#rive gauche

Dear Country Anon,

My ancestors come from the country Faith Fraser was born. They left it a very, very long time ago, because they were Huguenots and that was not ideal at all, around 1688. The memories may have faded with time, but they never completely disappeared.

I have had the absolute pleasure and joy of calling Paris home for six entire years of my life, during my university days. I have lived a stone throw's away from the places 'Erself wrote about in Dragonfly in Amber and I used to know (still remember) any damned crack in the pavement, each and every shopkeeper's quirks and where you could always, always find the best tarte Tatin in the entire universe (L' Ecritoire, a humble bistro on Place de la Sorbonne that I am almost afraid to revisit, lest I would be disappointed). I have loved every single second of that adventure, even when it brought me to crocodile tears - to paraphrase Rimbaud, who the hell is serious at twenty?

This may come as very corny and predictable, but that version of Paris does not really exist anymore, global Disneyfication being what it is. And Patrick Bruel, the French postmodern crooner who made all of us Nineties teenagers swoon once upon a time, still dishes out his wishy washy songs, with alarming regularity. They are to Gainsbourg's witticisms exactly what a cup of Americano is to a real ristretto enjoyed at the Sant'Eustachio, in Rome. However, something of that magic still survives in this particular song, which narrates the ten-year reunion of a group of former university mates. Perhaps because the clip was shot at The Bombardier, an English pub behind the Panthéon and smack dab opposite the Sorbonne Law School. A place I only know too well, even if now the awning is blue, not red: