Honorary Parisian


It was October and I had crossed Dover-Boulogne on the Channel ferry, standing on deck in the wind and wet of a passage so rough the captain said he should not have gone out, but the blue sky and bright sun had fooled him. In Paris I came down with a drowning cold and took to bed where the feverish idea struck that a gringo cheeseburger and french fries would cure me, so I pulled on my still damp and saltstained raincoat and dragged my rumpled self across the river to the Marais. I was moving slow, looking and feeling very much the worse for wear with my red running nose when a lady drunk whose nose and raincoat were equal to mine stepped up to me and asked, "Vous êtes du quartier?"

MOVIE LOVE, a short film:
(for Nicolas Roeg)

A man and a woman exit the dark of a movie theatre in each other's arms, enjoying themselves under the spell of the movie they have just seen. Stopping to read and admire the poster for their movie, they strike the pose of the lovers on the poster before they stroll out into the night with all its beautiful and glittering cinematic promise. On the sidewalk in front of the theatre the man slips and finds that he has stepped in dogshit. The romantic post-movie moment - like the twilight consciousness between sleeping and waking - is shattered as the man shouts at a person walking a dog away from the mess. The owner of the dog turns and reveals that he is blind.