There she is, there she is!

Last year I was chatting with a Parisian friend who told me that the “loves the Eiffel Tower”. I looked a bit puzzled. I didn’t really believe that she could “love” it, but she was adament.

Now, despite watching tourists in their hundreds, every day, pour into the Champs de Mars to photograph themselves with their fingers “pinching” the tower, or jumping in front of her or some other such apparently essential holiday snap, I thought my friend was a bit odd.

Somewhere, somehow, as winter slowly gave way to a bright and sunny spring, spring into a rainy summer, when I walked past the steel skeleton in the early morning, at high noon or waited with visitors to watch the flickering bulbs, she grew on me. I love that she’s a different colour at the top than at the bottom. I adore checking her out against a steely grey sky and in brilliant sunshine. I wait with excitement in the dark for her bulbs to twinkle, I find it funny when her head disappears in the mist.

So that’s it folks: TG loves Paris.

Words I’m a bit scared to utter, because I’m sure that that will set the wheels in motion for another move…

I love to watch people. How they walk, how they move, what they’re wearing and where they’re from have always fascinated me. Usually I just drink it all in and enjoy, rather like watching a film. Occasionally though, somebody surprises me (like intergalactic Grandma) and I’m shaken out of my reverie. This takes quite some doing as I have been consciously people watching for at least fifteen years, everywhere I’ve been.

I’m not sure if this man was a scout leader, something that only ocurred to me when I got the photo onto a bigger screen and saw the inverted triangle on his t-shirt and payed more attention to his hat.

Think about it though, what do you expect him to be wearing below the knees?

Think hard. Harder.

Here you go:

Now I BET you weren’t thinking of pink knee-high socks and orange shoes!

Paris is not a fashion-forward city. Stylish, chic, classic, yes, but there are not enough risk-takers in the attire department to make it a trend-driver. This does not seem to differ whether people are in the older or younger generations: everybody dresses like their peers.

So look at the photo above. It’s taken in mid-July at around noon. Our Parisian lady moved deceptively quickly past my lunch companion and I. In a pillarbox red coat* and black berret, she already stood out – red is not a typical colour to see on a Parisian, especially a coat and more especially on a lady who is probably a grandmother, as they usually (read: always) opt for black or beige.

Sometimes all this sameness can get a bit boring.

So imagine our squeals of delight when we spotted her utterly fabulous intergalactic boots!

*I haven’t altered these pictures, they were taken with the iPhone in a hurry so a bit blurred, but the coat really was that bright!

Ssssh! You don’t know I’m here.

I’m in hiding.

Somebody put a notice up in our apartment building recently announcing a “building party and bbq”. Excellent idea.

Are those things that are just announced? Perhaps there’s a core of people who all know each other and they decided and the rest of us are expected to attend.

Expected, because how on earth do you hide in your apartment pretending you’re not there? It’s not as if letting the phone ring will cut it – the party-goers can see the lights on!

I can’t enter or leave the building because the entrance hall and garden courtyard is the party location!

And why is it that I’m so terribly anti-social? First there’s the food: I can’t eat it (have you tried to have meat well-cooked in France? Pregnant women are also not allowed salad in France. Not much else to eat at a bbq!). Second there’s the wine: I can’t drink it. Third there’s the language: I can’t speak it well enough to socialise with people I don’t know but kind of have to see everyday. If I were to never meet them again, I wouldn’t mind, but that’s not exactly the case with neighbours. Which brings me to my fourth point: I don’t actually want to socialise with the horrifically noisy neighbours from the apartment below. It’s hard to avoid it because I have no real idea what they look like. If the father decided to shout in the aggressive, military manner he does every single evening to his four year old twin sons (who I’ve also never met), I would know who he was. If the mother decided to scream, as she does every second afternoon, I’d know immediately she’s someone to avoid. The chances of them showing their ‘home’ faces are rather slim – which is fine, I hear them often enough!

Finally, point number five: Mr S is away tonight for work.

I’m a big, fat chicken and don’t want to face everybody in my faltering French (did I mention that one of our neighbours regularly corrects the grammar on announcements and notices put in the elevator?) alone.

It’s a strange thing wearing skirts again after 9 years of almost never wearing them. I find myself constantly patting my thigh just to make sure there is still fabric covering my modesty. My favourite dress has concealed pockets at hip level, so I can (I think!) surreptitiously make sure it stays in place in case the wind blows. So far, there haven’t been any accidents, I’m just overly concerned.

Getting out of trousers also brings with it the legs issue: they are on display. Parisiennes seem single-handedly to keep the bronzing market in business. Not deep tacky tans (oh la la! Heaven forbid!), but gentle kissed-by-the-sun-like-I-have-spent-the-summer-in-the-sun-swimming-and-drinking-cool-rosé tans – in April. You know, the sort of tan that makes you look good.

I caught my friends’ very polite eight year old daughter staring at my legs with furrowed brows.

“Is everything ok?” I asked

“Um, yes. I was just wondering..are you wearing tights?”

“No, not today, it’s too hot.” I said.

“Oh, I didn’t think so, but I was just wondering..why are your legs soooo white?”

Aah, bless…

Right, time to make an appointment at the fake tan centre!

I’ve been studying my quickly forming wrinkles increasingly frequently lately. To Bo or not to Tox? Is it a modern day necessary evil, or just downright ridiculous? I feel the answer will be formed the day a wrinkle can’t be removed by contorting my face…

In the meantime, an alternative strategy has made itself apparent: nice cashiers.

As I went to pay for entrance to a museum, the cashier asked, “Are you under 27?”

