All along the watch tower…

Sometimes in life, there are moments which make you feel glad to be alive: surviving a devastating, bone-crunching earthquake, the arrival of your first born (I imagine) … or receiving an invitation to an open-bar celebration on St. Patrick’s Day.

The date was set. The 17th of March if my memory serves me correctly. And it might not. I tucked the invitation neatly into my small, casual man-bag. Feeling like a cross between Pierce Brosnan and an out-dated IRA terrorist, I quickly and discreetly took out my battered French mobile, and sent a text message to Tom.

“Meet me in Montparnasse. Six o’clock. No questions asked.”

The operation was underway. And sure enough, come 18:00 hours, Tom was there, sucking on a rolly, and frowning like he didn’t seem to grasp the notion of surprises.

“Where have you been,” he uttered, somewhat grumpily.

“What do you mean?” I replied, innocently. “It’s six o’clock, just like I said.”

“No, it’s four minutes past six. You made me stand in the cold for four minutes. Do you know what that can do to a man’s internal organs?”

I decided to ignore Tom’s irrational irritability. Seeking to calm him down a notch, I slowly reached into my man-bag and took out the priceless invitation.

“I’m ready to tell you my secret now,” I said, in my best Haley-Joel Osmond impression. I handed over the invitation.

“The Tourism Board of Ireland sponsored by Guinness cordially invites you to an evening of fun and craic’” Tom read out loud. He looked unimpressed. “I don’t even like Guinness.”

“Relax, it’s free!,” I told him. And that wasn’t the best part.
“And you do you know where it is?”

I pointed 45 degrees to behind Tom’s head. Tom turned around, his limited enthusiasm preventing him from making visual contact with anything other than a marquee offering free key rings for a nearby telecommunications company.

“No not there. THERE!” I pointed to the top floor of the Tour Montparnasse: a foreboding 210-metre tower of commerce that stares boldy out over the Parisian skyline; a solemn, clean-cut business man of an edifice, to the Eiffel Tower’s sparkling, flirtatious French mistress.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Tom looked impressed.
“Oh you’ve done well this time JP,” he said. “This could be exciting.”

And it was. I mean, there’s nothing more exciting than travelling in an elevator that makes your ears pop, right? Especially when it’s one of those futuristic ones that you find in Berlin or, I imagine, Japan. An elevator fitted with a 21st century plasma screen that shows you video footage of just how high in Paris you actually are, and what the view might look like, were you in fact Superman, and capable of using X-ray vision to see through iron and steel.

Stepping out at the top of the tower, one already expected to be treated like royalty. Complete with invitation – received only due to my affiliation with the press – Tom and I were received with open arms by some charming, if elderly members of the Irish Tourism Board. They pinned on metallic shamrocks onto our button holes, and seemed to say “now you be good boys” although this might have been my imagination.

In hindsight, this must have been exactly what they did say. A few moments later, we were leaving our consciousnesses behind, and walking into the viewing section of the tower’s 56th floor, our eyes drawn not the panoramic view of Paris, but to the enormous, custom-built Guinness bar that seemed to be pouring pints by the dozen.
“Suddenly, I think I like Guinness,” announced Tom.

You have to hand it to the Irish. After centuries of brutal wars, famine, conciliations and reconciliation, they still know how to put on a good spread. And what a spread! Table on table of canapés, amuses-bouches, hors d’oeuvres, nibbles, samples, snacks and just about anything that you can fit ten of into your mouth at the same time. To attempt to describe what exactly I was eating would be to put to shame the delicacy of Irish cuisine. Let’s just say that some of it was potato, others salmon and all of them yummy.

Next to this, there were meat dishes, in – as if we hadn’t had enough already – a traditional Guinness sauce. There were also cheese selections and a vast tray of the most exquisite-looking oysters, which I regret to say, were never sampled by the likes of us, because our minds had been drawn elsewhere.

Sitting aside the Guinness bar, and behind the endless rows of Irish wine, sat the crème de la crème of the evening’s gastronomy: Irish whiskey. And lots of it! There were fancied varieties like Jameson and Wild Geese, and single malts like the excellent Connemara. Several glasses later, and Tom and I were in alcoholic heaven.

Some time later, and my memory hazes a little. I remember appreciating the view, not just of the city, but of the traditional Irish dancers, who had just started tapping away on the wooden floor area. Female French journalists gathered around them, one of whom caught my eye so much, that her jealous ex-boyfriend felt he needed to make his own little song and dance; a potentially violent encounter which could have taken the shine off the evening, were it not for the fact I remembered I was in Irish company, and that fisty-cuffs were considered debonair.

