Waiter, Café Madeleine, Paris

Paris Day 3

Marvellous breakfast (perfect coffee and croissants) in a little café opposite the Madeleine Church, whose huge Corinthian columns give it the appearance of a massive faux-Roman temple. The waiters were seasoned dancers, relaxed, speedy and efficient, as with this man in the mirror. Dance (and waiters) emerged as a kind of theme today, in contrast to our heat-exhausted wanderings.

Got the Metro to the Seine and wandered about, taking photographs of the trees mainly, their mottled trunks almost the exact shade and pattern of American Gulf War camouflage fatigues. Once more, we had lunch in a little café nearby, sitting almost on the street, with a view of that fairytale prison on the opposite bank (the one the guide had told us about). I had snails for the first time: not bad, a bit too meaty for my taste, probably quite bland without the garlic. The melted goat's cheese on toast was MUCH better: heaven. Watched the dancing skaters whiz by, and other photographers/blippers doing their thing.

We spent most of the afternoon in the Pompidou Centre, beginning with coffee in the rooftop café (more dancing waiters, more sober and formal though), where, not being lunch-paying customers, we were confined to a viewless freeform enclosed plastic yoke (like being inside a secondrate sculpture); made for interesting photos though. Went to the Beckett exhibition which, like the Joyce exhibition I'd worked on in the National Library in Dublin, was a mix of Beckett's notebooks, some films by and about Beckett (including his Buster Keaton vehicle: 'Film'), a strange video/DVD installation projected onto a square on the gallery floor involving four shrouded figures (or was it five?) running wordlessly around a little dark hole, like a drain: changing abruptly and swerving from eachother, never colliding nor treading on the hole at the centre, the impression was of a kind of swirling water-dance, though of water that kept changing its mind, never converging to trickle down the plughole. A little boy came and stood on the square, dodging and/or dancing with the different-coloured shrouds.

In the main gallery (the permanent exhibition) I recognized some works by the old/modern masters, paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Miro, Brancusi etc. whose reproductions I have grown up with. I was delighted to learn that photography was allowed, so long as a flash wasn't used. So I photographed my reflection in Brancusi's bronze Muse, one of my favourite sculptures (reminds me of Melanie LeBroquay's Head, to which a little story is attached; maybe I'll tell it someday).

The Centre is an amazing building, very high, with views over the Paris roofs and chimneys right out to the hazy Eiffel Tower. The square below was like the banks of the Seine, full of musicians, street-sellers, sun-bathers etc. Great sense of teeming irrepressible VIE.

Strolled through the little streets (amazing reflections in new glass building) to a restaurant where we sat on the pedestrian walkway and I tucked into a dance of the taste-buds, one of the best feasts of mussels I've ever had, maybe the best.

Then onto the boat at Pont Neuf again, this time for a night cruise. The Eiffel Tower was cleverly lit, like something woven out of bronze.

Bridges, bridges, bridges, each with its little bleat of greeting/waving. But the bank-life looked enchanting by night, more lively and less heat-exhausted, full of impromptu or organised music-sessions, the aftermaths of candle-lit dinner parties where people drank wine and dangled their legs over the quay wall, dancers (reminded me of Paula Rego's painting 'The Dance'), hand-holding couples, Le Dejeuner Sur L'herbe without the herbe... a sense of peaceful yet vibrant life, a kind of ideal vision.