France. There are days so alien I feel I've dropped onto another planet.
On the way to the nursery this morning, right in front of a policeman waving his arms and blowing a whistle like a demented football ref, a scooter rider mounts the pavement and whizzes by. I look at the policeman. He looks at the scooter. He goes back to directing the traffic and blowing his whistle.
One car and three cycles jump the red light in front of the policeman. He sees them. He carries on waving and whistling.
I walk over the zebra crossing in a straight line. A woman crosses diagonally and barges into my shoulder. She glares and says: "Look out".
Someone lets their dog deposit the most enormous pile of poo in the middle of a cobbled pedestrian path.
10.10am, outside the health food shop supposed to open at 10am, a small, grumbling queue. Inside, several staff. Tap tap, someone raps on the door and points at their watch. A shop assistant, face like thunder, arrives and opens up. She says nothing.
On the way back from the nursery someone has parked blocking the pavement forcing pedestrians into the road. The driver sits in the car.
"Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here".
2 comments:
Oh yes. I am soooo with you.
My particular faves:
"Vous me faites chier avec votre poussette". Repeatedly.
Behind thumped by an old lady in Rue Poncelet with her walking stick for being in the way.
The 20 year old in the flat downstairs who came up, hammered on door and said he was calling social services because "c'est pas normal, un bebe qui pleure comme ca". My son was two months old, and had been crying for all of, oooh, five minutes tops.
But there were many, many more. Stop me, I can feel my blood pressure rising!
Actually it's even worse when you go native and start feeling/behaving exactly the same. Probably a good thing you still feel like an alien!
Welcome to Paris.
I'm mostly inured to it but every now and then it catches me raw and I wonder what I'm doing here.
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