Paris Drift / One day in Paris

A day in Paris. Just one day. To be guided by my feet and senses. Arrive on the Eurostar walk all day and depart again from Gare du Nord. I can’t say I was completely without plans. I had three:
– visit Re:Voir
– see the new Notre Dame
– walk – and only walk, no Metro or bus or Tram allowed
– have a nice birthday lunch – so ok, that’s four plans.

On my way to Re:Voir I passed Rue du Château d’Eau, where I remember I stayed with my wife on my first trip to Paris, in 1997. I was returning from three years abroad and flew in to Paris from Delhi intent on arriving back in England on the Eurostar which had started running after I’d left the country in 1994. I stood outside Hotel Pacific and the years rolled back and there we were in the summer of 1997 up in that room beside the hotel sign delighted to be back in Europe, downing cans of cold Kronenbourg from the Reception vending machine, gulping down tap water, while ignoring the resident mouse.

Paris 1997 vintage video footage

Around the corner at Re:Voir I marvelled at the array of Super 8 cameras, had a nice chat with the fella behind the counter and walked away with DVD OF Jonas Mekas’ The Sixties Quartet.

I discovered new passages to me at Passage Ponceau and Passage du Grand Cerf and thought of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project as I always do, but now with the added context of Dan Hancox’s great FT article on Benjamin’s final journey across the Pyrenees.

Re:Voir Paris Super 8 cameras
Re:Voir
Le Pave Paris
Notre Dame Cathedral January 2025
Rue Marie-Stuart Paris
Cinema Paris
Notre Dame Paris
Paris house on the Left Bank
Windows and balcony Paris January 2025
Polidor Paris
Polidor

I lunched on Confit of Duck at Le Pave and then marvelled at the newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral before my mandatory visit to Shakespeare and Co. From here I strolled up the hill to the Pantheon and back down again through the wine caves of the Left Bank, over Pont Neuf and just had time for a quick dinner by Gare du Nord before catching the last train back to London.

Walter Benjamin and the Paris Arcades

The above quote is from a video posted on YouTube about Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, that I stopped watching after 35 seconds to take the screenshot and post this blog. The book I’m carrying in my bag at the moment is the recently re-published Verso volume of Benjamin’s writing on Charles Baudelaire.

Paris Arcade

I don’t know where my interest in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project began but I cut a video from footage I shot on family trip to Paris in 2011 with a reading from Benjamin’s signature work by my wife. My feeling is that the interest started about a decade before that.

Heidi in Passage Jouffroy, Paris Arcade

Whenever I’m in Paris, I find myself back in the arcades (as recently as March this year) thinking about Benjamin. When I passed the Piccadilly Arcade in London at the weekend Benjamin’s project was there again. Where will it end?

Rainy London Walk through Mayfair to Piccadilly 

The rain really reveals London in the raw. So where better to take a walk in a downpour than through the glitz and glamour of the London district most associated with ostentatious wealth – Mayfair. We peel off Regent Street down Maddox Street into St George’s, looking down into the valley of the lost River Tyburn. We accidentally stumble upon David Bowie’s old red phone box in Heddon Street where he was photographed for the back cover of the Ziggy Stardust album (I had no idea and learned this in the YouTube comments). We pass through St James’s Church into Jermyn Street and stroll Piccadilly Arcade to face The Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly. And its here we find the destination of this sodden walk (via Hatchards booksellers) – Burlington Arcade. Opened in 1819, following the fashion started on the continent in Paris and Brussels, this beautiful passage seems to belong in a parallel dimension. When I emerged at the other end – the rain had stopped.

A Birmingham peculiar

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Last Sunday took me back to Birmingham, for a screening in the Flatpack Festival of a short film I’d made of the walk I did to Twyford Abbey with Nick Papadimitriou and Peter Knapp. Nick joined me for the jaunt to the Midlands and I managed to persuade him to take a detour with me through the splendour of the Piccadilly Arcade.

Piccadilly Arcade Paul Maxfield

The beautifully painted ceiling of the arcade is by Paul Maxfield and with the glimmering lights and tiled floor recalls the dream palaces that inspired Parisian poets and German social theorist Walter Benjamin who, when he described the Paris arcades as ‘a land full of inconspicuous places from which dreams arise’, and that the arcades were ‘galleries leading into the city’s past’ could as easily have been writing about Birmingham’s Piccadilly Arcade as the Passage des Panoramas.

