Paris offers FT journalist la vie in prose
There were nine of us living in my first flat in Paris. It was grand on the outside, with a trompe l’oeil and marble staircase in the entrance hall, but grimy and dark inside. Only three of my flatmates had full-time jobs, and they all smoked. All the lights in the hall were broken.
I moved there from London nearly four years ago, during the gloomiest days of François Hollande’s presidency, long before the youthful reformer Emmanuel Macron took power this year. Economic growth at the time was weak, unemployment double that of the UK today, and polls showed two-thirds of French people thought the nation was in “decline”.
My flatmates, who I found online, were all 25- to 35-year-olds from the provinces who had come to Paris to find work and, passing their days in our tiny kitchen, were victims of this faded France. Within rigid labour markets many struggled to find jobs, or the right jobs, and were frustrated and angry.
They protested in the street, talked incessantly about politics and were always discussing what was to blame for France’s seeming stagnation. Being French, and young, it was never a question of tweaking tax rates — but creating a new world order.
“It’s neoliberalism that is ruining us,” said one, lighting his cigarettes from the filaments of our toaster (they all smoked but no one ever had a lighter). “Yes, you are right,” said another. “It’s time for a revolution.”
My diplomat girlfriend and London friends — bankers, consultants, lawyers — could not understand why I had chosen to live there, in a noisy part of town around Bastille, amid dust and quasi-revolutionary chaos. But I loved it. It gave me an insight into what was malfunctioning — but also wonderful — about 21st-century France.
France has an intellectual culture, as everyone knows, and which the British often mock. Children learn reams of Baudelaire by heart before they turn 10. Yet living in my flat I saw how deep this was ingrained in everyday behaviour and how it went far beyond the educated elites.
In July, while interviewing the prime minister, Edouard Philippe, in his gilded office only a few miles from our cigarette-lighting toaster, he briefly stopped talking about tax reform to tell us about the “irritation” of not being able to understand Dante’s Inferno when he was six years old. “We all have addictions, we are all addicts,” Philippe added. “Mine is reading,” he said, with a completely straight face.
On the presidential campaign trail this year, the candidates’ speeches were peppered with difficult poetry. Even as economy minister, back in 2015, Macron rose to a challenge from a journalist and recited the entire opening of Molière’s Le Misanthrope from memory.
In my flat it was the same. My flatmates would not consider themselves intellectuals, and yet they would talk nightly over the dinner table about Alain Badiou and the political philosophy of Charles de Gaulle.
As for food, the chief executives I knew were often connoisseurs, but my flatmates were little different, and would cook for themselves dinners from scratch every night — artichokes with a potato gratin followed by a home-made apple tart. I never saw a microwaveable meal.
Eating well was not a question of rich and poor, just what “food” really was. They learn this at a young age; a typical menu at any local state crèche might be swordfish and creamed spinach followed by stewed apples.
Not everything my flatmates showed me was positive. I never quite came to terms with many of them who saw the state as a kind of benevolent uncle, there to indulge them. One of them purposely got fired to receive the generous state payout (two-thirds of his final salary for two years, he said). Others would jump the metro barrier without paying. “The state is there to help us,” they would shrug.
My flatmates could not teach me everything about modern France. They were outside the dynamic Paris start-up scene that took off while I was there — in 2016 France was the third-largest tech hub in Europe by investment.
In other social circles I had friends doing food delivery start-ups and fintech; Parisian kids who spoke perfect English, idolised New York and liked the same kinds of food (kale, crushed avocado on toast) and coffee (flat-white made by an Australian) as those in Shoreditch and Brooklyn.
These internationally minded entrepreneurs, often wildly pro-Macron, were part of the “other” France that I covered for the FT, a world of billion-euro deals, wealth and opulence. The meeting rooms of BNP Paribas, one of the powerful banks I wrote about, were literally covered in gold. It was where Napoleon married Josephine in 1796.
The food at business lunches was almost absurd; truffle sandwich starters, langoustine-stuffed ravioli, sablé biscuits with coffee. Companies had full-time chefs on retainer. They also had their own wine cellars, outmatched only by those of the government.
Despite the pomp, executives were more relaxed than I expected. One said of my newly grown beard: “Your generation, I don’t get it. You grow your beards but then you shave your pubic hair. I feel the opposite is better.” Then there was a pause: “That was off the record, right?”
One of my most memorable interviews in France was not with a minister or executive, however, but with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the 89-year-old founder of the far-right National Front party.
His party, now run by his daughter, was the runner-up in this year’s election with an anti-immigration and anti-globalisation message that resonated across the country.
Walking into his house gave me a stark picture of the man behind it all. He proudly showed off his collection of model slave ships. “This is where the breathing holes were,” he said. On his wall was a life-size oil painting of himself dressed as a pirate.
After two years I moved out of the shared lodgings to a more elegant, light-filled apartment near the Marais with my girlfriend, who became my wife this summer in a château in Gascony. One of the flower girls was one-year-old Eliza, our daughter. Her eating habits are less refined than my former flatmates. She likes to stuff mangoes, yoghurt and hummus in her mouth all at once.
Sometimes I miss my old flat, but life changes. And when I stride through the tree-lined streets of Paris with Eliza high on my shoulders, greeting everyone she passes, the French, who I once thought of as distant, now seem anything but.
Recently there have been more smiles in France as the mood here improves. The economy is growing again, unemployment is falling, and there is a sense of optimism — at least in some corners — about the Macron presidency and his promise of reform.
Going to see some of my flatmates before I left Paris this summer to be the FT’s correspondent in Madrid, we sat in our local bar one evening and I asked them if they are optimistic about the Macron presidency. They were not totally convinced, but one said: “At least he might do something . . . that makes me optimistic, yes.”
Inside knowledge
Stothard’s favourite places . . .
On a sunny evening, Le Perchoir rooftop cocktail bar near Ménilmontant is surely one of the nicest places in Paris. The tables are long and crowded, so it’s hard not to get talking to strangers — not normally so easy in Paris
The voie Georges-Pompidou on the right bank has been pedestrianised, making for a beautiful walk. The best spot for children is just opposite the Île Saint-Louis where there is an adventure playground
Le Petit Cambodge is famous for where Islamic terrorists killed 15 people in November 2015. But it was always, and remains, one of the best Asian restaurants in Paris. Try the Bo Bun Spécial
Buying guide
- There are no restrictions on foreigners owning property in France, although if the value of the property exceeds €800,000 you may be liable to pay the French wealth tax, the ISF
- Buyers should expect to pay fees and taxes of around 6.5 to 7.5 per cent of the purchase price. These include land registry taxes and the notaire’s service fee, but not estate agents’ fees
What you can buy for . . .
€1m A two-bedroom apartment in the Latin Quarter, opposite the Île de la Cité
€2.5m A three-bedroom top-floor apartment in the chic seventh arrondissement, near the French National Assembly and Napoleon’s tomb.
€5m A five-bedroom 348 square metre flat in the 16th arrondissement, south-facing and with splendid balconies
Michael Stothard is the FT’s Madrid correspondent
Photographs: Alex Cretey Systermans; Sebastien Rande/Studio Cui Cui
FT Weekend Festival 2017
Returning for the second year, the FT Weekend’s annual festival celebrates arts and ideas with speakers including Simon Schama, Gillian Tett and Lucy Kellaway.
Saturday September 2
Kenwood House Gardens, London
10am-8pm
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