Keith Austin: When the world is your lobster

On The Road Again..

keith_austin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:49:00 GMT

"Davy's on the road again
Wearin' different clothes again.."

Who WAS that? Blue Oyster Cult? REO Speedwagon? Manfred Mann's Earthband? Whatever, as we say here in America; it pretty much describes where we are pretty succinctly - on the road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. This time, though, it's from inside a Greyhound bus, one of the iconic features of the US of A.

Since the last post from the back of a SUV in a Florida thunderstorm we've travelled to Fort Myers in a hire car, driven ditto to New Orleans for a two-day stopover before taking a three-day Amtrak train from the Big Easy to Union Station in downtown LA.

From there it was another five-hour drive in a hire car to Las Vegas, where we've spent the past 6 nights at the Stratosphere hotel and casino - not because either of us gamble (we don't) but because I think the constant moving is getting to both of us. It really is time to come home.

The Greyhound bus isn't too bad to tell the truth. It's clean, air-conditioned, on time and, at $39 each for the one-way fare, cheaper than almost any other mode of transport we've taken in America.

Mind you, the driver has already read us the riot act: rules and regulations include turning cell phones to vibrate; no loud conversations allowed on said cell phones, no loud music from headphones please; no smoking; no intoxicants; and here's the big one - no profanity allowed. Profanity on his bus will get you thrown off. It's safe to sit and look out the windows. I think.

Actually, the driver is interesting; he's wearing a small gold badge that says 'Jesus First'. However, he has just told 'the person playing with the footrests' to STOP IT in no uncertain terms. Twice. NO please, no thank you. At the last rest stop he left a woman behind because she failed to meet the 20-minute deadline. When it was pointed out that the missing woman's seat was at that moment filled with her handbag and a whole load of pills he just shouted back that he gave us 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes and that she would have to catch another bus. See? Jesus First and everyone else second.

And now he's driving the bus and using both hands to text someone. That is NOT illegal here. You can't set your phone to ring but you can put 30 lives in danger by texting while driving at 70 miles an hour along the freeway.

The road to LA today is that classic American cliche; the heat-haze road arrow-straight ahead, the landscape on either side just scrubby desert until it reaches pink-beige ridges holding up a cloudless, relentless blue sky. And it's 98 degrees out there!

It was like that yesterday to and from the Grand Canyon, a bus trip that started with a 6.20am pickup from the hotel and ended with a 10.30pm drop-off at the same spot.

In between we got precisely 45 minutes of the Angel Lodge lookout point and one hour at Mathers Point lookout. At the first you could see "approximately 10% of the canyon" and at the second "about 20%". It's not a lot of return for 16 hours in a bus but it was more than enough to whet the appetite for a return trip one day.

If you do plan to go to the GC make sure you organise an overnight stay atthe Angel Point Lodge. Sunset and sunrise there would be pretty amazing, I suspect.

Oh, we have just passed a sign for Baker, CA, which boasts that not only is it a gateway to Death Valley but that it has "the world's tallest thermometer". It is big; you can see it from the road and it's now 102 out there.

At Mathers Point we returned we returned to the bus after an hour taking hundreds of pictures of the view - it was seriously the wrong time of day to be doing that, with the sun almost directly overhead - and I mentioned to Julio, our driver, that 'Grand' really wasn't big enough a word for the canyon. "Fucking enormous and bloody spectacular canyon might just about do it," I said.

Luckily Julio saw the funny side of it. If I did that now in the 'no profanity' bus, I'd be standing next to the world's tallest thermometer, fuming.

Cheque, mate, in the US of A

keith_austin — Fri, 4 Sep 2009 05:38:00 GMT

I’m writing this in the back of an SUV on the way back to Fort Lauderdale from the Florida Keys. A wet and sultry tropical storm is passing overhead and a passing SunCruz Casino sign says Florida has the loosest slots.

There is a Burger King and fries congealing queasily in the pit of my French cheese belly (something acquired during six months in Paris, and Key Largo’s Hideout restaurant has an all-you-can-eat Friday night fish fry.

After beautiful blue heavens, kayaking and snorkelling yesterday, the sky today is the colour of washing machine runoff, and we are now on I-95 in Monroe County where fat drops of rain are engulfing the sign for the Gulfstream Shores resort and the radio spruiks a ‘special’ on ‘vaginal rejuvenation’ surgery (which should sort out those loose slots at SunCruz once and for all).

The Florida Keys are a lot like tropical North Queensland in terms of weather patterns and architecture. Clapperboard houses on legs, sunny one minute, rainy the next ... but here they have several things that Queensland doesn’t: Wendys, Dennys , Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds (with a 99c cheeseburger offer), Taco Bell, Wendys, Dennys , Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Wendys, Dennys , Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Taco Bell ... and so it goes.

Outside, the rain is bucketing down in vicious gusts that feel, frankly, a little vindictive. The SUV is being buffeted, the wind is coming in waves and, even though I’m freezing from the A/C here in the back of the vehicle, it’s upwards of 80 degrees outside.

We are passing through the Crocodile National Wildlife Park Refuge and the hump-back bridge ahead seems to be disappearing up into a grey haze. It’s spooky looking at it through windscreen wipers that are thrashing back and forth, working overtime to disperse the rain. It feels personal now.

We have pulled over to let the speeding lunatics go past. It’s tropical chaos out there but you won’t slow down? Faint fractured halos of light appear, headlights of cars coming towards us, as if from nowhere but proof that the other half of the bridge still exists.

Starfish palm trees bow to the inevitable, another Hummer goes by, and I wonder why. Why a Hummer? I also wonder why all the people in the ‘service classes’ here in America are black or Hispanic, why everything tastes of sugar and why the banks won’t change my American Express travellers’ cheques.

I was going to sit here and write about our night at the El Bulli restaurant in Spain but it feels like a long, long time ago on another planet in another galaxy.

* Here’s some advice – don’t take travellers’ cheques to America. My bank sold me a whole bunch of them, assuring me they would work in the USA. They don’t. The banks won’t/don’t take them and if you are lucky enough to find a currency exchange booth they will gouge you like it’s going out of fashion.

We finally had to go to Miami International airport to change the travellers’ cheques and lost a bucketload both on the exchange rate and the charges. One currency place I tried in a mall in Florida would have charged me like a wounded bull ($11) for the privilege of giving me an exchange rate at which even the Mafia would have baulked.

