For those of you that are not aficionados of all things felt, technicolour and googly eyed, this song featured on my all time favourite children’s’ television show, Sesame Street. Starring giant birds, talking frogs and microscopic people that live in a milk cartons in the window, Sesame Street is the second best thing to pop out of Jim Henson’s brain. Beaten only by the original The Muppets* and only marginally ahead of Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street was the home of the sexually obscure skivvy-ologists Bert and Ernie, a blue blob that stuffs it’s face with cookies, the numerophilic Count (mwa-ha-ha) and like their Muppets cousins, an anthology of catchy tunes.
To this day, as I count out 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, I can still sing the rhythm of the song that plays as a giant ball jumps around some sort of psychedelic pinball machine. Joking with friends, I might spontaneously pipe a quick ‘one of these kids is doing his own thing’ when you see a weird looking youth in a pub. But the ditty that darts most frequently around my mind today is the one I hum as I wander up my local street.
“these are the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, in your neigh-bour-hoo-ood”
On the infrequent weekends that I am at home, my greatest pleasure is my Saturday morning wander. I’m happy for this to become my second greatest pleasure if the Butcher ever comes good on his salacious winks, but I will get to him in a moment. The day starts with about two hours spent in the lifting darkness reading the papers, reading blogs, watching videos, generally reminding myself that there is a world out there beyond the tip of my own nose… even if I experience it mostly in pixel rather than in person.
After I have managed to paint on the face that I washed way with Pouilly Fumé the night before, and wrapped something clean around my modesty, I head out into the wide world and I fais mes courses.
As I wander down my local high street, the Rue des Abbesses, I wave hello to the same people at certain points along the narrow way. I feel like a little bit of a Rockstar as they wave hello, or on occasional, more intimate instances, kiss me on the cheeks. It’s always the same handful of people; they know me for the big hair and red shoes but most especially for the invisible Australian Flag that flutters above my head as I walk. I know them for the little pieces of sunshine they bring to my life, or at the very least for their contribution to my rounded tummy and wobbly thighs.
During this hebdomadal promenade, I am reminded that despite living in Paris, France’s largest city and Europe’s second, I am known, I am at home, I am safe. The faces are familiar, the repeated rhythm of my steps is comforting and the world is rendered a little less chaotic, a little less cold, a little less unbearable.
So here they are… the people in my neighbourhood.
First up, just as I pass by the Place des Abbesses and the metro station that spews hundreds of inert tourists proffering maps onto the little remaining open space, are the Tunisian brothers who own Au Verger des Abbesses.
Samir and his brother and Tariq their cousin and the multitude of sons that work there during holidays when they are not studying somewhere, else are the second most famous greengrocers in Abbesses; the first being the fictional pair that featured in Amelie ^. Their family know mine intimately. They ask after my mother and my sister, whom they got to know during their stays in Paris, in fact they followed the Art-sist-ologer’s pregnancy with almost as much interest as I. More recently, they ask after Sapphire and Smack, the little people they bribed with free strawberries each time I went there to buy “kids bananas”.
They’ve taught me what grows when, what it is called in french, which apples are crunchiest and why French people prefer clementines to mandarines (no seeds). They correct me if I get the LE or LA wrong on a vegetable, they show me photos of Tunis and I show them photos of Sydney. They almost always give me a free bunch of parsley and they drive the most interesting truck you ever did see.
I had noticed, but never bothered to ask why, that every single fruit truck in Paris is daubed with a mural graffiti. The Smartarse, curiouser and curuouser than I, had me ask them why. Rungis, the massive central market in Southern Paris from whence all fresh produce is sent out into France is full of trucks every morning from 3am. Robbed of safe places to paint and practice their craft, the street artists of Paris took to the enormous carparks of Rungis guaranteeing themselves an endless supply of fresh canvases and the cover of early morning darkness for safety.
Next door to Samir is Marie, the cheese shop (let’s call her my dealer) who has only just opened and next to her is the Chemist.
I don’t know their names, but they are husband and wife. They know me well; they remember me with a leg coated in plaster and a feeble aluminium crutch holding me upright. They taught me how to job a syringe full of blood thinner into my upper thigh. They remember me buying illicit substances in bulk to send home to Australia. They remember measuring the alien foot for my sexy support socks. They remember absolutely every detail of my medical history since I landed in Montmartre.
