Ici et là - The butcher shop

'Here & There' is a Wednesday series dedicated to shops. The 'here' is the area around Paddington. The 'there' is generally La Rive Gauche de Paris, especially the single-digit arrondissements. I am interested in how people live, not in retailing per se.

Bellevue Road, Bellevue Hill

Are you a harker? Do you look back to some of your childhood and wish it had not disappeared? I do – I wistfully hark back. It is as much in the language that swirls around my head (butcher, baker, greengrocer, corner-store, milk-bar), as it is in the types of places I look for examples of these shops. I search the High Streets and the Main Streets; eschewing the arcades and the shopping malls. I am from the generation who went down the street to buy necessities, not to the mall for a ‘shopping experience’.

Rue Saint-Louis, Ile Saint-Louis

Is it possible to discern a difference between butcher shops in my Parisian haunts and butcher shops here at home? My experience is that super-marchês in Paris are smaller, meaning that the meat sections are also smaller, resulting in the survival of more stand-a-lone butcher shops, la boucherie. In Paris, La Boucherie takes one’s breath away the instant the hearth is crossed.

Left: Rue du Bac Right: Rue de Bourgogne

Finding a stand-a-lone butcher shop in a ribbon development in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney has been a struggle. It seems that butcher shops are now within malls, like Westfield, or within major grocery supermarkets, like Woollies and Coles. In my mind whirls a faded memory of blue-striped aprons, smoothed and hollowed chopping blocks, massive hooks, sawdust, and missing fingers, or fingers swathed in band-aids (cloth not plastic).

Oxford Street, Paddington

Just as the cuts of meat from assorted animals have altered over the years, so has the ratio of cut to packaged meat. Windows are now replete with a myriad of spiced sausages, seasoned rissoles, and marinaded kebabs. Gone is the tray of wavering tripe, the aerated liver, and the poops of kidney. ‘Offal is awful’ seems to have consigned these ‘cuts’ to the dustbin of history.

Left: Rue Caulaincourt, Montmartre, 18eme Right: Hampden Road, Artarmon

However, there is one distinct similarity between a butcher shop in Paris and its equivalent in Sydney - and this could be in the eye of the beholder, especially should that beholder be a 'harker'. Butchers are proud individuals who really care about the image of solidity that they present to their customers, to the service that they provide for their customers, and the image of their shop in their neighbourhood. Butchers are pillars of their community.

Bellevue Road, Bellevue Hill

Stuffed

My body is back down under, the brain will follow soon. Do you know that terrifying retrieval of subterranean gases known as fracturing? My brain feels as though it has been fracked.

Beneath my studio in the 7eme, on Rue Bourgogne, was this charming little French cafe. Charming to me as they did not serve me heaps, and allowed me to 'emporter' back upstairs. A 'sac a dos' is what I know as a back-pack. You might know it as a rucksack. Or by another term ...

Paris Eye 30/30 - Yep I am still up there somewhere

Back in the first half of 1966, in English Lit I, Norman Talbot (1936 - 2004) tried to introduce a theatre full of us to Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood'. He set an exercise for us to give our thoughts upon the opening monologue for First Voice, you know 'To begin at the beginning'. It being 1966, and us being 18 year old nerds, he knew 'the bucking ranches of the night' would zing across our uncomprehending craniums, and he had quite a giggle at our expense.

I thought of that excruciating experience many times as I encountered this advertisement in metro stops across Paris over the last month. It is an advert for sneakers of some sort. Forget which. But it is a lovely shade of orange, cerise and hot pank. But what does it mean?

'For the athletes of the night' - all nicely double-entendred. But those little logo things. They have me stumped. What do YOU reckon these athletes-of-the-night indulge in?

Paris Eye 29/30 - The sun also sets

As the sun sinks beyond Pont Alexander III, illuminating the Seine in the colours of love and romance, so I say farewell. I depart CdG at midday Paris time on Thursday, and arrive home in Sydney at 7pm Friday, Sydney time. This is a total of 31 hours. However, 8 hours of that is just *puff* in the time zones. Another 2.75 hours (and let me assure you I will be counting!!) will be spent changing planes in Singapore.

