55/12 - Easy Like Sunday morning

Sunday August 8th.

We don’t hear the church bells till 10 o’clock this morning. Obviously Paris doesn’t rise early to go to Mass. It’s a grey day - not at all like the stifling heat of the last time we spent August here. We had forgotten that there’s no fresh bread or croissants on Sunday so we make do with half a loaf from yesterday, heated in the oven - but it doesn’t amell or taste the same. Today its my turn to feel tired - or maybe it’s the weather. In the mirror I can see how much good this break has done me. I have a golden tan for the first time in years. My eyebrows and eyelashes are bleached white from the sun and my hair isn’t far behind….I am incredulously blonde - which would be okay if I were a 19 year old Californian girl or one of the English lizard necked burnt orange menopausal matrons who hang out in Spain! But I look well, and the sugars are under control, so I’m happy. I will get back to OZ rested which is just as well as it looks like we have to go into another draft of this film script the minute I get back. Still I am grateful there is work waiting as we are going through money like water. Paris isn’t Provence. Understandable everything costs more. A coffee that was 2.20 euros in Provence is 4 euros here…almost double. I’m budgeting carefully but don’t want to cook every day though eating out is very expensive.
We take some time to wander round the Marais and get our bearings. There’s a Sunday morning market in the square just before the Hotel de ville - mostly fruit and vegetables and African trinkets. Another little square hosts Le Maison de Magique which I mentally list as a place to possibly go. I LOVE table magic, sleight of hand. I don’t want to know how it’s done - for then it wouldn’t be magic. Life and love are a bit like that - once you actually understand how the magic is done, the journey is pretty well over. There’s a jazz concert tonight in the Rue des Lombards and we make plans to go after dinner - which is a pretty basic fettucine Carbonara. It’s tribute to Thelonius Monk…who can be inaccessible even when HE played…let alone listening to someone interpretr him. In the afternoon we watch people relaxing on the Plages…. The artificial beaches that Paris sets up during the summer down by the Seine. There are kids building sandcastles, parents chilling, couples having picnics - there are even about 10 Patonque or Boules pitches in the sand and Tony and I but that down as another thing to do IF we get around to it. Later we put on Tony’s fabulous CD of The Gerry Mulligan Big Band Live. It is soooo great, and so cool, that suddenly we decide a Thelonius Monk tribute will be an awful letdown and we cancel plans to go. We really haven’t done anything much to speak of…but still we feel it was a good day.