There was a mighty wind in Paris today. Might-ay, might-ay. Because we live on the last floor, and because this building is a hundred years old, the wind is a noisy thing.
"Whoa!" we kept shouting, as our fireplaces clattered and our windows shook.
It got so intense that I got up to check the streets below. Nobody was outside, but garbage was swirling upwards in little turbillons, sometimes reaching the roofs across the street.
Suddenly, I heard a loud crack! then a bang! then some shouting. Craning my neck to see further up the street, I saw a man carrying a 6'x5' piece of metal across the street, struggling against the wind. Weird, I thought, and wondered where it came from. I sat back down and got some work done, all the while hearing more crack!s and bang!s.
Then I heard a really, really loud crack! and bang! and got up to check again. Yet another piece of metal had fallen. But from where? I had to open the window and lean out a bit to see that the metal was actually pieces of scaffolding falling off the building a little less than halfway up the street from my apartment. Chunks of it were everywhere, and a few other smaller pieces of metal had already fallen on the cars below.
It wasn't long before the police came and roped off the street to passersby. Being French, nobody took to this speedy display of order too well. The cops, however, remained firm and would not let people up/down the street.
At one point, I had to leave my house to go to the post office. It was not something I could put off. As I walked out my door and down the streets, three cops yelled at me to hurry.
On my way back from La Poste, I waited in a line of about thirty people as we hoped to get home. The policeman was only letting us go one at a time, and only every 4-5 minutes. With thirty people ahead of me, I figured that would mean a long time in the cold. And I hadn't brought my mittens.
Then I thought of going through the passage on the otherside of the block. It connects my street to a backstreet, and the conncetion point is about halfway up my street, two doors down from my building.
When I came out on the other side of the passage, a good-looking policeman was there, looking stern.
"Mademoiselle?" he asked.
"Yes. I'm just looking to go home," I smiled (smiling works with men, not with women. It's a crazy phenomenon.)
"Do you live at number 10?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Go ahead, then. But be careful to only walk along the side of the walls."
"Thanks," I said, and walked away to him telling me I wasn't close enough to the walls.
Another policeman stopped me no more than eight steps later and reminded me to walk closer to the walls. Jesus, people. The metal scraps were halfway up the street.
Just then, I heard a man from across the street yell, "Attention mademoiselle! C'est dangereux!"
I was just about to reconsider my opinion that French cops are, in general better then American cops when I looked up and saw the guy that runs the computer store across the street smiling at me. He was giggling uncontrollably, obviously excited by the fact that he would be working five hours less than his usual shift on Fridays. And suddenly, I was filled with a deep, deep love for my neighborhood. Again.
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