These are the moments that you live and relive in your head over and over again. If you never return to Paris in your lifetime, you’ll always be able to tell anyone who comes to dinner that you once got wasted at the top of the Montparnasse Tower, that you smoked a cigarette on its helipad while looking out across the spring Parisian night, its plumes of smoke and car horns jumping up at you from the distance. And while by then you might have given up on all of your hopes and dreams, those dazzling beacons on that perfect horizon might just stick in your brain, reminding you that yes, you were once young. And that yes, you did spit on a business man from 200 metres up. I mean, come on. It had to be done.

Madchester: Part 1

“Manchester…Paris…fookin’ come on!”

These, as I’m sure you are aware, are not the words uttered by Lord Admiral Nelson as he slipped away into the nether world, bullet lodged firmly in his shattered spine. Rather, they are the words of another of Britain’s most celebrated national treasures. Ladies and gentleman, star of the 80s rave band, The Happy Mondays, I give you: Bez (real name Marc Berry).

As is becoming apparent in the City of Lights of late, fun and frolicking in decent highbrow company is possible with just the right amount of contacts. In my case, contact comes in the form of Ellen: my newfound English acquaintance who I met after she responded to my ad for a band.

Ellen is the perfect embodiment of a rock-chick grown up. The girl who grew up listening to My Chemical Romance, taught herself a few chords on the guitar, and proceeded to lock herself in her room for the next seven years, wondering why noone wanted to be her friend.

Thankfully it is this period of enormous isolation and hatred of the world, that ultimately drives the angst-stricken caterpillar through its period of metamorphosis; writhing through its chrysalis and emerging as the beautiful butterfly we see today. Now, eyes that used to look at the floor meet you straight ahead; startling orbs of blue contrasted to perfectly straight golden hair that is obviously caressed rather than convoluted. And that’s not to forget pale skin so smooth that if you could wrap it up and sell it at market, it would out-perform scarlet, silk and cashmere. In truth, and as Bez would put it: “you wouldn’t kick her out of bed.”

Ellen’s obsession with music led her to organising a trip to La Machine du Moulin Rouge for an evening of Manchester-based DJs, which also included the drummer from The Smiths. The billing title of the event was Madchester (a cunning play on the word “mad” inferring craziness, and “Manchester”, inferring loutishness.)

La Machine du Mouline Rouge is a decent-sized music venue, with a capacity that would easily hold myself, Ellen, English friend Tom and New Yorker, Taylor. There are two bars, one of which sits at the side of a large, all-encompassing stage. This is surrounded by a two tier viewing area, and a little further back, the now-customary-for-all-night-clubs cancer box (smoking room, to you and me).

Arriving at the venue, sauntering past the seemingly endless queue of cabaret enthusiasts, we entered the doors which lie literally next door to the Moulin Rouge itself. We had been inside for five minutes, when who should walk past us but Bez himself, looking greyer and slightly more serene than during his Celebrity Big Brother days. In fact, I’d say the man who regularly jump on stage making a massive tit of himself while he yelled and waved maracas, was actually looking a little nervous.

He needn’t have worried – his fan club had just shown up. Three beer-bellied, tracksuit wearing chavs, who looked straight like they’d rolled of off a Bootle council estate and into Paris’ fashionable nightlife. Clearly pilled beyond belief, these three Mancunian-Scouse stereotypes proceeded to dance like their shoelaces were trapped in an escalator for the remainder of the evening. Conversation would not have been wise.

Three hours, several cocktails later, conversation suddenly seemed like a good idea. Wandering up to the ginger, shaved-head Scouser, I dug deep into my sub-conscious and dragged out my long-forgotten Northern accent.

“You alright mate?” I asked, as nonchantly as possible. “Where you from…like?”

Confused stare.

“I said, where you from?”

This man’s eyes looked as if they were about to explode. The vast cocktail of ketamine and speed had obviously rendered his ability to speak English impossible. Strangely enough, however, he was able to speak perfect French...

Just then, a cog turned in my own head. HE’S FRENCH! Mais c’est impossible! How could this chav be French? It made no sense. This was like suddenly discovering that, after all these years, Margaret Thatcher was actually a native of Equatorial Guinea. Before I knew it, my evening had suddenly descended from harmless jamming along to Joy Division, to trippin’ all the way to Macclesfield and back.

