more france

I'd been hoping to get back to France for years and years now and so when my friend Becky said, hey, I've got to go to Montpellier for work – want to come stay? I said ... OKAY!

Cathedreal in Angers, early(ish) in the morning.

Beautiful, spooky art to commemorate the prisoners held inside the Chateau d'Angers.

I was unable to capture the Sagrada Familia properly with camera or phone but I was able to stand and stare for most of the afternoon.

Old folks in Sergovia out for a Sunday stroll.

Madrid turned it all on for me.

Maybe I'll move there.

Montpellier alleyways are made for flâneuses like moi.

Street art, Montpellier.

La poste (le chien).

Crèpes equal delicious, with wintery sun and blue skies.

La Seine, Paris, on my birthday.

Have any writers ever died for Australia?

Would we build a crypt for them if they did?

Paris street art.

View from my fenêtre, Montmartre.

Wee baby Basile!

Coming up the metro steps to go home for the night.

le café

‘so,’ asks becky, ‘if a coffee is un café and a café is also un café, how do you know which one you’re taking about?’
the french glance at each other, shrug frenchly.

the french love their coffee. it’s a habit, an institution, the closing punctuation to a meal. something consumed from a tiny cup while you stand at the counter of a brasserie or sit on a cane chair smoking, your dog at your feet. (I LOVE french cliché!)

but it’s also nearly always bitter and/or grainy, made with a grimy espresso machine, or served at home from a lukewarm percolator. 

(but sometimes there's a time and place for this style of coffee)

not long before I left for my holiday, my friend hannah posted this link on my facebook page.

popular french coffee shops in paris, according to instagram

challenge accepted.
challenge not always photographed.

café kitsuné:

coffee club (this one is actually in montpellier):

honor café:

boot café:

and a sneaky london lunch at monocle cafe:

FLAT WHITES FOR ALL!

la lecture

I don't know about you, but I believe one of the best things about going to France is THE BOOKS.* And behold my haul.

As you can see I was quite reserved, really. I shopped in Bordeaux at an enormous (absolutely staggeringly big) bookshop (i got lost once) called Mollat, in Les Enfants sur le Toit, a children's bookstore in Montmartre, and at Chantelivre in the 6th arrondissement.
  

• Cupidon Power by Luc Blanvillain, published by l'école des loisirs (MG), in which a young boy has the magical ability to make people fall in love with each other – but he can't benefit from it himself.

• Dysfonctionelle by Axl Cendres, published by Editions Sarbacane (YA). Fidèle has a pretty crappy home life – Dad back and forth from prison, Mum from the psych ward – but she's clever, and so goes to a posh school in a nice suburb. I'll take a torn-between-two-worlds story ANYDAY.

• La pyramide des besions humains by Caroline Solé, published by l'école des loisirs (YA). This one was recommended to me by Coline Ribue, a publicist at l'école des loisirs who was kind enough to meet with me and chat all things book – answering all of my questions about how 'surely france respects books above all else' and hearing back that actually, like here, kids books get pretty overlooked in terms of reviews in mainstream media ...more about this another time – and she walked me around Chantelivre, the indie bookshop right next door to the office. This YA novel is about a reality TV show based on the idea of Marlow's hierarchy of needs. I'm going to have to read it to understand more...

• Quand le diable sortit de la salle de bain by Sophie Divry, published by Notabilia (adult fic) about a young woman, unemployed and bogged down in her novel. I try not to think about this one being too close to home. Sophie, the character, has a personal demon called Lorchus, so we're different that way.

• C'est chic! by Marie Dorléans, published by Seuil Jeunesse (picture book). It's about a merchant who can't shift his wares, until one day he gets a touch of heatstroke and begins pitching very strange goods: coffee shoes and rain carpets?? And the snobbity rich folks, well they think these things are just so unique!

A closer look at all things chic...

Isn't it magnificent?

• Le merveilleux dodu-velu-petit by Beatrice Alemagna, published by Albin Michel Jeunesse (picture book) and which is about a little girl who just wants to get the best present for her mother's birthday – better that anything her sister could get...

 I couldn't not buy the Beatrice Alemagna, even though she's pretty often translated into English – and this title is already, it's called The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy – but I had read an article about this one last year, in which Beatrice was asked (I believe) to redraw a scene in which a butcher brandishes a bloody, dripping knife at our little main character Eddie. American sensibilities etc. I don't know if she had to censor it in the end, but I know I wanted the bloody knife version for myself.

