Big Apple Red (for a change).

I won’t write a rambling post today- for a change.  I have a dinner to get to and today was the only ‘busy day’ I’ve had since I arrived in Paris.  I had two notifications on my phone before I went to sleep last night, the first being that my alarm would go off in the morning (great), and the other a reminder that I had to get to Dr Heisse at 5.15pm.  Oh, and French class for four hours in the morning, but that is a given and hard to forget.

Change, as they say, is as good as a holiday and getting my nails done, regardless of the city I’m in (on the holiday seeking change), is an experience so familiar that its probably the only thing in the world that doesn’t ever change.

Around the corner from my apartment in Paris there is a nail bar called Happy Nails (you guessed it), and inside the nail bar sit two of the sweetest women I think I’ve ever met.  ‘You have boyfriend?’ they ask in French (every week) –  to which I reply (going a shade of Big Apple Red, the colour they busily paint my nails with),  ‘Oh, non, je n’ai pas de petit ami,’ as a standard response- and no, I don’t know why and much as I would love to tell you my life story, I don’t actually have the dialogue to and yes, I too am frustrated about this (is what goes through my mind, every- single- time).

I write this post with a dead arm and bright red nails after Happy Nails at 4pm and Doctor Heisse at 5.15pm.  At the nail bar we watched cute videos of babies dancing to Justin Beiber songs and later, with Doctor Heisse, I  was put through my paces (in French) and grilled on the importance of taking care in India and if I felt sick, I had to take this, and then this ‘understand Virginia,’ ‘Oui Madame,’ (even though I didn’t), ‘diarrhea is the single most terrible thing you can possibly contract- that, and eye mucus- you know eye mucus, you get it from dirty hands in the eyes’.

Got it, and thank you, and with that I looked down at my Big Apple Red nails shimmering under the bright lights of the surgery.  The only other thing bothering me in that moment of revolting thoughts and abysmal French (both of which were shelved for a moment), were the wafts of beef bourguignon that I got each time I shifted in my chair (the beef smell was deeply embedded in my skivvi after sitting in a petit cafe for lunch where it was the plat du jour- I went for the salmon).

So I’ll leave you with all of this as I enjoy my first Aperol Spritz in what feels like one hundred years- under a heater, wearing a puffer and two jumpers over a beef scented skivvi before I go to see friends for dinner.  This being one of my favourite things and (like nail bars), I can’t imagine will ever change.