Metro music

       You always hope that you'll assimilate quickly into the way of life of a new place. So, it was with some pride that I informed a new friend and colleague about my increasingly proficient Parisian ability to bump and barge people out of the way on and around the Metro (they call it bousuler and yes the sciatica-inducing rucksack has helped with this).
"Ah," he intoned wisely, "but do you still say 'sorry' after you've done it?" I had to admit that yes, I did. "Well, you're still British then."
       Although I could concede this, I have noticed the convergent effect that public transport has on the La Manche-sized gap that separates our two cultures. The most noticeable is the 'switch-off'. This is the ability of the most ardent Latin - normally found gesticulating wildly over his copy of Le Figaro every morning - to, upon entering a Metro carriage, stare fixedly at his winkle-pickers, pointedly ignoring even the ten-day-old-brie-scented armpit or kidney puncturing elbows of his neighbour. Enter a Metro car at Opera and you may as well be doing so at Canary Wharf or Regent Street.
      This can come in useful, mind, when your commute is interrupted by one of the capital's plethora of itinerant poets, musicians, dramatists and unfortunates who ride the lines in search of a charitable centime. When one of these enters a carriage you have never seen so much attention payed to bootlaces, handbag straps or the intricate way a staple holds a newspaper together.
      Although many of the more pungent, hirstute operatives inspire similar actions from me, there are occasions when I feel that M. or Mme. Commuter is missing out.
      There was the accordion player whose fingers blurred across the keyboard, his arms furiously pumping as he induced foot-tapping tunes from his squeezebox. There were also the the mournful, yet melodious tones of a Mahgreb singer who had me drifting off to the harsh, terra-cotta backdrop of the Atlas Mountains.
       On both occasions I had my coins at the ready to reward their efforts, but so expectant were they of their fellow passengers' ingratitude, they pushed past me in a haze of habitual disappointment.
       Outside the opulent main opera house one evening I saw a trainee concert pianist entertain a crowd of hundreds who cheered every chord. Maybe the Metro musicians deserve some greater recognition of their talents. Perhaps it's time Monsieur et Madame became a little less London and a petit peu more Paris.

L'ecole de bierre

After a hearty Vietnamese meal in the heart of Paris Chinatown last night, followed by two pitchers of Dublin Ale at the Sputnik Bar on Butte au Cailles, I wished bonne nuit to my Metro-bound friends and  wandered onwards to find a nightcap of sorts. What I found was Chez Michel, a bar devoted to top-class Belgian beer run by an Algerian. This would normally have been enough to have put the cherry on top of a wonderfully cosmopolitan Parisian Friday night.
Chez Michel, compared to the other more salubrious, chic or lively pubs and bars in this little area of the 13th, has a more rough-and-ready atmosphere. Many of the beers advertised are done so with a scrawl of felt-tip pen on a blank piece of full-scap paper stuck to the wall. This is made more exotic by the sheer variety of spirits behind the bar, ranging from top-shelf Absinthe to what looked like witches' brews of various fruits in alcohol, not to mention the plethora of well-known beers (Kwak, Duval, Kriek) to the unknown (to me at least) like Chouff.
Unwittingly, I chose the strongest and darkest, an almost syropy thick Trappiste, served in what looked like a flat-based white wine glass with a gold rim (I admire barkeepers who use the authentic glassware for these beers). Michel poured out a trickle into the glass and left me to it. Not really aware that there was anything more to it, and slightly worse for wear, I continued to pour and took a sip. A taste like smokey, hoppy molasses rolled onto my tongue, ensuring that, as late as it was, and as weary as I was, this was not beer I was going to quaff.
Unbeknownst to me, my naive and unskilled supping had been noticed by the proprieter. He put his glass of milky pernot down, ambled over and in a patient tone, usually reserved for about this time of night, rhetorically asked me if I had never drunk this particular beer before. Not waiting for the obvious answer he took the bottle, with the remainder of the beer, and with a deft hand, swirled it expertly around. The aim of this action, he informed me, was to dislodge the sediment that would otherwise have collected at the bottom of the bottle and given me a nasty surprise at the end of my otherwise heavenly drink.

I thanked him profusely and then sat in admiration of this Mahgrebian prof de bierre and wondered if a barman anywhere else would have bothered, or would they have just let l'anglais murder his drink and his taste buds. Pride in one's profession and the in-depth knowledge of one's wares is a little found quality these days. So with this deft flick of his practiced wrist, Michel had ensured that this gallois, another potentially one-off customer, would make Chez Michel a little part of of chez moi from now on.

Thought for today

"Stay out of the merde - say 'bonjour' to everyone."

