THIS KIND OF BLUE...

Some random film pictures I took on a walk in Paris, forgotten about since June. Featuring my kind of blue.

FED AND WATERED...

It is a well known fact among those close to me that I have an insatiable appetite... for restaurants in Paris. The rolling list keeps rolling and though I feed and water the demand, it is never satisfied.

How convenient then, that a very local, low key restaurant I go to all the time recently changed chefs and happened to employ two of the most happening ones in Paris: Shaun Kelly - former chef at Au Passage and Elenie Sapera, formerly of Bones.

At first, I was horrified at the thought of my little secret becoming not so and of the cobbled rue de Mont-Louis thronging with, I don't know, people who don't live in the furthest reaches of the 11th arrondissement, forming a bawdy, excitable congregation outside; making it impossible for me to slip in for a quiet dinner on a Wednesday night without being in the background of several people's Instagrams. I thought it would change, and I liked it just how it was. I felt almost Parisian feeling this.

But luckily, although the food has changed, it's much for the better and the charming and friendly servers remain, along with the calm and happy atmosphere. They also had the good sense to keep the famous Kate Mousse on the dessert menu - adding Eton Mess as a new option, which I'm told is a direct transplant from Au Passage. The opening hours are still maddeningly confusing/non existent at the weekend - maybe I hallucinated that one time we ate there on a Sunday evening. But the food, ah the food - somewhere I already liked very much raised its food game at least several notches? It couldn't really be a better result. Below, some photos from a recent dinner, where we sat at an outside table during l'heure bleue, which did not turn to night until at least 10.45pm.

The menu was printed on white paper - it was the hour that was blue

Octopus and black radish, bone marrow and fresh petit pois

Rilettes of rabbit and pork sandwich - basically a pulled pork burger.  

So then it was onto a special meal on a special day, at the almost impossible to reserve Septime. I did not make this reservation, but I'm told it involved stalking the online booking system to determine when the advance booking thingy clicked round. (FYI - 0.01 AM.) Septime is, of course, somewhere I had wanted to dine since it opened - named one of the top 50 restaurants in the world and one of the few on that list that has the exact vibe I'm looking for in a restaurant, which I can only describe as natural and luminous. Everything in the place glowed with a kind of healthy, radiant light. Bertrand Grébault looked way too young to be directing the kitchen staff, but direct it he did. We ordered so as to try everything on the menu and everything was sublime. The juicy octopus tail with rhubarb will remain in my memory for many years. (The hot trend in Paris is currently meat or fish paired with fruit apparently.)

Details like the tiny white flowers - maybe they were from some kind of bean? and a single nasturtium leaf were considered, but didn't feel pretentious. The candlelight, flowers, rough wooden tables and the enchanted garden behind the restaurant all added to the feeling of goodness and wellbeing. Can you tell I was very happy to be there? I surreptitiously 'stazzed our meal as it seemed rude not to just concentrate on the flavours:

I had cheese obviously

Sea bream, fromage frais, cucumber, those little white flowers; pink veal with bonito cream and capers

(Amazing) octopus with pepper, rhubarb and green beans

The courtyard garden behind Septime

But my brain, the never ending list... is now saying - we have to go to Clamato next.

FLOWERS, CAKE, NICE LUNCHES, CATS, A FEW DOGS, WINDOW BOXES, CHARACTERS, MORE FLOWERS...

Herewith - a selection of my photos of Paris, which I have arranged in a procrastinatory fashion into a little gallery on my website - here. It will rotate as and when I add to or subtract to it with new photos. Luckily I'll be seeing all the above things in person this week.

LIFE ON THE STREET ~ PARIS...

These pictures don't go with my other pictures of Paris somehow - random moments snapped on the street of humans and animals going about their day in a Paris of grey streets.

FLOWERS...

In building my new portfolio website for my writing work (oh yes I did) it became apparent that I have tens of thousands more pictures of Paris than I know what to do with, or could even begin to categorise and edit into a cohesive collection. I'm beginning to organise them and certain themes have begun to emerge - if you know me, you'll be able to guess what those are instantly... Eventually I'll have a rotating gallery on my site, but until then I'll post little collections here on the blog now and then. First up, in honour of spring - flowers and florists.

{© Claire Oldman}

WHAT REMAINS...

It took me so many years to finally visit the Musée Nissim de Camondo, but it was worth the wait.
My favourite part of the house was the kitchen, where I could happily have spent all day/the rest of my life.

Less happy was the fate of the Camondo family. Moise de Camondo had the house, which faces into Parc Monceau, built in 1911, which he then filled with his collections of tapestries, furniture, porcelain and art. His son and heir Nissim was killed in the first world war, so Moise changed his will to bequeath the house and all its collections to Les Arts Decoratifs in his honour. The house opened as a museum after Moise's death in 1935. During the second world war, Camondo's daughter and her family were all taken to Auschwitz where they were killed, meaning the family line died with them. I imagine that if the house had not been in the possession of Les Arts Decoratifs already, then it may have been seized by the occupying German army and who knows what would have happened to it. It has always been preserved in its original condition as a family home, which is what makes it unique.