“Where am I?” I asked Tom.
“At the bar,” he answered back. “It’s your round!”

At that moment, Ellen appeared, looking as radiant as any girl I’d ever seen, after consuming 7 pints of cocktails.

“John, I need to ask you something,” she said. “Would it be ok if I kissed you?”

Now, as far as I can remember, I have only ever been asked that question once by a girl. It was at primary school by Jenny Kleinz, and even then I didn’t have much choice: she just jumped on me and stuck her violent tongue down my throat before I even knew what was happening. I had felt so abused.

This was a different kettle of fish, however. Rather than staring down the nostrils of a a masculine 11 year-old, I was facing a 5ft 11, 25 year-old beauty. There seemed only one thing I could do…

Newsflash!

Yes, after nearly one and a half years, I have at long last received my Carte Vitale: the document which entitles me to a whole range of social security benefits!

So finally, I can get the doctor to look at my rash, and NOT have to worry about any financial repercussions. Hmm, I wonder what the French word is for "piles"...

JPS

Time Keepers #1: Angry African Lady

"I saw the woman who had given birth to Mike Tyson."

It was one of the first nights after I moved into my apartment, and I was awoken with a start. At some time just after midnight, a loud series of violent wails rained down on the street from just under my bedroom window. As I listened closely, the wailing grew louder and more aggressive. It sounded something like a Ladysmith Black Mumbazo record played at 45 speed.

Down there on the cobbled streets of Paris 20th district, there seemed to be a voracious argument going on between a group of African ladies in some unknown dialect. The heat seemed to be turning frantic, and I wondered what events were about to unfold. Unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I reached over to the window sill and gently peeled back the curtain. As I looked down into the street, I saw the woman who had given birth to Mike Tyson. Her hair was tied up in a bright orange headscarf, and she wore traditional African garments that reached down to her enormous, bulging thighs. Behind her, she was dragging a battered trolley bag that seemed to contain all of her worldly belongings. As she plodded down the street, I looked to see who could possibly be the target of her frustration.

Contrary to what I had expected, there were NO other culprits. Angry African Lady was entirely alone, dragging along her trolley and shouting the odds at anyone who cared to pay her enough attention. The more she shouted, the more she made herself even more angry, and soon other neighbours were leaning out of their window to witness the commotion.

She pointed at windows, the road, at lamp posts, at dustbins; everything was guilty to her; they had all done her wrong. Lord knows what would have happened if she had come across a real person. Her anger was so acute, so frenzied; her gesticulating, so wild; her rampage, bitterly sincere.

Feeling quite terrified by what I’d seen, I hopped back into bed, and pondered on what a crazy world I lived in. It was several more minutes before her wails were drowned out by the ephemeral silence in the street she had vacated, and I drifted back to sleep. I remember thinking this would be my last experience of Angry African Lady and what a terrible experience it was.

The following night proved how mistaken one can be. At almost the exact hour, a little after midnight, Angry African Lady was back - this time with a vengeance. She overturned an empty dustbin. She threw a rotten tomato at someone’s window whilst wagging her finger at the startled resident whose apartment window she had just soiled. It was clear that her rage knew neither boundaries, nor sense. This whole rigmarole went on, night after night. And so it has been for months…

Now, however, a year later, Angry African Lady has became as much a feature of my evening routine, as brushing my teeth, or The Times online cryptic crossword. Some nights, she shows up a little earlier than usual, and that’s ok with me, ‘cause I can handle change. Other times she doesn’t arrive at all, and I wonder what has happened to her. Most disturbing of all, these are the nights that I can no longer get to sleep at all.

Angry African Lady has become such a fixture in my life, like my grandmother or my facebook account, that without her I wither into existential crisis. I lie awake in my bed waiting...pleading for the deranged screams of Angry African Lady because then, and only then, will it know it’s safe for me to let down my guard, switch off the light, and drift off into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Midnight at the Oasis

Midnight at the oasis
Sing your camel to bed
Shadows painting our faces
Traces romance in our heads…

Maria Muldaur, 1974.

The thing is, it wasn’t really midnight. It was actually more like
3 am. The only Camels about were the ones being smoked by revelling 20-something bo-bos (bourgeois bohemians). And instead of Oasis, it was Pulp – or at least the former front man of the band - who I had the good fortune to come across under the mood-lighting of a cavernous waterfall.

