Grey Paris
Not so much Gay Paree as Grey Paree, unfortunately. I woke up this morning to a dirty white sky, and as I bounced through the heavy rush hour traffic in a dented taxi the Grande Arche slowly - painfully slowly - faded into view. This was the fourth taxi I’d tried, the other three refusing to take me anywhere because the traffic was too heavy. And so I was grateful to be moving at all, even though it looked like someone was tweaking the Arche’s opacity for a full half hour until eventually I arrived at the steps at its foot and tried to explain myself to the red-coated corporate in broken French.
‘Savez-vous ou je dois etre?’ I asked. ‘Je suis avec l’equipe de ____ au royaume uni, mais l’alarme sur mon television etait silencieux ce matin, et il ne me reveille pas avant le car partit pour ici.’
She looked at me like I’d just walked something smelly and hard to clean onto the red carpet beneath our feet. I don’t think she liked the way I was mangling her language. She raised a French eyebrow and pointed to an enormous tent in the middle of the concourse plastered with corporate logos and the words ‘delegate registration’.
Hmmm…
Fortunately I was not the only one who was late. We were staying in a hotel in the centre of town, where I’d stayed before. Not a bad place, it has a good bar, although the drinks start at
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