petite anglaise

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that separating from someone you were not married to is actually more expensive than divorce.

Take France Telecom for example.

A couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that my phone number was still registered in Mr Frog’s name. As I have always harboured a burning, secret desire to see my name in print (even if it is only in the pages blanches), and didn’t particularly want to speak to any old flames or schoolfriends that might look up Mr Frog at some point in the future, I decided to have the entry amended.

The lady from France Telecom who explained the procedure to follow was uncharacteristically helpful. A fax, signed by Mr Frog, authorising a transfer of the line, plus a copy of my bank details was all that was required. A couple of days later, I noted that my name already appeared in the online phone directory.

That was fiendishly simple and efficient, for France, I thought to myself.

And then I received the first bill bearing my name.

€ 55.00 – Services ponctuels ou occasionnels (ouverture de ligne)

I phone France Telecom, to report what I am – in my misguided optimism – determined to see as an error. I haven’t just moved in, and I don’t have a new telephone number, so I can’t possibly be charged a “connection fee”, can I?

First, I explain my problem to the service clients in a calm, almost cheerful manner.

“But you were informed of the cost when you enquired as to what the procedure was to carry out the name change.” states the lady, voice dripping with boredom.

“No, absolutely not. I was informed of no such thing!” I splutter, suffering from an acute sense of humour failure.

My call is transferred to the service facturation, where I have the pleasure of starting my complaint all over again from the beginning, minus the cheerfulness.

The man ascertains that I have not changed my telephone number, and (pretends to) consult with a supervisor. When he returns, he tells me it is absolutely normal to have been charged in this way.

I am livid. “It’s daylight robbery,” I shout, trying desperately to think how to say “preposterous” in French, but making do with a forceful “c’est aberrant!”

Getting worked up like this makes no difference whatsoever to anything except my life expectancy, which is considerably shortened.

When he can get a word in edgeways, Mr France Telecom gleefully delivers his parting shot:

“There are some cases in which the transfer of a line is free. If a line is transferred between spouses, or if you were PACSé for example.”

I knew Mr Frog and I should have got married.

I asked my Lover to buy a one-way ticket to Paris, so that I could pretend he was here to stay for good.

I had been cautioned, by many of the people who read petite anglaise and wish me well, that after the desolate lows of last week, I should be aware that spending time with my Lover would no doubt prove to be a palliative therapy, relieving the symptoms and reducing the suffering without curing the root causes. Problems would be forgotten, temporarily, but would not miraculously dissipate.

They were not wrong.

I spent a simply heavenly weekend in his company. The most mundane things, like shopping for food in the supermarket, or fetching a DVD, were blissful. We talked. We strolled around my neighbourhood. We went to bed at unlikely times of day. Happiness was pottering in my flat, knowing he was in the next room making a cup of tea.

Sometimes I almost had to pinch myself to see whether it was all real. I think he felt the same. A couple of months ago all he knew of me was what I had written. Now there he was in my apartment, contemplating the strangely familiar view from my balcony, known to him previously only as the header image at the top of this page.

I was however conscious of the demons lurking just on the periphery of my vision. I would catch sight of them, fleetingly, out of the corner of my eye, and knew they were waiting to pounce in a moment of vulnerability.

From time to time I would wobble dangerously: some trifling thing would bring sudden, unnecessary tears to my eyes and my spirits would plummet. A sensation of falling, similar to that which I get sometimes when hovering between sleep and wakefulness, ‘landing’ on my bed with a sudden jolt. I was torn between attempting to put on a brave face for my Lover, or baring my soul and running the risk of wounding him, making him feel powerless. Because even when he is with me, holding me in his strong arms, and not stranded at the other end of a phone line, there is only so much he can do to help.

I chose honesty. Because that is what we do best. Love might not make me invincible, but as long as I am mindful of this, and know that I do still need to exorcise my demons without his help, we can weather this storm together.

I fell into a hole yesterday.

Not literally, of course.

Despite the fighting talk in my last post, despite the fact that my lover is coming to stay with me for two weeks while Tadpole is away on vacation with mamie et papy, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad. Fragile. Brittle. Exhausted.

I knew it was a temporary bout of depression, and that I wasn’t seeing things clearly, but that didn’t help. I couldn’t find my way out.

