If you hate it, fine. I'm not so sure I like the style. Maybe it's too personal. The only people who have read it are me and my best friend who understood. Written ages ago... I was hopelessly in love with a guy in my year. No longer. But this was floating around my room and I thought I'd type it up... So here goes. Crit accepted, and if you just want to say you don't like it that's fine too...
Imagine this. Me, aged twenty four, ten years from now. A blustery evening in Mid-May, in Paris. I’m going back to my bed-sit on the Right Bank, finishing work in a little café in Montmartre. I’m studying English literature through French, I’m hoping to teach it here.
I’m heading down the Champs D’Elysées, to the Charles de Galle Metro station. I don’t have to switch here, but I love the centre of the city, and watching the change. Already as summer rolls in, the Japanese tourists are snap-shotting the Arc de Triomphe.
I’m walking slowly, watching. Do you know how many people will bump into their soulmate in Paris everyday? Most, of course, are Parisian. Yet perhaps there’s hope for this language adoring Dubliner girl.
So I watch. It would be typical of me to bump into the love of my life along here and not know it. I’m looking at faces, eyes. After all, don’t they say eyes are windows to the soul? Grey meets green, like storm clouds let grass grow, hazel hits blue like trees strive to reach the sky. That’s why I look. Here a little old lady carrying her groceries, here a business man shouting down his super-slim chrome mobile phone. They all have lives. This one is planning to propose to his girlfriend tonight, this one was tragically widowed a few months ago. Their heads are as full as mine.
I am tempted by the soothing aromas of a Starbucks. Perhaps not French, but they’re warm. I stop in and continue my walk. It is a long one. The longest avenue in the world to be exact, and filled with rubbish. A Lacoste shop takes up about a quarter of one side. But what can you do about it?
I snuggle my chin deep into my coat collar and wrap my hands around the paper cup, pausing for a moment. My sweet little brown handbag dangles at my elbow and I am ever wary of pickpockets. But I must look like a born Parisian, the street hawkers selling tat to tourists no longer bother me. Perhaps it’s the hairspray and silver eye-shadow, black mascara, red lipstick. Or my high-heeled leather boots and fitted coat. Or perhaps the way I am at ease with the city. Once you get over the fact you’re in France, it’s no different from home.
I watch a couple of American honeymooners walk past and I smile at them. True love and Paris go hand in hand.
With that thought still in my head, my mind wanders to Pierre, the witty, gorgeous boy in my lectures. His English is as good as my French.
Suddenly he is pushed out of my mind. To one side, squashed between Costa Coffee and a private boutique, is a patisserie.
It’s probably horribly overpriced, but I never have been able to resist a real tarte au citron.
I absent-mindedly wander in that general direction and… I crash into someone. You idiot, my conscience tells me. You’re so effing clumsy.
And then I look up. Whoever it was caught my elbow and prevented the near empty cup from spilling.
The someone is a man. Same age as me. Grey eyed. Dark haired. But yet so different looking from me. And so familiar. Who is it? Someone from classes, someone from back home? Whoever it is, he also recognises me.
Who is it? I realise suddenly.
The Starbucks spills as I throw my arms around him.
Many people will bump into their soul mate in Paris everyday. And perhaps there’s hope for this language loving Dubliner girl.
--I know, perhaps it doesn't make a lot of sense, sorry. Please review, please?
. I love detail too, and usually to me the characters are the most important part of a story. The problem is, this person is who I'd like to be when I, ahem, grow up, I didn't really want to write about her and sound really conceited!
