Paris: Friday

[Again, more scheduling. Because posting something written in the past, in the future tense, to be posted in the future is all exciting and shit. Really. Hush at the back there.]

On Friday, I got another lie-in, while Paul did the laundry, and then we went to Vincennes. Since it was a sunny day, we had lunch in the park there, next to the lake, and wandered around a bit before going to the Parc des Fleurs, a sort of botanical gardens, apparently very popular with holiday camp type groups of small children in long crocodiles with their names pinned around their necks. Cute, if noisy.

The flowers were pretty enough – lots of brightly coloured photos – though I did think the woman hand-feeding the swan was being a little... clueless. Probably the politest word for it. Recklessly fucking stupid also springs to mind. Though, while I’m thinking of swans, does anyone know anyone who ever had their arm broken by a swan? Everyone (apart from this woman) seems to know that swans are dangerous and can break a man’s arm, but does anyone know if this has ever happened? Anywhere?

For dinner we went to the Alps, or at least a tourist-focused facsimile on rue Mouffetard, where they did a 12 Euro menu of plat + entree, which was rather nice. Some confusion followed as we tried to find out whether the 12 E price still applied, since it wasn’t listed in the menu, and we didn’t really feel like dessert, which would have been included in the formule that was listed in the menu, at 16E. Eventually, all became clear to our charming but dim waiter, and he reassured us that we didn’t have to pay for dessert if we didn’t want it and promptly bought us the bill. Which meant we arrived back at the Parc Montsouris in time to see the beginning of the film they were showing – xxxx.

The forum des images and commercial partners, the litany of which I didn’t listen to, are hosting a series of open air cinema showings around Paris over the next few weeks, with a different film in a different place every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night – last night’s happened to be right near the hotel, so we went. A nice idea, but it’s still a bit too cold in Paris for open-air films, in my opinion. And this film, well, it’s typical of its time and genre – even for a French film, it lacks a certain amount of plot, and I was again reminded of the difference in sense of humour between France and the UK. That or I just didn’t understand the language, it was slang heavy, and 1970s slang, at that – but I think it more likely a difference in sense of humour, since a lot of the time they were laughing, it was without dialogue... It wasn’t a bad film, it just wasn’t good enough to justify staying awake late into the night when I knew stupid o’clock was coming rapidly when I’d have to wake up again. (See my rant at the beginning of the entry about last Saturday.)

This brings you up to date on my August Exile so far – we’re on the train going home, to our new August Exile Flat. If there’s a miracle, it will have internet. More likely, it won’t, so you’ll have to wait a little longer for these updates to appear, and by then you might also have a description of the flat. If I’m feeling inspired.