Paris Notebook

The French President says he wants to rule as a Jupiter — but he doesn’t look like a Jupiter to me. Not the bearded beefcake painted by Rubens in the Louvre, anyway. Macron’s more a clean-shaven Mercury, messenger god and patron deity of the financial services industry. So far the message has been: ‘En Marche!’ Forwards! But forwards where? ‘Macron est nul,’ says the graffiti at Porte Maillot.

Imiss London’s parks. Parisians tell me where not to walk. The Bois de Boulogne? Pick-up joint. The Seine? Rats. I have been taking the Métro to Château de Vincennes to walk in the woods. There’s a migrant camp pitched along one avenue. I never see a soul, only the hummocky hoods of tents under the trees.

I am living in Paris in the unofficial role of Diplomatic Wag. Though since I am neither wife nor girlfriend, but fiancée, or, in best Franglais, la vielle balle et chaîne, I have been searching for a new acronym. Foho (Foreign Office Hanger On)? Andy is a ‘Directeur de SIN’, a demonic job description out of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. SIN is the government’s Science and Innovation Network, promoting collaboration between international scientists. There is goodwill in laboratories on both sides of the Channel to go on working together post-You-Know-What.

Brexit is pronounced to rhyme with Brigitte, as in Bardot. Parisians ask if you’re American or English and when you say English they bring up Brexitte. What do you think of it, I ask. ‘C’est à vous,’ shrug the butchers, the bakers, the buckwheat-crêpe-makers. It’s your decision. When I have the same conversation with curators, press officers, gallerists, they say: ‘C’est comme un suicide.’ Which suggests that the small shopkeeper and l’homme de van blanc are admirably of one mind in Calais and in Kent.