PARIS

So I woke up relatively early this morning after going to bed rather late. Some plumber had come and knocked on our door at around seven thirty in order to check some problem with the hot water. Now seven thirty may not really be that early for some people, but when you're unemployed, and used to going to bed at four in the morning for no real good reason, it is. I dozed for perhaps another hour once the plumber  had left and whilst my poor girlfriend got ready for work at nine o'clock. The night before we'd played a version of the card game Presidents and Assholes with her flatmate and before we knew it time had somehow gotten away from us. She was feeling a little sorry for herself so I dared not fall completely asleep, that way I was giving her the bare minimum in moral support to get her on her way. Once she'd left for the day, I fell asleep again and caught up on the lost hours of the night before.

I know it's not the most exciting lifestyle, but unfortunately when you've got no job, are low on cash and are constantly struggling with French administration in order to receive a work permit, it kind of becomes like this. When I did eventually get up at around eleven thirty, I had to remind myself not to slip into some silly pattern of lounging about and doing nothing and kick myself into some new gear of productivity. In no time I had the dishes done, the washing folded, the bed made, breakfast eaten and one quarter of a short screenplay written. It was around four o'clock, when I'd finished perhaps my third cup of tea and had knocked off a good few chapters of The Lord Of The Rings, that I realised I'd run out of things to do and still had a majority of the day left ahead of me. To cure my internal ADD, I decided to toughen up, face the cold and go for a walk to my girlfriend's work for a drink.

Now Paris is a lovely city, beautiful in so many ways, but when you've been here a while, and it is as cold as the final scenes of Titanic outside, you kind of forget how nice it looks. Instead, you power-walk from you flat in the 3eme ardt to St Michel with your hands in your pockets and your head down, glancing up only briefly to glimpse Notre Dame with its many tourists mingling about out front. It's not that I've grown desensitised to the place, it's more that I no longer consider myself as much of a tourist as I used to, and that most of the buildings are all the same height with a similar architecture. It took me a while to stop getting lost down streets that look kind of "samey". Despite all this, Paris IS still beautiful and I did slow my walk to a bit of a stroll once I'd reached the Seine. It is a marvelous river that splits in order to pass the small islands on which Paris had first been built. All along its banks are beautiful old buildings and historic landmarks. It is perhaps my favourite part of the city. On this particular day, it was still a pleasure to meander alongside it before reaching the pub and having a drink.

Now I won't bore you anymore with long descriptions, it's my first time writing one of these so I have no idea what I'm doing. What I will jump to now is when my girlfriend finished work at seven. What we both decided to do then is take a lovely walk up to the giant palace that is the Louvre and look at some ancient Egyptian artifacts. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I love the Louvre as it is an incredible building full of incredible things. I even caught myself thinking how cool it was that I could simply stroll up to one of the oldest museums in the world, enter for free (thanks to a handy UK residency VISA and the full effects of the Brexit not taking full effect) and admire some of the most famous works of art in world history, all because I was bored. But when we left at the cool Friday night closing time of 9pm, my girlfriend's legs decided to stop working from her having stood all day. Thus began one of the longer walks home I'd ever experienced in my life (the gold medal going to the time I'd successfully walked from the Adelaide CBD to Glenelg drunk at 4am). For some reason we hadn't been able to agree on whether to ride a bike, or catch a cab, or take the metro, and Paris is misleadingly, and confusingly, both big and small at the same time. You're constantly finding that things are quite close when you're not looking for them, but ridiculously far and out of the way when you actually are. In the end we did eventually make it home and my girlfriend immediately passed out of exhaustion. Then, I had left of lasagna for dinner.

The End.

(YEAH!)