A sound piece of advice to nouveaux/elles Parisiens/ennes from well-known francophile Stephen Clarke - author of the "Merde" series of novels (pictured) - inscribed in my newly bought copy of his latest "The Merde Factor" at a signing at WH Smiths in Rue Rivoli last night. (www.stephenclarkewriter.com)

On the right side of the tracks

One of the things I was most dreading about moving to Paris was getting around. I had never lived in a capital city before and an essential part of my job (itinerant business English teacher) is to travel from office to office, spending as little time in between as possible - because as any TEFL teacher knows, time (spent traveling) is money (you don't see).

I was envisaging becoming a harried, sweaty, stressed-out sardine with chronic sciatica - due to humping ruck sacks full of text books - and a wish to return to the humdrum yet peaceful world of the outskirts of Dusseldorf, my former home.

Well, after a month, the sciatica is coming along just fine (I've been promised a wheely-bag, for Christmas!) and after a couple of Metro journeys my pores are happily ejecting whatever delicious Parisian pastry products I've hurriedly consumed that day.

However, the most feared symptom, the stress, has been substantially reduced by several brilliant, barely mentioned characteristics of the French capital's transport system:

1. Buses - you would have thought that most capitals' roads would render this public transport inviable and impractical. Not so, by taking a bus you can, for example, reach Place d'Italie (13th) from Place Gambeta (20th) - as I once did with 30 kg of luggage - in about 40 stress-free minutes, while avoiding the crowds and the labyrinth of the metro and taking in some lovely sights along the way. What's more I've never waited more than 10 minutes for one.

2. Bus stops - if you wander as aimlessly as I do, you will be happy to know that all bus stops in Paris display both a local and city map, so, as you're never very far from one, at least you'll know whereabouts you became lost. The RATP also provides you with a door-to-door mapping service on its website. www.ratp.fr

3. Overground Metro lines - a large part of lines like the 6 (Etoile - Nation) run above ground, a breath of fresh air in more ways than one, which brings me onto...

4. Windows on Metro trains - they actually open enough to let (what accounts for) fresh air in (only if you stand mind).

5. Buildings, signs and other accoutrements - they have style here, so Metro signs, station buildings and even the viaducts holding the overground tracks are often works of art. Some you barely see (Place de Monge). In fact most you don't have time to admire because I've never waited more than 5 minutes for a train at any of them.

I'm not saying getting around the biggest city in France during the morning rush is a breeze, but there's less to sniff at than you'd think (unless you count my shirts).

Thought of the day

From my mate Ali Bullen: "If we run around in circles, we only run from what we chase - so be still."

http://www.writerscafe.org/Alistair go and read his poetry, it's amazing!

Meant to be

What does a big, fat, Greek wedding, the Indian Premier League and someone's inability to comprehend internet jargon have in common? My blog.

I've been procrastinating about doing this for years now. I've seen quite a few things, been to quite a few places, met great numbers of great people and had a huge number of thoughts about it all. I've always thought about telling others about these. The thing was that life went on, I met new people, went to new places and did new things and there never seemed to be the moment.

As is usual with these things it took a number of random, completely unconnected series of events to make the moment happen. The second two don't take much explaining. Last year English coverage of the IPL (www.iplt20.com/) was sponsored by www.godaddy.com where you can buy web hosting kit (smash 'em bash 'em cricket and web hosting, I didn't understand either). I went on and soon realised that names like SQL and the such meant nothing to me, so I searched the Internet for help. There I found http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-set-up-a-blog-for-beginners/ and so I began to follow the step-by-step instructions designed to help even the web illiterate begin their journey into the blogosphere.

The thing was you needed a name for starters; something bright and catchy, but not naff or cliched; original, but not so 'out there' that no-one's going to understand it. Well, it just so happened that I had been at my cousin's wedding the other weekend and after the lovely ceremony, we adjourned to her dad's garden for the reception. There I met a lovely lady (NOT a bridesmaid, I'm trying not to be cliched here, OK) and we started up a conversation. Somehow, we got around from me wanting to write a blog to the dad in MBFGW insisting he could derive any word from the Greek and then back to how certain things just happened because they were supposed to

"Serendipity" I said.
"Pardon?" was the understandable reply.
"I bet that comes from Greek."
"O-K". So we set about trying to do it. I thought the first part sounded like the Greek for 4 or "TesSERA". The second half she admitted could conceivably - when conceived on several glasses of wine - could come from "diploma" meaning a fold (look on Google translate, it's there).
"So," I surmised, "Serendipity means 'to fold something over four times'," a hesitant look, "at just the right time." I added. A sly smile,
"You have to put that in your blog!"

So there, you have it, fourfoldsandover, the random blog that was meant to be! Enjoy!