Parisistible
Olivia Dean
Column II
My mum sent me a rather enormous parcel over a week and a half ago now. I’m writing this in bed at 8.45pm on Sunday night, and I’m self-aware enough to see that the melancholy of an impending week of work has projected onto the unwarranted levels of hatred I harbour for the French postal service (I too was, until now, unaware that one could have any strong feelings towards a shipping conglomerate). Reading my last column back makes me want to tell myself to stop showing off; the weather has slumped into firm cold and rain here, the type that isn’t quite heavy enough to be atmospheric but provides just enough damp to frizz up your hair. Being, once again, too narcissistic to struggle carrying more than one suitcase on the Eurostar when I first came here, I left all of my clothes and shoes in an unceremonious pile on the spare bedroom bed at home, accompanied by the promise that I would pay my mum to post them. I left everything that was too heavy to carry, that is to say, anything warm or waterproof, behind. The parcels that have been arriving for the past few weeks resemble the packs of cocaine you see wrapped up in brick form on the news when the police do a major drugs raid, except the plastic comes in the form of Waitrose Bags for Life choked by metres of Sellotape to foil any attempt the postman could have made to get his hands on my age 9-10 Ireland Rugby shirt.
Credit: Image by Ganossi from Pixabay
I tracked the parcel on laposte.fr a few days ago, and, lo and behold, it was supposedly delivered last Wednesday. I live on the top floor of an old Parisian apartment building so, when I receive parcels, I get a note in the post box and have to collect it from the very obliging gentleman at the ‘tabac’ (think off-licence/ post office/ dive bar, all in one convenient location) next door. I enquired with said obliging gentleman, who told me there was not only nothing he could do, but nothing that he had time to do. I left a note and my phone number, rather too reminiscent of the escort cards you see in more insalubrious parts of town, next to the post boxes, begging my neighbours to have pity if they had happened to have stolen the parcel but, thus far, to no avail. I’ve called the central office of the postal service, I’ve put in a complaint online, but I’m shouting into the void. I’m too cold to fight any more.
Le Tabac - ‘think off-licence/ post office/ dive bar’
Credit: Olivia Dean
I stand out sufficiently at work as it is, given that there seem to be next to no other redheads in the whole of Paris, let alone in my offices, and the fact that I am the only one unfortunate enough to be and speak English. I’m also approximately a foot taller than all of the other women I work with, not helped by the 3-inch platforms I’ve taken to wearing to work every day, to my ankles’ dismay. But what I’ve noticed is that the French body’s thermoregulatory centre seems to keep Gallic blood approximately 10 degrees colder than that of their English neighbours. I’m an editorial assistant at a luxury Fashion House, which I won’t mention by name in case they sue me when, in a future column, I inevitably complain about something they’ve done. I’m allowed, to a certain extent, to wear what I like, as long as it’s fashionable and presentable. I turned up on my first day in a cropped corset top I’d made myself, XXXL-leg jeans and a headscarf à la Amish housewife, thinking I looked, if you’ll pardon the vernacular, pretty darned excellent, only to have one of the older ladies in charge of the Creative Department stop me in the corridor. I assumed one of two options, perhaps a 3-year overhang from school:
A) that she was going to tell me off for not doing enough work, hence why rather than “bonjour” I hit her with the opening line of “ON MY WAY TO THE PRINTER” (I was headed to the office next door to chat to the other interns), or
B) that she would shout at me for having my stomach on show, hence my adoption of a mildly aggressive crossed-arms-and squat-slightly-to-make-jeans-cover-stomach stance. Yet the shock on her face was not prudish or workhorse-whipping, as she took my arm and asked, “Ma belle, are you not cold?”.
Credit: Olivia Dean
The zeitgeist is bubbling with gleeful disdain over the blatantly idealistic clichés of France in Netflix’s new rom-com Emily in Paris. Every man she meets is offensively gorgeous and falls in love with her, the women dress exclusively in haute couture and chain-smoke Gauloises cigarettes outside bistrots with their married lovers, and there is not one tacky tourist shop selling light-up Eiffel Towers in sight. Talking to the interns that work on the press and creative floor with me, all French and all infinitely cooler than I will ever be, I’ve seen that, obviously, Europe has equal and perhaps more accurate stereotypes of the English. The girls wear short skirts and not enough clothes, have “bizarre” eyebrows and are loud and confident. The boys are simply “not very attractive”. Somewhat ironically, we fulfil each stereotype as we discuss it; they sit smoking, in roll neck jumpers, scarves and coats, while I’m thermally satiated with an old man’s suit jacket over aforementioned crop top. Parisian chic seems so ingrained in their biology that they could never contemplate not being stylishly covered up, in contrast to me flashing my midriff around with abandon.
And yet, my goosebumps tell me that the time has finally come to say adieu to the suit jacket and get back on the phone to La Poste to locate my coats and jumpers, however much their customer service may grate me. At the very least, if only to join the ranks of the other interns and look a little bit more Parisian on the Métro.