The area around Parc Monceau is not one I have reason to visit often. So after visiting the house, we walked in the bright winter sunlight of Parc Monceau, where piles of Christmas trees being chipped scented the air with fresh pine. Then I insisted on going to the cafe in Place Saint-Augustin and sitting in the same seat as Frédéric in L'Amour L'Apres-Midi, famously shown in this scene. Neither the cafe (or its menu!), nor the exterior view of Place Saint-Augustin seemed to have changed at all.

LE TIGRE D'HIVER...

If I have a resolution for 2014 apart from to cull quell(!) anxiety, or deal with anxiety better, or be less crippled by anxiety please, it's to get my camera fixed or get a new/old camera that I'm happy with. If I'd done that I would not be presenting these dreadfully awful phone pictures of an intensely amazing moment.

We were wandering the streets of Paris, commenting on various architecture, looking at trees, wandering past the Cirque d'Hiver, which I've never paid much attention to and actually always thought was an old circus that was now only used as a theatre / venue.

Crossing into the little Place Pasdeloup I turned my head to the side and looked straight into the eyes of a tiger. A real, full sized adult tiger who batted his eyes at me like a cat, from his green room cage across a yard behind railings. Tied back tarpaulin curtains framed him. We had a long silent communion and I tried to zoom in enough with my iphone to picture the moment. Mostly failed on that. After about ten minutes I wandered off in shock and later couldn't stop telling everyone about the tiger, including a four year old boy who wouldn't believe me and thought I meant a statue of a tiger, until I showed him a blurry photo as proof. When we passed by again later the curtains were pulled shut.

I feel uneasy about the existence of circuses in general and wouldn't go to one for entertainment. Though from the little I saw, the animals seemed content and well looked after in their yard. The next day I just so happened to conveniently pass by again at around the same time and my friend was waiting there, curtains open - this time putting on a Lola worthy display of flirting, paw licking, stretching and yawning. Fortunately there were several layers of bars between us - not because I was scared; I felt no fear at all - but because I would have been so tempted to crawl in and nestle into the beautiful fur of his belly.

It was a genuinely magical happening. Things that are dear to me are not what I usually share with the internet anymore sadly - the nature of the beast, one might say. But I think this incredible creature, hiding in plain sight in the centre of Paris, is larger than life enough to be a spirit animal to me and anybody else who cares to pay him a visit.

Some of my favourite moments of this summer so far: midsummer's night on the Thames after seeing Patti Smith perform at the Royal Festival Hall, with her son and daughter as back up band; the cat in Parisian bakery window shot never gets old; a drink after watching Hiroshima Mon Amour (without subtitles!) at Le Champo; an unexpected bonus of a cancelled Eurostar train = an aperitif at La Buvette; and lastly, always and forever, the lido ♡. 

COINCIDENCE...

I was reading James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime the other day and came to a scene in Paris, quite near the beginning, set at the old Les Halles market in the early hours of the morning. As soon as I started reading this scene, familiar images flashed into my mind of the photographs taken there by Tom Palumbo in 1962, which I've always loved. A Sport and a Pastime was published in 1967, Les Halles was demolished in 1971 and replaced by the Forum des Halles - the depressing, labyrinthine underground shopping centre and Chatelet-Les-Halles transport hub where I've never been without feeling lost and that I'll never emerge above ground again. Together James Salter's book and Tom Palumbo's photographs transport me to a place that was razed to the ground before I was born, as if I'd been there myself, clattering over cobblestones in the dark, looking for the pig place.

 Below, some excerpted paragraphs from the book interspersed with some of Tom Palumbo's images of Les Halles:

Isabel laughs. The evening has only begun.
At three in the morning - Christina never goes to bed when she's drinking - we are wandering through the disorder of Les Halles. The air is chilly at this hour, noises seem to ring in it. The workmen glance up from their crates at the unmistakeable sound of high heels. Isabel is talking. Christina. They are pointing everything out. We trail foolishly between great barricades of fruit and produce, past empty bars, through the carts and trucks. Finally we emerge at the roaring, iron galleries where meat is handled. ..........

"We're really going to sleep sometime?" Billy asks.

"Let's go to the pig place," Isabel says.
"Sweetheart, where is it? Isn't it right around here?"
"It's just down the street," Billy says.
It takes us ten minutes to find it. Of course, there's an enormous crowd, there always is this time of night. Taxis are waiting with their lights on dim. Cars are parked everywhere. The restaurant is filled. There are tourists, wedding parties, people who've been to cabarets, others who've stayed up in order to visit the famous market. It's said they are planning to move it to a location outside the city, it will soon be gone.

Au Pied de Cochon - the pig place! 

Somehow we find a table. Billy is rubbing his hands. There's a delicious odor of rich, encrusted soup which is the specialty. Christina doesn't want any, she wants wine. ..........

The crowd is thick. The waiters struggle to get through. They seem to hear nothing, or it has no effect. The patrons are multiplying as if in a dream. Incredible faces on every side, Algerian, bony as feet, cardboard American, the pink of French. Isabel is laughing, laughing. ..........

"Don't ever marry a Frenchman," she says. Then she laughs. She is hugging Coco, her poodle, and laughing.

{Excerpted passages from A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, photographs by Tom Palumbo, Les Halles, 1962.}