My Gay & Glamorous Life - Paris

Some of my friends, mainly in the US, have this notion that I lead an impossibly gay & glamorous life.  I nip off to Paris on the Eurostar, I meet friends at My Club in London, I trip to Germany on real airplanes, and as to my daily life at the centre of one of the great medieval university towns – why words fail to describe it!

It is partly to dispel such ludicrous notions that I began to write this blog.  Before I blogged about La Bourboule, friends and enemies alike envied me for spending the vacation in ‘The South of France!’  No doubt they had visions of Monaco and Marseille, of sun-drenched southern towns simply thronging with elegant gentlemen keen to court and coddle me.  The reality, viz having a hose stuck up my nose and my sinuses irrigated every morning in the company of old age pensioners and tiny children, turned out less entrancing. 

Of course, for all my readers know, I hide and hush up certain aspects of my holidays!  Perhaps after my watery treatments each morning I am whisked away by my Latin Lover who likes nothing more than to paint my toenails with a purple polish while I read Asterix books to him in an effort to improve my French.  Perhaps!  But I am not telling.

Anyway, having thus successfully dispelled the myths of my holidays in the South of France, I decided to continue my efforts and branch out to include other aspects of my reputedly gay & glamorous life.  Like going to Paris on the weekend, for example.

Paris is, of course, wasted on me.  Every time I go I swear I will take photos, and once I am there I never see anything I want to photograph.  What the heck, I think, just buy a postcard!  However, this time there were two sights I wanted to photograph.

The first one I wanted to, but didn’t, because although I am always up for behaving badly I draw the line somewhere.  Lunch took place in a very glamorous setting, namely Le Café de la Paix on the Boulevard des Capucines, with a view of the Opera Garnier.  Tres chic.  Tres chere.  Frightfully expensive, and portions so small it made one weep.  Main meal was wild duck.  Enough duck to fill two tablespoons, lovingly garnished with five grapes, two figs, and gravy with raisins.  Served with crusty bread.  Too small even as a starter.  I ached to photograph the plate and send the picture to Les Galapagos in La Bourboule.  Dessert consisted of a chocolate sphere the size of a tennis ball.  I cracked it like an egg, and discovered a little bit of chocolate mousse and some stewed mango.  I was speechless.  If that’s what glamorous dining is all about, I do without.  Oh how I longed for the steaks at Les Galapagos!

The second noteworthy thing I saw I did manage to photograph, after I gave the clochard in charge of the subjects of my interest two Euros and promised not to include him in the photos.  Isn’t this the cutest thing?  I have seen any number of beggars with dogs, but cats?  Cute cute cute!  They seemed quite content with their lot, by the way.

The other stuff I did in Paris was pretty commonplace, really.  Visiting friends, buying Hermes scarves and carambars, talking about ethics with a friend in a little café overlooking the Seine – not much to write about, really.  Did much the same thing when I was in Portland, Oregon, and anywhere else, for that matter.  It is no more glamorous because it is done in Paris.

By the way, carambars are chewy sweets, sort of like maoams.  I buy them for my colleagues who find them strangely addictive.  I eat most of them myself.