Tadpole was adorable. She saw me crying silent tears and came to give me a big hug. She fetched a tissue for my runny nose (I have a summer cold – it is not helping).

“Mummy’s tired. Mummy fait dodo on di bed,” she said, maternally, climbing up onto my bed and motioning for me to join her.

Not that I would actually be allowed to sleep. I’d barely closed my eyes when she screeched “WAKE UP!”, only milimetres from my right ear.

I opened my eyes, pretending to have been woken with a jump, and Tadpole thought this was so hilarious that we had to repeat the exercise at least ten times.

There is nothing worse than finding yourself unable to muster up even the ghost of a smile when you are playing with your child.

I have been puzzling recently over the best way to describe the situation in which I find myself at work. The French have a phrase which fits perfectly – “harcèlement moral” – but the naming of this phenomenon is relatively recent and I could find no translation in my university French/English dictionary.

Yesterday afternoon saw me in floods of tears, curled up in a foetal position in our work kitchen. After being the focus of a barrage of insulting remarks throughout the morning, for which I could find no rational explanation or justification, it was a phone call from departing boss which was the final straw.

“Well, I won’t list all the ways in which you could have been more helpful this morning…” was the stinging rebuke. Given that I had done everything in my power to be just that, the remark really stung. I was speechless.

By the time he called back however, the hurt had turned to anger and I was ready to riposte. “Perhaps you could list the things I ought to have done to be more helpful this morning, I’d be very interested to hear what they are.”

The explanation, when it came, was so preposterous that I will probably laugh about it, one day. One of the accusations levelled at me, in all seriousness, was that I had had the gall to offer him a slice of someone’s birthday chocolate cake when he hadn’t yet had a cup of coffee.

I must remember to add coffee and tea making to my job description when I next have an appraisal form to fill in.

Some of his other criticisms were more sweeping statements. I “operate in a vaccuum”. I “don’t talk to him enough”. I fail to see how it falls to me and me only to initiate contact with him and wonder if a word like “enough” can be quantified, for the avoidance of doubt. More importantly though, I feel that his reproaches make it sound more like we are in a personal relationship than an empoyer/employee situation, and that is wrong on so many levels.

The insults continued to fly until I finally cracked, and told him, in a wobbly voice, that I needed to excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and was there anything he required before I put the phone down?

Leaving the office that evening, I felt sure that the only way out of the situation was to resign – even if, financially, it is the last thing I want or need to do right now – and made a mental note to dig out a copy of my CV.

Today, however, I woke up seeing things in a very different light.

Somewhat peversely, the instant I decided to label what is happening to me “workplace bullying”, I started to feel much better.

I called the HR director in London for a chat, in confidence. I explained my situation: both that I had a problem, which I was trying to deal with in my own way, but that I felt there was no-one to turn to in this office who doesn’t report directly to my boss. She was supportive, and said I had done the right thing in talking to her, and suggested I keep a record of significant events going forward. We decided that the chat which my boss is proposing, to “clear the air” before he leaves on holiday next week (which, interestingly, he wished to hold outside the office), should definitely take place in the office, preferably with a neutral third party sitting in.

I will not be beaten by a bully.

In 1995 I would probably have ordered a snakebite and blackcurrant in a damp and dingy cellar nightclub, with a name like “The Swamp” or “Moles”.

This weekend’s drink of choice was a pitcher of Pimms and lemonade, the classiest of which was served in the private gardens of the Royal Crescent Hotel.

I think that sums up nicely how we have changed in ten years.

The “reunion”, which started out as an ambitious plan to reunite a whole host of fellow “eurostuds” (European Studies and Modern Languages graduates), was actually a rather a low-key, intimate affair. So much the better. There were two or three people I really wanted to catch up with properly, and not having to feel obliged to make polite small talk with lots of others meant I could concentrate my attention fully on those who mattered.

Walking around the campus alone on Friday, before everyone else arrived, with 1995 vintage Renaissance on my Ipod, I let my feet guide me to the house where I lived in my first year. The curtains in the window bore the same leafy pattern. The trees in front had grown, and now almost obscured my third floor window. I stood there for a long while, letting memories wash over me.

Going to university, for me, was about becoming a new person. Starting over in a place where no-one had ever known me as a bespectacled, swotty, shy teenager. Leaving behind the heartache of the traumatic split with my first boyfriend, and the friends who had turned out to be more his than mine. It was about re-inventing myself. The exhilaration of living my own life, far from the constraints of the parental home, going out whenever I pleased, spending my (ahem, well, the government’s money) on precisely what I chose, answering to no-one but my own conscience.

I loved my new life, my new friends and the new me wholeheartedly, and spent the happiest years of my life to date in Bath.

Ten years later, in the process of shedding my skin and re-inventing myself all over again, I stand at a crossroads and contemplate a future far from the city of light.

I like to think that ten years from now, I will no longer refer to my time in Bath as the happiest years of my life.

A train carries me in the direction of Paris, away from my lover, at breakneck speed.

There is a plane to be caught the next day, a long-anticipated university reunion to attend in Bath. However, the excitement I felt when I first booked that trip, my elation at the possibility of a weekend where I could slip back ten years and catch a fleeting glimpse of my twenty three year old self, has largely evaporated.

I wish I wasn’t going alone.

I know we will have a fantastic jaunt down memory lane. I also know that I will have to bite my lip so as not to tell anyone who cares to listen with the story of how I met a lovely man two short months ago. A man who fell in love with petite anglaise before he even met me. Nor will I tell them that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I intend to marry him one day.

Every single time I close my eyes, whether it be in a train, a metro, at home in bed, or even, for the briefest second, in front of my monitor at work, I see his face. I taste his skin. Flashbacks to moments of overwhelming intensity cause me to inhale sharply.

Soon after I began writing petite anglaise, the blog was mentioned in the Guardian newsblog. That day I almost skipped around the office. I was unable to share my glee with any of my colleagues, so I hugged my glowing secret to myself.

That is how I feel today. Almost by chance, I have stumbled upon something unbelievably precious, which not many of my nearest and dearest dare to believe in, at this early stage.

I smile a secret smile whenever I think of what we are, and will be.

I open the letterbox, and, to my surprise, pull out two identical envelopes, both containing train tickets. Upon closer inspection, I realise, with a sinking feeling, that they are duplicate tickets for the same journey.

I curse the SNCF and their wonderful, shiny, new website.

Later that day, I phone 3635 to see how the situation can be remedied. First, I am told that it has nothing to do with the SNCF whatsoever, as the website is run by another company, “Voyages SNCF”. Well I never! A French fonctionnaire merrily* shunting the responsibility for my problem onto another person/department/company. How novel.

I persist, undeterred, and manage to establish that although any complaints about the shortcomings of the website should be addressed to Voyages SNCF, to obtain reimbursement of my ticket, I simply need to take it to any station, before the date of travel.

This was yesterday. Date of travel being today. After which I would no longer be able to obtain a full refund of my € 100.

I resolve to spend my lunch hour in St Lazare station, the nearest mainline station to my office. As I approach the guichets grandes lignes, I am not a little relieved to note that there are only three or four people in each queue. This should be painless, I think to myself, idly wondering which sandwich I will by from Paul for lunch once I am done. A Dieppois? A fruit tart, to celebrate?

The employee listens patiently to my explanation, without interrupting, and when I have finished points silently to a very small sign: “Départs Normandie uniquement”.

I am not going to Normandy.

Nor can I strangle this man with my bare hands, because he is protected by bulletproof glass.

I make my way, stomach growling, to the opposite end of the station, where there is another sign marked “Billeterie Grandes Lignes“.

Oh. My. God.

Picture a large, windowless, dimly lit room with ticket desks lining three sides. The room was last refurbished circa 1960. The colour scheme is brown, on brown. There are fourteen desks, lining three sides of the room, of which only six are open. The queue zigzags back and forth across the centre of the room, in a decidedly orderly fashion for France, the irritated, overheated people having been shepherded into submission using barriers and red tape. I start to count how many irritated, overheated people must be served before it is my turn. I stop at 50, deciding, on balance, that I’d rather not know.

The time is 13.20; I left the office at 12.50.

Some people in the queue came prepared, and nibble on baguette sandwiches, or read books. I have no such means of sustenance or entertainment at my disposal, so I content myself with fuming inwardly at the number of SNCF employees who are milling about behind the ticket desks seemingly unoccupied; chatting, or just standing around with their arms folded, calmly surveying the mayhem, in full view of the people queuing. Hardly very tactful behaviour.