The occasion was La Nuit Blanche; an evening whose English translation (White Night) sounds like a dyslexic superhero movie. Sadly it was rock stars not caped crusaders who had gathered this evening in Buttes Chaumont; the 61-acre park that sits in the 19th, adding a touch of refreshing greenery to an otherwise sombre arrondissement.

The reason I was here was the same reason as everybody else: to witness the glorious illuminations and hand-crafted installations that had been scattered all over the park to celebrate Paris’ annual nocturnal art celebration. Judging by the quality of the evening’s attendees, I was obviously in great company. Our conversation, for those avid fans among you, read like a manual on awkward introductions:

JPS: Hi, sorry, would it be ok if I had a photo with you?
Jarvis Cocker: Erm, I dunno, you’ll have to ask my manager.

Points to scowling wife. She nods reluctantly. JPS and Jarvis strike a pose while a friend readies the camera.

Jarvis Cocker: Are you gonna smile?
JPS: Yes, are you?

The situation was all so very forced, and after managing a thirty-second chit-chat about one of his Paris gigs I’d attended, there really was nothing particularly interesting left to say. It begs the question, why do we get so star-struck? Do we have the right to interrupt a person’s evening, if we have nothing of vital significance to say? It's true that there were so many better things I could have said to such a star of the music world. Imagining how the conversation could have developed, I started along the following lines...

JPS: Hi Jarvis! I was just wondering what you made of Speech Debelle winning the Mercury Music Prize?

Or…

JPS: Jarvis! I’m just starting up my own prog-rock band, would you like you to join?

Or…

JPS: Jarvis, your suit’s on fire, but it’s ok because I just happen to have this fire extinguisher in my hands…

In each of these alternative realities, a generally more furtive relationship is established than the one which vanished before it had even begun that night in Buttes Chaumont. Sadly it’s only with the benefit of hindsight that you are able conjure up such pearls of wisdom. And so, feeling a little embarassed, it was back to reality for me, and back to normality for him. "But it's ok", I told myself. "We'll get him next time…"

Paperwork: Part 2

A new day, a new waiting room. The ticket machine’s out of action, so the order of the day is to fight for numbered pink slips like they were winning raffle tickets. After a small fracas, I'm eventually seen by a friendly Mother Teresa figure who morphs into Jean-Claude van Damme when I reach her desk. She practically karate chops me out of the building when she discovers my lack of Carte Vitale is down to pure disorganisation. She then takes immense pleasure in informing me that the necessary document required for my interview at Pole Emploi may or may not be ready in time and I thank her for her help, before scurrying away like a mouse in a cornfield.

Finally Judgement day arrives, aka the day I discover whether I’ll ascend into welfare heaven. The first thing is for a quick pit stop at Assurance Maladie to pick up proof of existence, which I obtain without a hitch, although looking at my watch tells me I’m going to be late for the boys at the Pole Emploi...

A short while later...

I’m there! It’s just off Place Gambetta, a full 15-minute sprint from the social security office but it’s ok because they’ll understand from all the sweating that I was sorting out necessary paperwork to make their job easier. Won’t they?

“I’m sorry sir, you’re 20 minutes late. You’ll have to make another appointment.”

QUOI?

This baldy must be kidding me. Not only have I spent the last two days trapped in a sickening waiting room with Kill Bill and Goebbels just to get a sodding piece of A4, I’ve also deliberately missed my grandfather’s wake just to be here on time. As a bead of perspiration drops off the end of my nose and onto his appointment sheet, I’m adamant I’ll be seen today. I quickly scour around to see if others will join my one-man revolution.

A massive Arab guy who I nickname Tupac seems like he wants to join my side, having also just missed his appointment. We proceed to re-enact De la Croix’s Liberty Leading the People, using nothing but cardboard cutouts of young French businessmen punching the air. Eventually the baldy man tires of us, and agrees to accommodate us in his next available slots (ooh matron!).

Thanking Tupac for his work, we agree to reunite to combat world evil just as soon as our employment prospects have picked up. Alas, I mount the steps of the Pole Emploi. I’m ready to be welcomed into the brotherhood of benefits. It’s like the end of a long, hard, pilgrimage, albeit with one important difference. Unlike the Muslims in Mecca, or the Jews in Jerusalem, I can honestly say that I never want to come back here again.

Paperwork: Part 1

The French and their god-forsaken paperwork. If there were a form to fill in for wiping your arse, you can bet your bottom dollar (no pun intended) it was masterminded by a gastro-obsessed member of the Assemblée Nationale.

