WELL THIS HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING. Everything in France seems to move at half speed, due to freshly baked baguette weighing down the stomachs of the people and increasing their inertia, so it has taken me about three weeks to even approach the keyboard and contemplate emptying out my mind all over it. But seriously, I have actually consumed a baguette a day for the past three, so don't think I'm falling back on the classic mildly xenophobic non-joke, for it is actually now a personal truth. I think it's the crust to fluff ratio that makes them so super eatable. Or maybe the fact that they cost €0.88; an immediately spendable yet quality assuring price.
In a desperate bid to appear thoughtful and on a journey, I have attempted to note a few Fundamental Observations of Human Life. After reading them all through, however, I feel like a gigantic twat and am sightly ashamed about my compulsive desire to seem more astute than I ever will be, but I'm going to share them with you anyway, because the best way to get over yourself is to mercilessly mock. HERE WE GO:
- The human race is at its least attractive when eating cereal out the packet. Fingers are clearly not designed to clasp oaty nuggets and mini-projectile plop them into the mouth.
- One must always be depressed on the metro. Compulsory collective swaying and frowning only, unless you want to be judged a potential menace to society.
- All human temptation and repulsion can be represented in the €1.86 bottle of red wine. It must be done before it must not be done.
- Always look upwards. Stuff on the underneath of windowsills and tree branches and lampposts isn't given enough eye-time.
- It's easier to tell someone your name isn't Pauline straight away.
- The best way to get offered a job is to be incompetent. Go into any butchers, ask for 'one of your saucissons please', get an old lady to cackle loudly next to you to start the joke, blush and flounder with some substandard French, wait for the sweaty man with blood on his shirt to say 'ah we have been looking for a nice young girl to work here for a while - would you like a job?', immediately panic reply with 'yes yes, tomorrow at nine?', regret risky joke choice, collapse internally when he says 'YES SEE YOU TOMORROW MY ENGLISH FLOWER', flee, never return to the building that is one meter away from your house, write about it afterwards to get over the shame. Yes this really happened.

THERE WE GO. Sometimes it is nice to share. In fact, sharing is caring. And daring. And bearing, and faring and tearing. It is in this fashion, therefore, that I bring you the collaborative effort from the colocs at Rue Célu; a multinational, multilingual melting pot of wannabe locals.
First up is Giuliano and his Pastry Obsession. Here is a real life story: he once made some dough and carried it with him on the metro for comfort. He then decided he didn't want it anymore so he wrapped it round a lamppost in a suburb somewhere. Serious.

1) Guess the amounts of the following ingredients: lukewarm water, salt, yeast
2) Guess the amounts of the following ingredients: flour, olive oil
3) Mix the first group of ingredients into the second
4) Kneed
5) Leave to rise in a bowl somewhere (this can be on the floor, on the windowsill, on a chair, in an unplugged microwave)
6) Use for a variety of different dishes; pizza, pies, pizza pies, bread, all thrown together before wandering off and doing something completely different.

I actually just ate a plate of his pasta about five minutes ago. It was so good that I whimpered. It was salmon, courgettes, garlic, ricotta and spinach all slowly bubbled up together, so if you feel like being a bit carefree and fluid in your cuisine, get some and or none or all of the above ingredients and treat the dough like a friend.

Second comes Pierre-Olivier and his heartfelt, mindfelt, soulfelt appreciation and understanding of Jim Morrison. The Doors Soft Parade live at the PBS Critique 1969 induces an absolute trance of absorption that cannot be penetrated, even if the music is turned off.  It's good to watch, but probably even better to do. I am incredibly unqualified to talk about it, but I will say with confidence it is a poem that is sung, rather than a song that is poemed. It goes with the dough of Giuliano because you can chew on it, and it would also probably wrap around a lamppost.

And finally for the livre, it is the house's bookshelf's Rimbaud Un saison en enfer Illuminations (folio collection, bitches). So so impossible to understand as it is written in the French of a genius, but still worryingly captivating. I found two in particular that I really liked - the first one is (get ready) from the second paragraph of the second part called Phrases II of a chapter called Matinée d'Ivresse from a section called Les Déserts de l'amour: Proses en marge de l'Evangile, which is written prosaically and spans only three lines, and seems to be the product of a drunken ecstasy during a prolonged depressive phase. That sounds fairly heavy, but it chats about stretching tinsel type stuff between stars, so it can't be that tortured. I'm actually going to give it to you so that we can all join in and have a nice time together:

J'ai tendu les cordes de clocher à clocher; des guirlandes de fenêtre a fenêtre; des chaînes d'or d'étoile à étoile, et je danse.

Google Translate actually does it an average amount of justice, so EVERYTHING IS SWELL.
The second is a longer, more arduous chunk that I cannot relocate in the book at this present moment in time, but it starts with him sitting Beauty on his knees, which should already sound like it is heading in the right direction. It's The Doors all over again; youth and brilliance and decadence and burning out, and I imagine if you mixed it with courgettes it would also be delicious.