Occasionally, an employee comes on duty and deigns to sit down at one of the empty desks and pull up the blind to start work. But not before they have sauntered around the room at the speed of a snail and kissed both cheeks of every single fellow fonctionnairein the room.

For every blind that is pulled up, another is lowered, elsewhere in the room.

I finally reach the front of the queue at 14.02. A pleasant and efficient young gentleman with a ponytail refunds my ticket in seconds. I smile, pathetically grateful, as all along I had been imagining what I would do if once I got to the front of the queue, I was told that I was in the wrong place for refunds.

I arrive back at the office at 14.20, looking forward to consoling myself with a sandwich and a strawberry tart.

I see that my boss is back from lunch, looking pointedly at his watch, so I return to my desk, stomach still protesting, crestfallen, and consign my lunch to the recesses of a desk drawer.

At that precise moment in time, I would gladly have paid in excess of € 100 to be able to eat my fruit tart in peace.

*a figure of speech. There was nothing merry about the voice of my interlocuteur. Disinterested, slightly dim and very bored would all be more apt descriptions.

I hang up, reluctantly, after another long conversation with my absent lover, and feel around on the bed for my glasses.

Odd. I thought I had put them down on the pillow beside me.

I scrabble around pointlessly on the bedside table, then the computer desk, narrowly avoiding a calamity involving a large glass of tonic water and some vital electronic equipment, not reputed for its fondness for fizzy drinks.

Nothing.

I slide off the bed and try the bookcase, the fireplace, the chest of drawers.

Patience is not a virtue I possess in large quantities, so I begin cursing under my breath, not exactly seeing the funny side of the ridiculous catch 22 situation in which I find myself: need glasses, in order to find glasses.

I feel something yield under my bare foot.

First rule of living alone: if you have soft-focus eyes, never place your dark brown Gucci glasses on a dark brown hardwood floor.

**************

Tadpole and I bundle ourselves into the lift. We are late. Again. She is carrying her Miffy bag, which accompanies her to the childminder’s every day, and I am carrying a weekend bag, a handbag and two bags of rubbish. It’s a tight squeeze in our minute lift, and I can’t even see Tadplole, as she is below the bag horizon.

“Mind your fingers!” I caution, as the lift doors strain closed around our luggage.

I empty the recycling rubbish into the yellow bin, wondering who will have the job of separating papers from cans and plastic. I suspect no-one does. I have a rather pessimistic theory that all the rubbish all gets taken to the same place, and that the yellow bin is just there to lull us into feeling like we have done our environmental duty. The bin in question is almost empty, and comes up to my chest.

Rubbish bag duly emptied, I grope for keys in my handbag.

Nothing.

I try the front pocket.

Still nothing.

A long, thin icicle slides down my spine as I realise that no-one in Paris has a spare set of keys to my flat, the letter box or the pushchair room. Taking a deep breath, I mentally retrace my steps and can almost feel the cold keyring dangling loosely from my index finger, just seconds before I started to empty the rubbish into the bin. I peer downwards, gloomily, looking for a glint of metal and the hair bobble attached to the keyring.

“What has mummy done now?” I wail at Tadpole, who looks rather puzzled as the top half of mummy disappears into a stinking dustbin.

Arms flailing, I stir the junk mail and packaging around a bit, straining to hear the muffled jangle of keys. My hair is falling unhelpfully across my eyes and my glasses have slid to the very end of my nose, where they threaten to fall off – a fact not unrelated to the earlier incident which saw them bent rather out of shape.

I withdraw my head for a moment, surfacing for air, only to see the sun glinting off something metallic in Tadpole’s tiny palm.

I have no recollection whatsoever of giving them to her. Sometimes I fear for my sanity.

Second rule of living alone: give spare set of keys to nearby friend (Mr Frog) to avoid repeated coronary incidents.

Petite anglaise began blogging on 7 July 2004.

Looking at those first posts, which quite frankly make me cringe when I re-read them now, I realise things have come a long way since then. The blog has evolved, organically, without any sort of master plan, and I have undoubtedly evolved with it.

