Paris s'eveille (Paris awakens)

Two nights in Paris - September 08

I wasn't even intending to go to Paris. I was online looking at flights to London and Norwich thinking about what to do with my 2 weeks off work when I saw that Ryanair had reduced flights to Paris. Purely out of curiosity I had a look and found I could get from Glasgow to Paris for under £40. Now, I don’t really agree with such cheap flights – it just creates more air traffic and environmental problems. But, I did really want a holiday…

So I booked the flight, tracked down a cheap Paris hotel with single rooms from the Lonely Planet or similar and informed Michael I’d be going away for a couple of nights! I then realised that the exchange rate at the moment is rotten and that everything was going to be much pricier than the last time I went which was a good few years ago.

It was a whirlwind visit with me arriving Monday evening and leaving Wednesday morning but I really loved being back in France, hearing French speakers, smelling the French bakeries and seeing the wonderful architecture. The weather was gorgeous weather – 20C and over and sunny.

My wee room in 'Le Marais' district

View from my hotel room

I don’t mind travelling by myself as I’ve done a fair bit of it over the years, either for work or when visiting friends who were working while I was there. But, it’s been a while and I did feel slightly nervous as I boarded the bus from Beauvais (which if you’ve ever been is no where near Paris – it’s in the Picardy region!) to Paris.

By the time I found my hotel I was feeling good and was looking forward to finding a restaurant to eat in. The staff at the hotel were helpful but the man who gave me my key when I arrived made my skin crawl! The sort who tries to touch your hand as he gives you your key and who assumes you don’t understand what he’s saying in French. He was about 5 feet 1 and kind of leered at you over the desk. Luckily he was only on duty once more during my stay – and yes, he touched my hand again- ick (I am doing my Rick Mayle impression 'w**ker face' as I write this)!

The lovely Place Des Vosges round the corner from my hotel

Traditional Art Nouveau Metro signs

I found a small local brasserie in the Bastille area near my hotel and sat out on the terrace under a gas heater (I was so warm I could’ve done without the heater). I was surprised to see that the Parisians were actually abiding by the new no smoking laws and not smoking inside cafes and restaurants – most unlike them! I ended up chatting in French to a couple of men sitting at the next table, one who owned a small local art gallery and the other an elderly jazz musician from the UK whose parents were from LA and Jamaica. Of course, I didn’t tell them I was in Paris alone but said my husband was ill so had stayed at the hotel- you never know who’s listening!

The next day I did a lot of walking around the twisty back streets of the ‘Marais’ district which has become quite expensive and touristy in places and eventually found the comedy club that I wanted to go to that night – Le Point Virgule. Marias means swamps or marsh, which the area used to be long ago. It was, and to an extent still is, the Jewish district but is also a popular area with gay men (not that you notice until the evening).

Les Jardins des Tuileries (gardens by The Louvre) - cheeky statues.

The old and the new- St Eustache church in the background with Les Halles shopping centre in foreground

I went to the FNAC- a bit like Virgin megastore – to buy my ticket for the show which wasn’t cheap at 20 euros – having decided to go and see the French comedian rather than the British one who was going to do his show in ‘franglais’. In the UK you tend to buy a ticket for the whole evening in which you might see 2 to 3 comedians but at this club you paid per show meaning it was expensive to see one comedian for 1 hour. There was someone on straight afterwards but to see that show you’d need to buy another 20 euro ticket!

For lunch I had decided to go to a Breton crêperie – a pancake place! Crêpes are a traditional dish of Brittany and they do ‘galettes’ which are savoury pancakes and ‘crêpes’ which are the sweet ones –these are to be eaten along with traditional French cider, very similar to Somerset cider. The crêperie was really small and friendly and I felt quite happy and glowing after my lunchtime cider!

One of few Parisian comedy clubs- the tiny Point Virgule (semi colon)

I walked for miles before and after lunch all the way down to the Centre Pompidou, the Louvre and its gardens before heading back to the hotel for a quick shower and change before dinner.

I was disappointed with my choice of restaurant for that evening but I had wanted to find a place close to the comedy club as the show started at 9pm. I had chosen a place in the tourist guide which was supposed to have fantastic falafel and to offer quick service- well, yes, the food was good and the service fast but the atmosphere was lacking and some of the waiters were somewhat self-obsessed (one of them was posing directly in front of my table which was putting me off my food). It also wasn’t what I would describe as ‘cheap’, unlike the guide book.

I queued up with all the French locals outside the comedy club waiting to go in. When we went in I realised how tiny the place was with wooden benches to sit on- not even enough room for my legs and they’re really not that long! The place was more or less full with maybe 50 or so people. Throughout the show we could sometimes hear passers-by talking outside the club. The comedian, a guy from Brittany called Arnaud Cosson, did sketches and characters, which is a more French approach, rather than the UK traditional type of stand up. As it was all in French I did miss some of punch lines but I followed most of it and I tended to find some jokes funny that the French didn’t really find that amusing such as one about French films vs US films (in the latter everybody dies, in the former nothing happens!).

