In a bid to shamelessly use my holiday photos as ‘internet content’, here are some photographs I took after a few day’s sabbatical in gay Paris. As they say over there, “j’ai oublier mon cahier.”
The photo on the left may look like a romantic vista, but do you see that small building near the trees to the right? Well only a few minutes before I poached this shot of some happy newlyweds, I went for a slash round there only to be greeted with an indescribably dreadful scent. On looking up I then found out what Indiana Jones must have felt like when he realises he’s surrounded by snakes, but instead of hissing serpents I was surrounded by about a dozen separate instances of human excrement. How did I know it wasn’t dog muck? Well Parisian dogs may be pretty classy, but I’m pretty sure they don’t use toilet paper. I somehow managed to exit with my shoes unscathed but the damage was done and to me at least, Paris has forever lost its romantic sheen.
They sure do love wheeled apparatus on the continent. I’ve heard in London you’re never more than five metres from a rat, but in Paris you’re never more than five metres from a business man on a scooter/Segway/snake-board with his tie blowing back in the wind. One particular standout was a forty year old woman in leather hot pants who zipped past on roller-skates whilst shouting in sheer delight. My trigger finger wasn’t quick enough off the mark, so when she’d stopped at the lights, I chased after to get a quick snap of the Parisian version of Starlight Express. Sadly she didn’t hear my cries of ‘let me get a picture’ under the uplifting sound of European dance music blasting out of her headphones, and skated off in the distance to forever be the roller-skating mad-head that got away.