petite anglaise

Try as I might, I can’t even picture what an 600 m2 apartment would look like. It would be a whopping ten times bigger than the compact and bijou little flat our household currently rents. Of couse Mr Frog and I do not have eight tadpoles (for which my hips are pathetically grateful), let alone a maître d’hôtel, two maids, a chef and a nanny to accommodate.

The now ex-Ministre de l’Economie, Hervé Gaymard, considered housing his extended family in two 300 m2 apartments on the avenue Montaigne (home to the most exclusive fashion boutiques and the Plaza Athenée Hotel – you know, the one where SJP stayed in the final episodes of SATC) and adding a lift and stairs to connect the two floors for a further € 150,000, was eminently reasonable. At a monthly cost to the taxpayer of a mere € 14,000 (£ 9 000), the apartment in the exclusive Triangle d’Or district costed a little over twelve times our annual rent, and the equivalent of Monsieur Gaymard’s monthly paycheck. Oddly, Monsieur le Ministre did not feel this to be in any way inconsistent with his stated policy goal of introducing spending cuts in the French public sector.

Soon after the satirical weekly the Canard Enchaîné broke their story about Mr Gaymard’s rather extravagent lifestyle, revelations which were compounded by Gaymard’s string of gaffes and indeed shameless lying about the extent of his personal fortune to the press, Monsieur Economy Drive was forced to tender his resignation after fleecing serving his country for only three months.

Now the infamous flat is up for grabs. And this, my dear readers, is where you come in.

Click on the handy button above to make your donation to the petite’s posh new pad fund.

Because I’m worth it.

I reach into my bag and give my Ipod a little stroke to turn up the volume a notch.

I’m still not completely over my paranoia about taking a gadget which is worth as much as my PC on the metro with me every day. Even if I didn’t actually pay for it. I should probably purchase some different coloured headphones, for my own piece of mind. Right now the only people I trust are fellow Ipod wearers. They get a covert nod; it’s like VW Beetle owners honking their horns at their peers.

“Your favorite innocence,
Your favorite prize,”

CLIP!

“Your favorite smile,
Your favorite slave.”

CLIP!

“I’m hanging on your words,
Living on your breath,”

CLIP! CLIP!
Did something small just fly past, missing the end of my nose by mere milimetres?

“Feeling with your skin.
Will I always be here?”

CLIP!!

I ease the volume down and take a look around.

There is a man, approximately my age, attractive in a scruffy, academic sort of way (brown corduroy jacket, one of those narrow, stripey, many-coloured scarves that men are wearing this season coiled around his neck, tufty brown hair), sitting across the aisle to my right on a strapontin. In fact, on closer inspection I decide that this person makes the grade and shall be added to the “Top Ten Foxes I Have Spied In The Metro” list. An honour which he remains blissfully unaware of, as he seems to be inspecting his hands. He has rather nice hands, I note.

The unkind neon lighting, which gives all metro travellers a sickbed complexion, regardless of whether they are wearing expensive MAC foundation or not, glints off something metallic in his right hand which I can’t quite identify without craning my neck a little…

CLIP!!!

Nail clippers.

That man is clipping his fingernails on the metro! Tiny, jagged pieces of him are flying in all directions! I suppose I should be thankful that he doesn’t remove his shoes and socks and start on his toenails. I wonder whether this is the sort of thing which you are allowed to sound the emergency alarm for, but dismiss the idea, as there is a fine for misuse.

Mr Métro Manicure is ejected unceremoniously from the list he never knew he was on as I caress the volume up again and close my eyes.

As a precaution however, I keep my mouth tightly shut.

The snow creaked pleasingly underfoot. For once I was glad of the pushchair, because it’s actually rather difficult to fall flat on your face when you have a four wheel drive Italian stallion Peg Perego buggy to steady yourself with. The waterproof poncho, source of much Christmas woe, got its first outing today and I silently thanked the EVILs for their foresight. Quite the chic Parisienne was I this morning sporting my sensible flat shoes, poncho drawstrings tied tightly under my chin.

Tadpole finally got to see some live snow, something that until now she had only seen in the illustrations from ‘Maisy’s Christmas Eve‘. A muffled chanting “no-ing! no-ing! no-ing!” could be heard from under the buggy’s misted up plastic raincover. What I wouldn’t give on days like today for a bit of role reversal. Oh to be pushed to work in an upholstered cocoon.

Ideally, we would have taken a detour through the Buttes Chaumont on the way to the childminder’s house and built a little “no-man”… However this was not to be. Parisian parks close their gates at the first hint of unclement weather (intempéries). Especially the Buttes Chaumont, as it is on a very steep hill, and therefore highly perilous when slippy. Presumably the powers that be at the town hall are paranoid about their liability should a jogger or dog walker accidentally break their neck. It’s a crying shame though, as those slopes were made for sledging.

Whenever it snows in Paris, vivid memories surface of the strikes of December 1995, and my spell as an English teacher at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (poor relation to the photogenic sister faculty of the Sorbonne, housed in a 70’s monstrosity, its ugliness matched only by the faculty website.)

That winter, two million French public sector workers elected to go on strike for the best part of a month. If I wanted to go anywhere at all during this turbulent time, it had to be accessible on foot, and using a route which avoided the pancarte-brandishing manifestants. There are few things more tedious than having to wait half an hour to cross a road as the demonstrators trundle past, from the enthusiastic ones at the front who wave their banners energetically and have mastered the day’s special chants, to the very last stragglers bringing up the rear.

At Paris III, the majority of the teachers, students and admin staff downed their pens for the duration. However lectrices like myself were not permitted to take industrial action. So for several weeks I was supposed to turn up to classes – a good forty minute trudge from my little bachelorette pad on the rue de la Roquette – never knowing whether the building would even be open when I arrived. There might be a single student, or five, or more likely none at all, awaiting my ‘expert tuition’. And I remember snow. Copious amounts of it.

My deux-pièces had a tiled floor, big, draughty windows and miniscule electric heaters were positioned under the windows. One day I awoke to the sight of ice on the inside of my bedroom window. When I had no classes at all, I took to hanging out in cafés and cinemas to keep warm. I was pathetically thankful for the fact that if you buy one coffee in a French bar you can sit there for as long as you please.

After three weeks of teeth-chattering, isolated boredom, I packed my bags and went back home early for Christmas.

The very next day, naturally, the strikes were called off.

I’ve got butterflies in my tummy.

This is because I’m going to meet a fellow blogger for lunch today. For some reason I’m as nervous as a fifteen year old getting ready to go on her first date. I think we both are. She summed it up really well, saying she is nervous of falling victim to the ‘I preferred the book to the movie’ syndrome. I’m worried about not living up to whatever expectations she might have, based on my blog. And I suspect that in her presence I’m going to feel rather old. Nerve racking stuff.

But I also feel that we expat bloggers have a lot in common. A love of writing, a love of France, shared frustrations, similar experiences of trying to find our niche in this city, of coping with living in a foreign language. It seems a shame not to get together and see if some of the virtual friends we have made on the interwebnet don’t have the potential to become ‘real’, three-dimensional friends.

It would also be an excuse for a bit of proper anglo-saxon style drinking.

So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a suggestion.

A get together. In Paris. For expat bloggers (and anyone they want to bring for moral support). If you like this idea and my proposed date works for you, please comment or drop me a line on petite.anglaise at gmail.com. The date is just a handy Friday I have when Mr Frog and Tadpole will be at the EVIL’s and I won’t need a babysitter. It can be changed if necessary. Offers of accommodation for any of our non-Parisian expats who can make it will also be gratefully accepted. And suggestions for a venue (I think this will depend on the number of people planning to come along).

There should be ground rules of course. No writing about each other afterwards. Or at least, no specifics which would compromise anyone’s anonymity. And definitely nothing like this: “I know petite said that her bottom was of J-Lo esque proportions but I wasn’t expecting…”

What do you think?

Update: are there any male expat bloggers in Paris I should know about? Apart from Jason? I don’t mind this being a (sh)event, but I never realised before how overwhelmingly we outnumber the blogging males… Iain – be worried.