A particularly special moment was when she asked me ‘how I was going’ after handing over a fresh box of drugs that keep me sane. I hesitated to say, ‘I’m fine, I just take anti-anxiety pills because being interrogated by strangers makes me anxious’. Even so, given they actually take an interest in my health, I count on them to keep me healthy more than the Hannibal-esque misogynist of a GP I am obliged to visit next door.
After the Chemist I wave across the road to Stephane, Murielle, Lucie and Vincent, the hairdressers at Profession Coiffeur. They are the lovely, if over-theatrical, crowd to whom I have entrusted the maintenance and care of the Kate Bush that sprouts from my scalp. They are directly across the road from the Greek Guy who sells me hummus and semi-dried tomatoes, a Greek Guy who is always shocked that I say hello and thank you in Greek, a Greek Guy who gets my money each week because it is impossible to find pita bread or haloumi in a generic supermarket. Pita bread is, you see, exotic.
A couple of shops down from the Greek God of chickpeas is the home of my most entertaining purchase of the week, Boucherie Jacky Gaudin. Jacky and his band of Merry Men are widely believed to be the best butchers in the quartier.
Filled with naked contortionist birds#, the street-facing window appears to be a funeral home for poultry (their still-attached heads bent around plump breasts in supplication). While the queue to be served wends its way beyond a standing rotisserie oven that is home to even more dead, if slightly warmer, rotating birds. Entering via the glass front door, passing the passport posted on the wall that details the provenance of all the different dead things, is the interior display case.
If the outside has all the horror of Freddy Krueger’s tribute to chicken, the inside is the Evil Dead of offal. Little brown kidneys, tubs of bloodied brains and a giant slab of veal liver vie for poll position with the traditional logs of loin. There are dried sausages dangling from the ceiling along with giant metal plates awarded to Jacky in honour of his ability to kill and then dissect a five-star joint of carnage. They laugh at my ever-wider eyes as they carve up something’s right leg in front of me, you would think I had become accustomed to it. But just last week, they offered me a glass of water as I nearly passed out in shock at a gutless, skinless lamb that just caught my eye as it was cradled in the strong arms of Guillaume.
Aaah, Guillaume.
Guillaume is a rather strapping example of manlinees who with his father, Guy, might be the only people in Abbesses who follow Rugby…not counting me. Each week, I am subjected to jibes and jokes at the expense of the land I love simply because we lost…again. Each week they offer to sell me Wallaby, usually followed up by some comment about how they’d be better barbecued than trying to catch a ball. Each week they make fun of me for not being able to say magret properly. Each week I watch Guillaume flinging his giant butcher’s knife around in front of his carefully tied apron and wonder what giant things the apron hides from view. Each week I wonder what it might be like if he trussed, tenderised and spatchcocked me rather than the pale yellow bird on the bench.
Essentially, despite the fear of seeing an actual lamb actually sacrificed in my honour, I still go to the butcher so I can stare into Guillaume’s big brown eyes while he debones my duck.
Should the opportunity to get roulade with Guillaume ever present itself, I would pay a pre-purchased visit to Laura, the Baker’s daughter, to whom I pay very large amounts of money to pour hot wax over my nether regions… but never after noon.
My Saturday lunchtime’s are sacrosanct.
Regular visitors to my life on these pages, or even to my actual life, are familiar with Le Miroir. There have been some changes over the last year, some for the worse and some for the better. The food is still exceptional, the service is getting back to where it was and each week I entrust my digestive tract to the dynamice duo, Sebastien Squared.
Seb, the one who cooks, is spending increasing amounts of time on the floor, so I’ve gotten to know him a lot better. He is trying very hard to set me up with someone who’ll cook for me. He recently invited me to the party for the birth of his daughter. Seb, the one who gives me wine, is the new guy out on the tiles. His enthusiasm for art and design are matched only by his enthusiasm for a hairdo that is bigger than mine.
Like a dimly lit independent play, this little drama unfolds in a space only 5 blocks from my door. It features a small cast of reliable performers. Like Much Ado, I know the story inside and out, but I will pay to see it over and over again. I happily hand over the fruits of my fruity labour for the opportunity to smile, the opportunity to be entertained and the certainty that I will be delighted.
* In related news, I could write another War and Peace pledging my love for The Muppets and hence my manic obsession with Jason Segel, especially 4.26 minutes into Forgetting Sarah Marshall…
^ It is a real greengrocer!
# The human variety is just down the hill at Pigalle
Just to clarify, It's my hairdresser and you are invited to visit them :)
Posted by: LOUIS XIV | 05/24/2013 at 06:56 AM