We have both taken to taking money out on our credit cards – surely even they can’t charge what they charge here!

What a change from Paris, where we changed travellers’ cheques in banks with no problems whatsoever, and without the outrageous charges.

Once more unto the beach...

keith_austin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:03:00 GMT

MANY thanks, Lufthansa, for telling me that you couldn’t find my son on your manifests because he had somehow got his tickets from United Airlines. Despite being on Lufthansa flight LH 565 from Ghana to Frankfurt and a further Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, arriving at 8am.

Many thanks for being so helpful about his non-appearance four-and a-half hours after he was supposed to land. Ring United Airlines, instead, they suggested. Well, yes, heaven forbid you might have any details of who got on YOUR planes and YOUR flights.

And many more thanks to United Airlines, who confirmed that he had caught both flights on time and, as far as they were concerned, he got off the final flight on time at Heathrow.

So where was he? You can imagine the dire imaginings of teenage pranks gone wrong and 18-year-old Calum trying to explain how ‘that’ got into his backpack while bending over in front of a beefy Costumes & Exercise chap snapping on his plastic gloves.

Finally, the call came from London; Calum had arrived at his grandmother’s house at 12.45pm.

The flight from Ghana had NOT taken off on time; it had been many hours late.

He had therefore missed his connecting flight in Frankfurt and was mos’ def NOT on the 8am flight.

He had finally landed at Heathrow at 11am.

Yes, thanks to everyone for a most exciting morning. Your websites were shit, too.

ON A more positive note, Paris has outdone itself yet again. Yesterday was the official opening of the Paris Plages 2009 – Un ete solidaire. This is a celebration of all things summery along the expressway beneath the Right Bank of the Seine from Pont Sully in the east to around the Pont du Carousel in the west.

This road – the Voie Georges Pompidou – is a bypass which normally funnels traffic away the smaller Parisienne streets and thunders along doing much to stop Paris becoming one big traffic jam.

So what do the city bigwigs do? They close the thing down every July/August and truck in 2000 tonnes of sand and fill the voie up with artificial beaches, and bars and cafes and ice-cream kiosks and a swimming pool and sun loungers and deckchairs and water fountains.

It might sound like some bizarre City emulation of Bondi or the Costa del Anywhere and, well, it is a bit like that but along the whole 2 kilometre or so stretch there’s a definite relaxed holiday vibe – and the beach doesn’t look too odd to tell the truth.

In fact it’s great to stand on the Right Bank, lean out between the booksellers’ stalls and watch excited kids making sandcastles right next to the sloppy old Seine. It also shelps that lots of yummy mummies take the opportunity to grab a sun lounger and give the bikini an outing.

Popsi Bubblehead was so much taken with the idea of the swimming pool – built from nothing not far from us just before Pont Sully – that she took her cozzie out with her and was determined to take a dip within sight of Notre Dame.

Sadly when we arrived it was a kids’ and parents’ hour and they wouldn’t let her in, despite her various attempts to steal a small child.

The City Fathers have also set up, at various points along the way, water features which pump out a fine mist – very welcome in yesterday’s heat and, from their faces alone, amazing fun for the kids of all ages who dashed in and out of it to cool down. Or just get wet.

The price of food and drink has also been kept down – probably because the Town Hall is involved – and as such it’s a great place for an affordable beer – certainly cheaper than many of the rip-off joints nearby.

Anyway, I’ll upload a whole bunch of pics to give a better idea of it. Well, I will if it doesn't take two days to upload...

Other highlights included the little pedal-powered VeloPresse carts which trundled up and down selling newspaper and magazines, the outdoor gym, the leathery nut-brown skin of the elderly sun worshippers as they settled on the boardwalk sun loungers, the free balloon animals for kids and the large area either side of the Pont Louis Philippe where you can play boules for FREE in newly-built petanque pits.

Great fun in a great atmosphere – and full marks to the Paris Mairie for coming up with it. Where else in the world would a city close down a major traffic artery and fill it with attractions for the locals and tourists alike?

It’d be like closing the Cahill Expressway in Sydney during January, or pedestrianising Oxford Street in London for the whole of August. Gotta love the French.

AND FINALLY, a minor downside to the whole banning of smoking inside thing. This is all very well in somewhere like London but here in Paris, where eating and drinking al fresco is almost a national pastime, it has had the effect of forcing all the smokers outside. This means that on a stinking hot day, if you don’t want a faceful of Gauloise you have to sit inside.

Just a few days ago a sat at a lovely little cafe along the Rue de Rivoli, next to a couple who got through six cigarettes in the time it took them to drink one cup of coffee each. And I really don’t know the French for ‘any chance you might side downwind of me, you smelly gits?’

AND FINALLY finally, I might be out of contact for a few days because Popsi and myself are heading down to Spain to have dinner at El Bulli, supposedly the world’s best restaurant. We’re taking the overnight TGV to Girona and then hiring a car for a few days in Roses on the coast.

We are both very excited at the prospect of El Bulli and will report back with pictures on our return.

Gallery: Bastille Day

keith_austin — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:03:00 GMT

Allons, enfants ...

keith_austin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:51:00 GMT

Saw an interesting sign at the Science Park in Paris’s 19e the other day (see thumbnail accompanying this update). It’s basically a Lost And Found office but it was the literal translations that struck me. In French it’s ‘Objets Trouves’ – Objects Found; in Spanish it’s ‘Objetos Perdidos’ – Objects Lost.

Hmmm. Does this mean that the French are basically optimists; the Spanish are pessimists; and English speakers – Lost AND Found? - are realists, or just couldn’t care less? Discuss.

Anyway, we were out at the Science Park because it was on the list of places we wanted to see while in Paris and, somehow, five-and-a-half months have crept up on us to the point where there are only 12 days left before we leave – and three of those will be spent in Spain having dinner at El Bulli restaurant. (Oh, yes indeedy.)

Well, if there was an area ever in need of a drastic makeover that was it. Down at heel, grey, scruffy, under-used and about as inspiring as a visit to the dentist. The actual Science Museum and its Geodome and the like are said to be pretty schmick stuff –at least according to our guidebook – but we’re both a little too long in the tooth for ‘exciting’ hands-on science park exhibits. Well I am.

