I have moved to Paris to start a job child-minding. Yup, they looked at me and thought “here’s a good role model to expose our son to.” The following is an account of the move and my attempts to understand how to live in Paris.

How best might I explain the style in which I travel? A vignette. Imagine, if you will, a first class compartment on the Caledonian Sleeper. It’s the same as a standard class compartment, but you’re guaranteed you don’t have to share and you get a free drinks voucher (which I have already spent in the bar down the train.)

I am hunched, sitting up in bed, my computer resting on the bench/sink thing they have in here blasting out Paul Simon, and the half bottle of Talisker I smuggled on board is starting to go down. Bleary eyed and reckless I look out between my straggly hair strands through bloodshot eyes at the computer screen. I know this ’cause I can see it in the mirror to my right: it’s quite the effect. The room rocks to the rhythm of the train and Graceland, dim lights flit orange through the night outside, and on the floor is my rucksack, to which has been taped with large quantities of brown packing tape the worn-through gig bag housing my guitar in the hope that Eurostar will believe it is all one item of luggage. On the floor are a couple of potted plants, and in the guards van further down the train I’ve left a bag of boots and my enormous trunk containing my lps, the player, more clothes, my copy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary and my typewriter.

And I’m talking to you. Yes, you dear reader, as there is nobody else here. I’m going to lie back in the bunk and take another pull of my whisky now…

Later dancing on the bed to the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, giggling, waving my third full bottle around wearing nothing but the Scotrail blanket as a cloak looking for all the world like a deranged, drunk tartan bat…

Waking up at Watford Junction, the carriage guard is knocking on the doors with breakfast. She’s just done mine – little teapot and everything – this is living! Elegance by the mile. I’m eating breakfast in bed off a tray at about forty miles an hour. When I wake up early in the morning… every body seems to think I’m lazy, I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy… Keeping an eye on the world going by my window.

…On the Eurostar – Frenchman sitting across from me is reading a translation of Bukowski – “Journal d’un vieux dégueulasse” Diary Of a Dirty Old Man. He doesn’t speak much English (has no currency) and I don’t fancy tormenting strangers with my French just for the hell of it. There is a funky smell in this voiture… and I suspect it might be me. Well, that’s what you get when you travel first Tom class…

…a miniature meal – the suggestion of a piece of salmon and the ghost of a few noodles. The waiter asks what we would like to drink and the Frenchman defers to my expert judgement. Vin rouge I think…

…on returning from socialising with the most recent tumbleweeds and having a few drinks, I looked at the bedding in my Parisian garret. My boss’s husband evidently learned interior decoration from Eric Clapton. It’s white. White. I can’t live with white. The bedding is white, the floor is cream, the walls are newly painted white. By the time I’m gone it’ll be painted black.

I looked at those sheets and thought of the lovely dark patterned sheets I’d brought with me. They’re old, stained, faded, but have proven their worth time and time again. OK, I thought, I’m going to change them. I took off the pristine white sheets and put them away in a drawer. The white duvet and pillows were lying there on the bed, my coverings over a chair. I decided I wanted wine and poured some into my cocktail shaker glass. A streak of red across the bed, a frantic hurry with a towel and shampoo, a sigh of relief I’d taken off the white sheets and a realisation: I can’t have nice things. I’m putting down the old grotty carpet on top of the nice new cream one tomorrow. God I wish Fran hadn’t persuaded them to repaint…

…and now I have a mobile phone. That’s right, the non-smoking vegans have won. It’s a damned sight more difficult to get a phone in France than you would think. I just wanted the basics – a prepaid card with the cheapest phone. In S&Co Charlotte tutored me in what to ask for and how much it was likely to cost and gave me directions to a place called “The Phone Shop” which translates into English as “la Boutique de Telephone” The bloke there said I shouldn’t get a prepaid card, that it would cost too much money and it would be more economic for me to get a contract. I said I didn’t care and wanted the prepaid card. I don’t think he felt I was taking buying a phone seriously enough, he refused to sell it to me and made me go down the road to the Orange shop instead. Anyway, I now have a phone. Task number one for the day complete. Next task is buy groceries. I hope they aren’t as complicated as phones.

More updates at irregular intervals, sooner, later, or not at all.