A Day Off

Today was supposed to be my day off from flat hunting, except that I had one flat to visit. Yesterday was a bit of a scorcher so I spent my time hiding in the shadows waiting for agents to turn up. As I ambled up to one building I spotted another prospective renter waiting outside. You can spot us a mile off; we’re the ones juggling at least five business cards, a diary and a pen. I had got the appointment for this flat on Monday and I was buggered if I could remember a damn thing about it, so I got chatting to my competition. Neither of us knew what floor the flat was on, how big it was or how much the rent was. We started joking about how we now had the ability to spot agents a mile off. Yep it’s the A4 diary that gives them away, except we were so busy comparing our ability to do this that neither of us saw Olivier coming: a young thing, in a blue shirt, jeans and trainers. Overdressed but too casual, I thought to myself as he led us up the stairs.

As Olivier led us up the stairs he admitted that he hadn’t visited the flat before so he couldn’t tell us too much about it. He pulled the huge wad of keys out and began unlocking Fort Knox. After a minute or two it became apparent that he was struggling. The back of his light blue shirt was turning dark blue and his hairstyle was adopting a wet look. After a few minutes his composure was completely gone, he was swearing at the door like a good ‘un.

Competition decided to have a go at the door while I had the extremely important job of flicking the light switch every time the timer reached the end of its limit. Finally both Competition and Olivier gave up. “Well you have a go, you haven’t tried yet.” Competition said to me and for the second time in two days I found myself struggling with a set of locks that agents couldn’t manage to open. I knew the other three locks were open and the one that was flummoxing us all was definitely turning, but I couldn’t manage it either.

Suddenly the neighbour’s door opened. “What’s going on?” She took us in and sighed with relief. “Well, it’s not a burglary.”

“No, this flat is safe, we can’t get in and we’ve got the keys.” Olivier explained.

Neighbour had a go but she couldn’t manage it either, but she told us as we trooped off down the stairs that the current renter also had problems with the locks occasionally. So I ended up coming back this morning. It was a quick tour because behind that elusive door was a very little space. So I traipsed back down Joseph de Maistre for the millionth time this week, back past the cemetery, remembered to stop off for some fags and then got home and packed away the laptop to take it off for a much needed check up. It’s been getting all hot and bothered and switching itself off in a huff.

While I left in the capable hands of The Server Man, I went off to get my jabs for Bali, yay. The woman at the reception told me that the jabs were recommended but that I didn’t really need them. There was a moment of temptation there, but then I thought Kimberley and Estrella are already jabbed and then knowing my luck I’ll get sick. I’d timed it, so that during my two hours wait I would get some lunch, sit around and read some and then go back get jabbed and go pick up the laptop. Well, I sat on the Esplanade des Invalides and got my book out, got my journal out, got the musak out and then didn’t know what to do. I’ve been running around like such a blue arsed fly all week that I wasn’t really mentally ready for this two hour break.

Anyway, the laptop seems to be better now; trojans and all sorts of other crap apparently. It’s been on all evening. I’ve listened to Ben Harper (over and over again, it just suits the climate), did my hours sacred writing time. I’m glad it’s only an hour, because what I’m writing is a bundle of laughs. I’m enjoying it, but it’s draining. Farted around some and then decided to see if Orange New Voices liked my mine. I had a feeling that they had announced their short list. They didn’t like me (sad face) except really deep down I knew that I just couldn’t get the ending right, so I got fed up with it and just sent it off. I kind of know what it should be, but it ain’t there right now. Another one to work on I guess.

On est en Finale

Right you see this. Now imagine its night time and the fountain is lit from behind as landmarks are nowadays. Now you see those two bottom tiers imagine that is full of people jumping up and down and getting very wet. Oh and the left hand corner, someone’s waving a huge red flare there, bathing the whole scene in its scarlet glow. The semi circular base of the statue, oh yeah there are a whole bunch of people there doing a fair impression of the cancan although it seems the aim is to kick as much water out of the fountain rather than showing us their knickers. And there’s a fair amount of French flags waving off that bit. And on the fallen angel, yep there are a bunch of people clinging on there and jumping around. And there are a bunch of boxer shorted young men riding the dragons, redirecting the jets of water flowing out of the dragon’s mouth over the milling crowd.

Now imagine the sound. Firecrackers going off, horns beeping and every now and again the crowds start chanting as one: “On est en finale, on est en finale, on est, on est, on est en finale.”

But hang on who’s that there behind the fallen angel’s wing. He’s trying to clamber up higher but keeps slipping down.

“Shit, he’s going to fall and break his head.” Colleen says.

“No, he’s going to get to the top and wave the flag off. See it’s easy, if he climbs on the fallen angels wing, then hitches up on St. Michel’s skirty thing and then...” And then I get a bit stuck, but I want him to do it.

And he wants to do it too. He kicks off his shoes and clambers up the fallen angel’s wing. Then he ducks behind and he’s up St. Michel’s back like a little monkey and then he’s on St. Michel’s left shoulder clinging to his head like a little boy on his Dad’s back and then he unfurls the flag and I hoot and scream and clap for him and a general cheer goes up.

