I’ve been pretty traumatised by a haircut recently. In fact, I go to pieces whenever I think about getting my hair cut. Even though I’d like to think I’m a pretty confident person, the moment I get into a hairdresser’s chair, I get stage fright.

That’s right, the old rabbit in the headlights trick. I stare straight ahead, only to see a stunned mullet reflected back at me (but one that’s internally fretting and imploring to every world deity not to have a mullet as the final product…)

But I went and got my hair cut recently, against all better judgement, at a hairdresser near our metro station. By default (comes with the territory of living in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, I guess), it was a pretty snazzy place, with a price tag to match (darn!). Sure, I hadn’t had a haircut since arriving in France, but I really should have thought it through a little more and taken heed of the elderly clientele and the location. I was just fed up with cutting my own fringe, had made a mess of it the last time I did it, and decided that I wanted my demi-annual shearing. It was time for my shoulder-length mop to go.

The hairdresser spoke English (after reliving my French ballet trauma recently, this should have also set the alarm bells off), but to my dismay, neither of us spoke hairdressing English. A request for a low-maintenance, short haircut with an angular fringe turned into a very hip 1980s pom-pom puff of extreme side-parted, blow-dried volume. Some gel? Why not, could it get any worse?

So I just sat there, faking an appreciative smile, just tiding away the moments before I could go home and wash it and reclaim the hair as my own. On my arrival back to a forgiving mirror, I realised with horror that she hadn’t actually taken any length of the fringe. Why didn’t I just stay home in bed?

I had observed previously (somewhat controversially) that there seemed to be some sort of a Zen-like patience in Parisian drivers – I’d just like to take that comment back, throw it down on a freshly sculpted steaming mound of dog poo and stamp on it with a vengeance.

I must have had one month solid of Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa incarnates behind the wheel, and then during the strikes everyone’s tempers flared. Fair enough, I reasoned. But the road angst has continued unabated and I’ve realised that it’s all about the self-interest at stake. The cars that had previously impressed me, waiting so reverentially behind the furniture removal trucks, must have just moved into the area and viewed it as some sort of karmic equation. Now, with summer long gone and people in a hurry to make their green lights (orange lights or red lights for that matter…) or announcing that they are about to plough through the green lights of pedestrians too, I’m getting well fed up with the constant honk of car horns. The car in front tarries or hesitates for two seconds – the horn. A cab stops for a moment too long when receiving the coins from their charge – the horn. Even if someone stops at a pedestrian crossing to let a young girl and a three-year-old on a scooter across a particularly perilous corner – you’ve guessed it – a symphonic chorus rises from the subsequent vehicles.

I think I might have a look on EBay to see if I can get myself one of these pedestrian horn outfits. I could give it back as good as I got it, all from the safety of the sidewalk.

What do you think?

I have to mention some more about the comic book series Les Parisiens, because I was reminded about a certain joke the other day. I was waiting at Invalides RER station and was repeatedly asked in English and French if it was the right line for the Eiffel Tower (and it’s only February!)

It reminded me of a scene I saw whilst having a flick through the bandes dessinées (BD) at the Angoulême Comic Book Festival, in which a man is asked in different languages every few steps of his journey in the streets of Paris for directions to the Louvre. He utters the same, curt response each time (something like “straight ahead, then first left”) until a curvaceous young female backpacker in a revealing singlet and barely-there cut-off jeans asks the same question. His response, informative and courteous, reads like the Petit Larousse dictionary entry for the Louvre (ha, ha, ha).

Or take this for a scenario – a Parisian finds an unconscious body on the street. He takes out his phone to call for help, then the phone rings with an incoming call. The man chats on to his long-lost acquaintance over the inert body, and then strolls off as he plans to meet the guy for coffee.

Here’s another: a woman goes to a glorious outdoor marketplace. The scenario is typically provincial French, and she and the greengrocer wax lyrical over the qualities, colour and texture of a delectable organic aubergine. One hour later, after the crush of the crowd on the dark and dusty metro and the road rage of the traffic above ground, the woman returns home to realise she’s late, and her children are already waiting for their lunch. The scene ends with the children cheering over their meal: “Yum! Ravioli from a can! We love it when you go to the bio-market, Mum!”

Simple tastes, yes… but it makes me giggle!

