Lights. Camera. Action.

On Sunday evening Charles and Clydette de Groot invited PWW faculty and staff to a soirée at their apartment on the Champs de Mars. A charm-filled apartment with unimpeded views of the Eiffel tower. To match the location I slipped into my dark blue cocktail dress and silver sandals and swept my hair up high.

Tom had his camera rolling as the guests walked through the door. I took a gift for Clydette - one of my photographs - and presented it to her on entering. She was thrilled and showed the photograph to the rolling camera as a close-up. I made sure to invite her and Charles to my vernissage.

It was a delightful event - a chance to drink nothing but champagne and eat wonderful food (filo-wrapped asparagus with sweet chilli dip, satay sticks with finely chopped chives, mozarella ball, basil and tomato kebabs, enormous prawns with alioli). I listened, I talked, I charmed. I elicited some new guests for the vernissage.

Clydette and I shared our lists of the good and bad books written about Paris. I discussed moose with my professor for the coming week (Kevin Jackson) who will be teaching a group of us how to produce Creative Non-Fiction. I listened with attentive ears when Charlotte Puckette mentioned her need for a photographer for her forthcoming cookery book - The Ethnic London Cookbook. I talked to Siobahn about the difficulties of initiating cultural change in an organisation. It was both fun and stimulating - a fabulous evening.

Outside in the street I slipped off my silver sandals, delved into my bag for a pair of flat ballereins and happily rode a solitary metro home.

Reading in the afternoon

On Sunday morning I ran one of the beautiful Paris circuits that we developed when we lived here - it involved going under the Eiffel tower, along the Seine, through the Tuileries and then I got delightfully lost in the streets of the 7e and 6e until I eventually found myself back on Boulevard du Montparnasse and therefore "home". Vicky and Pascal leave tomorrow for Ile de Ré so I spent some quality time with them and then headed out - still ravenous - for registration at Forum 104 which are the rented premises for the Paris Writers Workshop this coming week. I totally acknowledge that without PWW I would not be here now.

John Baxter, Sherry Stringfield and Patrick McGilligan read excerpts from various pieces of literature on Sunday afternoon to welcome the attendees for the subsequent week of the Paris Writers Workshop. As I entered the garden at Forum 104 I saw Tom and Coco both filming the reading, both trying hard to ignore the miniature waterfall making more noise than you would ever think possible behind them. 

My job was to meet and greet. I added in a personal "promote" to go with the postcard in each individual pack. I need an audience next Thursday and this was one of my opportunities to "woo". I wooed as many people as I could.

Movie Dinner

After several e-mail exchanges (mutually complimentary) and a couple of phone calls (about timing) Tom Rudolph and I eventually met in the lobby of his very bijou hotel on rue de l'Université in the 6e. He wore the big smile of an adopted Parisian returning home.

His first words were to admire my dress (see previous blog posting - phew) and to describe a small restaurant down the street that he is particularly fond of. We ordered aperitifs followed by dinner and wine and swapped tales from childhood to Paris and back again seamlessly for several hours. 

He asked me what I found so inspirational about Paris. I looked up the height of the building dwarfing the street in shadow as the evening sun fell below the roof line and pointed out the golden glow in two window panels and the last vestiges of sun on two bars of a three-barred balcony. Tom did not follow my line of sight but was looking at me. "You should see your face right now," he said. "You are in love."

Practical movie conversation was limited to the sound equipment (lost by Air France between LA and CDG). They mis-labelled it "Transit". Interesting movie conversation was about how he knows Sherry Stringfield (she is his next door neighbour in LA). 

Back at his hotel I met Sherry and her boyfriend and Coco (the other videographer). I will see them around over the next couple of days but our time together is Thursday, filming Paris through my eyes. Sherry and I will have microphones on and I will take her on a tour of the 18e, cameras in hands, walking, talking and photographing. The crew, and Sherry will then come to the vernissage and film there too. Tom promised not to break any plates.

La vie quotidienne

Everyday life is the subject matter for my photos. Where the ordinary meets with the unexpected to produce humour, beauty, irony... Pictured left is Victor, Vicky and Pascal's eldest son (who speaks with my accent in English better than I do).