This said, there are parts of the welfare system that put the penny-pinching bigwigs of Whitehall to shame. Take, for example, the controversial subject of the assedic; welfare allowance available to anyone who’s ever worked a day in their life. In my case, 10 months in a private company entitles me to 57.5 % of my salary. Doing the maths on his pocket calculator, my advisor at the Pole Emploi (Job Centre) informs me this equates to over €900 per month, or €30 per day. I’m sorry? Did I hear this correctly? You’re going to pay me something similar to minimum wage, for sitting on my…erm…I mean scouring job ads? I wait to hear the catch.

The steps to the interview at the Pole Emploi are, however, long and arduous. Like most things, you’re required to prepare a dossier; a collection of documents from passport, to your death certificate (pre-signed by local town council, of course). After registering for an appointment online, you spend the days before the interview tracking down payslips, bank statements, social security papers and the like, just so that when you show up they won’t send you packing like the blood-sucking ‘rosbif’ parasite you really are.

My path to welfare heaven was obviously not going to be smooth. Starting as I meant to go on, I missed my first jobseeker’s appointment completely by accident, failing to read either the attached email confirmation or the reminder the following day. The ten-day wait until the next available slot ought to have given me time to organise my dossier. However, it was in the interim that I realised my first major faux pas of my year in France: failure to matriculate at the social security office.

Who knew something so trivial could have such ramifications? As far as I knew, when I arrived in Paris in 2008, pompously wielding the social security number I’d acquired as an English assistant three years prior, it was game, set and match to JPS on the paperwork front. I was wrong.

Apparently, this 13-digit number did little in terms of proving my existence in the French welfare state. I thank God that over the last year I haven’t required any Tamiflu, else I might not be hear to blog the tale. While private companies provide health insurance that covers a percentage of costs, it is only in conjunction with the Assurance Maladie that you’re truly safe.

It was an interesting conundrum. How did I go about declaring my worth to the French welfare system, now that I was unemployed? Sure, had I popped down social security while I was bringing in the pennies, they would have welcomed me with open arms. But now it was a different kettle of fish.

The golden snitch of paperwork is the Carte Vitale; sort of equivalent of your National Insurance number card and, as I should have guessed from the name, actually quite important. In fact, it’s so difficult to come by, I still don’t even have one yet.

Traipsing my way to the nearest social security office, situated off the Place des Fêtes in the 19th, I arrive to find a hefty queue and a Mr Bean-style waiting room, where people jostle in line to get served. 422 is eventually called, and I present my conundrum to the Senegalese social worker (is this what they are called?) who informs me, after a thorough 30-second name-and number check, that I don’t exist. Not wanting to argue the toss of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am), I merely agree to fill in the forms she’s stuffed into my hands and slink away to examine the damage.

What the hell? She’s given me forms that require an employer’s signature. What part of unemployed did she not understand? Come to think of it, did I even tell her I was without work? Better take another ticket.

442 sends me to someone much more helpful. This lady, older, and French (we’ll get to the subject of xenophobia in a moment), is eager to hear my complaints. It’s almost as if she cares about my plight, and for a moment, I relax into my chair as I might do when grandma offers to make me my favourite soup. But my world is brought crashing down just as quickly as I’ve created it. Thrusting my ticket back in my hand, she informs me that I must wait in a new line, until her colleague can see me. ‘Can’t you do it?’ my eyes seem to say. But she’s already welcoming the next elderly gentleman to the table.

The new queue takes ten times longer. I wait for an hour on plastic chairs wedged in between a beautiful but tenacious-looking blonde and an elderly man, who’s she’s humouring on his outrageously racist viewpoints. Apparently, he says, the only way to get ahead of the queue is to tie a headscarf around your head. Either that, or move to an all-catholic arrondissement where the African immigrant mafia can’t screw you over. Thankfully the dulcet tones of Thom Yorke on mp3 are enough to drown out the old man’s drivel.

Eventually left alone with the blonde, I try to strike up a conversation but without success. It seems she can tolerate racist old farts, but horny young Englishmen are a step too far.

Finally reaching grandma’s colleague, I’m saddened to discover that, as a resident of the 20th district, I am definitely in the wrong place. Furthermore, as my dossier lacks my first payslip, I will be unable to proceed with matriculation. My two-hour wait has been in vain, and I must do the whole thing again the next day, albeit without blonde tough nut for company. I’m more than a little peeved.