Instead we wandered around the Parc de la Villette outside and were inspired to, er, go home. It’s a nice enough place for kids, with its playgrounds and the like but we found it all a bit depressing.

That said, I read that the Grand Hall, a former livestock hall turned cultural centre and performance space, and the Zenith concert hall are “hotspots” for shows and the like. Perhaps it does transform at night but during the day it’s pants.

Still, we walked back along the canal, which was the highlight of the day, and we got to cross it off The List.

Along the way, near Stalingrad Metro, we came across a fascinating little set-up whereby a cinema chain has plotted up on both sides of the Bassin de la Villette. If you pay to see a film that’s playing on the other side of the water your ticket gives you a free ride across the water on a little ferryboat. No ticket? It’s 50c.

Since then we have experienced Bastille Day in Paris, which starts on the evening of July 13 and continues into the next day. Allons enfants de la patrie and all that ... man the barricades, mes amis.

Well, we manned our local restaurant, the Cafe Le Louis Philippe, with Fiona, visiting from Australia, and somehow managed to miss it all. By the time we got to Place de la Bastille (an odd area that is a confluence of the 3e, 4e, 11e and 12e) it was at midnight and the celebrations were more or less all over – and it took us almost an hour to get Fiona a cab back to her hotel near the Arc de Triomphe.

The next day there was the usual military parade along the Champs Elysees at 10am – a parade that woke us up in the Marais as various jets roared almost directly overhead. But while military parades aren’t our sort of thing we did decide to give the evening fireworks a go.

After crepes in the Creperie des Pecheurs in St Germain – no, we couldn’t possibly eat a sweet crepe for dessert oops where did that go – we took the Metro to Invalides and found a position on the bridge there across the Seine.

We waited about an hour and 15 minutes for the fireworks to start – just about the right time, it must be said because the streets began to fill up quickly after that - but they were, to be perfectly honest, a bit of a letdown.

For quite a few long periods there was no sense that the Eiffel Tower was even there, so bad was the lighting. We could as easily have been watching a fireworks display in Notting Hill or Blacktown or Bondi – there was a resounding lack of context. And context is all as far as fireworks are concerned.

A quick mention here, though, about the Metro that night. The streets around the Champs Elysees were thronged with people – and they all seemed to decide they wanted to go home at the same time.

But while it was packed, the Metro was quick and efficient. We were back in the Marais within half an hour. Gotta love that.

A Euro star!

keith_austin — Thu, 9 Jul 2009 21:29:00 GMT

THERE was an advertising slogan in Britain many years ago which urged people to ‘Let the train take the strain’. That was in the supposedly good old days of British Rail, Intercity, and a nationalised train network, of course.

That slogan, though, could easily be resurrected by tourist boards across Europe to compete with the cheap fare airlines.

Main train stations are conspicuous by the fact that they are all within cooee of the centre of the city, if not right in it. Paris, for instance, has the Gare de Lyons, the Gare de L’Est, the Gare du Nord and the Gare St Lazare – three of which are in walking distance of us here in the Marais.

Ditto London.

Which is what makes the Eurostar train such as delight to use. Myself and Popsi Bubblehead went back to the UK recently on separate trips to see family. From leaving the studio here to arriving at my mother’s house in Bethnal Green, East London, took 4 hours – most of which were spent sitting down and reading on trains of one sort or another (Metro, Eurostar, Tube). And all this without, somehow, the stress and constant movement and hassle that are the hallmark of modern airports.

As a result, the prospect of short-haul flights now fill me with dread: the schlepp out to the airport with all your gear, the interminable queues, the squished seating, the wait for your luggage to arrive on the carousel, the schlepp from the airport into the destination city ... dear god, it’s depressing.

(Trains are also the perfect method of transport for all those numbnuts who jump up and grab their hand luggage as soon as the aeroplane stops bumping along the runway – on a train it actually does make some kind of sense because you already have your luggage with you and you can be first to the door and first off the train and first out of the station. On a plane you still have to wait for it all to come down that conveyor belt – so sit back DOWN why don’t ya?!?)

Anyway, since our arrival in Europe we have travelled on the Artesia night train from Venice to Paris (see previous post ‘Train, train do not go away’), regularly used the Eurostar back and forth to see UK family, and taken a train to Glasgow and back as part of a journey to the Isle of Islay.

The latter trip was interesting because I was already in the UK and took the train from London to Glasgow while Popsi booked a flight on one of the cheapo airlines from Paris.

The plan was for me to hire a car in Glasgow, pick her up at the airport and off we would go ... but the best laid plans and all that.

My train was on time at both ends and the car was ready to go. I drove to the airport to meet Popsi, who unfortunately wasn’t able to fly from Charles de Gaulle but from a small airport outside Paris at a place called Beauvais. This entailed a Metro trip to Port Maillot Metro and then a 40-minute coach trip to the airport.

I parked in the airport car park and rang her. “Where are you?”

“I’m off the plane and waiting near a bar called Yates”

Unable to find said bar I asked a barman. “Yates?” he said. “Yates? There’s no Yates here, ya Sassenach moron, but there’s a Yates at Prestwick airport. That’s about 40 minutes from here.”

I might have been making that ‘Sassenach moron’ bit up but I swear that’s what he was thinking. I certainly was. Seems I was at the main Glasgow airport while Popsi was standing in the Scottish equivalent to Beauvais, 40 minutes’ drive in the opposite direction to the one in which we should have been going.

In about two weeks we are taking the overnight train (huzzah!) down to Girona in Spain to worship at the culinary shrine of Ferran Adria’s El Bulli restaurant. On the way back we are flying from Girona to Paris but I haven’t had the nerve to ask Popsi where it is we’re landing.

I just hope it isn’t Prestwick.

* A word of advice if you are planning to use the Eurostar; book early. I booked a return journey to London about 4 weeks in advance and managed to get it for £80 (about $160). You can do it cheaper (I once got it for about £57 return) but you have to be early and flexible about journey times.

Popsi, on the other hand, decided on a Friday to go back on a Saturday. And, £178 later, she did.

On the other hand, my six-hour train trip from London to Glasgow cost me £48. When Popsi and I returned to London on the same train it cost £35 for BOTH of us. So shop around if you can.

