La rue des Brancanteurs

For some reason, I didn't want to go home straight after lunch so we crossed the crowded square and ended up in the rue des Brocanteurs. 

Serge, Olivier and Daniel spend their days sitting around a table outside the café that sells tea, looking put out if someone goes into their respective shops along the same street. I imagine they talk about house clearnces and politics.  

Serge is a poet who was once very fat but has lost a lot of weight and wanders in a Longfellow-kind-of-way along the banks of the Hers in his hat and long leather coat.  

Olivier looks like he could play Mr Rochester in a costume drama.  He is tall,  disheveledly handsome and not at all bothered whether he sells any of the back copies of Paris Match that clutter the shelves of his little shop.

I won't describe Daniel because he's standing up in this picture.  A one-time music teacher with whom I shared cigarettes at breaktime, Daniel has always had his shop in this street.  It runs deep into the pâté de maisons and is a hasard to walk through because the shelves groan under the weight of elaborate ash trays, religious iconography, film props and African sculptures. Daniel mixes the kitch with the sublime and always has a coffee brewing.