Coucou!

 

Summer in La Chataigneraie is over once again. Serignan, Avignon, Le Lavandou, Saint Tropez are done, swimming in the Ardèche and La Charante accomplished, annual visit to La Rochelle and lunch at Christophe Coutanceau ticked. Also, having been practicing my French all month long in the countryside, I now speak English with an accent. Actually, I don’t speak English at all – even my tan is French!

 

Dear My British visitors, bring your dictionnaire, or a bottle of Pimm’s! Bisous.

 

Where am I now?

 

Paris, Paris, you don’t need to guess!

 

Entering you this time, nothing seemed to have changed: crazy traffic, unusual beating inside my chest – Paris, what are you doing to me?

 

Upon checking in to a hotel close to my new flat, the reception looked dumb-founded when he saw my three suitcases and other delicacies (shoe boxes, garment bags, a Persian rug, etc.). It’s not for my two nights at the hotel, I said to those shocked eyes. Meet your new neighbour! ß insert appropriate emoji.

 

Met my French landlord the next day and sorted things out in French, and then a very hot summer’s day to move my belongings into the flat followed by a sleepless night and then said goodbye to the family very early in the morning. There was no time to get emotional as everyone was too sleepy – if it was part of a movie, this bit would have been done quickly, no words, just in-between music as the scene dissolves into the next scene:

 

a woman in black cropped silk trousers, black silk camisole, black cotton-cashmere cardigan, black heeled suede loafers (yes, those Gucci!) with an Italian-patterned silk scarf around the head carrying Le Figaro walking down the dark steps of a metro station,

 

stepping into the unknown.

 

Suffering comes later, or it will never come.

 

Acquired an emergency baguette (I’m fussy when it comes to baguette) and walked in to my flat to live. Couldn’t wait to unpack – sleepy head, but restless soul.

 

Here I was: a parentless student of La Sorbonne, not enough money to buy a Birkin (luckily I brought with me a crate of good wine from Provence), spending nearly an hour trying to close an ancient kitchen drawer (a good excuse to call the landlord’s cute son), no local friends yet, although I’m already almost fully booked by fabulous people coming to visit from all over the world (please make your reservation via instagram).

 

Two big windows with a beautiful church view (by church view I mean I’m right bang in front of one), a bright and spacious two centuries old apartment with handsome beams on the ceiling, a sofa bed, a decent-looking shower, well-equipped kitchen, and a washing machine, also two centuries old. So central in Paris, you will never get short of all sorts of food, or people, in my neighbourhood.

 

In to the unknown I moved, or did I?

 

What do we actually know and don’t know anyway? Some things are introduced to our heart without a handshake. Strangely I haven’t felt like a stranger here at all. People speak back to me in French as if I was a local, which I am (since yesterday). I go to local supermarkets and cook my own food (refer to the phrase “parentless student”) and successfully open my own cork top bottles of wine (I’ve been served my whole life), I have strong cheeses in my fridge.

 

There’s plenty to discover, of course, but when I went downstairs today to have a coffee at the café next door and the patron refused my money and said “je vous love”, what’s unknown about that?

 

 

je t’embrasse!

d.o., le 3 Septembre 2016

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