...Just after Javert finishes singing this song, he throws himself in the Seine…
This week, I woke up on a sunny Monday in London. I was sleeping peacefully upon an inflatable bed, dwarfed, only just, by the Queen Mary II; the Cristal quaffing King of France doesn’t do anything on the cheap, not even blow-up beds. I woke up to what I expected would be a typical week of phone calls, emails, office politics and the requisite dose of Rosé to keep my head out of a gas oven.
Had I have known how my week would unfold, that Monday morning, I might have pulled King Louis’s quilt over my head, hid in the dark upon my inflatable life-raft, dreamt of floating across oceans and pled non compos mentis for 5 days.
Just when you think the sun will come out tomorrow and that everything old is new again and it’s getting better all the time and somewhere over the rainbow and the winner takes it all and the tide is high and everything’s alright and every other cheerful song you know, life deals you a big dose of steaming hot Vegemite to the nostril and you open your eyes to see that sh*t just got real.
Last weekend, I shed the orthopaedic boots and the sheepskin layers, slipped on some ballets and wandered the cobbled streets of London. I, sprayed with a rare mist of luck, happened upon the Trooping of the Colour. I stood alone in the park, among thousands of tourists, many of whom approached me to ask what was going on. One American espied the suited up soldiers on horseback and asked me if ‘Kate’s baby’ had been born, which, even by precise British Military standards, was incredulous and ‘Kate’s baby’ is actually the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, #justsayin.
I explained that the Trooping of the Colour, not color, is the annual celebration of The Queen’s Official Birthday. Liz and the rest of the gilded family frock up, then rock up, to watch the Duke of York’s ten thousand men march to the top of the hill and down again, showing us all how deftly they can change their assault rifles from one hand to the other^ and how well they can‘t prevent their horses from pissing all over the palace pansies. The Queen waves at them, they stomp loudly and the one at the front with a big gold stick gets a bit shouty. Liz thanks them all for spending the past 12 months standing still at her front door while Americans Instagram their fluffy bearskin hats, and then one goes home to drink one’s refreshing Pimms proffered by one’s manservant upon one’s silver tray.
I watched as carriages bearing Camilla, Harry, Kate and Her Majesty, trotted their pastel Phillip Treacy fascinators up The Mall. Then I shopped, I had my nails done, I looked up at the sun, I watched Star Trek and gaped at The Cumberbatch’s sexiness…even in outer space where no man has boldly gone before…but where every woman would gleefully, un-boldly, go…as many times as physically possible. On Saturday night, I even got boldly gussied up for a fancy, jazzy Gatsby themed party. It wasn’t remarkable, but I was happy.
Spending so much time in London is never easy on my nerves. I feel more normal in London…but Paris feels more like home. In London, I can buy shoes and shirts in sizes that I understand and that fit. I can watch telly for hours on end. I can make jokes at the expense of the locals about our current cricket and rugby clashes. But Paris is where I live, where my friends are, where the urin-oma of the Metro is more welcoming than the barbarian hoards of London’s Tube. First-world problems indeed; I’ve got two arms, two legs, a good job, brains, unlimited broadband Wi-Fi and a dodgy right ankle. I’ve got nothing to complain about.
Still, not content with photographing someone who is named Elizabeth*, and partnered with a Phil, that is not related to me, I sought out homelier, relative comfort.
On Monday evening I met up with my second cousin, visiting from Sydney, whom I hadn’t seen for at least five years. KB is my mother’s cousin and when I was about 7, I was Flower Girl at her wedding. Having recently lost her husband, a passing that darkly coloured my May weekend in Burgundy, we spent many hours reminiscing and updating each other on the goings on in our respective families.
Our respective families…
Her father was Maltese, mine was English, both are on the other side of the Pearly Gates, we share Polish connections, Thai connections, Irish connections, German connections and even a bloody Freemason! KB was accompanied by her granddaughter, who shares her first name with my great-aunt (you following??), a wee girl of 11, who will go down in history as the funniest person on earth who doesn’t know it.
I was explaining tax and citizenship and why I can’t vote. She asked me why I haven’t become French so I told her that I’ve not lived in France long enough to apply. At which point she asked if I would then remain “a normal person”, her definition of Australian but, for her grandmother and I, a moment of hysterical laughter.
I don’t often think about Dad, but when I returned to Versailles-upon-Thames that evening, I felt like the wind had been taken from my sails, forced up into the clouds and then blown down upon me, full force, an explosive fart in the face. In fact, a fart in the face may have been more fun. I do such an excellent job of remaining frenetically occupied and avoiding anything that even mildly dampens my high, that when the crash comes, which it inevitably does, I’m always taken a little off guard.
So as the week progressed, and an invisible man continued to smack me across the head with an invisible baseball bat. I came to wonder if there was enough alcohol in the 18th arrondissement to see me safely through to Friday. Then Tony Soprano died.
I stared up at the sky and begged Venus to stop beating up Mars, but she didn’t listen.
Summer Solstice is a time of year when the inherently beautiful people of Sweden take a day off, drink beer and eat dill-seasoned potatoes, unlike Christmas when they take a day off, drink beer and eat dill-seasoned potatoes. Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year. It marks new beginnings and everyone shags each other raw while dancing around a Maypole; sort of like Vegas only with natural blondes.
It must be because I am Australian.
June 21st was, for 31 years, the shortest, darkest day of my year. My body, still not accustomed to summer when it should be winter, has an innate need to lie low in June, to don my very own bearskin, to crawl into the dark and hibernate. It could also be that despite my calendar reminding me that the date is June 21st, the torrential rain, the hailstorms and the slate grey skies tell me that it is still September.
Javert, recognising that the stars have more to do with his fate than his own actions, opted to end his breathing days and jump in the Seine. This week, realising that no matter what I did, the whole world was going to hell in a handbasket, I was tempted to go all Russell and if not throw myself in a river, at least throw someone else in one.
I’m proud to say I didn’t. I shouted a lot at people who didn’t deserve it. I spent a couple of hours sobbing on video calls. I shed the Artemisian armour and told an actual human man how I felt about his actual human self. Still, I’m not sure what will happen next week, but I’ll have a new hairdo to defend myself.
The answer is in the stars.
^ I mean really, when you are in the Afghani desert and a mujahedeen is coming at you with a machete, being able to switch hands should not require a choreographed movement of 25 seconds.
*Yes, I know intimately an Elizabeth who is with a Phil. She doesn’t troop the colour but there are plenty of colours in the poop she washes off her Dauphine.
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