When the rain and grey intermittently clears, I head out with the children and enjoy the sunshine. My visits to the park, now weekly, are my window to seasonal change (unlike the grey geometry from my studio window). I noticed yesterday that the chestnuts of a few weeks ago have been replaced by fallen leaves, although the majority are still on the trees in various shades of yellows, oranges, browns and greens.

I’m actually surprised that I’ve held off for this long without an in-depth analysis of the weather. I asked Guillaume if it was a particularly British thing, but no, it seems to be a French obsession as well. He told me about his previous workplace, where the météo was sacred rite observed nightly – and episodes of the weather report subject to more gossip than the latest “in” sitcom.

But it reminds me how lovely autumn is – how it visually indicates the change of season, signalling all that impends, but with a tinge of regret. Like looking forward to donning a scarf, but grudgingly accepting that it will have to be with a rain jacket (some girls in Sydney overcome this by the ridiculous trend of wearing a winter scarf, with a tank top and flip-flops in summer. It just looks stupid and I hope for the future of the Australian nation it stops, very soon). I’m sorry, where was I? Ahh… yes, not a fashion rant, but a musing on autumnal beauty (I am going somewhere with this…)

Autumn in St. Petersburg was particularly wonderful in 2005. It was an Indian summer, the skies remained dry, and the snow stayed away, and thus the trees were a haze of fiery and golden glory for weeks. The days were mild, and when my class was assembled at the university, even the most draconian of our teachers would say: “What are you doing here? Get out and enjoy one of the most spectacular autumns we’ve had for decades!”

I’m only writing about my French experiences here, but (here it comes…) I have another blog about my travels throughout Europe.

http://www.europetrotter.org/

Please feel free to check it out!

So recently I’ve been stretching my Mary Poppins-ness to become the super babysitter of the building. This is something I have mixed feelings about, though I feel that soon I will know every single inhabitant under the age of ten.

The latest job that I’ve picked up is taking a neighbour’s daughter to school at eight o’clock. As I’ve been unofficially on summer holidays up until this point (well for as far as sleeping in during the mornings is concerned), it literally comes as a rude awakening. But, begrudgingly, I’ve come to realise that it’s better for me to be up earlier in the mornings, and really, it’s half an hour’s worth of work that’s really quite fun.

As this job is over by 8.30am, I walk home again with my head churning. It’s too early in the morning for contemplation and reflection, and I haven’t worked long enough to consider knocking off for the day.

I just stroll along Boulevard de Grenelle, across the Seine at Pont de Bir Hakeim. It’s a different view of the Eiffel Tower in the mornings; a dark silhouette on a grey sky, it inspires awe and wards away any urban depression. It’s only like this the mornings though (so far…). I find that I get all rugged up for a cold morning, and then the midday sunshine catches me off my guard.

The houseboats on the Seine also get my thoughts spinning. I had seen an au pair job advertisement to live on one, but I didn’t think it would be possible for Guillaume to live there too. They strike me as painted gypsy wagons of the water, but I also feel a little uncomfortable about them, as a book I recently read ended in a muddle of psychosis and Amstel in a houseboat in Amsterdam. It’s early morning, I’m not thinking straight, connotations confound and I am left thinking what to do with the rest of my day.

A few years ago, I was in Belize during election time. It was something quite different for me, with election slogans accompanied by steel drums, and the opposition party had a sausage sizzle on the beach, surrounded by the milky blue waters of the Caribbean. Quite the political party, I remember chuckling to myself…

Last weekend topped all that. I went to see a host of French and international bands (along with a crush of thousands of others, so it was hardly an intimate encounter) at La Fête de l’Humanité. Held in the outskirts of Paris at La Courneuve, the Fête de l’Huma (as it’s affectionately known) is an annual music festival organised by the Communist newspaper L’Humanité. This year the festival promised three-days of sensational music, with the leathery torso of Iggy Pop (+ Stooges) providing an intriguing headlining draw card.

I only, unfortunately, managed two late nights of it, because I had to work on both Friday and Saturday during the afternoons. A little over-indulgence on Saturday night, wrote off Sunday for me, and instead of the final sun-drenched day of the festival, I enjoyed the… umm… vistas of my bedroom. Ahem… it happens…

But aside from the music, the festival was something else. An installation of bars and restaurants on a phenomenally enormous site rendered a grid-like maze of white-tarpaulined havens of indulgence, frivolity and ruin. There were many times I had to stop and marvel at how “French” it all was, for in which other country could you find festival food venues offering 32€ menu packages, containing six courses, and paper-clothed tables with serviettes and wine glasses? Each regional communist party had a tent serving specialities of their region, which admittedly contributed directly to my downfall on Saturday night. More about that one later… with photos…

Late one night last week, I realised that we had attained the international ideal in Paris. This epiphany dawned on me after a few drinks, as they so often do, and the chance observation (whilst closing those ubiquitous French window shutters) that our room has a view of the Eiffel Tower! Not some crummy, two-bit, generic cityscape… but the Eiffel Tower!

Of an evening, every hour, the Eiffel Tower erupts in a spectacular display of glittering golden light. A searchlight beam trawls the skies (often the first indication that one has of the theatrics), and the whole shape of the tower sparkles.

I tried to take a few photos, craning precariously – and ridiculously – out the window. I’ve included one below. However, I’m a little ashamed that this is the first photo to make it onto my blog, as really, I think it depicts the Eiffel Tower only fractionally more than those blurry images which “prove” the existence of extraterrestrial life…

Hehehe… the Eiffel Tower… it’s out there…

Mission: (no choice but to accept it) Entertain children on first day of work.

