Devour...Paris: Brian has the right idea

On the radio last week, a miscellaneous artist was discussing her latest album. She panted away about her modern euro-dance-soul-pop style (is this a genre now?) sporned from her discovery of spiritual faith, a brush with her deceased grandmothers ghost and a non-controversial coming-of-age sexual discovery. I am not sure her PR team knew they were promoting a single entitled “Shake dat Bootay” when her script was briefed.

A view from graduation. The Year I Lived The Dream.

Oddly enough, The Booty Shaker did say one thing that stuck with me. I know! I know…I blame the temporary lapse in my intellectual firewall on a long day in the sun. Miss Shaker: “As an artist, I am constantly traversing the line between the emotional and the sentimental”. From this statement I took the basic dichotomy: Emotional, good. Sentimental, bad.

Summer time by the Seine. A picnic of chefs.

While querying whether either emotion or sentiment was harmed at all in the making of “Shake dat Bootay” I found myself rising to the defence of sentiment. Brian Adams and Richard Marx have each bankrolled lucrative careers on the love songs and dedications ballad model (OK, perhaps not my strongest argument). The e-dating community thrives on an intravenous feed of sentimental promises and nobody can fend off those tears in the airport arrivals hall (or the credits of Love Actually if you lazy enough to make your loved ones cab it home from Heathrow).

The Winner, Nachos, TGC. Second Place, Nachos, The Moose.

In the taxi on my way to Gare du Nord for the last time, I was wearing a sentimental unitard. Even whilst arguing with the typically boorish driver in my best Taxi Driver French (a measure of fluency whereby the speaker can discourse with taxi drivers with confidence (often, but not always, aided by a glass or two of vino prior to travel)) I withheld the urge to affectionately punch his arm whilst exclaiming “Oh you! Good times, good times”.

I'll just have something light, like a salad.

9.13am to London St Pancras International. On way. No more summer time glasses (bottles) of chilled rose at La Palette with my girlfriends. No more Sunday nights with caramelised pork and a glass (bottle) of Morgon at L’Avant Comptoir. No more Grom. No more Prescription Cocktail Club. No L’as du Fallafel. No….ohhhhh!!!

First Rice and Fish then Rice and Beans. California goodness in Paris.

Already I am fighting the demise of this blog post into the rhetoric of a US high school valedictorian’s speech. If Green Day had released “Time of you Life” in French I would attach a sound link. Instead I’ll retreat to the barren executive format of dot points in my farewell to Paris and The Year I Lived The Dream (hey, I said no sentimentality, not retrospective cliché…I’m claiming a difference). It’s just easier for us both this way, Paris, jusqu'à la prochaine fois.

The Ultimate soothing broth, Pho Boeuf Cru, Pho 14

To a loop of Sebastain Tellier’s “La Ritournelle” I’d like to thank all those calories which contributed to the making of this year. Amazing. In no particular order, I’d especially like to thank:

• Picnics by the Seinne, Le Cordon Bleu style

• Gin Gin Mules, Prescription Cocktail Club

• The Stonker Sandwich, Cosi

• Foie Gras, everywhere

• Café gelato, Grom

• Falafal Sandwich, L’as du Fallafel

• Une Bouteille de Morgon, L’Avant Comptoir

• Brie de Meaux

• Mixed Taco’s, Rice and Beans

• Pho, Pho 14

• Nachos, The Great Canadian

• Giant Salads, everywhere