First of all the really good news – for all of you that know Jo, she arrived safe and sound in Paris on Friday evening – minus her bag thanks to good old Heathrow….However it did arrive on the following flight so we had only a couple of hours waiting around at Charles de Gaulle airport…..yawn….!
She is fine and slowly recovering from the effects of long haul and has almost switched into the European time zone (-10 hours from Australia) :yawn: .
Yesterday we went for a walk along rue Alésia to contemplate some warmer clothing – Sydney warm and North European warm are poles apart (almost literally I suppose). First stop was at one of the more useful ‘stock’ shops (selling seconds, end of line and last year’s fashion at discounted prices) where I spotted a nice fleece in the window. Although I spent 10 minutes hunting around in the shop I couldn’t find it so I had to ask. The assistant came and looked in the window with me and then had to remove it from the display because it was the only one….sadly I didn’t like it so she then spent another few minutes putting it back. Then Jo found a rather nice scarf on the display dummy in the window. And of course that wasn’t to be seen in the shop….because , according to the assistant, “it was the only one”. Never mind, it was nice, so she carefully unwrapped it from the dummy and voila, there you are Jo…..and an instant sale. We left the shop as the assistant was redressing the dummy with a completely different scarf…
Soon afterwards we saw a really nice grey ribbed pullover in another window. So in we went and again hunted for the ones in the shop. This time they were eventually found for us and the assistant asked Jo’s size…in French units of course….so we countered with Aussie sizes…and were presented with the smallest of the pullovers from the pile. Nice style, nice colours but just too floppy – we needed the next size down. No problem, madamoiselle will go and find one from the stock cupboard…Ah, désolé Madame but there are none left in the stock. At which point the assistant suggests to the shop owner that perhaps the one in the window is a smaller size. Five minutes later a topless manekin is standing in the window having suffered the indignity of being stripped in full view of the passing Parisian traffic – who being Parisian didn’t as much as give it a second glance. The pullover turned out to be exactly right giving Jo instant warmth to those parts that I can’t help with in polite company…We left the shop with the assistant re-dressing the maknekin in a different pullover!
Somehow I can’t imagine that happening in many other places in the world. And twice in the space of half an hour.
Simon & Jo