A Yorkshireman in London

The phrase “now, I really have seen it all” has recently begun to lose meaning for me. After a magnificent coffee at the foot of the steps to the Sacré Coeur de Montmarte, we climbed the hill to be amazed, not merely by the resplendence of the basilica itslef, but at the speed with which a view over the whole of Paris emerges. And yet what illustrious culturual monument do we find but 50 yards away? You’ve guessed it, Corcoran’s Irish Pub.

I was reminded of an interesting evening spent recently in the foyer des élèves, having been given promises of live music, and expecting a similarly entertaining calibre as the preceeding week’s incomparable Beaubourg. What happened, of course, was a good old slap around the face with the proverbial wet fish.

I arrived to find an arrangement of sofas in front of the stage, and having taken my seat was subsequently presented with a group of barely-dressed students behind instruments with their backs to the audience. The focal point of the performance was a projected black-and-white video, which seemed to portray the rather disturbing lives of a group of plastic dolls. Accompany with the group’s rather anomalous experimetal jazz, and the effect was bewildering and overwhelming, but also strangely addictive.

The culture shock continued further on the metro. The familiar smell of burning rubber this evenig coincided with an unexpected rendition of a well-known Verdi opera, by a puppet that emerged from a makeshift black screen at one end of the carriage. Gauging the reactions of some nearby Parisians, we treated the performance with the contempt that it apparently deserved, but could not withhold a few smiles before disembarking to complete our journey home.

This, of course, consisted of the usual treachurous voyage across streets with no apparently active, or maybe effective, traffic conbtrol system. Roads and pavements have been torn up by the mile, and omnipresent metal barriers present a maze for pedestrians and motorists alike. What’s more, there is never a worker to be seen. Avenues and Boulevards are not being refurbished, they are merely being destroyed. The overall impression is that such projects seemed a first-class idea during the Olympic bid; today the city seems to have lost interest. But we Londoners don’t mention that subject.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2005 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Paris. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.