Shut up, Woody Allen

Today I finally saw Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's most recent film.  It was charming and romantic, beautifully shot, with an excellent cast (particularly Corey Stoll as Hemingway) and a fun storyline, and I hated it more than words can possibly convey.  But why???  Well, because it's a movie I would have absolutely loved before I moved here, and will doubtless absolutely love it when I watch it again in the future when I no longer live here.   At that point, I'm sure it will tug at my heartstrings and make me wallow in misty nostalgia about "ahhhh, Paris; living there was so great, I miss it so much" - but right now, it makes me want to force-feed  escargots to Woody until he passes out from snail poisoning.

I mean, having your main character give up a lucrative career to live the life of a starving writer in Paris?  You really want to get me started on that one, having done it myself?  Sure, have him give up wine tastings on the rooftop of the Meurice and private showings of the Monets at the Orangerie - why not?  It's soooooo much more fun to live on packets of ramen noodles (plus you get to go all the way to Chinatown in order to buy the cheapest ones, thereby seeing even more of Paris - good times!).  It's soooooo much more fulfilling to have to eat at home every night so that you can afford to go out and have a drink with your friends afterwards (because you can't afford to both eat and drink at the café).  Oh yes, indeedy, that whole living-in-poverty-for-your-art thing is just awesome - it's a testament to Owen Wilson's affable persona that I didn't want to slap his face off every time he bitched about his highly-paid Hollywood job as a "hack" writer.  Dude, I would be happy to be a hack.  I would be thrilled to sell my soul into well-paid corporate servitude as a writer, because selling my soul would be infinitely preferable to selling one of my kidneys, which may very well be how I pay next month's rent.

Don't get me wrong, Paris is indeed awesome and living here is a great experience in many ways, but it's not all wine and waterlilies.  I mean, I know the movie is a fantasy, but I assure you that, in Paris, time-travel back to the 1920s is far more likely than:  a) finding a friendly shopkeeper, b) walking on streets which are miraculously free of dog crap, or c) strolling the streets of Montmartre without approximately 87,346 tourists strolling along with you at any hour of the day or night.  

Woody, your vision of Paris is very sweet and beautiful and charming, but until you've applied for a Carte Vitale, or had to file a French tax return, or been snubbed by yet another Parisien for not speaking absolutely perfect French, you have no idea about actually living in this town - next time, you might want to stick to New York...

Luck of the Irish - Part 3

Gentle readers (assuming I still actually have any readers after such a long absence?), I am very happy to report to you that I am not, in fact, writing to you from a cardboard box under the Pont Neuf.  It was a pretty close call, but I managed to find a new home at the very last minute - whew!!!  You may remember that I had two rather fabulous pieces of luck last year ( Luck of the Irish and Luck of the Irish - Part 2)?  Well, this whole experience of looking for a new place to live here was so difficult and miserable and depressing that I really thought my good fortune had completely deserted me, but apparently not - I went to a dinner one night and had the right conversation with the right person at the right moment and now I'm living in a fabulous sub-let in the Marais (one of my favourite areas in Paris) for the next few months.  There's a balcony and a walk-in closet and an adorable kittycat, so I couldn't be happier.  The only real drawback is that it's a fifth-floor walk-up, but I'm so ridiculously thrilled to be here, I couldn't care less about that.

So thank you for being patient and bearing with my temporary crisis.  I'm now all moved in and mostly unpacked, so I can finally get my life (and my poor neglected blog) back to normal.  Let the eating and drinking and socializing (and snarky writing) re-commence...

Walk of shame

Are you perhaps thinking, from that title, that Miss K might have a little salacious something to confess?  (Not that I would tell you if I did, but I will most certainly complain about the fact that I don't!)  Alas, no.  I went to a very good party with Tiny Dancer last night and we left just a little bit too late to catch my metro connection home.  So I ended up crashing at her place (and I slept in a child-sized bunk bed, no less), but at least I had an adorable kitten to keep me company, and they made me a rather splendid breakfast this morning.  So the shame part of my walk of shame home this morning is that it was completely not shameful.  I mean, really.  There I was, at a party where I saw several people couple up and leave with clearly amorous intentions, but me?  Rien.  Disgraceful!  Shouldn't I be living a scandalous, decadent life here in Paris, in the classic tradition of writers?  Clearly I'm not doing very well at scandal and decadence -  which really is a shame!

Where's the love?

I've been writing this blog for exactly one year today - this is my 177th post, which averages out to one nearly every other day.  So even though I haven't always been the most...erm, consistent, shall we say?... blogger, that's not actually a bad track record.  And I seem to get quite a reasonable number of hits, but not many actual followers (although to those of you who do follow? Thanks!) appearing on this page.  Now, gentle readers, Miss K is a hardy soul, but I could still use a little ego-boost from time to time.  So if you lurk out there in cyberspace and drop in once in a while to see what's happening in my random life in Paris, and if you enjoy my silly ramblings, I would take it as a personal favour if you would put yourself down as a follower.  It only takes a couple of mouse clicks, and you can count it as your good deed of the day - show a humble blogger some love, people, because it's hard to stay motivated when you feel like you're just talking to yourself all the time... 