So ... just 20.25 hours in the air.

Paris Eye 28/30 - Bums not on seats

On Easter Monday, I walked the Champs Elysees. I took the metro to Clemenceau, walked up to the AdT, then down George V, over Pont de L'Alma, across Des Invalides greensward and hence home.


The geometry of these seats just gob-smacked my eyes. Is that possible? Well, it did. I suspect these particular bateaux were out of operation because the day was so sunny that they needed the boats with covers. But I could be wrong. I once knew a man - in the biblical sense - who admitted he had been wrong once. Back in 1963.

Paris Eye 27/30 - Parisian mix-master

Uh-oh ... why do I feel this sense of dread?

No ... not the road ... the underpass ... aarrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!

Brrmmm ... hoonnk ... Brrmmm ... watch-it! ...hoonnk ... Brrmmm

Paris Eye 26/30 - Les bibliophiles

But of course. I went again to the Book Market down in the 15eme, close to the metro stop, Portes de Vanves, on Line 13. Who could resist? Certainly not I ...

It took me forever. Of course, one pass is not sufficient to make a choice. I early determined that I was better served with yesterday's thought of Orwell if it were in English. So I wandered. These books are delicate creatures, their pages flimsy and browned, their owners hovering, like mid-wives. And each needed to be stroked. And the publishing details examined. The binding inspected. The internal pages sniffed.

Oh, yes. Do not forget the smell test when deciding to purchase a book.


And constantly being way-laid, I was. By the buyers and the sellers. Encased in their turned-sod beauty. And the signs: Achat et Vendre; Sarko is a this, and Sarko is a that.

The blackbirds singing in the Plane trees hanging o'er. The pesky french mutts demanding to be heard. Aroma de stale-food wafting from behind a stall here, and eau-de-tabac assaulting the senses from over there.

Until my decision it was reached. The bargaining began, the prices came down. I had done it. Three illustrated books from early in the twentieth century just right for little girls. Now THAT will surprise you!

Paris Eye 25/30 - Down and out in Paris

On Thursday I read 'Prime Numbers' by Margaret Turton in the SMH in which she mentioned Parc Georges Brassen down in the 15eme. Negotiating Metro lines due to Easter closures on some lines, added zest to this must-do excursion.

Parc Georges Brassens is an old industrial area that is now used by families from the surrounding high-rise buildings to sit in the sun, and to commune with friends. It is quite different from the parks in the single-digit arrondissements. It has more in common with Parc Monceau in the north, but that still slight. It used to be an old abbatoir, which goes some-way to explaining the inscription on the central tower building: Vente à la criee - Sale by auction. The young boy making like a mountain goat was fun, until I realised I was waiting for him to tumble.


Under a cloud of disappointment, it was only on my way out that I discovered why I felt compelled to visit this park. I stumbled upon the market, which book-ended the entire excursion for me. It was peopled by 'geeks'! The market is held all year around, on both Saturday and Sunday, from 9am until 6pm. The boquinistas on the Seine cannot hold a candle to these stall-holders.

Oh, how I would like to take home one old volume from each stay in Paris from here on out. Dare I return tomorrow? Oh, that I could find a tattered copy of Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris'.

Paris Eye 24/30 - Use it rather than lose it

The gambit, followed by the tap on the timer, whirls across my consciousness in a blur. I console myself with the thought that I am more interested in the player, than in the play. The truth is that seeing in that particular third-dimension has always eluded me. However, seeing into the inner landscape of 'we the people', is another dimension altogether.


What do they contend about ageing? You have to keep physically active, mentally active, and keep involved with other people in like-minded pursuits.

Would that this were my nursing home ...


Once again, all these photographs were taken over the last week in Jardin du Luxembourg.