After all those computer issues, I have finally been able to move into my bijou Paris pad! It all sounds rather sexy but at 20 square metres, it was never going to take too long to host a guided tour. I had a friend and his partner visit last weekend for a welcoming glass and we had to turn sideways to pass in the entrance hall.
I had become so bored with hotel nights and long journey days that I had taken the studio without seeing it. Property disappears so fast here. Caveat Emptor - emphasised by the lease that was rather clear about "what you see - or don't see - is what you get" and "don't come running to us, if you have regrets". For the moment, je ne regrette rien and with a British stiff lip, I will smile and carry on whatever.
Then of course , there's the "we have a partner who can help" with your insurance and the "caution" account, where the bank charges you a set-up fee then interest for blocking your own money, presumably because they cannot use it anymore to speculate on the currency markets! Sacres Francais was perhaps right after all.
The studio does enjoy a fantastic view - perhaps not to everyone's taste - over the cemetery at Passy. Directly over the cemetery, with all the mausoleums being just outside my window. I am clearly living in a very quiet (as the grave) part of the city; something my Paris friends would die for, if it wasn't for all that coughin' (coffin).
The owner of the studio took great pleasure in explaining who was resting where and, as she left, gave me a Monuments de Paris booklet and, with a smile, a grave map. What a house warming gift!
Well it seems that, among many French Celebres and the odd American (the tragic Pearl White of the Perils of Pauline), Mr Gordon Bennett (1841-1918) has found his final resting place at Passy. No-one is sure if he is in fact the Gordon Bennett whose name is often used as an English expression of surprise in place of a 4-letter expletive. I would like to hope so.
So it would seem to be the case that his epitaph is an epithet expressed as an eponym for a synonym and used as a euphemism! What a linguistic legacy.
It's a slow day today so just off to find where they scattered Flaming Nora's ashes. Seems even Google has a problem searching them out.
Odd kind of distraction - going to look for dead people who may have never existed !
ReplyDeleteIn the same cimetière de Passy that your studio overlooks, lies my granduncle Etienne Giry who died during WWI fighting in the Pas-de-Calais and is buried with a number of my uncles and aunts of the Ginot and Giry families. Is it only by pure coincidence that today I live 500 meteres away ?
Gordon Bennett did exist - but it's only his orthographic fame that is in doubt. Maybe the fact you are living so close is an ancestral echo (not that I am sure what ones of those signifies!).
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