Misery, mishaps and Le Meurice

I have been overwhelmed with a kind of existential crisis which has been building up for some time, but feels worse than ever since getting back from Paris.  (Though if you're going to have something as grand-sounding as an 'existential crisis' befall you, where better than Paris for it to occur?)  Some disasters started off the trip.  For starters, a two and a half hour delay, which ended up making me late for getting to the ballet, so carefully booked and planned by the faerie godmother trainee.  Then the realisation that my tiredness in packing had led me to supremely idiotic packing, which meant my old mobile, the one with the camera I had been taking photos on and posting too many of on here, was stolen.  (How ironic.  That'll teach me not to reprimand myself for taking too many photos.)

After all of this, plus a fairly horrible arrival in Terminal 3 (Charles de Gaulle would be horrified to have his name put to such a concrete warehouse of an airport terminal) I made it out alive and had the longest conversation in French of the whole trip with the cab driver who took me to 'l'hôtel Le Meurice'.

And then there was a kind of sublime calm that gradually descended over the course of Friday and even a little into Saturday, as I soaked up the ease with which one can live if unburdened by poverty.  My French didn't fare as well as I'd hoped, what with my lack of experience of using aristocratic-like levels of politeness, but nonetheless, I got by.  I "enjoyed" the banter with the audacious waiter on the street who tried to entice me and my friend to his cafe by calling out to my friend about how beautiful she was, and then when I responded, because she didn't speak French so didn't understand, he told me, "not you, her! I wasn't talking to YOU!  She's beautiful, not YOU".  All with the most delightful Parisian charm, of course.  (I.e. none whatsoever.) 

Thank goodness I have years of training in this kind of scenario, what with Madame Charlita and the times I went out with her and was totally ignored, to the point of people looking at her while I spoke, which must be what it's like to be the best friend of a supermodel or a celebrity.  No-one talks or listens to you, even when the celebrity is tired and has nothing to say, or, indeed, even when they don't speak the language but you do.  (In fact, this even happened a little bit in Prague, with my visitor, who was also rather glamourously dressed compared to me, and certainly prettier, and even though she remained silent during (my) conversations in Czech, everyone looked at her and not me, hoping she was about to say something devastatingly interesting.)

However, I got my 'French fix' with lots of books and magazines to read in French (now all I need is the time to read them...) and I even got some lovely postcards and took some pictures with my friend's camera instead, so all is not lost on that front.  The bookshop nearest the hotel had a picture of Jacques Prévert in the window, so there was no way I could avoid going in, 

unlike the Patisserie, which we gave a miss in the end.

And walks in the park and moments of quiet to sit and write at the kind of desk I would LOVE

in a most inspirational room filled me up on the 'rest and recreation' front, along with absolutely sumptuous food and even champagne.  So my doom and gloom should not have hit me so hard really, but somehow it crept up on me nonetheless.  I miss the double bed, the armchair and cushions,

the time to think, the opportunity to speak French and the delight of a companion almost as eccentric as me, who just needed a friend to accompany her this time.  By next year, she'll have moved on to have an entourage of friends and personal assistants and I will be a distant memory, but I hope I'll still get to return to Paris soon and do things the pauper's way and console myself with a glass of wine while I sit on my own in a bar in Montmartre and write forlorn poetry about being constantly overlooked.

Non, je ne regrette rien.  Ni le bien, ni le mal...tout ça m'est bien égal....