Later when the one who scaled St. Michel is down and the flag that got nicked off the front of an official building is up we decide it’s time to leave.

“It looks like it’s raining over that metro entrance.” I point out.

“Ach.” Colleen replies.

We get down about four steps before they notice us and they kick and they kick and we scream and giggle and Colleen looks at me with her few drops on her t-shirt and says. “Ah you must have got the brunt of that.”

I turn round, I’m drenched!

Not really about the Tour de France

Spent the afternoon and evening yesterday sweating buckets; other than that there’s no football, no work and no distractions - except I am a distraction unto myself. I added a sentence or two to something that had just popped out on Sunday evening, but that wasn’t going anywhere. I re read Sirens in preparation for its eventual rejection and re-write; I had decided on quite a radical re-write a few months ago, but as I read it yesterday I figured it was OK as it is, but could definitely do with some tidying up, which I didn’t do. I read Stardust to see what Anne had so hated about it. It was pretty twee and cringe worthy, but there are probably some bits I can pilfer for something else along the line. And then ... I sat on the sofa watching the Tour de France. That is a huge distraction and something else I lay firmly at the feet of my Dad (along with a whole pile of other things). Last year he visited me while it was at the ‘Montagne’ stage. Armstrong had basically already won and I made the huge mistake of asking ‘Why?’ I’m not saying I understand the Tour any better now, but I’ve got a vague understanding of time and sprinters and how the teams work together and there’s always a pretty exciting ‘chute’ along the way. As well as that, the Tour has hours of TV time and there is only so much cycling you can watch, so it really is a Tour de France. The helicopter zooms in on places of interest and you get a little geography and history along the way and the mountain stages are just amazing. The scenery is fantastic and it’s the one thing that makes me finally want to learn to drive, so that I can get down to some of those places one day. But then I was meant to be preparing myself for today’s supposedly free writing day. I did a few sudukos and sprayed Evian everywhere and sweated some more and then I went and found that bulging green file I’ve carted from Plymouth, back to London, to Kent, back to London where it stayed while I was in Mexico, then it rejoined me in Madrid and now it’s finally here on my untidy bookshelf in Paris. I knew what I was looking for; it’s been a friend for so long.

I pulled out the untidy sheets and laughed at what I had typed on, worksheets, the back of old essays, the thin paper that covered the top and bottom of reams that Mum used to bring home for me to use. I typed on absolutely anything. It was a little green typewriter with a red and black band and sometimes the keys used to get stuck and sometimes I must have been short of paper because there were no margins or headers and footers, but boy I typed it out. And the typos, well there were many, sometimes it was a bit of guesswork that got me through what I had tried to spill out then. So I read... I remember writing it in the dining room surrounded by my plants on that huge varnished table. My typewriter was sat on a folded up tablecloth so that I didn’t scratch the table and I was surrounded by rizlas, baccy and a fair amount of Afghan black (if my memory serves me right). I must have written this stuff; what 14, 13 years ago now, but I still liked it. Ok, I’ve got to admit, I loved it. I was surprised by it sometimes. There were even some lines that I recognized as having written again recently. There’s something in there just dying to get out. But I popped it back into the folder and wondered what.

This morning I did my usual rounds of my fave blogs and stuck on Deep Thinker’s. She’s been going on about this 30 day Writing Course for a little while now and I have to admit that sometimes I take these things with a little pinch of salt. I surf from time to time when the words dry up and usually an exercise or two is enough to get me through, so do I really need a 30 day course? And then I figured what the hell. Between now and the end of the holidays I should have about 30 days, so go for it, what have I got to lose and from Deep Thinker’s rave reviews everything to gain. So I’ve done the first exercise. Now I’m kind of impatient to get to the second one, but sometimes these things are best left to mulch in your head, and besides it’s almost the end of today’s stage!

Another One

I've got another three flat viewings. I need to be more systematic about this flat hunting malarky. The website got all glitchy on me, so I decided three appointments was enough for today. Then I looked at appointment no.1. I've written the address down and the phone number, but what agency is it? How much is the rent? What arrondissment is rue Constance in? Oh dear! So then I decided to whack another story up on The Pimple Continued. It was written last year on the train from St. Malo back to Paris.

The journey to St. Malo had been a bit frought. I may have mentioned I'm not one for time keeping so I arrived at Montparnasse ten minutes before the train was due to leave. I charged up the stairs spotted a guy sitting on his rucksack just about to spark up and walked with complete determination towards him. "Est ce que je peut avoir du feu?" I asked my hand already extended expecting the lighter, the cigarette in the other hand. "Wow, you know what you want." He commented as he handed me the lighter. Then I began my march across the concourse to the platform no.21. My phone was buzzing like an angry fly in my pocket as Jane panicked that I would miss the train.

As I tossed my cigarette away and climbed on board it was four minutes before the train was due to pull out. I settled down and it was then that I realised that the journey was five hours, there was no buffet car on the train, I was starving and I had no water! But I had a lighter. I had texted Jane from the metro when I had realised that I was missing one and like a complete star she had bought me one!

It was sometime during those two days as we sat staring at the kitesurfers whizzing across the water, or walking along the city walls, or when we were in hysterics about my button and bird phobia that I realised something about me; I was enormously relieved.

