Riding the Waves to Eternity

What can I write about Paris which hasn’t been written countless times by others more talented than me?

Perhaps I should begin with a statement of intent, with a roundly heretical statement in the eyes of many who loudly proclaim their Britishness (or at least a particularly unattractive form of Britishness): I like France and the French and I also like Paris and Parisians. This is not simply a matter of enjoying aspects of French culture as, for example, Brassens, Degas, Brassai. Monet or Cartier-Bresson (and yes, I know Brassai was not a French national). It has something to do with finding the underlying attitudes and outlooks which underpin the culture appealing.

But it is getting a little harder to connect with that underlying Paris as compared with our first visit in 1988. This is not because –or not just because- of the general changes to the world which urban modernity, the EU and rampant capitalism have wrought on many of our great, and not so great, cities. No, it has to do with the never-ending proliferation of tourist tat which is inexorably oozing through the streets. There is nothing new in tourist tat of course, it has been ever-present since the commercial exploitation of the taste for souvenirs began; there is no longer, though, even the slightest pretence at anything which might be possessed of taste or quality.

This is not of huge concern in the sense that we were not looking for souvenirs but it was a nuisance as it is becoming an ever present feature making the real and authentic that much more to be treasured.

But the fact that it was a thoroughly enjoyable long-weekend is testament to the fact that there remains something of Paris to be sought out and valued. We tried to go to a couple of places to which we hadn’t been previously or not for a while and largely succeeded. Ile de Saint-Louis was a previously unvisited spot while the Pantheon to the foot of Rue Mouffetard are well-kent haunts. We also revisited Montmartre for the first time since 1988, fighting off the tourist tat and pavement artists as we went.

Do not believe those who regale you with tales of art and Montmartre: this is no longer the place where you will find undiscovered Lautrecs scratching a living but a place where the vaguely capable congregate to remove the cash of the substantially gullible. There is a recognisable house-style of most of those knocking out paintings there, identifiable by the stylisation of forms and thick wedges of impasto oils shovelled onto the canvas producing a veritable pain in the art.

And yet Paris is still there, beneath the tat; it is there in the stalls outside the shops, in the many, many, independent shops which defy the otherwise global march of high-street homogeneity; it is there in the many of those shops which are operated by skilled artisans and craftsmen; it is there in the cd shops from which chanson can be heard occasionally and the buskers who keep alive street styles popular before the musicians were born.

Most of all it survives in the people and their sense of style, albeit a frequently odd style which would not work in the UK. A middle-aged bloke got onto the Metro carriage we were on wearing slightly distressed black jeans tucked into calf length boots. Under his black overcoat he wore a white roll-neck jumper, all sheltering beneath a shock of floppy hair and a tightly razored goatee. He was clearly the sort of chap who would not scruple to wear a cravat either should the mood take him. He’d look pretty odd on Princes Street but was not in the slightest out of place on the Metro.

The only real disappointment on this visit was the food. Now, French cuisine has, famously, a lot to recommend it and, in fact, one of the things which was very apparent was that there was to be seen very little of the gross obesity which is creeping through Anglo-American life. To be sure there were to be seen slightly pot-bellied gentlemen who, after a lifetime of artisan-made bread and agreeable red wine, were relaxing comfortably into a slightly rotund middle age but there were no lard-arses wobbling down the boulevards. But the food which we had only rarely rose above the standard of the average. We were not eating in high end restaurants, I am here talking about the average fare from reasonably priced places where plenty of locals were eating of an evening. Yes, there were some decent dishes and some places tried harder than others, but standards seem to me to have fallen.