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.