I went shopping with Vicky. Ordinary, everyday grocery shopping for her. Vernissage shopping for me. And then I realised I did not have any bags to carry the 6 bottles of wine, 4 bottles of water (I am guessing what people will be drinking!!!) and foil piles of yet more salty snacks that I had just purchased. "Pas de problème", said Vicky. "Tu prends le chariot!" And so for four blocks I pushed the shopping cart along the sloping sidewalks, in the rain, partially covered by a small black umbrella.

Ile St Louis is a special place and is home to a gallerist - Jaqueline Lemoine. I called in on the off-chance she might be willing to display a poster for me. The question formed and reformed in my mind; I asked if she could offer suggestions as to where I might display posters to encourage a decent audience to attend. She shook her head gently and remarked I should try the local cafés and restaurants in the Montparnasse area. The message was clear - "not here honey". I kept my posters rolled and hidden in my bag and headed out of the gallery for a mouth-cleansing ice-cream (rose-flavoured raspberry) followed by a visit to friends on Boulevard St Germain.

I arrived some time around 3pm as Margaretha was cooking blinis and smoked salmon for brunch. Preparing to leave to meet Tom (the director) for dinner Margaretha asked what I was going to wear. I looked myself up and down - summer skirt, light weight grey top, summer ankle boots - and replied "ce que je porte maintenant". Cries of outrage ensued. I was to call Tom, invent an excuse for being late, go back home, change into high heels and get it right. With honorary Parisienne status I must not let the side down! I acquiesced. In the RER my excuse arrived serendipitously - a fault on the line meant the trains were not running. I phoned Tom to discover he had got embroiled in other activities and would love to delay our dinner date for half an hour. I ran home, changed into a dress and high heels and flew up to rue de l'Université to meet the man who has paid me the biggest compliment in choosing to feature my photographs in his film.

Previous films made here include...

Saturday I had a meeting with Lois Grjebine, the owner of this marvelous apartment (pictured left) who has kindly offered to host my photo exhibition entitled "The Other Side of Paris". She is a woman of character and a social calendar to rival the busiest in town. The apartment is enormous with the most amazing triple height window in the sitting room. Original artworks hang on the walls interspersed with African masks. More artwork rests on random easels.

I had the vague thought that it might be fun for Lois to have a film crew in her apartment, then she told me how a great French film of 1981 by Claude Pinoteau "La boum" was filmed here featuring the novice Sophie Marceau! The film crew broke plates (which they then replaced), scuffed the floor and generally made a mess. Lois fiercely expressed her concern over the crew arriving on Thursday. I made suitable mollifying noises.

We discussed how I will hang the images and I explained my ingenious plan to which she nodded her acceptance. She asked to see some of the photographs that I had brought with me to this meeting and scrutinized them and nodded her approval. Then she told me she was the Chief Photo Editor for a newspaper and had met one of my heros - Robert Doisneau.

I feel smaller, but in very good company.

Blue Eiffel tower from Passy metro

Really too gorgeous - I ran through la tour Eiffel today - there are a bundle of blue lights piled in a heap underneath it.

A Night in Gormenghast

Friday evening found Sebastian and I back at NYU Paris in Passy - a village I am becoming very fond of. Caroline, the director of this part of NYU, had arranged for a glass of kir for attendees and PWW (through Kate) provided small salty snacks! A fed and watered audience are always more receptive! 

Sebastian's talk led us through his father's work as an illustrator. In the UK Mervyn Peake is known as the author of Mr Pye and the Gormenghast/Titus trilogy but his first love was illustration and one of his first commissions was for pen and ink drawings for RL Stevenson's "Treasure Island". Sebastian explained how his father had him stand on the kitchen table in their unheated house in Sark for hours on end as he modelled for the character of Jim! I was hooked into the tale of a father who not only drew his kids but drew for them. We saw sketches of pirates and heard about an igloo that Mervyn made for the kids when a deep snow fell on Sark. 

The most powerful illustrations to me were the Glass Blowers (now on show in the Manchester Art Gallery) who were blowing glass cathode ray tubes for the bomber planes in WW2 unbeknown to Mervyn as he sketched them at their trade. As an illustrator foremost, Mervyn sketched his was through the Gormenghast books, his manuscripts were full of drawings and Sebastian says his father saw the scenes in his visual imagination before describing them in prose.

I collected my first autograph of this event as Sebastian kindly signed a poster I designed for the event and dedicated it to "My great friend and colleague Kate". I was truly touched. We had a farewell dinner and parted company - each their metro station and their route to the next adventure.