Fete de la Musique, wine and cassoulet ...

keith_austin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:17:00 GMT

* My quest to make cassoulet here in Paris has to be deemed a failure. While expat Australian author John Baxter, who has lived here for 20 years, might have been a bit of a purist for insisting that cassoulet had to be cooked in a wood-fired oven he was most certainly on the money in the general sense. (By the way, if you can get hold of Baxter’s book Immoveable Feast, do; it’s hideously well written, witty, and a food lover’s dream quest.)

I have made a cassoulet, and a damn good one at that, but it was at Popsi Bubblehead’s sister’s place down south in the Lozere. We gathered together all the ingredients and, voila, 18 hours later there it was.

Sadly the two-ring electric hob here isn’t up to it, even with the assistance of the electric oven which will take a very small chicken at most. And even then you have to keep turning the thing because only three of the four heating elements work and it’s the only way to give it an even tan.

In the Lozere we even had to buy a new casserole dish to fit all the ingredients – it’s not really a dish you can whip up for two. Indeed, we fed four adults and two teenage boys (second helpings all round) and still had enough left over to do it all again.

Here in the Marais we could feed that many only by pretending it was a relay race.

* The Marais, by the way, went off like a frog in a sock last night (June 21). It was the annual fete de musique and the place was packed. It was a bit of a shock to tell the truth as I wasn’t expecting it. Popsi Bubblehead was off visiting family in the UK and I was planning another quiet and tragic night in watching old Man From Uncle movies when a new American friend and her daughter mentioned it.

We three had met up at the beautiful Place des Vosges in the morning and were on our way to a Sunday morning market not far from here at the Bastille – a huge thing that, somehow, we have manage to miss in 5 months of living here.

The market, by the way, is terrific. We have been doing most of our daily shopping at the two small supermarkets nearby but this was an eye-opener. Churros, chickens, chops, cheval stalls, wonderful wet fish and all manner of mushrooms, herbs, veggies, cheeses, olives, saucissons ... it was delightful.

I was also introduced to what I’d like to think of as the Lucky Dip Vino Collapso stall. This is a stall which gets, I suppose, collections of wine from deceased estates and the like. There are wines priced from reasonable up to “whoa!’ but there is also a selection in boxes marked up at 2 and 5 euros.

As American Carole explained, you just have to take pot luck. She knew people who had bought 20-year-old wines from there for 2 euro only to find that they tasted like vinegar but that on other occasions they had hit the jackpot.

So, you guessed it, I came away with a 5 euro bottle of Chateau Gontier, a “Premier Cotes de Blaye ... mis en bouteille au chateau” and dated 1996. It was the first one I picked up and it was 13 years old. The last time I drank anything that old it was a scotch.

What’s it like? We’ll have to wait until Popsi Bubblehead gets back. I’m not attempting this stuff without someone around to call the ambulance.

* Yes, the Marais and surrounding areas went off. Seems this happens every June; bands, DJs, and various other musical acts just head out into the streets and start playing. I passed one band who’d set up on a street corner who were bashing out a passable version of Riders on the Storm; there were samba bands, rock bands, a huge DJ-led street party in the central Marais that reminded me of Sydney’s Mardi Gras without the Straights; an a capella group performed wonderfully in a side street; and a reggae band got the crowd going in the upper Marais reaches near Temple.

An idea for Sydney perhaps?

The only downside to the night was the number of bands with bongo drummers. I’m sorry but it all sounds the same to me and after the first 45 minutes or so of bong-bong-bongoing I always want to take a knife to their skins.

The group playing in the square at the front of the Hotel de Ville earlier in the evening was a case in point. On and on and one and ...

Still, it does fulfill one very important social function: it gives white hippy-dippy chicks who can’t dance somewhere to throw themselves about.

Mona and Me ... the question of souvenirs

keith_austin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:45:00 GMT

With mere weeks left until the end of our six-month sojourn in Paris – hang on, didn’t we just arrive? – thoughts have turned to the question of souvenirs.

This is a somewhat vexed question if the truth to be told as the only souvenirs I’ve picked up so far – two beautiful and expensive Carnivale masks from Venice to add to my collection – were sent in January and are still bashing about somewhere in the Italian postal system. Perhaps Berlusconi has been using them for masked orgies . . .

So, an Eiffel Tower keyring? Five for 1 euro in some places. A glass Eiffel Tower that lights up and changes colour? Pure poetry if you are eight and only 5 euro, mum!

You’d think that there wouldn’t be much call for this sort of rubbish but looking at the hordes of guys flogging them around the Tower itself there must be a thriving trade in tourist tosh.

And why not? Think how that musical Notre Dame snow dome will look next to the maracas you brought back from Spain. Add the postcard with the bit of the Berlin Wall embedded in it and you’ve got an historical triptych to last down the ages.

The Berlin postcards were for those of us who never got round to seeing the Wall before it came down. This was on the understanding that it would always be there. And if we learn nothing else from this it’s that you should buy Michael Jackson tickets while you can.

Then you can say you were there the night he stumbled around stage looking for his nose. It might not be pretty but it would be like being able to say you saw Elvis. He might have looked like 200kg of sausage meat stuffed into a 10kg sequinned sausage skin but it was ELVIS, man.

Somewhere I still have that Berlin postcard but I suspect that to have filled up so many souvenirs the Wall would have been longer than the Great Wall of China, and seen from Mars.

So, souvenirs? What to do?

A photograph perhaps? All over Paris people pose in front of the landmarks. Here’s me in front of the Louvre pyramid; here’s me in front of Sacre Coeur; me with the Eiffel Tower on my head; me and my mate Mona Lisa; me in front of Notre Dame; me at the side of Notre Dame, me behind Notre Dame. Me, me, me.

I see this pose a thousand times a day, and always wonder who, exactly, is going to look at this picture after the fact. Do Japanese families gather en masse to watch Yoko’s slide show on her laptop? “Oh my God, she ‘s doing the V sign in front of the Pantheon, the little devil!”

Of course, there are also those people who want to get hold of a more intimate bit of Paris and try to steal bones and skulls from the Catacombs. Yes indeed, people’s bags are occasionally searched on the way out and divested of bits of the DEAD PEOPLE buried underground hundreds of years ago.

Maybe Socrates had the right idea; he distrusted books because they were, in his opinion, a pale imitation of speech. And when you begin to rely on books, he argued, you fail to develop memory, imagination and your own ideas.

Of course we only know this because Plato wrote it down. In books. Which would have gripped Socrates’ shit no end.

