My visit to Paris last week coincided with a “Passation de Pouvoir”, as the TV news at the hotel breakfast buffet tagged it. The rolling coverage was of a transfer of ministerial power in the French government, after a reshuffle.
But of more immediate concern was the power situation in the hotel, where the man at reception the night before had warned that electricity would be switched off for six hours next day in line with some annual legal requirement.
I had forgotten this during a post-breakfast stroll. Then my column deadline loomed and I went back to the room to work. But by now, the lifts were out of bounds and I had to climb six flights of stairs, with only dim emergency lighting to show the way.
Since nothing worked in the room either, I took the laptop and descended the same six flights, where the darkness seemed to have deepened and I had to cling to the rail to guide myself down amid a growing sense of disorientation.
Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue
Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War
Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels
The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926
Then, having settled into a local café, I realised I’d left the laptop charger behind – damn! Another six-flight climb ensued, followed by another fumbling, murky, descent.
It was a relief when I met a bunch of young Americans coming the opposite way with torches.
No, the torches had not been issued by the hotel’s health and safety people. The kids were using their iPhones, something that hadn’t occurred to stupid here. I switched mine on belatedly and reached the ground floor again in one piece.
There was nothing to be found online about these annual hotel power-downs, except occasional discussions of the phenomenon by equally confused tourists.
So I sought further enlightenment from the hotel’s reception, where I was told that the annual switch-off (required of all hotels, they said – only the dates were optional) was for reasons of “vérification”: a word that sounds better in French but still left me in the dark.
Although Ireland does not beat France in many cultural spheres, compo culture in clearly be an exception. However attractive it sounds in French, litigation – of the personal injury kind anyway – must be as yet little known over there.
But for how long? Sooner or later, this hotel power-cut phenomenon will become widely known here.
Then there may be a new craze in anti-health tourism, as Irish visitors flock to Paris for the chance to fall down stairs.
Out on the streets, by contrast, the City of Light felt completely safe. I didn’t get to the banlieues, it’s true.
But in walks around a dozen arrondissements, at all hours, there was no sign of the recent riots.
Strolling the banks of the Seine one night, I was scandalised by the spectacle of a large group young people sitting on the ground, having a card game over wine and cheese. They must have no drug-fuelled raves to go to there.
Aside from that, the nearest thing to anarchy was an occasional row of electric scooters knocked to the ground.
This follows a popular revolt back in April when, following a series of fatalities, Parisians voted overwhelmingly to ban scooters. Knocking them over – “à bas les scooters!” – must be an interim measure by the mob. The actual ban takes effect in September.
***
An almost shocking thing about Paris last week – given the persistence of a certain stereotype – was how friendly the city’s waiters were. None was obviously snooty or arrogant. Most were polite and attentive. Some went about their work with obvious joie de vivre.
Outside a frenetic corner café on the 13th arrondissement side of the Pont de Bercy, a busy but cheerful waiter took time out to say how much he enjoyed working for such a “brasserie classique parisienne”. It wasn’t a job, he said, more like a “game”.
He didn’t say this in hopes of a tip, I’m sure. We had already paid the bill, with its usual 15 per cent service compris. And it must have been obvious we were not Americans.
***
During my days as a struggling writer in Paris, I sometimes find it useful to study street signs. This time, I noticed how many commemorate dates – a Parisian specialty.
The most seasonal was Rue du 29 Juillet, a side-street off the Tuilerie Gardens and so named for the last of the three “Glorious Days” in the July Revolution of 1830.
Those days were not so glorious in the long term: hence the need for further revolutions in 1832 and 1848. But in the meantime, they justified the erection of the “July Column”, which still stands at the Place de Bastille.
As an erecter of columns myself, which can be hard work in summer, I greatly admire the gilded design of that. But July columns are one thing. August columns can be even harder. It’s probably no coincidence that, half the city being on holiday by then, Paris never bothered building one of those.