My House Painter Could Have Done That...

So Paris was wonderful but is now tres cher as compared to seven years ago when we were last there.

Costs were over and above anything we saw in London just a year ago.

But that was not the most shocking note from our tenure in the Grande Cite, rather, with an increased price comes politeness.

We could not believe it: Parisiens were suddenly "nice". I mean it, friendly, helpful, jovial and all around happy that you were visiting the city, this unlike last time where they acted like they intended to ride out every tourist on a rail.

Thus unless I believed in "possession" (which I do not) I could only conclude that this global nicety was part of some clever modern art piece in which tourists are used as hapless props in a grand and magnificant vision of performance art, we being the performers in a cabaret of life which would ultimately be revealed.

As for art, I still shudder at the Sunday we spent at the famous "Picasso Museum", filled to the brim with Parisiens, packed shoulder to shoulder wherein C would walk from room to room and, when finishing each, would announce in a rather loud voice: "I just don't think Picasso was a very good artist."

Having fled from the Picasso Museum, C insisted on going to the very "Musee du Art Moderne et Contemporie" despite my many reminders that she didn't really like contemporary or modern art.

However my warnings went unheeded but the day turned out quite well as C had to admit, despite her prejudices, that she really liked the third, giant, square canvass painted entirely white (as opposed to the other five giant canvasses painted entirely white, interspered in different rooms of the Musee) as she thought that that particular artist had painted stuff white pretty well.