Ben Waddington later told me that the Arcade had been built as a silent cinema but had declined in the 1920’s and converted to a shopping arcade. Nick seemed unimpressed by the arcade, the video I attempted to shoot on my pocket camera (a Canon Powershot sx230 Hs) has a soundtrack of him impatiently drumming a rolled up copy of the TLS against his hip climaxing in an instruction to, “Hurry Up John”.

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Nick seemed to enjoy Victoria Square much more than the arcade. We’d detoured around some of the side-streets leading away from New Street and remarked on how hilly this part of Birmingham City Centre feels. It’s a city that cries out to be explored.

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After using the toilets in the Symphony Hall our explorations led us into the Museum and Art Gallery where there was a display of the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard, “The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found”.  The delicate filigree pattern on the jewelry and sword mounts was hypnotic – at odds with the idea of a brutal and barbaric ‘Dark Ages’.

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I was equally seduced by the work of the Birmingham Group of artists, particularly ‘Sigismonda drinking poison’ by Joseph Southall. The above painting of ‘tower block with old lady’ by Arthur Lockwood found in a room displaying architectural models of the city stayed with me throughout the day. Lockwood has documented the changing urban landscape of West Midlands with watercolour paintings, leading him to be described as “Birmingham’s very own Lowry”.

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The screening in Digbeth was looming so there was little time to absorb the ambiences of the City Arcade of which Nick was even less forgiving. Curzon Street Station (opened in 1838) was another matter – dominating the landscape on the approach to New Street on the train from Euston and soon to be the Birmingham terminus of HS2. Perhaps the reopening of the station will breathe new life into the Eagle and Tun.

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Fazeley Street Birmingham

The sun broke through as we reached the Digbeth Branch Canal at the junction of the Typhoo Basin. We had half-an-hour before the screening in an old industrial building beside the towpath and Nick told me more about his interest in the Birmingham poet Roy Fisher whilst I talked of walking the River Rea and doing the Tolkien Trail.

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We had been invigorated by our short stroll around Birmingham, it seems to offer so many possibilities for the urban rambler. We are already plotting a return.

London beers #1: Reliance Pale Ale & Wu Gang

London is currently bursting with breweries, at least 50 at the last count. Luckily for me a place has opened on my doorstep that sells a great selection of the ales they are turning out giving me the opportunity to sample them by taking the short stroll across Wanstead Flats to the Wanstead Tap

Brixton Brewery Pale Ale

Reliance Pale Ale – Brixton Brewery

According to the eye-catchingly designed label this luscious golden pale ale is named in honour of one Brixton’s dreamlike arcades – the Reliance Arcade built in 1925 and now thankfully granted Grade 2 listed status. I wrote about the arcades in This Other London. German theorist Walter Benjamin used the Paris Arcades as the inspiration for his seminal work The Arcades Project. Benjamin saw the arcades as being like the portals to the underworld of ancient Greece, ‘a land full of inconspicuous places from which dreams arise’. The arcades were ‘galleries leading into the city’s past’ that we pass during the day not realizing the wonders they hold.

In the case of the Reliance Arcade the dream that has arisen is this glorious pale ale. I don’t know how to describe it in terms of its aromas and the varieties of hops used in its brewing except to say that my taste buds ascended to the heavens and did laps around the evening sun. It’s bloody gorgeous.

Pressure Drop Brewery

Wu Gang Chops The Tree – Pressure Drop Brewing

I had no idea what a Hefeweisse is and was beguiled into buying this curious brew by the idea that it contained ‘foraged herb'(s). Dan at the Tap suggested it had hints of sage. It’s also got a lovely label – you don’t find artwork like that on a tin of Carlsberg. Pressure Drop are also relatively local being based over the valley in Hackney.

It slides down like a melted ice cream working it way over your knuckles on a childhood summer afternoon. I couldn’t taste the foraged herbs to be honest but by the time I’d worked that out it didn’t matter.

I’d better get over to the Tap for the next batch.