On Paris 2024, part V

We wanted to see friends, celebrate a beautiful birthday girl, but just crossing the bridge proved impossible, and as the day went on more and more metro lines were cancelled. We could probably have found a way around all the barricades to get out of Paris, but the idea of trying to get back in the middle of all this seemed impossible. Instead, we went to Pick-Clops, an old favourite, for an afternoon apéro while we waited for the spectacle to begin. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this,' the waiter said to me. ‘There's nobody here.’ I hadn't thought of it, but could suddenly see all the empty tables. Normally at this time of day we would never get a space on the terrace. I know there are many in the city at the moment, but it seems they are all occupied at the various venues for the games.

At home we could hear the music and see the heart being blown over the city. My daughter saw the beautiful silver figure on horseback through the trees. We worried about the dancers slipping in the rain and the players getting sick from being in it. I was happy to see so many non-male performers and the children rescuing the torch from Zizou. I still think of the little boy holding the torch. And I was moved to see the Palestinian players. How can we not have a ceasefire in all countries during these World Games? Juliette Armanet even sang Imagine as a call for peace. She is a national treasure and her cover of Piaf's Non je ne regrette rien for a Dior campaign was such a beautiful surprise version of a song I have heard almost too many times.

And then Piaf and Céline. The Dion fever in the city is high, I was so impressed by a man wearing a homemade T-shirt with the singer's surname made up of the rings of the Olympic logo that I didn't think to document it. Piaf wrote Hymne à l'amour in 1949, while thinking of the man she loved, the boxer Marcel Cerdan. This version by Dion was even more intense than when she sang it at the AMA nine days after the Paris November attacks. The reminder of that performance makes me wonder how Parisians are coping with the intense surveillance during the JO, when many have been in a constant state of hyper-vigilance since 2015.

It is still raining the day after the ceremony. I'm at the Louvre for a research project, and I sneak into the room with the Mona Lisa. Getting a really good shot of that special smile, without stomping on anyone's feet or insulting the guides, could possibly be an Olympic genre in itself. I wonder about the other paintings in the room, do anyone ever get to see them? Since my last visit, someone has put up a sign in French, English and Spanish urging the public to be kind to the staff. I think of those poor guides who had to deal with people who fight with them just to get through. There must be many possible stories in this room, a photo-novel could be made, but first I must see the Olympic flame in the Tuileries garden.

The rain is even heavier when I get back outside. I stand under a tree and try to get a picture of the big balloon with the tower in the background, but my mju goes on strike. I ask in a shop across the street if they know of any analogue photo shops in the area and am told that no one works with film anymore. But in the country so proud of having discovered photography, some still do, I do find a small shop with a long queue outside. We are many dinosaurs still in love with negatives and I feel at home meeting the nicest staff who fix the camera and ask for nothing in return. The rain even stop after this visit. This must mean something.

The feeling of la vie en rose comes to an abrupt end when a very tired waiter throws a menu at me as I find a table in a run-down bistro. I want to stop the three tourists next to me, on their first trip to Paris, from asking the waiter how to pronounce Burgundy in French. When they repeat it, the waiter sighs and tells them they are saying it wrong. ‘You pronounce it as bourguignon, which is a stew, as we all should know,’ he says, walking away without taking their order, and I decide not to interfere, they are on their own.

These texts relating to Paris 2024 are a work in progress.