(Not) Down and Out in Paris and London
Not achieving your goals is really quite alright, running is extremely overrated and nobody can make pastries like the French
For anyone keeping track, in my first newsletter-cum-self-indulgent exercise of vanity, I had shared my plans to try and stick to two things this year: weekly entries to this newsletter and to run the Paris half marathon in March. Perhaps as a shock to no one, I did not run the Paris half, and I very much fell off the self-imposed one week structure I had so diligently kept up for a grand total of 6 weeks.
I had declared at the time that if - for whatever reason - I did not end up running in Paris, well that would be absolutely fine. Getting out of bed would be achievement enough. I stand by that assertion. There was something liberating in telling my friends a few weeks before the race: “change of plans, fuck the marathon. I’m just going to have a nice weekend in Paris instead”, much to their encouragement. Instead of waking up that morning at 7am and running 21km for a perverse form of self-punishment, I wondered around the city eating pastries. A significant improvement if ever I’ve heard one.
I hadn’t been to Paris in about 7 years. Me and Hells used to go for a few days every summer when we were kids (fine we were in our late teens but it’s the same thing). We’d cosplay as grownups and run around the city, trying desperately to look chic. We would drink too much, walk all day and traipse around museums. It was quite joyous. Going back as an actual adult, accompanying a friend who had lived there for several years and knew the place inside out was an entirely different experience that made me feel as if I’d actually never seen the city before.
I was stunned by how beautiful Paris is and how quickly I formed a vivid vision of myself spending a decent chunk of my life there. Apart from the obvious staggering architectural beauty of the city, each neighbourhood we walked through (imagine me saying arrondissement in a dreadful French accent) had a tangible energy that was thrilling and enticing, each with its own identity and presence.It was a near immediate chemical connection to a place that felt simultaneously familiar and totally brand new that made me think “fuck I actually might have to move to Paris”.
Perhaps it’s got something to do with the value the French place on pleasure, hedonism and a good dinner that really does it for me? I’ve always been drawn to people/places that know how to have a good time, and Parisiennes for all their faults, certainly know their way around having fun.
I didn’t feel it in Berlin when I visited the city last summer, though at the time I tried to convince myself that I had. Falling in love with a city, much like a person, or a really good coat, is a gut-driven, primal thing. It’s either there or it isn’t.
I love Paris for many of the same reasons that I love London: the city’s inhabitants are harsh but playful, tough and yet sort of in on the joke that they’re arseholes who won’t give you the time of day unless you look good and/or have an attitude problem. The cities are often unforgiving, a bit rough around the edges but most of all, upheld by a diversity of people, styles and cultures that cannot be easily matched. The only other city I’d ever felt an instant love and affinity for upon first meeting, is Beirut.
As I come to the one year anniversary of my moving to a city that is very much not Paris, I find myself asking the same questions that I’ve posed to you several times before, dear reader:
What in the absolute fuck do I want in my life right now/ for the next five years? Am I able to grit my teeth and bare through the discomfort of living somewhere I don’t have any real love for? Even if I can, is it worth it? After four days in Paris, I’m not so sure it is.