Something for the Weekend (12th – 14th November)

A long weekend for many in France this weekend following a public holiday on the 11th, but also one that promises to be cold and wet. Perfect then for a weekend of crime novels, film noir, prisons and science fiction!

See the list of events on the Paris Weekends blog.

Some corner of a foreign field

When Rupert Brooke wrote his poem 'The Soldier', the foreign field he imagined would surely not have looked like this. It is easy to picture his field as a burned and toxic land, today reclaimed by nature and heavy with oppressive silence, but altogether more difficult to think of his soldier reposing in a rumbling corner of Parisian suburbia.

So why are there 29 identical graves here in the Levallois municipal cemetery, lined up to attention beneath a gently fluttering Union flag? Rich earth it may be, squeezed between a noisy railway line and the bustle of building sites, but it is far from the classic image of isolated military cemeteries.

Far too from the scenes of battle and the trenches, far from the regiments and far from home. These are the graves of 29 victims from the British Commonwealth (including individuals from Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and Canada), whose deaths spread over a period of six years (from 1914 to 1920, two years after the end of the war). How did they end up here? The answer is the Hertford British hospital situated on the other side of the town.

These were those who were battered and broken by war, but who didn't turn to dust on the battlefield. G.F. Roberts, a name that strikes a personal note, was a driver. B. Button died only a month after war was declared, but George Fernandez, an Australian, died five days after the Armistace was signed. There is even a female nurse from the British Red Cross here, Olive Craggs, who died in 1915.

All would have been taken injured from the field, and placed in a bed at the Hertford hospital. Theirs was a death not instant, but one which gave them time to think of the sights and sounds of home. Like millions of others though, theirs was a life which nevertheless ended, hearts at peace, in some corner of a foreign field.


'The Soldier'
Rupert Brooke

IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The Marche des Ternes

I love Paris when it does scruffy. I was born in English suburbia, and my upbringing was a voyage around the ordinary, a trip decorated with poor town planning and minimal frills. I guess that this is the kind of environment where the inner me still feels most at home.

Paris, with its highly polished shops and tempting displays of beautifully crafted goods, is of course a constantly heart-lifting experience, but deep down I know that I'm an intruder in this world. Naturally then I was delighted to discover the Marche des Ternes, a place that positively breathes the homely banalities of my youth.

The building that houses the market is already more typical of a post-war British city than of a district in Paris that is in shouting distance of the Champs Elysées. A 1970s block in a colour that the French would describe as 'caca d'oie' (duck crap), it can hardly be classed as attractive, but the market is clearly comfortably installed inside.

Inside and outside. There seems to be no principal entrance to the market, but on all four sides of the block it spills out into the streets, with tables from a cafe or signs for a flower stand occupying the surrounding pavement. I'm drawn inwards, unremarked, but not unwelcome. I can take my time, wander around, compare prices. Nobody here is forcing their daily specials on me.

"Libre service, servez vous", announces a sign, not forgetting to also politely tag on a 'merci'. Onions, potatoes, garlic overflowing from boxes, pots bubbling with the recipe of the day and sausages hung up on strings. Colours clash throughout, reflected in mirrors, burning in the gleaming glow of artificial light.

In all honesty it's a mess, and yet its undeniably human. Nobody arrives here because they've seen it mentioned in a guide book, but instead it is an integral part of the community in which it sits. A market, not a supermarket, but equally as useful and convenient.

Choosing fruit from one of the stalls, I don't feel like I'm sullying the produce just by standing near it and I don't have the sensation that I've somehow made the wrong choice by not selecting whatever is this season's star product. As unpretentious as its decor, it feels like home to me.

Something for the Weekend (5th – 7th November)

With November being the ‘Mois de la Photo’ in Paris, the city will be home to a whole host of exhibitions as well as the large ‘Salon de la Photo’ this weekend. You'll also find a few other events listed on the Paris Weekends blog to keep you warm as the days get shorter.

The Rue de l'Estrapade

Paris street names hide many stories, but few can be as gruesome as the Rue de l'Estrapade. Tucked away behind the Pantheon in the 5th arrondissement, the street today is quiet, studious and respectable, but until the 17th century it was the scene of a quite horrific form of torture - the infamous estrapade (or strappado)!

In Paris, this form of torture - which consists of tying a victim's hands behind their back then suspending them from a post by their wrists - was used mainly on the city's Protestant population. Few survived the punishment, being repeatedly hoisted back up to the top of the post then dropped down again, in full view of the baying crowds.

Shortly after the estrapade was declared illegal in France, the writer and philosopher Denis Diderot moved into a house at the number three of this street where he worked on his Encyclopédie. His encyclopedia contains a description for the words tortur and estrapade, which he points out "n'est plus d'usage, au moins en France".

Whether any traces of the torture were left in the street at the time of Diderot is not noted, but nothing survives today. Anyone walking this way now would find no descriptions of the street name, and no reminders in the road's buildings and commerces. If the passer-by then sat down to eat at the 'L'Estrapade' restaurant at number 15, they would probably not even stop to reflect after finding a plat named 'Suicide au chocolat' on the menu.