The comedy show I went to - and starred in!

The highlight/ most awful part of the evening was when Arnaud needed a female audience member to participate in a sketch…..(you know what’s coming, don’t you?) As I was sitting alone at the end of a bench I was easy game! So I 'won' the chance to go onto the stage to participate in a sketch – I did consider telling him that I wasn’t a native French speaker in case I couldn’t follow him, but in the end I didn’t need to. I had to answer questions in a pretend quiz about my ideal man. We then had to act out a ‘date’ where we pretended to run through a field, dancing, were on beach, on a motorbike etc. while he did various visual gags.

When the show ended, we clapped for an encore but because they have such a tight turnaround and the next act was due on stage, he couldn’t do one and we had to leave so the next lot could come in! All-in-all an interesting and fun cultural experience!

The next day I had to leave for my flight in the morning so had time to buy a delicious freshly baked pain-au-chocolat (sweet pastry with chocolate in the centre) and to go and sit in a café for a while watching the world go by. At 4 euros for a coffee I might have been better to find somewhere more off the beaten track but as I had my suitcase and the café I chose was just next to the metro station I swallowed hard and paid up. I wasn’t disappointed with my people watching as there were a couple of amusing women in the café who were still partying from the night before, who were very, very drunk and were just having their dinner and red wine at 9am! Don’t you just love Paris!

Stormy Brighton

A short trip to Brighton, 4-6 September 08

I'd been accepted to talk at a conference in Brighton and was hoping to get some sunshine- what I actually got was soaked to my skin at least twice (so nice to sit in a conference with wet feet, legs, etc etc) and almost blown off my feet by the gale force winds!

Stormy sea & sky by Brighton Pier- this is summer!

The venue was out of town at Falmer, a short train ride from the centre of Brighton on the University of Sussex campus. I knew my timings were tight to get from Stirling to the conference in time to do my talk that day so if the plane from Glasgow was delayed I’d be in trouble… Luckily everything ran smoothly so I got to the registration desk at the conference centre with about 20 minutes to spare before the first talk. Little did I know I had been allocated accommodation at the far end of the campus – not, like most people, directly opposite the conference centre! It was of course at this moment that torrential rain poured from the sky as I dragged my suitcase all the way there and then had to rush back to catch the first talk. My first soaking of the day. The theme was set for more rain, strong winds and getting wet in order to check out.

The Royal Pavilion, Brighton

The day ran on until after 6pm, which I hadn’t been expecting, and actually I wished I hadn’t gone to the very boring keynote lecture since it was just founder members reminiscing about the start of the Medical Sociology Association 40 years before, telling anecdotes about people that were amusing mostly to those who knew who the hell they were talking about!

Anyway, things improved with dinner out in Brighton with some of the other conference folk at Carluccio’s an Italian restaurant and deli (there was one in Ealing Mic and I used to go to now and again for coffee) – the food was good, the people interesting but it was very noisy with bare walls echoing every sound.

One of the wee back streets of multi-coloured terraced houses in the North Laine area

The next day (Friday) there were more talks then I had arranged to meet an old friend Tom from RF, the charity where I worked in London, who lives in Brighton with his family. We went for dinner at a nice Indian restaurant called ‘Indian Summer’ near the seafront and I stayed over at their house that night.

There were more presentations on the Saturday but having looked at the topics, and also knowing there’d be another keynote in a similar vein to the first one, I opted instead for sight-seeing and shopping!

The Lanes area of Brighton- see the bath tub sign hanging outside the pub!

I had only ever been to Brighton briefly for work- there and back for a meeting with no time to look around – so I wanted to see a bit of the place. I found it a bit self-consciously cool and trendy as if people were trying too hard. It was an interesting people watching experience; people tend to dress in bright colours, with varied textures and layers – none of the black and white and denim of Stirling! There is definitely an under-current of ‘arty’ types (or wannabe arty anyway!), environmentally-aware folk and lots of students. I enjoyed wandering around the back lanes of The Lanes and North Laine window shopping and had lunch in a health food-type café sitting outside since a miracle happened and on Saturday it didn’t rain!

Graffiti art of James Brown on the backs of shops, North Laine

I flew home on Saturday evening so that I’d be back for our 7th wedding anniversary on Sunday so we could spend the day together. We wanted to go for lunch in a Mediterranean restaurant on Sunday but it was shut and all the other restaurants we looked at were empty! It was dead in town but it could be because Monday was a bank holiday and everyone was away for the weekend. We ended up having a coffee and cake in a café we haven’t tried before called Crema Central. I don’t think we’ll hurry back - it was weak coffee and I didn't like the feel of the place.