One week in. When I’m not working I tend to hang out at S&Co or read in my rather well-appointed little garret. Imagine a small attic room, a double bed, a modest but growing collection of books on the shelves, a record player, typewriter and some plants. Round a partitioned corner is the shower. I reckon I must have mentioned the perverse nature of European showering before now, viz. they obviously do it sitting down because usually there is no way of holding the shower head up, or at some point, presumably because they know they’ll never need it, it has been deliberately broken. In my case the latter seems most likely, but by means of a large quantity of packing tape and a pair of tweezers I am now able to shower hands free. For about two minutes at which point the hot water cuts out.

You can tell from the title, however, that my main point or argument or chain of thought today is unlikely to concern itself with the doucheyness of the Parisian shower, but with the phenomenal and excessively dangerous transport system known as Vélib. For those unaware, the Vélib is a rental bicycle of a sort found in a number of major European cities (in London they are known as “Boris Bikes.”) For the princely sum of twenty nine euros one can purchase a Vélib card for a year which enables the card holder to take out a bike for half an hour as many times a day as they could wish for. Having this card has very much speeded up my journeys about town and as a result has saved me a great deal of time (and after a few months of not using the Metro it will save me money) but there are a few difficulties with this system for the unaware ex-pat.

1. Cycling in France is not easy, cycling in Paris is nigh on suicidal. Not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road (and I have caught myself absent-mindedly drifting over to the left, especially on back streets where there are no cars around to keep me right, so to speak) the average Parisian driver is a lunatic. You might have right of way, that will not stop them trying to run you over. It is almost the inverse of my lesson on crossing the road: if you’re on a Vélib Parisian drivers just completely fail to see you: it’s like an invisibility cloak. The saddest thing of all is this means you know they wont see you flick them the vees straight after they nearly kill you.

2. The French take cycling seriously. Or rather cycling offences. One of the shop staff, Ben, was fined one hundred and eighty Euros for cycling the wrong way down a one way street. I’ve been stopped by the police for doing this in St Andrews, they just told me to dismount and push it round the corner before getting back on.Now here’s the story of my minor missdemeanor. I was heading over to the shop with tumbleweed Laura. We had to get there for opening, so I gave her a backie on a Vélib. For those unaware this is when the passenger sits on the saddle and the driver stands on the pedals. Admittedly this was slightly dodge as we were doing a reasonable lick down the Boulevard Saint-Michel when a van tried to run us off the road. I immediately thought this was a point number one problem – French blindness – and I readied myself to do a great deal of vee flicking and French swearing. Thankfully I was aware enough to circumvent the van and pull up at the traffic lights. Suddenly there’s a little Frenchman jumping out the van and walking over to me. I notice the van has “Vélib” written across the front. “Ça ce ne pas pour deux personnes!” That’s right, we got pulled over by the Vélib police. Grinning like an idiot and saying “déesolé désolé désolé, monsieur!” got us off the hook, but I won’t be trying that again.
3. 

   Some Vélibs are more obviously damaged than others…

   You never really know what you’re going to get. On my first day Vélibing I took out a bike with a broken seat and the chain came off. The next bike, it transpired, had a flat front wheel. I got into the habit of checking the pedals and tire pressure before taking them out, but imagine my surprise when bike number three which, up until the point I wanted to slow down had appeared to be a very good bike indeed, refused to stop. The breaks did damn all. I stuck my feet down and mounted the pavement thus avoiding a choice of collision with the car in front or sailing past through a red light and into a very busy junction.

So the secret to success? Treat all drivers with supreme suspicion, obey the rules of the road, be incredibly polite to anyone in a Vélib van and check every part of a bike before taking it out. If there’s something wrong with your bike, turn the saddle to face backwards when you return it so others know not to take it and the Vélib workers know it’s broke.

P.S. Some small mention should probably be made of the fact it was my birthday on Friday. I went to Alex’s gig with Karolina, Nathan, Milly and Krista before heading over to the shop to collect tumbleweeds and shop staffers. We ended up drinking whisky by the Seine and I didn’t feel particularly alive yesterday. Thankfully Nathan stopped by and we roasted a chicken.