A Daily Thing

On my very first day moving to Paris (age 19) I got a cab from the airport to my teeny 20th arrondissement apartment (la di da, didn’t want to take the bus).  And I got the taxi driver from hell.

‘People here don’t care about each other Miss, it’s every man for himself.  People just walk all over each other.  Why, people don’t even know their neighbours; you know, people die in their homes all the time and aren’t found for weeks.’

Awesome.

Skip 2 years later, and Christian and I are living in a teeny and old apartment in the 11th.  Around Christmas time the mailman comes to sell us a calendar (like every year, everywhere in France) and blurts out that the previous tenant, who had been there for 50 years – you’ll never guess – well she died in our apartment, and she wasn’t found for a few weeks.

After dropping that bomb he said ‘Merry Christmas’, turned around and just walked down the stairs.

That story makes me chuckle now, but you can bet it didn’t at the time.  I don’t think I went to bed quite the same that night.  Oh, and I decided I also had no intention of buying a calendar again from that mailman.

(Image is from here).