On Paris, part VII

Did this just happen, did we just sit in front of two people attaching a lock on the bridge at Ponts des Arts and throwing the key into the Seine—illegal today, especially with the last triathlon coming up—the woman giggling about how romantic it was and then the man getting down on one knee to propose? She in a turquoise glittering mini dress and he with enough gel in his hair to make him sparkle at her side. We looked around to see if he'd hired a photographer, because they looked like 'instagrampeople' as my ado called them, but we couldn't see anyone. So I snapped away and handed it to them before running out of the rain.

We had shared the bench with an elderly French couple who had come to catch a glimpse of the cauldron, they left when the lightning started—smart people—it poured down and we were soaking wet back in our little loft. But we were happy not to have missed this romantic event. Although I'd rather hang out in other arrondissements than in this postcard city of love, we had such a great evening, walking along the river, her eating the luxurious and three scoops of expensive ice cream she bought from a shop near Notre Dame, charming the most tired salesman in the city with her perfect French. I look at my daughter in her newly bought vintage clothes and wonder, as I have so often done, who she will be when she is older.

Today I go for an apéro with a dear friend here, who admits that at first she was so sceptical about the JO, but now that she's seen the ceremony, like many others, she's proud to be French. We google to see if any of the swimmers have fallen ill, she is sure they have, I find an interview with one who threw up repeatedly after the triathlon but blames it on the heat and how physically demanding the event was. In another interview we find an athlete who says she's fine for now, but that when she swam under the bridge she saw and felt things we shouldn't think too much about. Today it is boxing and my friend is preoccupied with the gender controversy surrounding one of the contestants, that she has an advantage with her XY chromosomes and should be boxing against men in her weight class. I have no answers.

When I ask if she would like to walk with me along the Seine to watch the cauldron rise, she laughs and says she has a dinner to attend. There is not a cloud in the sky tonight, I can feel it happening. Every single picture I see of it on Instagram was taken three days ago, before the bad weather came. I join all the people waiting in the Rue du 29 Juillet where I was a few days ago but had to go home before I could see it. This has become an obsession, it's as if I’ve made my own competition to take a better picture than the ones I'd seen, I feel ridiculous and yet I stay.

Nothing happens. We all wait. Some try applause to get it going. Some ask the policemen who respond it will start in five minutes. I’m surprised to see that all the people around me are French and not tourists. One of the ladies laughs when the policeman repeats five minutes and says that if there is something technically wrong we'll never know, Paris doesn't want to disclose any errors regarding the JO. I look at my watch, 23:15, it should have risen at 22:00. I start walking along the Tuileries Gardens towards the métro. The street is full. There are so many people with their phones up, twice as many as the last time I tried to take a picture. Outside the Louvre I realise that I am now one of those people I laughed at trying to photograph La Joconde.

There is a queue to get on the métro and people look as embarrassed as I am, why did we stay so long? I sit with a mother and her two daughters from the south of France who says it could have been the wind today. I say that I find the cauldron to be very Parisian and arrogant, only rising when it feels like it, and this makes the group laugh. All I know is that this little game I have made for myself must end, I will never be able to see it over the rooftops of Paris.

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