The correct answer, I soon discovered, is “Yes, of course!” said with the casual, bored arrogance of a 16 year old.

The wrong answer is something along the lines of , “Umm..[look left, look right]..uh..[grin like a Cheshire cat]..yes?”

Entrance fee paid: full price.

But the possibility of being under 27? Priceless!

It’s a cliche that had my eyes rolling to the heavens years before I even had an inkling that I’d one day live in Paris. Some friends thought that Paris in the spring equated a romantic experience for as long as you were there. Cue more eye rolling (whether actually done or not, I don’t know, but the urge was certainly strong!). I would argue that romance could be found in many different places and touching down for a long weekend in a city could not possibly mean that romance would flourish – and by extension, dissipate upon departure.

I still think that.

But..and it’s a big but, Paris IS delightful in the spring. Even more so when you’ve suffered the grey, black, beige and perhaps, just perhaps navy, Parisian uniforms of winter, coupled with the grinding grey skies. Paris in winter is not recommended (Christmas shopping break excepted).

Green buds start appearing on naked trees, birds begin to arrive and mornings are accompanied by birdsong. More than that, the sun makes this museum city come alive and vibrancy pokes holes through its unwavering facade of stuffiness.

I may not want to stay here indefinitely, but I have to say that I do love living in Paris in the spring.

It took me a couple of days of watching Noor to figure out what was going on, not only in plot but with the actors’ mouths.

Noor is a new TV show in Arabic on one of the free satellite stations originating from Dubai. This particular station, MBC4, usually shows English language programs: Rachel Ray, Oprah and Dr Phil are staples – we’re not exactly talking high brow entertainment!

Nevertheless, and perhaps because of this, I like this show. Of course, it could also be because it is extremely odd to watch Arabic being spoken by so many people with blue, green and light eyes. The Arabic is Lebanese, the people beautiful and the landscapes stunning. After a few days of assuming it was filmed in Lebanon by actors mouthing strange words, I have just figured out it is a Turkish TV series dubbed!

The real reason for my new addiction though? The leading man has one of my favourite, and seldom heard names: Mohanad (yes, that’s an N in the middle) and I’m not sure I could ever get bored of hearing it.

And they speak slowly enough, with enough pauses, for me to actually understand!

NB I have stopped comments to this post. I have absolutely no contact with MBC nor the makers of Noor in Turkish or Arabic. I merely wrote a personal account. Please pass any comments you my have about the programme onto the channel directly.

1. You don’t worry if someone overtakes you on the inside lane.

2. You have no qualms about overtaking on the inside lane.

3. You only buy summer shoes that are dust proof or can be easily cleaned.

4. You have no qualms about walking around streets in the West with the same numeric value of relevant currency as you do here, until you notice the shop assistant’s eyebrows raising when she sees $1000 in your wallet when you pay for a coffee.

5. You know that when you go to the movies for the 6pm showing you don’t need to turn up before 7pm as that’s when the trailers start.

6. Having watched too much MBC, you dream about Jeremy Paxman.

7. You notice how expensive everything is getting.

8. You start forgetting which words are spelled with a ‘B’ and which with a ‘P’.

9. You notice how crude lyrics to Western popular music are, especially in comparison to those of Arabic pop.

10. Amr Diab starts being sexy.

There are times when living in Egypt can just get too much. Everything becomes a headache, far more stressful than it usually is and expletives become common vocabulary.

The longer I’ve been here the less it happens. That, however, just leaves me with further to fall when it does.

Since Summer 2005 I have been visiting the pool of Cairo’s Grand Hyatt. There are not many places to go swimming in Cairo and even less once you remove the pools where an inch of skin will attract a gaggle of ogling male eyes. A dip didn’t come cheap, but it was worth every penny, particularly because this price also included access to the jacuzzi, steam room and sauna.

With temperatures of 38C right now, Mr S and I recently made our first appearance at the pool this year. All was going well until I asked if the steam room was working and then told, in front of another guest and in a tone that suggested I was trying to sneak in for free, that I could not use these facilities if I had only paid for the pool.

Off to get showered and leave, the same attendant managed to walk in on my shower. Apparently accidentally (it was the only one that was occupied..).

I made a complaint and tried to explain that if someone was thought to be using the spa area without paying, either talking to them ALONE or informing them at reception as they left that they would not be able to do so again without paying would probably be a better way to go. The response? Apparently it was my fault for misunderstanding four years ago what the deal was. Yep. Absolutely, totally, perfect sense.

And not very 5 star. So, most definitely the last time we go there. Which means, I have lost my escape in Cairo, my bastion of serenity. This was a devastating blow. There are so few places where you can get everything you want under one roof here, and for them not to be overcrowded too.

Next came some more water cuts.

Then, the following day when I forgot I’d left the tap on in the bathroom sink (and we actually had water). I rushed back to turn it off (from an ecological point of view) only to find that the sink had overflowed.

This was not because the sink has no overflow pipe. Oh no. It is there, or rather the hole in the sink is there, however there isn’t actually a pipe. There isn’t a pipe, because someone had the bright idea of blocking up the overflow hole instead. Unfortunately for my things in the cupboard below, they didn’t even manage to do a good job of it and from having no water mere hours before, I then had a flood in the cupboard and the bathroom floor.

Flipping fantastic.

The strange thing is, that when one of these periods starts, it doesn’t give up until it is well and truly tired (note: that has nothing to do with whether you are tired of it or not).

And despite living here for all this time, the bottom line still is (only when I have water you understand), “At least it is sunny.” I mean, come on, it could be far worse: sleet.