Non, je ne regrette rien

Lordy me, where was I? I left Paris with a hangover and found myself stepping off the train in the middle of the Massif central six hours later. That was it for the metropolis, I said to myself. Time’s up. I’m travelling light. Can’t afford to be gathering any moss. At least, that’s what I thought. And then I discovered that there was no effective internet access at La Bastide Haute. Luckily, I spent such a beautiful ten days under the auvergnat stars that I was able to cope with being unwired for a while. I’m still so rested and calm and centred that even though I have just flouted the first law of blogging, ‘be thou of the minute,’ and indulged in Paris post-a-go-go ten days after the fact, I think I can still cope with posting this, a non-binding list of Paris-related topics I didn’t write about:
• Le Rhumerie.
• How much I dig the Métro, particularly the view from line 2 over Stalingrad and the top of the Canal St Martin.
• The Canal St Martin.
• Crèpes with butter and sugar after midnight.
• My long held suspicion that Paris holds a world record for the highest number of pharmacies per capita. This might account for the terrifying grooming habits of many residents.
• The back streets of Belleville.
• The Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens. And Le Jardin des Plantes.
• The weirdness of thousands of respectable tourists and family groups lining up at Clichy to see what is essentially a live sex show at the Moulin Rouge.
• Eating dinner in one of Benjamin’s arcades that has been re-colonised by a set of Indian restaurants.
• Great chimney pots.
• How deeply I disapprove of the bookshop Shakespeare and Company which, save for the name, has nothing in common whatsoever with the bookshop through which Ulysses was first published in 1922. A related topic is of course my affection for the Village Voice bookshop on the rue Princesse and the garrulous middle-aged porn collector who runs it.
Flirting shamelessly with a cheesemonger. Returning, winking at him for his St Nectaire and feeling very cheap.
• Extensive digression on the great pun that is Parrots, France.• How highly I rate cornichons.
• Neighbourhoods in which I’d like to live if I lived in Paris again.
• The pleasure of returning to a bakery I remembered to be excellent (cnr rue de Marseilles et rue Yves Toudic) and finding it still to be so.
• People carrying dogs in baskets on trains.