I think usability after the fact is the way to go. An apron with the Mona Lisa on it is where Popsi Bubblehead’s thoughts are turning. That way you get art and functionality in one souvenir.

Me, I’m going to buy a shirt.

Strolling along the Bois de Boulogne...

keith_austin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:35:00 GMT

SPRING sprang in Paris and then sprang right away again; we’ve experienced the first prolonged period of persistent pluie since arriving four and a half months ago and although the rain has stopped it’s left behind cloudy blue skies and a cold wind.

Before the rain set in, I took a trip out to the Bois de Boulogne for a stroll. Imagine that Paris itself had decided to have a picnic; well, this is where it threw a great green rug, spreading it right across the western reaches of the peripherique where the Seine turns almost back on itself and heads north.

All the guidebooks warn that the park is seedy – this is where the infamous Catherine M went to shag strings of strangers in her car – and dangerous at night so I took the coward’s way out and went over a lunchtime.

The Bois extends over more than 2000 acres so a return visit will be needed to get a full idea of what it’s like but I did manage a slow turn around the boating lake and back, with a cafe crème thrown in at the little Cafe d’Acacia hut on the eastern edge.

To be honest, it’s full of ducks and joggers. At least at lunchtime. And really, it’s basically just a park – albeit one from which you can see the Eiffel Tower.

Perhaps there’s more further in – and it’s said to be a favourite playground of Parisians on Sunday afternoon – but it’s really just ... a park. Does the fact that it’s in Paris make it any more than that?

Central Park is New York’s great green lung but it does have the added attraction of being lined with skyscrapers. This, on the other hand, could have been Victoria Park in my alma mater of Tower Hamlets, East London. And would I advise a tourist to go there? Well, certainly if you go there and breathe deeply of the fresh-ish air you could well be sucking in a bit of my dad as I spread his ashes there a couple of years ago ... oh, please yourself, missus.

Ditto Centennial Park; though that has the advantage of being full of birdlife that tourists from the northern hemisphere would only ever see in cage or on docos.

On the other hand, perhaps only in Paris would a bloke get up from his table at the cafe and call to his dog thus: “Come on, we’re going ... Matisse? Matisse!”

Matisse? Naturellement.

ON the way back to the Porte Dauphine Metro, revelling in what had become a beautiful sunny day, a chap on a bicycle swept past me and then turned angrily and hissed: “Fifi - depeche toi!”

Now, even my French extends to understanding this and I looked round expecting a young daughter or downtrodden wife to be labouring up the slight incline. Instead, tongue hanging out and almost dragging on the ground, was one of those hairy little sausage dogs, its stumpy legs going ten to the dozen as it tried to keep up.

And I swear to you that the poor thing looked up at me with big doey eyes as it struggled past, as if to say ‘Have you clocked this? He’s on a BIKE, for fuck’s sake. I’ll give him ‘dépêche toi’ - I’m going to shit in his slippers tonight, you see if I don’t’.

AND, finally, sticking to the dog motif, check out the pictures accompanying this instalment. In particular the red sign that we spotted on a motorbike in the 19^th a few weeks ago. It translates as: ‘Stop! This motorbike is not a urinal for dogs. Thank you.’

Gallery: Bois de Boulogne

keith_austin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:29:00 GMT

Spring sprung in chic Paris

keith_austin — Thu, 4 Jun 2009 23:48:00 GMT

RECENTLY we have been concerned with the question of ‘chicness’. As in the age-old dilemma of whether the French actually are more chic than anyone else, or is it one of those self-fulfilling prophecies?

Certainly the chap strolling the Marais area in front of us earlier this week was the epitome of someone who thought he had nailed ‘chic’ but had unwittingly hit his thumb with the hammer. It was proof that not even a Frenchman can pull off a light grey suit and brown suede shoes. Especially if the jacket’s too short and sports those double vents my father used to call “fart flaps”.

He wasn’t right about much, my old man, but he was right about that. A suit should have one vent or none. Anything else just makes your arse look big/bigger (delete as appropriate).

Mind you, this from a middle-aged man wearing beige shorts, a canary yellow Australian soccer shirt, black Adidas socks and trainers. Might just as well have “Tourist” tattooed on my forehead.

But one question remains. Are French women chic or do we assign chicness to them merely because they are French?

To this end I took a turn around Notre Dame. Paris has, in the past few weeks, blossomed in more ways than one. The parks are full of people and flowers and the trees, so naked when we arrived in February, are bursting with life. Indeed there is a tree in the rue de Rivoli splattering large plump blackberry-like fruit all over the pavement – it’s as if a cloud of Sydney bats have been through there, shat, and shoved off again.

The big clue that Paris is opening up for spring, though, could be seen in the cafes as they folded back their windows and flooded the pavements with tables and chairs. It has been like watching a field of flowers unfold and spread their petals, allowing the tourist bees to flit from one to another, pollinating them with their Euros.

Notre Dame was a wipeout. Why I went there looking for chic is beyond me. Tourists are a scruffy lot on the whole (the exception being around the Place des Vosges where the dress code is expensively wrinkled linen suits in pale pastels and a jaunty sun hat – and that’s just the men).

Mostly, we tourists look like the survivors of an explosion in K-Mart, staggering out into the sun wrapped in whatever the blast landed us with. This isn’t strictly fair of course – surely even the French look like tourists in Lakemba or Louisiana. Don’t they?

Ado and Carla, two friends here recently from Sydney, had no doubts – French women really do have that ‘je ne sais quoi’. “They just seem to glide along,” explained Ado. So there you go, it’s because French birds are on wheels.

And they often are. Sitting at Le Pick-Clops cafe in the Marais today I conducted an experiment – avec la permission de La Bubblehead, naturellement – which involved drinking coffee in the sun for several hours while watching women go by. I know, I know, the things I do in pursuit of The Truth . . .

Anyway, many, many beautiful women passed by on bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, Jimmy Choos, you name it. One memorable instance involved a woman in a short skirt and a pair of silver high-heels that truly deserved the word stiletto - even ninjas don’t have shit like that, I tell ya. And she was on a Vespa! Probably because she couldn’t walk in those things.

Anyway, after two hours of hard perving there is only one conclusion to come to; they ARE more chic. Sit on a corner like this in New York, Sydney, London, Dublin, Glasgow, Cape Town, Accra, or Woop-Woop and you will not see this many stylish women (though, the men need a bit of work).