And yes I did say button phobia, I'll tell you about it one day, but that's another post.

More of Me

Right I have spent hours at this, but I am sharing a bit more of me with YOU.

Since the beginning of June I have been waiting impatiently for Leaf Books to announce their shortlist. Finally on Thursday it was printed. I didn't win, I didn't even make it onto the highly commended list. There was a rather nice comment about how their readers found the job very difficult and that they had enjoyed reading many of the other stories, but how did I know if they liked mine? So a little idea formed in my head (well actually nicked from Minx and Lee and bouyed on by Skint's success with his POD venture).

So if you look over at the side bar there's a new bit: The Pimple Continued. On that I will post my work in progress (or in this case works that got nowhere). Please feel free to comment, say they are crap, how they could be improved, never write again, YES it's the best thing I read in ages. You know that sort of thing and when it disappears from the blog it will mean that I've sent it off into the big wide world. There are a couple of stories up there already and if you like finding new fiction on the web, then I have also linked to other fiction blogs there.

I also had to link to the Free Templates page. Thanks Maxine for suggesting that link; found just the background I was looking for, spent hours farting around with it till it did what I want, but it's pretty good, me thinks.

Right, well that's it, I'm handing my babies over to you:

THE PIMPLE CONTINUED

A bit of a rant

A couple of years ago I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and didn’t eat in a fast food joint for nine months. I was probably suffering from the mother of all hangovers on the day all my ideals melted and obviously I have eaten in these establishments since; but I’ve always hated those places. Before it was just a gut feeling, whereas Schlosser framed it in a way that made me understand why I hated those places.

I grew up in a part of London that was owned by the church. I don’t know which church, or why, but what it meant was that there weren’t any pubs. The HSBC Bank on the corner was meant to be a pub until this ridiculous bylaw was discovered; so although we lived in a tiny little bit of London that didn’t really deserve its own tube stop we had four banks on the high street but not a single pub.

One summer, when I was home from university a man came and knocked on the door doing some market research about opening up a Weatherspoons on the corner. I was ecstatic; finally there would be a ‘real’ pub here instead of that dreadfully tacky Mandy’s wine bar. My Mum was not so chuffed when she got home and I relayed the news. ‘Drunk people in our street!’ Like me or my brother had never been drunk in the street? We wouldn’t have so far to reel home now, she should be pleased and front gardens all over the neighbourhood were safer (that was my brother not me). Well anyway, the Weatherspoons opened here, it opened there, it opened every bloody where and one day I sat in one of them in xville looking at the identical menu with a feeling of dismay. I sighed: ‘this is just like the McDonald’s of pubs, they are all the bloody same.’ I was missing the King’s Head where the manager used to rib me about my awful choice of boyfriends and the loose table top was glued on with chewing gum and the toilets were outside in sheds.

Soon after I left England and when I returned the rash of Starbuck’s, Costa Coffee etc. had spread over London like the plague and coffee was no longer coffee. Instinctively I hated them, I knew these coffee establishments were going to take over England and there was something hateful and insipid about them (and I don’t mean the coffee). Stupidly though I felt smug over here in mainland Europe; here we had proper coffee in little coffee cups that made your hair stand on end and your face contort into a Popeye impression. And we drank coffee for proper reasons: to finish off a good meal, while waiting for friends, to while away a Sunday afternoon, or just because it was time. When I got to France I also discovered that there were just as many different types of coffee as Starbucks: espresso, café crème, grand crème, noisette, allonge. And there are traditions too, you get a freebie glass of water with a coffee and coffee after dinner or lunch is just scrumptious.

But the Starbucks contagion continued to spread and reached Paris. Jose Bove was busy stopping GM food or was perhaps banged up in prison so he couldn’t stop it coming to Opera, and then one day I saw one in Montparnasse. Having finally discovered the wonders of Toastissimo, that was taken over by a Starbucks and now they are just everywhere.

And now this whole franchise crap is spreading into other domains. When I arrived in Paris six years ago, you found your apartments by phoning the small ads in Particulier a Particulier (owners rent directly to you) and you queued up with the other fifty million possible tenants with your dossier clutched in your clammy little hand just like everyone else and you got depressed just like everyone else. I’m on an e mail alert with PAP as it is fondly known and I’m getting NOTHING. So I decided to have a wee look with the agencies (who I also hate because what exactly do they do for their money). Anyway one kept coming up: ANCEA. Yep, I’m outing you ANCEA. They are not an agency, no they are kind of like Particulier a Particulier, but unlike PAP, instead of you phoning the owner up and making an appointment and the owner having to answer the phone countless times and make appointments, ANCEA does all that for you. Isn’t that nice of them? Yeah, and they charge you 220€ for the privilege. But they are not an agency, they won’t charge you again. But you already have you bastards, because you are flooding the market with your ads for places that I can’t see unless I pay you to see them and you are wasting my time. And come August 16th if I still haven’t found a flat I will probably be sucked into your organisation like a fly in a web because you will have killed the market, just like Weatherspoons killed pubs and Starbucks killed coffee.