Never has the title of my blog been more apt than during this last week in Paris (for those who don’t know, it comes from this Belle and Sebastian song). Temperatures hit 39 degrees, a peak I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in my life before and would be quite happy to avoid ever experiencing again.
Being a Brit, and never having blogged about the weather, I feel I have so far betrayed my national stereotype, but I am going to fully make up for that now. It was hot. Really really hot. It has just about cooled down, which means I am able to sit down and type this without sweat dripping from my pores into my keyboard. This time last week, I was sitting on the balcony desperately eating ice cream, wondering how sleep in a non-air-conditioned flat that was 33 degrees was going to work. It turns out, it wasn’t.
My main issue with the heat was clothes. I believe you can divide people’s dress sense into two categories: summer dressers, and winter dressers, and I am committed to the second camp. I like jumpers, I like black skinny jeans (sorry not cool anymore, but nothing beats them), I like turtlenecks that make me look a little bit like Steve Jobs more than any other item of clothing. I love wool and tweed and leather. I do not, however, know how to be chic in the heat. Having a job means slobbing about in tiny cotton shorts and a vest top is hardly an option, but neither is my loyal work wardrobe of jeans and a nice top.
I am lucky enough to work in an air-conditioned office, but to get there requires a metro journey. Not at all the dream in a heatwave. Tubes are sticky and smelly at the best of times, but during la canicule they were unbearable- imagine Dante’s descent into hell, only a bit hotter. For the first time, I made no effort to get a seat, in the knowledge that the distinctive sound of thighs ungluing themselves from faux leather is not one anyone needs to hear in the morning.
I ended up resorting to some pretty strange tactics to cool down, including putting wet socks on my feet (didn’t work), putting my pyjamas in the freezer (didn’t work) and crowning myself Chief Air Current Implementer, attempting to create a draught between the flat’s two windows…. didn’t work. It was less “travel south until your skin turns warmer”, more “travel south until your skin is swathed in a permanent layer of warm sweat”.
To top it all off, on Friday morning my best friends in the world descended on Paris to visit me, which obviously sounds great, but actually they selfishly made the flat even hotter. I joke, of course (but have I made it clear how hot it was??): it turns out Paris is a pretty cool place to herd about town, even when it’s not cool at all.
Les Berges de Seine, in my opinion, are the coolest of the many cool places Paris contains. On our short, hangover-fuzzy visit there, we climbed a giant hexagonal structure, lazed in hammocks and played Uno in a tipi. Cool and cooling, and I hear Paris Plages is due to kick off there any time soon. Add to that Bastille Day on Tuesday and the Tour de France making its final leg along the Champs Elysées in a couple of weeks time, and I’m starting to think I could bear this heat, if only to stay in Paris a little while longer…
Ellie's Year Abroad Blog 