But there IS a secret to it, and I believe it is hair. They all, whatever age, have marvellously well kept hair. This surprised me because I cannot say Paris is hideously well supplied with salons – though I could be wrong given that I haven’t been in one for a good 10 years (Popsi Bubblehead doing the honours for me with a combination of hedge clippers and a blowtorch).

I suspect there is some sort of underground salon society that makes the Da Vinci Code look like a boy scout meeting - the Tong Tong Macoute perhaps – and that only French women are allowed to join. There they keep the world’s top hairdressers chained to their sinks and, thus, stay one Prada-clad step ahead of the rest of the world’s women.

One thing, though, the cigarettes will never be a good look, girls ...

HERE’S another important fashion question: sandals on men – are they ever right? I think not.

TRUE story: Sydneysider in Paris refuses to enter ‘Australian’ restaurant – he hadn’t come all this way to eat scoff he could get at home. What did it? The sign saying ‘Restaurant aussi a l’etage’ – restaurant ALSO on first floor.

A Walk Back In Time

keith_austin — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Back in the 70s the manager of a pub in Hackney Road, east London (The Queens, I seem to recall – now a sari shop or a sports shoe wholesaler or somesuch), leaned close and, through the crashing wall of Philadelphia Sound being pumped by DJ Blossom (I kid you not), shouted something about under-age drinkers.

He was complaining that the Old Bill didn’t seem to understand that he couldn’t possibly check everyone’s ID or the place would grind to a halt. He had a point; the pub was heaving – a popular venue on the regular Friday and Saturday night circuit that attracted a rampaging horde of young, sweaty, cashed-up boozers.

“I mean, look at them,” he complained. “How would you know who’s over 18 and who’s not? I’d go out of business if I had to vet them all.”

Again, he had a point. Or so I thought at the time. And it would have been a little churlish to argue with him; after all, I’d only just turned 16.

So there are some advantages to owning a face like mine; never being asked for ID (somewhat useless after 18 but still), and never being mugged. I suspect would-be attackers take one look at my mush and think someone’s beaten them to it.

Disadvantages include the scars of spotty adolescence, and being followed around department stores. Even now, in grey-haired mellow middle-age the store detective or security guard can be counted upon to tag along at a discreet distance, making sure I don’t make off with the Nivea.

Yesterday, though, new depths were plumbed in Paris’s Latin Quarter where I took a stroll from Place St Michel to the Pantheon, the jardin du Luxembourg, Eglise St Sulpice and back, a combination of two ‘Best Neighbourhood Walks’ ripped out of a guide book. (see new pic gallery for some idea of the places.)

Much of this area is pretty familiar now, living as we do only a few minutes’ walk away, but I followed the route anyway and discovered that the Rue du Chat Qui Peche (street of the cat who fishes) claims to be one of the narrowest alleyways in the city. It’s a romantic name for a grimy grey gap between two buildings but that’s French for you – the only language that makes faeces sexy. Go on, say it: “Merde.”

Step 3 on the itinerary is the eglise St Severin, a medieval church built in the 13^th century and then rebuilt in the 15^th. Inside it’s the usual hushed silence, grey stone and stained glass – nice enough but not a pinch on Notre Dame or the spooky church behind our apartments. A statue of someone who looks like V from V For Vendetta (certainly not St Severin, a hermit from the 6^th century also known as The Solitary) stands in one corner with a baby on one arm and a little kid gazing up adoringly at him from under the other. Do that today and, whoever he is, his feet wouldn’t touch the floor until the court appearance.

In another corner of the church I passed a large man who had just come out of a little office. Unlike our spooky church, where the guardians are nuns and surprisingly young and good-looking monks, this chap was (obviously) a church official in mufti.

I know this because he looked like a store detective. He acted like one, too, following me around at the usual discreet distance, just in case. This I have come to expect in Boots or HMV – but IN A CHURCH? What did he think I was going to slip into my backpack? A two-metre crucifix with a dead bloke hanging off it?

I left in a bit of a huff, dignity intact but feeling a little, well, saintly.

A LITTLE later in the day, at the grander St Sulpice church in St Germain des Pres (famous for Delacroix paintings and, supposedly, scenes from the Da Vinci Code movie), I encountered another one of the glass boxes that seem to have taken over from your common or garden confessional.

Not being Catholic I have never partaken of this particular vice but it does seem odd doing the whole thing in view of the public. Isn’t discretion part of the deal? And they look disturbingly like those bizarre smokers’ boxes you find at airports.

Anyway, there was a priest in there in his finery and, kneeling before him on the other side of a small desk, was a nun. And both of them were sucking blissfully on Marlboro Lights ... ha-ha-ha, just kidding.

But it did make me wonder; what does a nun have to confess? I stepped on a pavement crack? She was wearing a sort of unflattering beige ensemble with the whole wimple kit and caboodle and, to me at least, oddly incongruous Adidas trainers.

Was that it then? “Forgive me, Father, for I have taken up running.”

To which he would reply: ”Your penance is three Hail Marys and a New York Marathon.”

Gallery: Paris walk

keith_austin — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:52:00 GMT

Eat Up At Robuchon

keith_austin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:59:00 GMT

We are all prisoners of our prejudices at times. We can try to combat them but . . . for instance, have you ever driven past one of those Classical revivalist McMansions and wondered what it looked like inside?

How surprised would you be if it was the epitome of good taste? Imagine getting past the columned entrance to find an ode to style and grace.

Well, it’s a bit like that at Joel Robuchon’s La Table in Paris, but the other way around. Outside it’s discretion itself; it crouches on a corner in the 16^th arrondissement, just a short walk from the Victor Hugo Metro stop, as if embarrassed to be there. The shades are drawn, the colours muted, and tasteful typography above the front door announces you are entering ‘LA TABLE de Joel Robuchon’.

And yet inside . . . the smallish room is all black seats, black tablecloths, black plates, gold leaf side plates, gold water glasses, the walls are gold-yellow, the carpet black-and grey, and the wall lights throw a golden glow over proceedings.

You imagine they laid Gianni Versace to rest in something like this.

Popsi Bubblehead and I were there to meet Tim The Brave and actor chum Matt, and to partake of the lunchtime Menu ‘Club’ for 59 Euro (about $120) a pop. Not the usual fare for myself and La Bubblehead here in Paris but sometimes you have to push the boat out.

