Ali’s birthday today. He told me it was gonna happen. I forgot.
He had the afternoon off and went into Paris on the metro. Pounded the streets. Lived the life. For the evening we had a rendezvous with Bouillon Chartier, his favourite restaurant. I love it there as well.
The Cadogan Estate stifled The King’s Road in Chelsea when I largely was in my early teens. They turned a place that was wacky and colourful into a horrendous tack of chain stores, by putting the rent up to price anything interesting out. Similar hijinks in Soho. Chelsea and Soho had a little string of restaurants that did what Bouillon Chartres does. Quick in and out, cheap but high quality. Such options are dead now in London, but for all the fuckery, Paris is still a city with low cost options. You don’t get so ruined by parking wardens – they want people to use the businesses.
We had a birthday meal. I was designated driver. People talk a great deal with booze. By the time I got home I was feeling absolutely talked out. Knackered. Winding down.
I’m off to bed now in a nice new flat, all scrubbed. But I can barely keep my eyes open. I want this early bed but it is getting later and later. Ali is cutting down trees with a chainsaw in the room just the other side of my head, I can hear him. I want to join him.
Bed bed bed bed bed. oh bed.
AlBarclay 