The Museum of the Middle Ages, housed in the former Cluny Abbey hotel (late c.15th) and the Gallo-Roman baths (c.1st-3rd), is a great way to spend an afternoon in Paris. It’s even better at the moment, because until June 30 the museum has free admission, which makes it even more appealing to splash out that extra 1€ for an informative yet toffy-toned audio guide.

Not that this was intended to be a post of tenuous segues, but the Museum of the Middle Ages was definitely thought-provoking. Judging from the smell, quite possibly the most authentic medieval item on display was the ladies loos, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the accompanying audio guide spiel on their origins.

Which in turn got me thinking about the greatest ever introductions to novels. In my humble opinion, Patrick Süskind’s rankly stenched opening to Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is deserved some sort of fetid accolade. The sensorially superb story of the odoriferous, yet odourless, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is really a love or hate tale. This book entices extreme reactions – it either gives you chilling creeps of disgust or glee.

Anyway… a portion of the tale’s action takes place in the south-eastern French town of Grasse. The centre of French perfume industry since the 18th century and regarded to be the world’s perfume capital, Grasse is also worth a look. A sun-baked Riviera feel characterises the town, and the perfume museum will interest even the most devout cosmetics-phobe (I can provide a personal testimony for this!). Grasse can be reached on an easy trip from either Nice or Cannes, and I recommend a wander through the backstreets for baklava!

It’s time to start observing your Saints’ Days, and which better to observe than that of St. Valentine?

With Valentine’s Day upon us, let’s have a look at where Cupid canoodles in the streets of Paris. For what’s Paris if not the city of romance!?! Enjoy a very French kiss in any one of these “Top 5” places for pash-ion, and your romantic weekend in Paris will be complete!

1. On the mouth
Well this is an encouraging start – but perhaps I should more appropriately say “at a mouth”… at a bouche de métro! Why not at the mouth of the Abbesses metro station, under the characteristically romantic art nouveau Metropolitan sign (no less!) at the lovely Place des Abbesses? While you’re exploring the area, don’t forget to have a smooch at…

2. Les 2 Moulins
This café is famous for being the workplace of the charming Amélie in the film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. If you are familiar with this film, then I’m sure you get my drift! While an amorous wild-goose chase to the summit of the butte Montmartre, from the square Willette to the basilica Sacré-Coeur might be nice for some, there is always that little toilet and telephone alcove in Les 2 Moulins… if you know what I mean (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)!

3. Hôtel de Ville
While we’re on the topic of recreating classic kissing images, you’ll have to make your way to the Hôtel de Ville and have a 1950s embrace, just like the iconic Robert Doisneau image of two lovers, Francoise Bornet and Jacques Carteaud. Bornet sold her copy of the image in 2005 for a tidy sum of 155,000€. Pucker up and take a photo, it could mean fame for posterity and future prosperity!

4. Smooching on skates
Lucky you’re already at the Hôtel de Ville, because now it’s time to rouler un patin! Not sure exactly what this means? Well, let’s find out. If you follow the literal meaning of “to roll a skate”, you’ll be innocently ice-skating around the Hôtel de Ville rink, oblivious to the term’s other meaning. Rouler un patin is what we would call a “French kiss” – so now with that essential piece of information, why not combine the two?

5. Les bancs publics
For the final kissing adventure, you needn’t go any further than your nearest public bench. Take the advice of post-war French crooner, Georges Brassens, and kiss like Les amoureux des bancs publics (“…bancs publics, bancs publics…”) like young lovers at their most scandalous!

Once upon a time, in a hair-raising race to buy sheep in the Altai Mountains, my Azerbaijani drivers urged me to visit Baku – “it’s the Paris of the Caucasus” – they assured me.

Budapest is regarded as ‘Paris of the East’ or ‘Paris of Central Europe’, and the redesign of Bucharest’s neighbourhoods by French architects in the 1870s to late 1920s earned the Romanian capital the title of ‘Paris of the Balkans.’ Irkutsk is apparently the ‘Paris of Siberia’ and Tbilisi was the ‘Paris of the Soviet Union.’