Too many topics

I started wondering if anyone actually reads this thing, so I just didn't bother updating it for a week.  And yes, I know that's bad but I was feeling demotivated and I didn't have much material to talk about anyway.  However, after the email bollocking I have received over the past few days from loyal readers who basically told me to get off my lazy arse and get writing, I am back, baby!

It's probably good that I took this little break, actually, because my brain is now positively overflowing with material to write about...but which topic first?  The totally crap outfit of the week?  My day with the dead?  The quote of the week?  Paris as a ghost town?  The new Lost Generation?  The revolting lack of customer service in this city (yeah, I've talked about that before but I have a whole new rant coming up)? Suddenly being able to see English-language tv after 10 months of being deprived of it?  Finding inspiration from unlikely sources?

Yep, that's all coming up.  But the decision for what to write about today was taken out of my hands, because as I was sitting at my dining room table writing this, I just saw a guy riding down my street on a bicycle.  Nothing interesting about that, except that he was making vroom-vroom motorcycle noises. Yelling them out so loudly that I could hear him from three floors above street level.  I just... I... words escape me to describe this level of crazy.  Paris, man.  Sometimes I don't even have to do any work, this stuff just happens right in front of me...

Ennui? Oui.

You know that feeling when you come back from vacation and everything seems just a bit....blah?  Okay, I am perfectly aware that I'm not going to get a lot of sympathy, considering that the place I came back to is Paris, but you know what I'm saying, right?  I'm just feeling a bit flat and uninspired, which is why I haven't written this week, but today I am going to shake it off and just make it happen.  I am about to slap on some sunscreen, put on some good walking shoes and go for one of my really long hikes all over the city, which is something I haven't done for quite a while.  Photos will be taken, weird randomness will likely be encountered, a glass of wine might be drunk at a café, and inspiration will occur.  Or so I tell myself.  Tune in tomorrow to see if I get my writing groove back...

Don't drink and write

Ahh, gentle readers, the things I do for you.  Look at the time stamp on yesterday's post - 23:18.  Do you realize what that means?  It means that after a day of drinking that commenced at 13:00, I staggered home in a state of decided non-sobriety, and before passing out into blissful unconsciousness, hauled out my laptop and wrote something just for you.  And not only that, but my spelling was impeccable and my punctuation wasn't too shabby either.  Of course, my grammar didn't exactly shine and the whole post isn't entirely coherent (hee!!!),  but let's not ask for miracles, people...

Poverty soup

I think I might have mentioned - oh, just once or twice - how crushingly expensive Paris is?  Well, I really noticed it on my recent trip to London, when I kept thinking how reasonable the prices were there.  Yes, IN LONDON.  I seem to have this unnervingly accurate gift for moving to cities just as they become the most expensive in the world - I'm sure if I moved to Bangkok tomorrow the cost of living would shoot up just to spite me.  

But Paris used to be cheap - I have recently been reading A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway, which is a memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920s.  It's hugely entertaining and I am enjoying it greatly - in fact, I only occasionally allow myself to dip into it because I don't want to finish it.  He writes a great deal about how it was to be a poor writer in Paris and it makes me laugh because he truly had no idea.  Um, Ernie?  If I may call you that?  You are not poor if you can afford to rent an extra hotel room just to write in.  You are not poor if you are writing in a café where you can afford a café au lait, two rum St James, a dozen oysters and a half carafe of wine.  Even in the 1920s, that ain't poor.

Let me tell you about poor, Ernie.  Poor is when you are at the grocery store trying to figure out what you can buy for a euro, because that's all you have.  Answer: a large tin of chickpeas (which I loathe unless they are in hummous, but really, what doesn't taste good with enough garlic and lemon juice?), for 77 centimes.  What to do to make the horrid things into a palatable meal?   Well, I foraged in my kitchen cupboard for whatever ingredients were already there, and I give you my recipe for Poverty Soup:

2 onions and 3 cloves of garlic - chop and sauté until golden
3 cups chicken stock - made from cubes (use what you like, that's what I had)
1 large tin chickpeas, drained
1 tin crushed tomatoes
1 tin coconut milk

Mix it all together in a large pot and heat, then puree.  Add salt, pepper, curry powder and tabasco (or whatever seasonings you like, that was all I had) until you can choke it down. 

So there you go, Poverty Soup - it actually ended up being (much to my surprise) quite tasty and that recipe makes about 2 litres, so you will have lots of leftovers for the freezer.   Hey, in these credit-crunchy times, I thought I might as well share the recipe...