Let me take this opportunity to thank you all for reading, blogrolling, commenting, emailing and nominating petite anglaise for awards in the past year. It means a great deal: without you, I am nothing.

I have no idea if petite will make it to a second blogiversary, but in honour of today, I wonder if you might consider leaving a comment in the box below and telling me one thing about yourself that not many people know.

I promise I won’t tell anyone.

I have a phobia about walking into bars on my own.

The painfully shy teenage girl who lurks somewhere inside, squinting anxiously out at the world through National Health glasses, takes control of my body in situations of stress.

I phoned, still a few minutes away on foot, and checked precisely where he was. That was the first time we heard each other’s voices.

At the entrance to the bar I took a deep, ragged breath and forced my reluctant legs to carry me forward, past clusters of strangers positioned at intervals along the zinc bar. His friends spotted me first, and smiled welcomingly; he was standing with his back to me, but saw the change in his friends’ expressions, and turned. I think I said his name, and mumbled something about how his hair was shorter than on the pictures I had seen. But the first few seconds are all a bit of a blur.

I know now what was going through his mind when he first saw me, but at the time I was blissfully ignorant, and thought I was probably a bit foolish to have attached such an inordinate amount of importance to this meeting.

Later that evening, the fact that there was a knee-weakeningly strong connection between us was acknowledged, but not acted upon. I will remember standing on the corner of the rue Oberkampf for the rest of my life, my whole being in turmoil, struggling desperately to come to a decision. His arms were wrapped around me and I clung on for dear life while a million conflicting thoughts swirled, slightly drunkenly, around in my head. I motioned to a taxi, which drew to a halt on the opposite side of the road, and, even then, I didn’t know whether good sense and morality would prevail, and I would clamber into it on my own, or whether I would give in to the demon perched on my shoulder, whispering in my ear that I should sieze the opportunity. Go back to his hotel, or forever rue the day.

Finally, I broke free and flung myself into the taxi, before I could change my mind. As it pulled away, I looked back in anguish. Would I allow myself to see him again? Would I ever find out how it felt to be kissed by him?

I knew that this meeting could potentially alter the entire course of my life, if only I chose to let it.

Paris is rapidly losing what little hold it still had over me.

I spent most of the return train journey dangerously close to tears. Saying goodbye to my lover after another idyllic weekend is becoming more and more of a wrench, even if I was, simultaneously, looking forward to seeing Tadpole after four days away. To add insult to injury, my ‘reserved’ seat had been double booked, meaning that in the absence of any other vacant seats, I had to spend the entire trip sitting on a fold down strapontin in the area between two carriages. There didn’t appear to be any air conditioning – or any oxygen for that matter – and my attempts to read a book were thwarted by my head dipping forwards at regular intervals as I fought a losing battle to stay awake.

I arrived back in the capital late on Sunday afternoon, at my lowest ebb, and began the interminable journey home to collect Tadpole. The métro was humid, and packed with sticky, scantily clad bodies. The connections involved what seemed like hours of trailing along corridors, heaving my bag up and down flights of stairs, and hurrying down moving walkways, all of which were heated to an uncomfortable temperature – which a Delia recipe would probably refer to as a ’slow’ oven. When I emerged from the exit onto my avenue, drained and dehydrated, I was greeted by the choking fug of car exhaust in the cloying, syrupy air and the familiar wail of sirens which form a permanent soundtrack to this city.

As the lift rose to my floor, I felt for keys in my pocket. They were heavier than usual, weighty with the recent addition of keys to my lover’s home. I closed my eyes and imagined that the lift would obligingly deliver me to his front door, instead of here, where only an empty flat awaited me. Devoid now of Mr Frog’s presence, cleared of all his belongings. Strangely though, it doesn’t feel like it is Mr Frog who is missing. Even though my lover has spent only one day and one night here, he has left behind his imprint, like a watermark, in every room.

As I waited for Tadpole and Mr Frog to arrive, and for the kettle to boil, I slid down the wall until I was seated on the soothing, cool tiles of the kitchen floor. The tears finally came.

If home is where the heart is, I mislaid mine in Rennes.

You will have to forgive me for sending you here again today as I am off work, away for the weekend, Tadpole-less and, ahem, otherwise engaged…

So, as you can see, my last post was far from theoretical…