Ahead of my return to Paris, I thought I would publish extracts from the diary that I kept during my first two weeks…
23.20 – Tuesday 10th June.
As I mentioned in a post not so long ago, I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel to come back to Paris. When I left, after three years of living there, it seemed to happen so quickly that I felt that I had not fully tied up many emotional ends. My sense of trepidation was furthered by my friend Rhidian ringing me at the airport and warning ominously, “its not the same as it used to be”.
Walking up Rue de Rivoli it all seemed to come back to me. The smells, the shops, the gruff Parisian nonchalance – it felt like I had never been away. Of course I am older now, perhaps even slightly wiser (or at least I can grow a beard these days), but walking through the streets I still felt the same frissons of excitement that I did back then. My sense of nostalgia was only heightened by where I was staying – only fifty metres away from my old flat, where I spent fourteen months living a life affirming existence – a time of burglary, stress, finals, water leaks, dodgy Polish landlords, falling in love – probably the most defining year of my life on many levels. Looking across to that flat little has changed, save the graffiti tag outside the window has been cleaned off. The shops and the ambiance are exactly how I remembered them and I am sure that the beggar outside Champion flashed me a booze-addled look of recognition.
Such nostalgia flowing through my person, I decided to conduct an experiment. In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s protagonist takes it on himself to track down and speak to all his ex-girlfriends in the hope of getting some closure. By analogy, on my first night back in the city, I decided to do this with Paris. I was quite scared about how this would make me feel: it could have really fucked with my head, but in the interests of good journalism and curiosity I spent a few hours self-consciously revisiting the places where I left the most emotional baggage and memories. Bustling through Les Halles, zigzagging through Le Marais and meandering over to St Michel I encountered hundreds of the ghosts that had tormented me over the past few years. Meeting them head on, I felt that, one by one, they were exorcised.
More importantly I realised that I had changed. It is testament to this that I am writing this sitting on the same spot (coincidently) in the same bar where I met someone who was to become a huge part of my life and ultimately broke my heart. I don’t feel mournful or sad, it hasn’t messed with my head, in fact it all seems so far removed from today and so I feel really Zen about it all. If I hadn’t had my Paris experiences then I wouldn’t be who I am today, and now I have closure I am left with just cherished memories and funny anecdotes.
Future psychiatrists: feel free to post comments.
Chris
) is placed in a no-win situation. If you tell your partner they cannot meet their ex, you are (rightly) pigeonholed as a selfish, mysogynistic bastard. What's more, if you labour the point in the days and hours leading up to their reunion you risk making things an awful lot worse. To paraphrase an famous Friends quote, "you turned him on and sent him off to see a stripper?!". You piss her off before she goes to meet him at your peril...
Just a couple of hours after arriving in Colorado, caught between insommnia and exhaustion, I find myself flicking through TV channels, and interestingly the local religious networks. A lot is assumed about religion in the US by Europeans, and admittedly we only ever hear of the extremes. Furthermore our generalisations are not helped by Bush and his blinkered outlook on the World. The TV Pastors I watch strike a surreal balance between preacher and car salesman - urging donations (it takes pennies to get into heaven) to assure salvation. The next day driving through the streets, the number of churches almost seems to bely a market-led logic to faith as a number of variations on an ideological theme each promise to get your soul cleaner than any of their competitors.
When they met again, her heart had turned to stone.
Well England were denied in the Rugby, but in a few hours we will see whether Britain's Lewis Hamilton can clinch the title in the Brazilian GP. Given how much the Hamilton fairytale has reinvigorated F1 after some of the dross of previous seasons, it was suprising to read the following revelations in Saturday's 
I recall reading some years back that male sex drive, testosterone and fertility rise at times where a man's sports teams are doing well. So, whilst the Favelas in Rio become even more overcrowded after another Brazilian masterclass, by the year 2100, should trends continue, the population of the British Isles will be around 27. Watching the Rugby in the pub tonight I will bite my nails down to their wick, shout myself hoarse and should we win will walk around with a huge grin on my face. However as the clock ticks around to eight o'clock, I am filled with a deep sense of foreboding and cynicism, angst and a general malaise. A condition symptomatic of any seasoned, patriotic Englishman.
So as the balmy days of summer end and the damp of a North Eastern autumn inhabits his chest, your hero finds himself, tired, overworked and lacking the mental energy to construct a logical sentence. Since my last entry I have started my latest Uni course (yes, I will venture into the real world one of these days) and so is spending a disproportionate amount of his time fretting about teaching French and Spanish!