I don’t really have much to say, as I lead my humdrum life. But in these fraught days, humdrum is probably good. No drama is the best kind of life to live, is my opinion.

The Christmas lights went up on the Esplanade de la Défense a few days ago. I’ll take photos next week. Always uplifting as I walk home in the dark, or rather, to the metro station after work on cold winter nights. Our company Christmas party – cancelled last year due to Covid – is scheduled for December 9 (but could be cancelled yet again … due to Covid.)

I actually had a tiny drama when I went to my local hair salon and walked out with orange-colored hair. This is not the first time this has happened to me. I paid a lot of money, sat there from 2 pm to 5 pm, and walked out a very dissatisfied client. But what peeved me more than the hair is the fact that the French never apologize. They should learn to do so, it would make for improved customer relations. Where does this non-apologizing come from … do they learn it in nursery school? I say that because it seems to be ingrained, I’ve come across it time and again. As I sat in the chair with two hairstylists standing behind me – all of us looking at the horrific highlights one of them had done – and me saying “But it’s fluorescent colored!”, the apology I was waiting for was unforthcoming.

All they said was – “Can you come in again tomorrow?” They’re going to try to fix it. As if I have nothing else to do with my weekends.

As much as I deeply dislike Boris (Bojo) Johnson, I have to agree with him concerning the migrant crisis. From the French shores, thousands of migrants – aided and exploited by smugglers – attempt to cross the English Channel in unsafe dinghies, small boats and rafts in order to reach Britain. Many of them die. What I don’t understand is – why are they so eager to go to Britain? Is it because they speak English, and not French, and can therefore find work and integrate more easily? If it’s to join family members, then surely a family repatriation scheme would be better than risking their lives in a dinghy to join them.

Bojo sent a letter to President Macron saying it was France’s responsibility to monitor and detain migrants from crossing the Channel, and asked him to take back the migrants who have freshly-arrived in Britain. France’s reaction, or rather, non-reaction vis-à-vis the migrants, especially in the winter months, is lamentable. Their non-reaction is like the non-apology: aloof and circumspect. Non-committal.

Miffed now because of the letter, French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, told Priti Patel, the British Home Secretary, that she was no longer welcome at Sunday’s European meeting on migrant issues after 27 people died making the English Channel crossing on Wednesday. Completely counter-productive.

Here’s an article in The Guardian about the conditions migrants live in, where they’re from and what their hopes are –

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/26/he-didnt-come-back-the-grim-camps-from-where-refugees-set-off-for-uk

To honor and pay tribute to the victims of the horrific November 2015 terrorist attacks that took place in several different locations around Paris, the good citizens of France were invited to hang flags from their windows and balconies. And if a flag wasn’t handy, well…use your imagination!

Incidentally, President Macron recently changed the color of the French flag, but no one noticed. The blue is now a darker, navy blue.

What was it all about?

The American cemetery in northern France:

The British cemetery in northern France:

The Canadian cemeteries in northern France:

I’ve been taking the kids to the “parc rouge” (the red park) for thirteen years now, ever since the eldest son – now 20 – was seven years old. Now it’s his little brother, 9 years old, who I take to the park and then to lunch across the road.

It’s not really called the red park, we call it that because the metal gates surrounding it are painted red. Its official name is Le parc Jean-Baptiste Lebas. The weather was autumnal: crisp, cool and sunny, the lawns littered with fallen leaves.

Directly across the road is the Gare Saint Sauveur, a former goods station with some of the buildings converted into an exhibition area and a terrific bistro that I love. Great food, service and ambience at reasonable prices.

The evening before, I had taken my 9-year old companion to a DVD shop at around 7 pm. It’s a place that I frequent often (I have a huge DVD collection) because there must be over 100,000 DVDs on offer, all years, all genres, all nationalities. I could spend hours there. But after about 20 minutes my companion complained that his back hurt because he was standing for too long.

“What?” I exclaimed, flipping through a row of DVDs. “You’re 9 years old and you’re complaining of back pain?” I suffer from lumbago. I’ll tell you about back pain, my little friend. (He confessed later that his back didn’t hurt, he was just bored and wanted to leave.)

So I quickly bought two DVDs: Bunny Lake is Missing (a 1965 British psychological drama film directed by Otto Preminger) and The Grifters (a 1990 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Stephen Frears) and out we went into the night in central Lille. We ended up in a pocket-sized sushi restaurant. We both agreed that it wasn’t as good as the sushi we had in Paris in August.

The Bistro de St So is a super casual, welcoming place filled with young parents and their kids who are encouraged to run around in a safe place while the parents catch up with their friends. Incidentally, the good people from Lille are twenty times friendlier and more relaxed than Parisians.

I chose the roast chicken with stuffing, mushrooms and roasted squash because it looked autumnal. My companion had the children’s menu of fish and chips.

I couldn’t resist the dessert which was a sort of butternut tart with a citrusy cream and chantilly (whipped cream). Eating it was a beautiful experience.

Back to Paris on the Sunday afternoon train.

One of my favorite activities is to stand in my small kitchen space, listen to the radio or a good podcast (or an author interview on BBC Radio 4), and make or bake something. I find it relaxing and de-stressing. The reward at the end is something delicious that you made yourself.

In view of my trip to Lille tomorrow morning (a city in the north of France, not far from the Belgian border), I decided to make two cinnamon raisin loaves, one for my friend and his kids, the other for another friend who Photoshopped something for me. I wish I knew how to use Photoshop, Inkscape and all the other graphic design software. If I had my career to do over again, maybe I’d be a graphic designer, I don’t know. It’s true that you can teach yourself, but what with my full-time job and my book-writing on the weekend, who has time?? I barely have time to read a book and am actually looking forward to the train trip tomorrow (it’s only an hour) to crack open a new novel I recently bought: Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers.

There are many excellent recipes on the internet for this bread. I prefer whole-grain flour rather than white, as used in The Smitten Kitchen’s recipe (link below).

whole-grain cinnamon swirl bread

As we follow Little Amal’s remarkable journey from the Turkey-Syria border to Manchester in the UK, she will shine an urgent light on the stories of the millions of young refugees who are displaced – and the many who are forced to risk arduous journeys for the chance at a better life.

Little Amal is the giant puppet at the heart of The Walk, travelling 8,000 km in support of refugees.

Three things strike me:

1. We forget there’s a human being inside the body of Amal – a puppeteer – who is walking on stilts and viewing everything through her cane torso; what a life-changing experience that must be for those wonderful men and women (they work in shifts);
2. The mobs of well-wishers and spectators are a hundred times more elated at greeting the doll-puppet than they are at greeting real life migrants and refugees, which is the poignant message that Amal delivers;
3. Amal looks old for a nine-year-old which is no surprise given the anguish, fatigue, abuse and overall trauma that all refugees encounter as they flee war, famine, persecution, the Taliban, and all forms of violence.

Here’s a fresh batch of magnificent photographs of Amal in London, all taken by David Levene for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2021/oct/27/little-amal-in-london-in-pictures