I thought my job would be fairly simple. I never took into consideration that I would need all the negotiating skills of an international diplomat, the creativity (non-drug-induced) of a contemporary artist, and the patience of a saint. Day one, take the children to the park. Make sure that they are out of the house for an hour and feed them some baguette if they are hungry.

Yes, straight forward. Clear. The type of work I was cut-out for.

The simplicity of the brief was somewhat clouded by rain entering the equation. In fact, it had been raining all morning, so the park was about as fun and appealing as cold tea. It was futile. There was to be no convincing through tears (as if there wasn’t already enough water falling), so an authoritarian stance was the only way to go about it.

En-route…

- We are going to the park – NOW!
- But it’s rai-ai-ning… [just to further state the obvious]
- Well, we’ll find a tree to wait under and then everything will be fine!
- But there are no tre-ee-ees…
- There’s a train. I know there’s a train. We’ll wait there, eat baguette and then play.
- I don’t want toooo… I need to go to the toilet [almost checkmate, that one stumped me for a little while]
- Here, there’s a little garden, you can go there [don’t fail on day one, Bettina, they have to stay at the park for one hour, you can do it!]

Perhaps it was the effect of tears, urine and rain mixing on the already-sodden ground, or perhaps I read too much into omens… but nevertheless, the sun came out! And simultaneously, so did the nannies and children of all nations of the world! The park was instantly a knee-high Babel, full and bustling with the life (children on slides, nannies on mobile phones) which I now regard as my own.

My attitude to Paris so far might sound a little depressing, but it’s true. I haven’t done “anything” yet. Of course I’ve done plenty of things – I have three little plants (ciboulette, chilli and mint) that I move around according to the sunlight, I’ve stared wistfully at the velib public transport bicycles and then keep forgetting to subscribe online so that I can actually ride one, I’ve even had a few language swaps, so I am getting out and meeting new people (other than cashiers at supermarkets and furniture stores). It’s just that I feel bogged down with the career-person’s mentality of work, work, work. It feels like I can’t be concerned with anything else – the only thing is, I don’t actually have a long-term career. I only work four hours a day, and as an au pair, I don’t know that these four hours of playing can actually be classified as work. But they have become all-encompassing and all-demanding and living in the same building doesn’t help matters!

But let me paint the picture: Guillaume and I are living together in a decent-sized room, with a nasty, gloomy corridor and then a separate kitchen and bathroom. It’s in the 16th arrondissement, or district of Paris, which seems to be demographically and economically diverse only in that it’s the rich and their service staff. The mice in the attics – the nannies, cooks, and cleaners – all live in the upper levels in specially designated dormitory-style accommodation. Needless to say, I’ve never lived in a city apartment building where I have known as many (let alone any) of my neighbours and people living on the lower floors. So my feelings are a little mixed, to say the least!

This is now my third visit to France.

Technically, it’s my fourth, but I am blocking a whirlwind “three days in Paris, two days on the Côte d’Azur” bus tour from my re-telling, but I thought I should set things straight in case any of those suppressed memories rear their ugly heads in the near future.

The first was a nervous meet-the-family visit to my boyfriend’s hometown, all under the guise of attending the Festival des Francofolies in La Rochelle. Linguistically, I was able to express that I was 13 years old, which was hilariously funny for me, but I don’t think the joke carried well, and I’m sure that many family and friends thought that perhaps Guillaume (let’s give him a name) was indulging in some illegal fetish that involved an over-grown pre-pubescent…

The second was spontaneous – and all related to the fact that the mercury had plunged to -30° in St. Petersburg (after a marvellously temperate 0° for the whole of the New Year’s festive season), whilst Toulon (where Guillaume was studying at the time) was enjoying a mid-winter 24° (plus!), so I thought I should join the dazzling sunshine to shake my winter blues. I spent a month nearby, in a little holiday unit, rented to students in the off-season. With the Mediterranean as my backyard, I could concentrate on the hardly serious pursuits of buying a pain au chocolat of a morning, and wandering amongst seaweed of an afternoon. To finish it all off, we had a memorably compact week in Paris, staying in a friend’s capsule-like apartment and notching up tourist attractions like they were prize scalps. Needless to say, this time, I’ve hardly ventured outside. I can see the Eiffel Tower from the nearby metro station, and otherwise, I might just wait till the tourist tide has ebbed away… wish me luck, please, I might be waiting until 80…

A cautionary and brief word by way of introduction: I had never anticipated settling down in France. Never once in my life did it cross my mind, even from the formative years of my education. Failing French at the grand old age of 13, I distinctly remember myself articulating “but when am I EVER going to need this?!?” I was totally nonchalant about the whole romantic notion of France and of living in France, oblivious to the appeal of a place equally regarded for style and Bacchical gluttony.

My attentions were always directed further east, with Slavic languages capturing my imagination and studies, and so, some years ago, living in Russia, I met my boyfriend.

French. Of course.

So after time spent living in St. Petersburg and London, then working and travelling in Australia, it was mutually decided that it was time for the French stint, to understand and appreciated the beautiful workings of all things French.

This, unfortunately, includes my previously unscalable Everest… the language.

I’ve been in France for over two months now, having arrived at the beginning of July, just in time for the season of weddings, Tour de France and tomatoes. After a summer spent either by the side of the local river or in various campsites around France, I’ve found myself in Paris, following the well-trod footsteps of those dreamers seeking success in the big city… or just magnets and coasters decorated with Toulouse-Lautrec images, I think either will suffice.