Wandering around the Morais, nudging Mags past ‘cute’ boutiques, it occurred to me that Paris must have 90% of the world’s population of wicker chairs all spread invitingly on the pavements welcoming visitors for a leisurely vin rouge or two.
Yes, we’re in Paris for the weekend, a well
deserved break for Mags after a week or two of hard labour in Canary Wharf.
We arrived for the Eurostar after a bit of
a scrum at St. Pancras station where thousands of people descended on security
at the same time. We’d opted for a quick bon voyage drink at the champagne bar
so perhaps should have arrived at the queue a little earlier than we did.
Anyway, the company sensibly delayed the train by a few minutes so that
everyone could get on.
We stayed on Ile Saint Louis, the smaller
of the two islands on the Seine in the 4 Arrondissement, close to Notre Dam.
This is our usual haunt in Paris, so we felt relatively at home. We’d come to meet up with our friends Karen
and Malcolm from Tasmania who had rented an apartment in the same street. We
generally mooched around with them on Sunday, checking out the shops and buying
vegetables from the food market in the Latin Quarter. The market runs along Rue
Mouffetard and was buzzing with locals. There are numerous delis along the road
squeezed in between butchers, fish mongers and boulangeries. We had to queue
for our baguettes which must be good thing, the bread still warm as we bought
it. Karen was almost talked into buying some cherry tomatoes but at twenty odd
euros a kilo, possibly a tad expensive at this time of year despite the
assertion from the green grocer that they were the “Rolls Royce” of tomatoes.
We had a wonderful meal at Karen and Malcs apartment,
which is situated on the top floor in a small quadrangle of 17th
century buildings. The stairs up was a bit of a struggle but well worth
it. The view from their small balcony is
of ancient rooftops and chimney pots, the spire of Notre Damn just visible.
Despite our short stay, we’d managed to
become locals at a couple of bars on the island. After the meal, we thought
we’d have a digestif at the Les Fous de L’ile. We’d just ordered a couple of
drinks when Mags elbowed me and declared in a hushed whisper that she ‘knew’
the guy sitting next to her at the bar. I said the perhaps he was famous and that
she recognized him rather than knew him. There is previous here as Mags went up
to an ex Spurs footballer in Cape Town with a “G’day, how’s it going?” only to
be met with an incredulous look. She had a rethink on the adjacent bloke and
decided that he was an old rocker. Anyway, he was on his own and obviously
wanted to chat. Seeing that Mags was speaking English (close to anyway), he
soon engaged her in conversation. A couple of locals joined in. Bizarrely, a
Magician and his partner, who was loudly arguing some point in Franglais but I
didn’t really catch his drift. The old American rocker turned out to be Mike McCready
from Pearl Jam. He was initially impressed that we’d heard of the band but less
so when we couldn’t name any of their hits – oops. This led onto a conversation
about French music, prompted by our waitress. Unfortunately, we foreigners
could only come up with Charles Aznavore, Edith Piaf, and Plastic Bertrand
which got a laugh from the locals.
After a few Armanagcs, there was much talk
of moving on to party the night away. Thankfully, we’re a bit wiser (older) now
and left them to it so Mike and the Magician disappeared into the Paris night.
I asked our French / Vietnamese waitress if the guy really was a Magician. “Apparently”
she said and asked the remaining throng “Has anyone seen him do a trick?”
“Non” was the unanimous response.
“A magician who doesn’t do tricks”, she
shook her head while polishing the beer glasses.
