Blogcoven

Yeay! Things arranged, worked like slavey through week to tidy up things, write reports and generally claw way back to top of pile to take Friday and go to Paris. Travel was disaster – BA to LHR canceled due to freezing fog, rerouted to Air France direct to CDG, hang around for hours, flight late reach CDG, bus gets stuck in rand.traffic jam for donkey, eventually find hotel, RV for coffee, then go meet my hostess who had sorted out this entire jaunt, nominally ‘intro to Parisien nightlife for Anglos’.

Walk, gossip, exchange intel on relevant branches of corp, discuss intel, chat, then go prepare for dinner, I stop up at my hotel while she changes. My hotel – Hotel Paris France on Rue de Turbolet – fine little place, itty bitty room with a shower with no shower curtain. It was exactly fit for purpose, which was somewhere to leave my bag, snooze before my flight the next morning and get a shower. In the end, I never actually slept there, just showered and left again, but it would have been just right had I needed it.

Dinner was hostess (from marketing end of Corp), her fiance, her friend from her banking days, the banker friends boyfriend, hostesses exes friend Franck, and his friend and me going to a charming restaurant nearby in the third Arrondismont and having a grand laugh – people turned out to be wonderful fun and after hours of that we made for a club hostess had heard good reviews of – so me, Hostess and Franck staked out a taxi rank at which no taxi’s appeared on Place de la Republique for quite some time until myself and hostess went on a spec-ops ambush to aquire a taxi, then returned to fetch Franck and were informed that original destination had been judged to dangerous, so we diverted to VIP on Champs d’Elysse – which turned out to have a semi-private launch party going on and wait time was astronomical…

We shed a few people along the way until eventually it all boiled down to Hostess, Fiance, me, Franck and a bottle of gin in the back of the most crowded gay bar in the 3rd arrondismont – the go-go dancers were being touched up and the amount of naked customers who ended up on podiums was eyebrow raising – but it was a lot of fun, and by the time we looked up to see ‘what next’ when the gin was gone, it was 6am, and hardly worth sleeping, so we had tea in Hostesses until just before my wake up call was due at the hotel, then went back showered, changed and headed for CDG, back home for the Corp’s annual ball.

It was fantastic to see a side of Paris that you don’t really – and this is congruent with the idea I formulated in Tahoe: the best way to get to know a place is to live and work there, or at least hook up with people who do and go with them. The way that people live in the heart of the city means that it all feels more lively – true 24hour life like London everything just keeps ticking along no matter the time. Theres still on of those cafe’s with tiny tables, brightly lit and warm, whenever you want it. Don’t think I’m saying its perfect, transport about the city was a nightmare – getting in, getting around and getting out – I hit snags and hitches at every turn. But a more friendly bunch I haven’t met in a long time nor a better time had.

Before we broke up we decided the whole thing was such a success, we’d replay it in London with Franck taking point. Ought to be both good and in February which is a slow month, so doubly welcome.

Listening to: Ebudae – Enya.