A Parisian Pinch of Salt this Christmas

"What I hate about Christmas, is the obligation to be happy." Thus said one of my students last Friday morning. I didn't know what shocked me more; this sudden outburst of dislike toward the most joyful of festivities, or the fact that the sentence was grammatically faultless. Moreover, this was not the first time that I'd heard this sort of 'Scroogery' in the last couple of weeks.

Just the week before, I'd heard a mother tell her son the cold, honest truth about Father Christmas. To emphasise the point she informed the child in both French and English, just in case he hadn't understood the first time. The little boy must have been, oh, about five! Cue, expansive howling and no doubt very expensive psychotherapy.

A good friend of mine has gone a step further and changed her name to 'Grinch' for the holiday period; a stance that rather amusingly backfired when she had to help her grandmother wrap a small mountain of Christmas shopping.

It's easy to take all this holiday 'humbuggery' at face value. After all, thanks to the last mad dash for presents, the major Parisian shopping centres are now no-go zones - or rather cannot-fit-any-more zones. The five-minute walk from Havre Caumartin Metro to my office has become an terrifying battle zone where casualties could be the result of  anything from trampling, by hordes of Louis Vitton-wielding Chinese tourists; 3rd degree burns from the upturned drums of roast chestnut sellers or near-fatal tinitus from the combined effects of Salvation Army bells and battery-powered Rudolfs. A week of this and you would have to admit that the green furry one has a point. However, somewhat randomly (as is my want) my first proper foray into French literature for sixteen years has made me consider this a little more deeply.

'Dessine-moi un Parisien' by Olivier Magny, is, as the cover blurb puts it, 'a plunge into the strange world of the Parisian'. Each mini-chapter is a firmly tongue-in-cheek look at something that defines this most contradictory of species. Be it their inane insecurities about education, their origins or accent; their undisguised hatred of  Les Fachos or les Américains (this despite all secretly longing to be New-Yorkers);  or their simple joy at the sight of an organ grinder, snow or sunshine.

'La Première Gorgée de Bière' by Philippe Delerme, on the other hand, is an undisguised,  delightful hymn to all the little things about life that make your average Pierre or Pascalle feel warm inside. Perhaps my favourite was the 'Le croissant du trottoire'  about the surplus, oven-warm pastry joyfully consumed on the cold Sunday walk home from the boulangerie. Or it could have been 'Invité par surprise' describing the gently subtle etiquette of an off-the-cuff dinner invite; or maybe it was 'On pourrait presque manger dehor', 'We could almost eat outside', as I shared the twinge of hope felt at the first pale, sunshine of Spring.

'What was the point of this little literary interlude?' you may well wonder. Well, it occurred to me that  anyone who can take unbridled joy from a shaft of sunlight; laugh at their own inability to accept an error or break into a mile-wide smile at the thought of an al fresco lunch, cannot be labelled Grinch, Scrooge or curmudgeon.

It's not that they particularly dislike Christmas, they're just asking the question: "Why only now? What's there to be happier about now than any other time of year?" Good point! 

Bonne Fêtes!

Sweetness and light (and maki)

    For once the grey shroud had lifted. The sky was a piercing blue that, unlike its colour-absorbant predecessor, reflected the sharp winter light onto every surface. Paris looked beautiful. The normally drab and imposing Haussmann buildings looked like they had been given a seasonal re-spray.The spires of Notre Dame glistened as we jogged along the banks of the suddenly shimmering Seine.
    This is my favourite weather and I joyfully gulped down gallons of the searingly fresh air and thought about what the day ahead might bring. My friend Elodie had suggested visiting a very special market in the 3rd arrondissement and we agreed to meet there for brunch. She'd posted an article on it on my Facebook page to whet my appetite, but reality, as we all know, has a habit of surprising us.
    Le Marché des Enfants Rouges, dating back to the early 17th Century, originally took its name from the inhabitants of a then abandoned orphanage who used to wear a uniform of bright red. There was nothing bright nor special about the creaking iron gates that marked the market's entrance on rue de Bretagne and if I'd been on my own I would have walked straight past it.
   Upon entering we weaved our way through a labyrinthine collection of the usual market stalls selling the usual fare: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, cous-cous. Wait a minute, cous-cous? Making up the rear section of the market is a sensory confection of food stalls. There were mounds of fragrant spiced Moroccan specialities, served on clay tagines and unctious cassoulets and confits from the south. On one side of an aisle an Italian waiter sung orders for five more rissotto de cèpes, while on the other a character straight out a manga cartoon was dishing up variety boxes of bento. Behind that the air was filled with the sounds of sizzling, spicy acras from Martinique.

   We plumped for the Japanese and sat in a corrugated plastic greenhouse, warmed by induction heaters, sipping life-giving, smokey thé grillé trying to pry the last grain of soy-soaked rice out of our trays with our chopsticks (luckily they also supplied forks!) After the grating grind of the working week, this was a gloriously disorganised time-out that was, at 4 o'clock, still doing a roaring (no doubt hangover-inspired) trade as we wandered back, sated, into the world outside.

    We weren't done with the 3rd yet though, as we had to go back past rue Debelleyme and "Popelini", a purveyor of petits choux. I guess we'd call them 'mini eclairs', but size was the only thing small about these cluster bombs of flavour, whose glutinous fillings included luscious raspberry and rose, creamy vanilla (you could feel the seeds!) and a dark chocolate that was so bitter it needed counselling. www.popelini.com

(photo courtesy of Elodie Salares) 

     As befits the randomness that is a parisian weekend, we ended up sharing these (inexpertly halving them with a coffee spoon on an unused saucer) at the "Rush Bar" (32 Rue Saint-Sébastien), a Liverpool Football Club supporters' pub around the corner from Elodie's flat. There was no doubting that that Sunday's combination   of sunshine, sushi and sweetness was a hat-trick of the quality that even the eponymous Ian would have struggled to surpass.