Desperate Times

In Lesser News, I Passed

I am so sad to write this, but there is trash all over Paris. It is overflowing the trash cans, sailing down streets and stinking up the sidewalks. There has been no trash pick up in Paris for more than 10 days and it is bad. When I say bad, I mean horrific. The waste disposal workers are on strike now, along with the metro employees, and the trash has piled up higher and higher for days. Look below.

This is right in the middle of rue de Buci which is a thriving cafe area a few blocks from my apartment. It’s dire. Apparently the mayor of Paris is supporting the strikers —who are striking by the way, because President Macron wants to raise the retirement age to 59 for the waste disposal employees and those people are hot! Steaming actually—kind of like the trash.

I truly have never seen anything like it. The first photo has so much trash in it that the entrances to my neighborhood grocery and wine store are literally blocked. I am outraged. I need groceries and wine—on the daily.

Shopkeepers are throwing buckets of water out the front doors of their establishments on rue Dauphine to wash the trash on down to a different locale. But there is no guttering in Paris, and in the 6th where I live, the streets are very old and very narrow. With the trash stacked a mile high on the sidewalks—which aren’t even wide enough for two people to walk side by side in the best of times— it is now necessary to walk in the middle of the road because the sidewalks cannot contain it all. It is like it’s the 1700s. People are just tossing stuff out into the city streets. Do not bring any good shoes to Paris if you are planning a trip—you will probably be doused with dirty water and rotting fruit. And you might want to reinstate that other old custom of perfuming your handkerchief to hold to your nose when you walk past the stinky refuse. I was supportive of the strikers till this, but now I am so afraid of how many rats must be lurking about, that if I were Macron or the Mayor, I would agree to just about any terms to get the trash picked up and the bins emptied. Nobody wants to see Ratatouille and friends at, what is surely the dinner party of their lives.

We probably don’t realize how much waste we put out on a daily basis until it suddenly stops disappearing from our neatly maintained trash bins out in the alley. It really has made an impact on me. I may never drink water out of a plastic bottle again—even if I am dying of thirst. However, wine still has to come out of a bottle with a cork—that is not yet up for negotiation. But I am willing to give up other packaging—which is a sacrifice, as I am a lover of beautiful packaging. Truth be told, I sometimes I love good packaging more than the actual product, but I digress. And no more endless Amazon deliveries with one thing in a giant box. I am going to consolidate my orders. I have always used my own bags for grocery shopping, but now I am not even going to put the produce in those little bags. It will just have to roll around loose.

This whole trash thing has just fascinated me—to the point I forgot to check on my exam status for an entire day. But as it happens, I just checked, and guess what—yours truly has passed Basic Cuisine. I would like to say it was with distinction or high honors or something, but alas, no fanfare—just PASS. Hmm. I will wait for my final transcript and word of the awards ceremony, which I am certain will be more distinguished. In the meantime I may just dance around my apartment in my Le Cordon Bleu uniform and toss my chef cap in the air à la An Officer and a Gentleman. I have always loved Richard Gere.

NEWSFLASH: In breaking news, the streets are packed all of a sudden as I write this! The strikers are marching past my apartment and it’s crazy! There are police uniformed in all black and strikers in white and now orange. They are belting out a rendition of “This Girl is on Fire” but instead of those words coming over the megaphones, all I can hear are the words “Macron and trash”—I think they are singing either, Macron is on fire, or the trash soon will be. This is insane and deafening. It is slightly reminiscent of the noise from the Highlander on a Saturday night but with a twinge of violence and anger to it.

These are late breaking pictures from my living room window.

An army of the Gendarmarie. Right down the Quai!

I may not be the most insightful person, but it looks to me like the strikers are digging in and the bins will remain unemptied for the foreseeable future. Unprecedented, even for the French. The tourists are not going to be happy. If you have tickets to Paris you might want to wait a week or three.

From your loyal reporter on the ground in Paris, have a safe and rat-free Wednesday.