Paris Journal 2007

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At the “penthouse” across the street, the resident cat
gave us a real scare.  He’d jumped over the railing of his
home, 8 floors above the street, and was trying to jump
onto the next door neighbor’s balcony, which is now
impossible because the next door neighbor has put up
chicken wire.

 

Still trying to foil the chicken wire.

 

Finally the foolish cat decided to jump back on the balcony
where he belongs.  His staff promptly led him inside.

Whew.

 

Ladybug minute timer from La Chaise Longue, €5.

 

 

Watch from La Chaise Longue, €19.

Saturday, August 4

 

We’ve had a few walks recently through the very safe 7th arrondissement, including a couple at night after dinner.  As I’ve mentioned several times, there is much security in this arrondissement because this is where many of the major government buildings are located, including the Hôtel Matignon, the headquarters of the prime minister of France.

 

There are many security cameras, and there are many guards who are gendarmes from the Republican Guard.  Now there are going to be fewer guards, the defense minister, Hervé Morin, has announced. 

 

The guards are called “gardes statiques,” or more colloquially, “plantons.”  They are 1800 of the 103,000 gendarmes in France.  The defense minister wants to cut 500 of those 1800 posts, including 450 in Paris, between now and the end of 2007.  Twenty-three of those jobs have already been cut.  Well, those guys were actually given other jobs in operational services.

 

The plantons are being replaced by more security cameras and by private security guards.  I saw one of those security guards when we walked home the other night.  His uniform was not anywhere near as interesting as the plantons’. 

 

The union that represents the police (SGP-FO) is not amused.  Their spokesperson, Luc Poignant, said the money spent on private security guards will be “money thrown out the windows.  The elected officials are protected by the gendarmes and the police and it must stay that way.”

 

One of the Republican Guards posted at the National Assembly said “Here, the morale of the troops is at its lowest point.  This job is super boring and not enlightening at all.  I stand there for nearly 24 hours.”  Actually, he gets a four-hour break in that 24 hours, but still, what a long boring day it must be.  And, he says, “I don’t have the right to intervene in the public street if there is an infraction.  I don’t make this [job] my whole life.”

 

He’s right that he doesn’t have the right to intervene in the public street if there is a traffic infraction.  This is something that Parisians forget when they see police, not gendarmes, doing the guard work in the 7th.  Such was the case the other day when Tom and I were walking down the very narrow sidewalk on the rue de Babylone where the Jardin Catherine Labouré is located across from the end of the back garden behind the Hôtel Matignon. 

 

Because the Jardin is a public park, police are often used to guard this spot instead of members of the Republican Guard.

 

So three policemen were standing near the park entrance, around their little van parked in the street.  As we were nearing them, a naughty Parisian man on a bicycle squeezed by us on the narrow sidewalk.  Riding a bike on a sidewalk in Paris can earn you a €35 fine.  The jerk just went riding right past us, and right by the police!  No doubt he was thinking of them as Republican Guard plantons who were powerless.  But no, one of the policemen turned, yelled at him to get off the bike and walk it instead.  The jerk complied immediately.  (He could not ride in the street here because he was going the wrong way for that one-way street.)  He was lucky that he was not fined.  We snickered.

 

You’d think someone would have to be an utter idiot to try to break into a building in the middle of the 7th.  However, that is exactly what two young men tried to do in early July.  Of course, they have been caught.  They claim that they did not know that the place they were trying to break into was the annex for the Hôtel Matignon, headquarters of the prime minister.  I wonder if they know they are in Paris?

 

We like the plantons.  Whenever we catch their eye as we pass by, we say “Bonjour,” or “Bonsoir,” and they always answer back with a bonjour or bonsoir, often adding “messieur-dame” to include both of us.  I think they like to be recognized and greeted.  I hope we make the planton job a bit less boring.

 

On Thursday, we walked all the way over, through the 7th, stopping to buy Nespresso capsules for everyone we know who has a Nespresso machine to use in Paris this summer.  The Nespresso boutique is just north of the rue de Babylone, on the rue de Bac, caddy-corner across from the Bon Marché department store, and right across from the Conran’s store which used to be part of Bon Marché.

 

We’ve shopped there a couple times last year, in October, and when the cashiers asked if we wanted to get a preferred customer card, we said no.  This time, the cashier was more persistent with us, persuading us to do this.  He wanted to practice his English, I think, even though I kept speaking in French out of habit.  Tom gives in to the pressure to speak English much more readily than I do.  So we went through the process and now have a Nespresso preferred customer card which gives us a small discount.

 

We went on to the 6th to the Village Voice bookstore to buy a copy of Julia Child’s book, My Life in France.  I knew they had just received copies on the 31st, and sure enough, there was one staring right at me when I walked through the door of the cluttered shop. 

 

Then we went on to La Chaise Longue on rue Princesse, right next door to the Village Voice.  I have a wild hot pink electronic alarm clock that I bought there last summer.  I love their zany merchandise.  This year, I bought a wild and crazy watch, and a very cute ladybug minute timer.

 

Then it was time to meet Carolyn and Doug (my sister and brother-in-law) in the apartment near Saint Sulpice.  Tom taught himself again how to use the Nespresso machine there, and taught Carolyn and Doug as well.  Then we all went to dinner at La Petite Chaise, the oldest restaurant in Paris.  The dinner was superb!  Our server spoke English almost the entire time.  This is weird.  It was not like this in Paris ten years ago!  My how things have changed.

 

Nevertheless, I still spoke French to him some of the time.  And every day, I read out loud in French, just as Elisabeth suggested.  It really helps.  Thanks so much for the tip, Elisabeth!

 

Carolyn and Doug walked back to their apartment, which was nearby, and we walked all the way home to the 15th, through the dark but safe 7th.  Paris is even more beautiful at night.

 

I love this city in the same way that Julia Child loved it.  I relate to everything she writes about Paris in her last book.  (She wrote 11, you know!)  The way she responded to everything she saw, experienced, tasted, heard, smelled, and discussed in Paris, that’s the way I respond.  This is odd in a way because she first arrived in Paris 59 years ago.  Much has changed.  But much remains the same, evidently.  I live and love the Paris of Julia Child.

 

Having finished Maribeth Clemente’s book, The Riches of Paris, I must say that I found that interpretation of this city to be amazingly shallow.  Nevertheless, Ms. Clemente writes about things that I do not know so much about, and I’m sure I will keep her book and refer to it often.  I just don’t see Paris in the same way that Maribeth sees it.  I suppose she thought she must avoid saying anything about the dark side of Paris and its past, but I say, without the shadow, there is no city of light.

 

Buy and/or read Ms. Clemente’s book as a shopping guide, but please read other books about Paris if you really want to know it.

 

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