Paris In The Fall

At this time of year, let's not overlook the fact that the second stanza of the famous song 'I love Paris' is 'I love Paris in the fall'. Paris is not just for lovers of springtime.

The BBC points out that more French people now live in London than in Bordeaux, Nantes or Strasbourg. French citizens laughing about the British weather, shaking off their umbrellas, peeling off their raincoats and making London France's 6th biggest city on their way to the bar. However, the reality is, as smart six-year city kid Eloise will tell you, that 'Paris raindrops are larger'. The reality is that, underneath all the bluster about being a magnet for French people, London hankers after that certain Parisian panache that only Jean Paul Belmondo in a rakishly angled trilby and Jean Seberg in a New York Herald Tribune t-shirt can muster.

On a trip to Paris exactly one year ago, I witnessed a male cyclist wearing a long white raincoat and no helmet weaving between several lanes of traffic, all the while happily puffing away on a Galoise cigarette. The modern incarnation of Jean-Paul, guilty of a number of health and safety breaches all at once that any modern Londoner would eschew. But in a city where the skulls of past inhabitants are piled high in catacombs as a reminder of the fate that awaits us all, there's something to be said about living life in the present that's life affirming. Joie de vivre if you will. As Jean-Paul Belmondo's anti-hero in À bout de souffle states, 'Being afraid is the worst sin there is.'

P.S. One of my current muses is listening to the latest downloads from Brolin, whose USP is the fact that all of his songs have the name of a city in the title - 'NYC', 'Reykjavik', 'Lisboa' and his latest track 'Portland'. He has yet to get around to making 'Paris', but it's surely only a matter of time.