Which has got me thinking about all the places, often ex-Iron Curtain or Soviet Union that adopt or are labelled with a ‘Paris of…’ moniker. But isn’t one Paris enough? This tendency irritates me, as it almost suggests that there’s not much more of worth in the place, other than a vague resemblance or a tenuous link to the French capital. Which raises the question of: how exactly are they linked? Did they undergo a substantial nineteenth-century conversion from medieval to modern by the construction of a radiating system of grand boulevards? Is it a penchant for art nouveau architecture? A reputation for fashion, style and elitism? Or just that they think their capital is in fact the centre of the universe?

So I thought I’d make a list myself, comparing Paris to other major ex-Soviet centres.

Here it goes.

The St. Petersburg of Paris. This one is easy. A regal centre, but flanked by high-rise residential monstrosities… Back in the USSR… you don’t know how lucky you are (dwellers of département 93…) St. Petersburg is Paris, only with real white nights (as opposed to artistically installed ones), real ice-skating, and a real need to touch up the gold foiling and give the place a new coat of paint. Invalides – the St. Isaac’s of Paris – I rest my case!

The Moscow Metro of Paris (Line 1). It’s ridiculous, only on a Friday afternoon in Moscow have I seen people so prone to metamorphosis (reverting to sardine form) as on the Parisian Metro Line 1, during a liberal stretch of peak hours.

The Russian Post of France. When Peter the Great (Peter I) looked out his western window to Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century, he took shipbuilding from the Dutch, a legal system from the Swedes… and administration, bureaucracy, and the postal service from the French? The resemblance is uncanny!

I went a bit silly yesterday.

By way of clarification: for me that means actually entering a shop.

I’m a bit averse to shopping (except for food) but all of Paris has been on sale, which is kind of hard to avoid considering I often walk home along Rue de Passy.

Furthermore, I went into the Gap store. I had been avoiding it since I was too scared to enter the Franck et Fils department store (and when I did, I was greeted with a “no cameras” sign on the door. I think it was a clear statement for tourists to stay the heck out, especially the calico-bagged, rainbow-laced-sneakered cultural tourist type).

But what did I find tucked away in a corner in my first less-than-intimidating three seconds in Gap? An awesome black winter coat for €26 – wow, wow, wow. I snapped it up instantly and even felt confident to try on jeans (which was instantly demoralising. Tall people with small waists aren’t allowed to have big thighs. Big thighs, big waist – small thighs, small waist… or so the logic seems to go). But I was totally chuffed about my coat and had a chuckle that they had the nerve to call what I considered the height of fashion a “military coat.” Hmm… armies of the world take note!

I’m not worried that winter is halfway over – it will be fine for next year because I don’t think Charlotte Gainsbourg will change her style anytime soon, so neither will the rest of Paris…

Anyway, flushed with shopping success I went to the Body Shop to buy lip balm. When I was waiting in line another woman turned to ask me if I had bought a coat from chez Gap. I replied yes, and then she started quizzing me about details and price. I bid her to wait, and with a flourish I pulled the coat from the bag. Everyone ohhed and ahhed, and marvelled that it was only 26€.

‘But surely that size is too big for you?’ someone asked. (Gosh, what an opportunity to practise my fledgling French in a conversation that wasn’t ‘Hello, France Telecom. There is a problem with our phone bill. You are charging us for phone calls. We don’t have a phone’).

‘No, it’s fine. Because it’s for winter’ and then I concluded my sentence with what I hoped was the Esperanto hand gestures for ‘it has room to fit a lot of jumpers underneath.’ I think she understood. She nodded thoughtfully.

When the grand dames of Paris are out in full force in their big fur coats with their little fur-coated dogs and designer paper bags of all sizes, one realises that it’s high time for good will and reflection on the year just gone… and as I’ve been in France for just over six months now, I also thought a little reflection was timely (by way of a disclaimer: any arising good will is purely coincidental).

Perhaps “Things I have learned in France” would be an apt title.

Here it goes…

• My life is now all the richer for knowing what a K-way and cagoule are (the first, pronounced “ka-way”, is about as necessary as a 2-Second Tent for any French summer holiday. Basically it’s a rain jacket in a bum bag. Even though I’ve succumbed to other French “must haves”, you’ll never see this little black duck toting a K-way. The second is a faceless balaclava, and is considered tongue-in-cheek as one of the regional specialities of the Savoy).

