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.

Silence

If silence is golden then readers of this blog could be living in Fort Knox by now. One month back in England, and already plans to document my time in Paris have turned staler than a Marks and Spencer’s croissant.

Reaching the end of my tether at my media job, I have been officially unemployed since the beginning of August. Deciding that this would be an ideal time to hop across the channel visiting friends and family, the last month has proved eventful in more ways than one.

First, it’s with a sad heart that I report the passing of my French grandfather, who at 75, lost his battle with an ongoing Gitane-related lung condition. I know that my French family will be relieved that he is no longer suffering, and the hospital canteen staff just glad to avoid his daily tongue-lashing.

Secondly, time has been called on my relationship with on-off-on girlfriend Madeleine. With just too many conflicting issues, the love affair between France and Britain is over. Feels like the winter of BSE all over again.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the financial constraints of unemployment have forced me to give up my apartment. I therefore find myself ‘squatting’ as the French say, in the tiny 24 m2 apartment of friend and former teaching colleague, Eponine.

With a brand new challenge for La Rentrée, I hope to be reporting on new jobs, apartments, life, love and all the nitty-gritty bits in between, ensuring that you, the reader, get a taste of what real life is like in Paris, not that picture-postcard bullshit you’ll find in a certain film starring Meg Ryan.

My Top Paris Tips by John Paul Sarko, aged 24 and ¾

Departing my Shoreditch flat, East London, Routledge edition of Being and Nothingness firmly in tow, I touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport last autumn with eyes wide open. At least that's what I thought. As I dragged my 50 kg suitcase through what I remember to be the world’s most life-threatening disabled train barriers, I noted the first of many things to which I was naïve, and which was to characterise my time in the French capital – firstly, the inaccessibility of the Parisian transport system.

Therefore it is here, in what I hope to be the first of many blogs, that I present to you ten of my most valuable pointers that are intended to prepare you for life in the French capital or, at the very least, to help you live to tell the tale:

1. Most metro doors have to be opened with your hands (yes, this is disgustingly unhygienic). Even more dangerous, however, is the customary round-the-maypole dance you’re obliged to perform while clinging desperately to the single metal bar whose sole purpose is to stop you crashing head-first into the carriage wall or, worse still, the 6ft 4 banlieu bruiser who’s just boarded at Chatelet. These accidents-waiting-to-happen can usually be attributed to disgruntled Parisian metro drivers whose ardent slamming-on of the brakes will generate a G-force akin to that of a Boeing 747 on takeoff.

2. In Paris, there a way fewer blondes than in the UK, and way, way fewer than in Germany or, for that matter, Sweden. Worth taking into account if you are thinking of packing up and moving across the channel, perhaps.

3. Despite their reputation, Parisians are fairly friendly to foreigners, at least those who make the slightest effort with the language, or try to make it look like they vaguely know where they are going. A smile, and a Hugh Grant-esque stutter as you fail to understand how to write your own bank account number to the beautiful brunette (not blonde - see 2) serving you in Crédit Lyonnais, will also go down a treat.

4. Job hunting, or at least finding an intellectually stimulating full-time job in Paris as a foreigner is much harder than it should be. Contrary to popular belief, being a native English speaker in France is not the key to opportunities and riches beyond your wildest dreams. In fact, it is merely an indication to employers that you are slightly less likely to join a popular uprising organised by the trade union-affiliated workforce at Henri LeConte Legal Consultants.

5. Paris is small and big at the same time. While this paradox might be a phenomenon that occurs in every city, in Paris it manifests itself through the fact that, despite its relatively small geography, you'll tend to find yourself frequenting the same places time and time again. Therefore, don't bother planning a trip to the chateau of Versailles, or a foray around the Isle St. Louis, because you'll only ever make it to Sacré Coeur, the Eiffel Tower or that café in St. Michel where cocktails are €5 during happy hour (Thursdays, 8pm - 8.05pm).

6. The music scene may at first seem like it doesn't extend beyond that guy singing Wonderwall in a camp Italian accent on the steps of Montmartre, or the fat guy in the 20th who thinks he's Stevie Wonder, but who’s actually the one blind to the way his alcoholic life is headed. Yet amongst all of the have-beens, will-bes and so-called artistes, there are a collection of like-minded and lively individuals ready to brighten up the jazz, blues, rock and electro scenes respectively, or sometimes - based on certain avant garde events I’ve attended - all at the same time! It’s all just a matter of knowing where to look (the area around the Canal St. Martin is a good place to start).

7. The Euro is definitely not a good idea, with the following exceptions:

- Whenever the exchange rate falls so low that shopping for Adidas trainers in Hull is cheaper than buying a baguette on the Champs Elysées, which to be honest, happens quite a lot ‘cause the guys at Brioche Dorée are quite thrifty.

- Whenever I need to go on holiday to Europe, and I save time by not needing to change money, therefore avoiding more embarrassing incidents with brunettes (see 3 & 8).

8. The myth of Englishmen being crap in bed in relation to our European counterparts is one that requires further investigation (Parisienne volunteers required for ongoing extensive field tests). Question marks as to my credentials for this self-imposed role as the UK’s ambassador to Anglo-French relations would, I feel, be entirely justified.

9. Giving money to every single homeless person you walk past who asks you to “spare some change” on your way home, would see you a ruined man before you had even made it up the steps of your €1,500 per month Haussmann flat, or at least force you into buying Je ne peux pas croire que ce n’est pas du beurre, instead of the richer, creamier, melts-in-the-mouth variety.

10. There are no “ghettos” in Paris or its suburbs. Traditionally working class places like Belleville, Ménilmontant and the 19th arrondissement are not, to quote some (un)educated French locals “shitholes”. Rather, they are places to be appreciated for their underground arts scenes and delightfully buoyant supermarket attendants who make no secret of their pure hatred of you - mainly due to the fact you elected to pay for your Camembert by debit card. Rioting, looting and burning of cars has only ever occurred in very isolated cylindrical areas of Saint Denis, and even then it can be attributed to widespread misinterpretation of a line in a Johnny Cash song.