I'm excited, though a little overwhelmed, at all the reading-in-a-second-language I'm about to do. I'm trying to improve my French from basic-conversation-fluent to something a little more nuanced and sophisticated. Books is the answer, I think.

Do you read in foreign languages? How do you source your books? Do you feel, like me, that we would all benefit from an increased amount of works translated from other languages in this country? How can we make this an affordable process?


 *croissants, baguettes and rocamadour cheese obviously a close, tied, second-best.

has it really been a year?

january 2015. the girl is a full-time editor again. she walks the docklands trudge; walks saltwater sandals beside the bankers.

the people are kind, interesting, creative, friendly, very tall. mothers of punk singers. mentors, inspirations, enthusiastic, passionate, helpful.

Find Me A Castle by Beci Orpin

the girl is given the most incredible projects to work on. there are more people to meet: busy, successful arty people who work really hard doing what they love. (beci must not sleep, i think.)

Ickypedia by The Listies

there are hilarious loose cannon first-time authors to work with, who write clever, disgusting things and are very good at puns and drawing queues. (‘pub date?’ they ask. ‘which pub shall we go to?’)

Celebrating 30 years of Paul Jennings!!

there are the authors who’ve been around for yonks, been your childhood favourites. this, this was pretty damn special. have you read ‘a dozen bloomin’ roses’ lately? or ‘skeleton on the dunny’, ‘nails’ or ‘cow dung custard’? have you ever, ever felt like this?

coffee by long shot, mostly. and bonus grammar fun with mary norris! (seen at the interrobang & you can listen to the podcast of the event.) many excellent books over the year. some writing (more on that later). lots of changes, lots of learning. lots of fortunate moments (hashtag blessed).

december 2015. the girl will wrap up her job at the end of january and bid farewell to the random penguins. elle va aller en france pour se détendre et ... 

i really like christmas

puppies, a game of croquet, a trip down the great ocean road, a surf lesson, a swim with australian fur seals and much delicious food and drink - this christmas holiday has been one hundred per cent fantastic. the family i worked for in france six years ago came to my parents' place to spend five days with us during their three week holiday in australia. the kids are older, but just as brilliant, curious and hilarious. and though it has been four years since we were last together, it felt like no time had passed at all. we introduced them to paper christmas hats, fish and chips, the hole in the ozone layer and homebrewed beer.

this is actually the evil sister, not a frenchie. she should know better...

i was also having a nosey through my grandmother's recipe collection and discovered this little bit of delightfulness:

a parisian original

A couple of years ago I read Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre. I enjoyed how he talked about adventure.

I've been scribbling away at a story for the past (long) while that I plan to expand into a novel at some point (not yet) and because it's about nostalgia, connections, memory, relationships and la France I like to read French novels and all stories about these things.

I was searching recently for some Very Important Notes I remembered writing in a little black notebook ... and I can't remember if I found them, but I did come across some hilarious pensées I recorded during my time with JPS and Nausea.

* * *

8/10/10

Been reading JPS's Nausea. Just one dude sitting about in cafes + museums and on trams wondering not just who he is or what he is. I'm getting through it now, not sure if I totally get it though... He seems to be talking about how he exists because he thinks about existing (but I know this from Descartes) But that his hand is the same as a table, that a root is nothing at all, that is is ... a crab? Must read on. He has some lovely phrases but is a bit of a wanker...

...

I've read more and Anny is trying to explain to Antoine about perfect moments + privileged situations (p210-214) and it is like someone - damn you JPS - has reached into my brain and yanked out my stupid desire for all situations to go a certain way, gone back in time and written it down. How depressing to realise you're not original! Every emotion has already been felt by someone else.

I'm picturing a scene with Eliza and Marc. She explains in great detail this thing she has, trying to make every small moment a MOMENT. After the explanation, Marc asks innocently: "Like in Nausea?" and Eliza rages and stomps about because she's sick of being unoriginal
...

Err, so two pages later there's Anny (p215) getting annoyed that she's not original. How do I manage to plagiarise something I've never read before?

* * *

So I'm trying to get comfortable with the fact that every story has been told before, and that nothing is original - even though I got very cross at Woody Allen when his lovely* film Midnight in Paris came out.

So I'm pretty chuffed that the frisky francophile folk over at The Rag and Bone Man Press have published the short version of my story, which is called When You Were In Paris and it has love and books in it, as well as some ghosts ... or are they?