The Menu ‘Club’ comprises ‘un hors d’oeuvre [from five], poisson ou viande [ditto], fromage, dessert, cafe et 37.5cl de vin’.

“In the 11^th best restaurant inj the world?” exclaimed Tim The Brave. “It’s a bargain!”

Tim works in television so you can never be too sure of his facts but I’m sure Monsieur Robuchon is in that Pantheon somewhere. (According to the restaurant's own website: "La Table was granted two stars by Michelin Guide and ranked among world’s 50 top restaurant.")

Tim, as I think I said, works in television and so therefore was late. Honestly! You take a few days holiday and the call sheets just dry up!

And so Popsi and myself were led to our table for four and were able to snaffle the best seats – backs to the wall, looking out into the restaurant.

Two women with impossibly coiffured hair and high heels tottered in just after us and were seated nearby. They certainly were NOT having the Menu ‘Club’.

I say this because the Exocet of maitre d’s was at their table almost before their Louis Vuitton bags had hit the floor. Champagne, madamoiselles?

Popsi, meanwhile, was enjoying the light glinting off the golden water glasses and wondering if they would ever be filled with water.

She has a subtle way of attracting waiters in these circumstances - half-standing up from the table and waving her arms in the air like someone drowning at Bondi beach - but I really cannot approve of it in a place like Robuchon’s. Mainly because it doesn’t work.

Finally we did manage to catch the eye of a waiter the size and stature of a small rabbit. I did this by heaving my gold leaf side plate across the restaurant and catching him in the eye. I didn’t, of course, but the moment was fast approaching.

He looked about 12 and, as the afternoon progressed, it became clear he was a trainee, aged about 12. Perhaps he gets to deal with all the Menu ‘Clubs’. He was sweet, however, and we liked him.

We especially liked him when, shortly after, he came around with some lovely bread.

Though, of course, some butter might have helped. Cue more and prolonged arm waving from the Bubblehead. We must have looked like the advance guard of a semaphore convention.

Finally the boys arrived and the true purpose of the afternoon could begin: getting some scoff in.

And here is where Robuchon’s excels. The next few hours – we were almost the last to leave – was a crescendo of delights, right down to the caramel-centred chocolates served with coffee.

We ordered from the maitre d’, who had somehow managed to retrieve his head from the nether regions of the Lunching Ladies but still managed to further blot his copybook by sniffing “poisson et poisson?” when Popsi ordered fish for both her courses.

It’s a times like these that, living in Paris, I wish my French were better but somehow ‘shut your snotnose gob and take the fucking order, Pierre’ is quite beyond me.

To begin, though, a surprise. Up came an amuse-bouche, unasked for and unexpected, but which elevated our expectations of what was to come.

Now Popsi and I are not great fans of foie gras. In this we are one with Jamie Oliver, who will not have the stuff in his restaurants. Or so he said on a TV show once when he showed viewers a ‘normal’ goose liver and then a foie gras. It was a grotesque, fatty balloon of a thing. How you can bleat about free-range chicken and then eat foie gras is beyond me.

Though a Frenchman did once tell Popsi that it was all OK because the farmers played the geese classical music while they force fed them. We think he was joking. We hope he was joking.

So what to do when a waiter delicately places a shot glass before you and explains that it’s parmesan foam on a pureed foie gras, with (we think but our French escaped us at that moment) a thin red layer of pureed chestnut.

Tim, who earlier that day I had been trying to shame into not buying foie gras, was triumphant. “What now?”

I confess that the smell was enough. I could have sucked up a pint of that parmesan foam alone, to be honest. It also worked perfectly with the extraordinary richness of the foie gras.

Popsi couldn’t eat hers and I must confess to struggling with mine but this had much to do with finding foie gras – quite apart from the ethical issues – far too cloying.

For starters Tim and Matt both chose l’aubergine en caviar legerement fume, aux jeunes legumes croquant. This turned out to be a small risotto-style dish – beautifully and delicately smoky – with crunchy miniature vegetables.

Personally I always thought that aubergines were the work of the devil until Jeremy at Snakebean in Sydney’s Oxford Street forced a traditional Thai smoked aubergine dish on us last year (go there, ask for it – you will not regret it). It is the only thing to do with aubergines; except throw them with all your might at people who force-feed geese.

Popsi went for the carpaccio of sea bream while I, meat eater that I am, hogged it up with Le pied de cochon (pig’s trotters) followed by a main course of spring lamb (l’agneau).

The bream was beautiful; sushi fresh, fanned out like a traditional beef carpaccio, drizzled with lemon and harbouring a hint of chilli that lifted but didn’t overpower the fish.

The trotters (see picture) were a hit, too. Not actual trotters, of course, but a slightly salty, slightly jellied melange of chopped flesh and herbs, topped with Parmesan shavings and heaped on what in France is called a tartine but what we call two small slices of bread. Stunning stuff, well-presented.

The mains continued this excellence; there was a whole deep-fried whiting with a herb butter; beautifully soft lamb chunks with basil for myself and Matt; and cod poached in a vegetable bouillon (with a yummy aioli) for Popsi.

Honestly, that poor food got moved around the table like pass the parcel at a kids’ party. And with the same enthusiasm: “Pass it to me! Pass it to me, you bastard!” (Though maybe that was just MY parties...) Honestly the elbows were moving so fast it looked like a photo finish at the Melbourne Cup.

Our pre-pubescent waiter also brought a small plate of spuds to the table, declaring it to be “our world famous mash”. Perhaps its fame has not reached Bondi yet. Personally I like a few lumps in my mash and this, for me, was a little too smooth – as if someone had whipped up some cream and waved a King Edward over the top of it.

That said, it did go amazingly well with the gluttonously rich lamb jus. And it did all get scraped off the plate and eaten.

Dessert, cheese and coffee followed. The cheese was a couple of slices of perfectly pleasant brie, the coffee was good but the desserts du jour themselves held another, final surprise. I mean, who knew that basil sorbet could taste so heavenly? Yes, basil. It came with a small portion of something cakey but I have no recollection beyond that sorbet.

Here’s a thing, though; what’s with the gold dust on the little black plastic dessert spoons? Is it really gold? Is it really necessary? Am I worth more going out than when I went in?