• I’ve come to the realisation that it’s not just France (or Russia) per se, but bureaucracy that frustrates life the world over. As Guillaume and I often say, if you want to make something close to impossible to achieve – in Britain, illegalise it; in France, bureaucratise it.

• The expression vachement has nothing to do with cows, but is instead slang for ‘amazingly’ or ‘extremely.’

• There is no rush to eat galette des rois on the Epiphany weekend. Oh no, far from it. It’s February, we now have seven fèves, and I don’t see any sign of it abating. I laugh now to think that I was worried that they were all going to go to waste after January 6…

Actually, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this earlier (other than my last post), and considering it’s Guillaume’s annual suggestion as what to get my mother for Christmas – I’d better rectify the situation.

Dieux du Stade – if this name rings a bell (and your blood runs a little hot), you’re probably scrolling down already to see if I’ve included any photographs (yet patience is a virtue, I’ve got a story to tell first).

Now it all began back in summer 2007, when I was crash-course revising rugby union, pretending that I had in fact invented the game and followed it all my life, just to get a job writing English commentaries for the Rugby World Cup in France. Writing a synopsis of the Argentinean team led me to the boys of the Stade Français and their lurid pink lily uniforms… but then I discovered that they’re even better known when they get their kit off!

It all began back in 2001, a calendar with nude and semi-nude pictures of the Stade Français players was released to try and put a bit of spark back into the club and into rugby in general. 15,000 copies were sold, and the marketing machine took off. Since 2004, a “making-of” DVD has accompanied the calendar for each year, and the figures for the 2007 calendar stand at a whopping 200,000 sales. Needless to say, the erotic and homoerotic pics are a hit with both the lads and the ladies, and wider audience appeal for the game has been of course assured.

I’m always one for parody though – and it was with glee that I discovered Les Odieux Du Stade (édition 2008) the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Part of the BD series Les Rugbymen, the calendar pokes fun at the whole Dieux du Stade shebang.

… And don’t worry, Mum, neither will be posted over to you any time soon!

I’m prepared to be about as open-minded as a traveller comes.* Sure I might have some gripes about France and Russia, but I hope it’s interpreted as all in the name of a laugh and a bit of tongue and cheek cultural insight. I’ll drink like a vodka-pickled fish or revert to teetotalism… I’ll have shoes off, shoes on, kitchen shoes, bathroom shoes, communal guest slippers… cover my arms, legs or head… not whistle indoors, refrain from blowing my nose, eat entrails… be charming, cordial, charismatic, reckless, relaxed or reverential. Anywhere I lay my head is my home. I’ll respect any cultural, religious or political atmosphere, more or less. BUT I will not live in a state of fear. I refuse to be scared just because the rest of the UK finds it profitable to maintain a level of panic. Give me France or Russia any day, I’d prefer not to be mollycoddled by the dulcet tones of reminder announcements, wrapped in a CCTV security blanket – or have my bag searched before boarding a train again.

This is where this post is going, as I had all my possessions rifled through before getting on the Eurostar back to Paris again. I didn’t realise I wasn’t allowed to have a knife/fork/spoon camping combo-set on a train. As all the contents were taken from my bag, a swab test taken (lucky I washed my backpack since lugging around all that bomb-making apparatus), and then the guy decided to make light of the situation by observing that “Ah, you like baked beans.”

Now baked beans are a bit of an in-joke between Guillaume and me. When we were travelling around in Australia, our gas cooker broke, and so we would just heat a can of beans on the engine of our van during a day’s 500km drive. Not that this was any of that guy’s business. I half muttered, half giggled an answer, tripping over my embarrassed words and fretting that I would miss my train – when really I should have tersely replied “Yes, I like black socks too, I’m glad we are now acquainted.”

I just don’t understand. I had plenty of time to stab someone with my knife/fork/spoon combo during my 48hrs in London… why would I wait until the homeward-bound last moment on the Eurostar? I was quite looking forward to getting back to Paris, but maybe the prospect of crossing the Channel makes some other Brits a bit cagey. Who knows?

Now Australians REALLY have something to be scared about!

*…but I won’t do that. There are some limits to my tolerance. I won’t smoke tobacco, drink coca-cola or put recyclables in the normal bin (or baguettes in the recycling, as some of my neighbours regularly do…)