*But clearly derivative of my work in some ways...

révolution, je t'aime

Today is forty-three years since the Nuit des Barricades – the Night of the Barricades – when the student-turned-general protests in France, May 1968 came to a violent climax. The protesters dug up cobblestones in the Latin Quarter, threw Molotov Cocktails, set fire to cars and barricades themselves on the street. They were sick of a dated university curriculum, sick of not having a voice and ready (like youth all around the world) for a new government, a new outlook for their evolving post-war world.

The poetic rhetoric of the May ’68 movement captured the idealistic fervour of the protesting youth and has remained one of its greatest strengths. Influenced by the Situationists (in turn influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism) they pasted posters and graffiti all around Paris, writing memorable slogans that have been reused and pastiched in French protest ever since.

The evolution of the slogans is clear as the movement progressed from mere discontent on campus to a wider attack on society as a whole. At the suburban university campus of Nanterre (where the problems escalated around the time Daniel Cohn-Bendit compared the French government to Hitler Youth) the students cried ‘Professors, you are old!’ Also evident in the slogans is an awareness of language and the strength of language as a tool of dissent. The posters and newspapers provide a visual representation of the rhetoric and language of the 1968 uprisings.

Other images also use the creative distortion of French linguistic formations. This slogan is making fun of the verb conjugation exercises that would have been learnt at school, but adds a very cynical edge. Translated, it means: I participate, you (singular) participate, he participates, we participate, you (plural) participate, they profit.

Another favourite is: L’anarchie, c’est je (‘Anarchy is I’). The use of incorrect grammar symbolises the disregard for the conventions of even the most basic element of French culture.

The students, rebelling against the old – the conservative education and the old man who ran their country – were also rebelling against the old ideas of literature and poetry. Rather than in the old books in the library, la poésie est dans la rue – poetry is in the street! The slogans scrawled as graffiti around Paris “were full of popular wit, but also…had a surrealist tone, symbolised in the assertion that ‘imagination has seized power.’”*

Using words and phrases to fight against the old social order, the students created an atmosphere of possibility: Rêve + évolution = révolution (‘Dream + evolution = revolution’).

Given that it's also Australian Federal Budget Day today, it's the perfect time to get some enthusiastic idealism into you!

To write this post I just smooshed together notes I made while writing my honours thesis. Apologies for the undergraduate hyperbole.

*from Daniel Singer's excellent book Prelude to Revolution.

If you want to read about 1968 in general (because it was a very exciting year all around this globe), look no further than Mark Kurlansky's excellent book entitled 1968: The Year that Rocked the World.

why claude, what a lovely beret!

Claude in the City, Alex T Smith* (Hodder)

Claude is a small, plump dog who wears a beret and a lovely red jumper.

He's a little bit Eloise. But a bit more canine. And instead of a Skipperdee and a Weenie he has a friend called Sir Bobblysock, who is 'both a sock and quite bobbly'.

Claude decides that today is the day to go and explore the City. Shopping (for berets), people-watching, a visit to the art gallery and oh perhaps just stopping a robbery. A visit to the hospital later in the story (poor old Sir Bobblysock doesn't feel too crash hot) gives Claude the opportunity to work on his doctoring skills and fix up some big wrestlers who have a mysterious sickness.

The black, white and red illustrations are wonderfully lively and incorporate the words right in there (and also add to the Eloiseishness), the humour is perfect for the kidlings and also for parents and aunties and nannies reading it to them. Delightfully lolish.

*I know I am going to accidentally tell customers it's written by Alex P Keaton. But he was way too conservative to write such a brilliant book all about time wasting and frivolity. Also, too fictional.

in honour of paris

*pere lachaise cemetery, view from the top of the butte de montmartre, view from la tour eiffel, 'my' flat in montmartre (with the flowers...actually my friend's place).

review : anna and the french kiss

Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins (Penguin)

This one is a love story: a kind of soppy teen romance, with a little edge of snark and genuine, occasionally laugh-out-loud, humour that saves it from being too cheesy.

Anna has been plonked in an American boarding school in Paris, France for her senior year (quite academically irresponsible of her father, I think ) and because she doesn’t speak French, has never been overseas before and is away from her mother and little brother for the first time, she’s understandably shitting herself.

But never fear! A smart and quirky bunch of friends take her under their wings immediately and within hours she is thrust into the company of the gorgeous (we’re told over and over again), charming – although short – Etienne St Clair. Anna and St Clair gel immediately, but his longtime girlfriend Ellie (it’s ok, we’re told early on she’s kind of plain) stands in the way of anything happening between the two. Maybe.