All in all an interesting afternoon but somehow the software was let down by some of the hardware. For instance, you never, never bring up a second bottle of wine (those 37.5cl added up to two bottles of a decent red) that has already been opened before it reaches the table. Popsi’s keen eyes caught this but she forgot to mention it until we had left.

And, finally, there really should be a keener eye kept on the toilets; Popsi discovered a tissue issue in the ladies that could have been embarrassing had she not had a bit of a sniffle that day.

Still at 59 Euros each it was little enough to pay for the pleasure of taste-testing at Robuchon, and we waddled into the late afternoon more than happy and more than replete.

Bon appétit indeed.

Address : 16 Avenue Bugeaud, Paris 16ème.

Phone: 01.56.28.16.16

Hours: Lunch from noon to 2:30pm
Dinner from 7pm to 11pm.

Non smoking restaurant.
PETS ARE ALLOWED. (My capital letters ... you can't smoke in there but you can bring Fido in ... see my previous post under Pet Hates!!!!)

www.joel-robuchon.com

Gallery: Lunch at Joel's gaff

keith_austin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:45:00 GMT

The Menu Club at Robuchon's

Pet hates....

keith_austin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:26:00 GMT

So here we are, on a fast train out of Paris’s Gare de Lyon, and the fun has already started. The blonde woman across the aisle has a little Yorkshire terrier in her handbag. Next to that, in a sort of pseudo sports bag with mesh sides, she has a fluffy white cat. It is 9.05am and the woman is eating a baguette and drinking a can of Heineken.

We are heading for Clermont-Ferrand in southern France for a few days to visit Popsi Bubblehead’s sister. The Bubletetes live in the Lozere region which, as far as I can tell, is a hideously overlooked part of France. When we there a few years ago, in July, it was almost empty of tourists and yet is a most beautiful, wild and wonderful area.

The cat next to us is mostly silent, looking forlornly out of a bag just big enough for it to turn around in. The dog, however, emits the occasional yelp at some ghost or other that only it can see.

Ah, that’s sweet; the dog is now slobbering over one of those never-ending chews. It might stop it barking but God help whoever gets that seat next.

Which brings me back to a pet hate; er, pets hate. In Venice we watched in astonishment as little old ladies in REAL FUR paraded around with dogs wearing coats. One pedigree pooch – and they’re rarely mongrels – even sported a leather bomber jacket and ski boots. OK, I’m lying about the boots.

In Paris recently, behind the Hotel de Ville BHV, we mooched around a shop for dogs where one little chap was being tried out for a pink halter. There were collars that cost more than everything I was wearing (yes, yes, not difficult, I know) and little pink doggie baby-grows with hoods.

Men stroll the streets carrying their little doggies in coats, women stick them in their bags with their cute little heads looking out in confusion, and I want to scream in their owners’ faces: “THEY’RE ANIMALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PUT THEM THE FUCK DOWN!!!!!”

Oops, and talking of bags, the cat’s out of the bag. Quite literally; it’s now stretched out on the seat alongside the dog. It’s quite charming in a way but Popsi isn’t terribly impressed.

Let’s be honest, it could be worse – the woman could have kids.

PS. I don’t believe it; another woman has just staggered along the aisle with a tabby under one arm. Talk about the Pony Express.

Gallery: Pet hates...

keith_austin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:23:00 GMT

By train to the Lozere

In a bit of a stew...

keith_austin — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 20:43:00 GMT

Cassoulet – a sort of southern French bean stew with sausages and duck - is my next culinary task. Many years ago Popsi Bubblehead’s sister, who lives in the Lozere region of southern France, gave me a large vacuum-sealed jar of the stuff and I have been hankering to make my own ever since.

To this end I recently mentioned it to John Baxter, an Australian ex-pat writer and biographer who has been living in Paris for more than 20 years and who is the author of the very lovely and entertaining memoir An Immoveable Feast, A Paris Christmas.

First off he pointed us in the direction of Au Bon St. Pourcain, a restaurant just around the corner from his house in the 6^th arrondissement which he said did an excellent cassoulet . He was right, as we popped in there a few nights later for Popsi’s birthday.

However, the genial Mr Baxter also asked if I had a wood-fired oven. Sadly I had to point out that we had a two-ring electric hob and an electric oven in which only three of the four heating elements were working.

Hmmm, a true cassoulet, he said, had to be cooked in a wood-fired oven ... and, of course, then there was the question of whether to leave the crust on when it’s served or to mix it in ...

Well, they certainly mixed it in during the making of the canned cassoulet (I jest not) that Popsi purchased in our local G20 (no, not the summit) supermarche in the Marais yesterday. “It was the cheapest they had,” she said. And with good reason.

It didn’t help that she paired this with canned spinach which, while it might have been good enough for Popeye, smelled as bad as it looked and, we discovered, tasted. Still, as I always say, you should put EVERYTHING in your mouth ONCE. You never know.

And now we do.

There will be a pause in posting for a week or so now because we are off to visit the aforesaid sister of La Bubblehead in the south. It seems wolves have been sighted in the area for the first time in many decades and they want to go hunting for them (to look at, not kill). Personally I will be happy to hunt for a genuine cassoulet recipe.

Gallery: The Ring Bearers

keith_austin — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:33:00 GMT

Parisian scam

Be careful, Frodo

keith_austin — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:26:00 GMT

Having just finished watching the three Lord of the Rings movies again it’s a good time to mention that The Ring Bearers of Paris continue to ply their wares. Every time we go anywhere near The Louvre there will be two or three of these women – seemingly from eastern Europe - coming up to us and pretending to ‘find’ a gold ring on the floor. It’s a scam, of course. The idea is that they ‘give’ you the shiny gold ring – they can’t take it as they are divorced and it would be bad luck for them – and you give them a few euros as a thank you.

God knows how they make a living out of it; we have seen nobody fall for it yet but there they are, day in, day out. One day we watched one of them do the ‘full monty’ on one guy who seemed about to fall for it but slipped off the hook at the last moment. The Ring Bearer herself saw us watching and laughing and ever so effortlessly flipped us the finger. Of course it could be Bulgarian for Have A Nice Day.

Popsi’s brother Paddy took a few pics of the Ring Bearers in action. Have a squizz.

Oh, another thing! For the journos among us; your press card will get you in free to most government-run museums in Paris. I’ve used mine at the Musee d’Orsay, the towers of Notre Dame and, most exciting of all, several times at the Louvre.