charming and cheesy

signs

On a shop front:
Open in August!

In the unisex toilets of a corporation I taught at:
Out of respect for other visitors, please urinate in the bowl, not on the walls.

Poster in the metro:
[IN ENGLISH] Paris offers you a warm welcome!
[IN FRENCH] For the good of your city, encourage tourism.

In an ad for a wonder cream:
Shed kilos and bronze at the same time.

All over the city:
J’aime mon quatier; je ramasse

To ramasse is to pick up, as in your dog’s shit. But a certain intertextuality suggests itself, especially in the accompanying cartoon of the man with the shovel hovering behind his dog. I love the way French public notices are often in the first person: perhaps they want the words to pass directly into your internal monologue, or maybe they are meant to be the words of an encouraging friend, a role-model type. Do you ramasse? I know I do.


commerce on the traffic island in the middle of boulevarde menilmontant

A shed full of arcade games, with Rastafarian plush dolls dangling from the ceiling.

A beige caravan like your nan and pop might have in their back yard, with posters in the windows offering tarot consultations.

A news stand that sells maps of Pére Lachaise cemetery and Jim Morrison t-shirts.

A guy who has made a barbecue out of a shopping trolley, an upturned tin bucket and a primus stove, and is barbecuing corn cobs.

Benches where men sit at night with beers in their hands and blankets of trashy jewellery laid out on the ground in front of them. Once I saw a car drive over a whole blanket load—oh boy, was there some gesticulating.


things on the banks of the seine in summer

A tiny sunken amphitheatre on the very edge of the water where people come to tango in the evenings.

Buskers playing Ticket to ride, Ma vie en rose and, inevitably, No woman no cry.

People pashing.

Cruise barges with banks of floodlights along their sides, so they can light up the banks like a police raid and give their passengers the best possible view of Romantic Paris by Night.

Three kilometres of fake beach with boardwalks, sand, deckchairs, palm trees, and a lending library.


easily amused

In fact, they were digging up all the footpaths around our house last month, creating holes a man could stand shoulder-deep in. Macgregor speculated they were shipping all the sandy dirt over to the Paris Plage. An irresistible thought. Under the cobblestones…