Anna is funny and her awkwardness at being in this new place, unable to understand or even communicate with most people she meets, comes across very well. She has a great sense of playfulness (loved the Nutella moustache) and while her misreading of looks and situations was at times frustrating, it was also mostly believable and moved the plot forwards. The dialogue is great and Anna’s thoughts and her overanalysing of situations (within the scene, between dialogue) was hilarious, very real and a great strength of this novel. Her interest in films is great and her desire to be a film critic is a nice kooky touch - I hope she saw some French films in there and not just American ones.

Etienne St Clair is allegedly a French-American boy who grew up in London and all the girls swoon over his ‘British’ accent and he’s all proper and posh but on occasions it comes across as though he speaks (me mum, different die-rections) like he’s from Liverpool, or competing in a talk-like-Jim-Sturgess-in-Across-the-Universe contest. Inconsistent! And one other thing: British? It’s not an accent.

St Clair's interest in history and facts is great and interesting and the banter between the two is gorgeous. I would have liked more made of his relationship with his parents because as it is I don’t quite buy it, the father needed to be developed much more. I was also a little miffed that St Clair fought some of Anna's battles for her, when she did prove capable of doing it for herself at other times.

The book gives a very cute view of Paris, even though it doesn’t extend far past the cliché. Notre Dame, Père Lachaise, Shakespeare and Co. etc – it’s all in every guidebook. But it’s still lovely to watch Anna adapt to life in a foreign country and her character develop as her confidence grows. Her trip back to America and return to France are particularly interesting, in terms of Anna's broadening world view and also highlighting how she has changed as a result of living abroad.

I admit that I got my cynic on before reading this because it seems like everyone on the interwebs lovelovedloved it, but in spite of my dislike for Sofia Coppola and the fact that I feel like I'm surely the only foreigner that Paris likes - it was a great read. Ultimately this one is a lovely, sweet, romantic summer read (with a terrible, terrible cover) and should inspire everyone to travel to Paris.

adventure!

i think that this, too, is how a good story is written (or told).


(this is from page 85 of nausea by jean-paul sartre, popular penguin edition)

no and me, delphine de vigan

"Dogs can get taken in, but the homeless can't. I thought to myself that if everyone took in a homeless person, if everyone decided to look after just one person, to help them and be with them, perhaps there'd be fewer of them in the streets. My father told me that wouldn't work. Things are always more complicated than they seem. Things are what they are, and there are lots of things you can't do anything about. You probably have to accept that if you want to become an adult. We can send supersonic planes and rockets into space, and identify a criminal from a hair or a tiny flake of skin, and grow a tomato you can keep in the fridge for three weeks without it getting a wrinkle, and store millions of pieces of information on a tiny chip. yet we're capable of letting people die on the street." (p.71-2)

De Vigan has created the most wonderful character in Lou Bertignac. She's a thirteen-year-old prodigy who conducts interesting investigative experiments (trying to find out why all frozen packaged food tastes the same, how watertight various containers are, to understand how the inspectors know if a metro ticket has been validated or not), finds her french classes so very interesting, quietly loves Lucas - the seventeen-year-old class bad boy (he was held back, she skipped a class or two) and who spends her afternoons at Austerlitz train station watching people come and go so she doesn't have to go home to her depressed mother and distraught father.

At the train station Lou meets No, a young homeless girl, and is drawn to her. Lou meets her often at cafes after school and No, knocking back vodkas, tells her about her life on the street. Lou's going to use the information for a dreaded school presentation. She's chosen the topic of life on the street for French women. When No goes missing Lou is frantic, she feels like she has failed No, and she travels through the seedier parts of Paris in order to find the homeless girl; Lou wants to give No a family and love. Then there is the chance that Lou's family can also be healed through helping No.

There is some beautiful writing here that tugged at my heartstrings:

"In the class photo...I'm up the front, where they put the smallest ones. Above me, up at the top, is Lucas, looking sullen. If you allow that a single straight line can be drawn between any two points, one day I'm going to draw a line from him to me or me to him." (p.13)

The story is complex but simple at the same time. Similarly the language is effortlessly sophisticated and philosophical topics are broached straightforwardly. I was on the edge of my seat, unable to totally put my trust in No (unlike Lou, for the most part) but desperate to be there for the ride. It's magnificent - for children and adults alike.