I'm getting palpitations already. For the second weekend in a row, I will be departing my beloved metropolis - but this time, not for the gallic grandeur of Paris, but the glamour of, er, Gloucester. Like, in the country. Bleurgh.

Which means a long-ish drive tonight, during which I'll have to go past, like, villages, and 'ye olde farm shoppes', and little country cottages with dodgy home-made signs outside saying 'Freshly Layed Egg's £1 dozen' or some such illiteracy (I mean, what's wrong with you people? Why do you think the good lord gave us Tesco's? What kind of weirdo drives to someone's house just to buy eggs?) And no doubt I will, at least three times, get stuck behind a tractor and/or horse box, which will be painfully slow and/or smell.

Still, gotta be done. Family obligations and all that - numerous family birthdays, and since come Christmas I'll be reclining with a chilled glass of champagne on a beach in the Canaries, it's also the only opportunity I'll have to deliver the assorted presents (yes, I have done my Christmas shopping already, and yes, it's freaking me out too. Normally I'm strictly a December 23rd person).

Back Sunday though, to breathe heavy sighs of relief at the Vauxhall Tavern, provided I haven't been swallowed up into some hideous provincial nightmare and forced to spend the remainder of my weekends trawling garden centres, believing that corduroy is an acceptable fabric, and seeing nothing wrong with floral wallpaper...

Just a quick note to Destiny's Child, who I know are regular readers. We like 'Emotion', but please, pick a note and just sing it. You don't need to try out fifteen alternatives for each one before you finally settle on it.

And you can stop smirking, Mariah...

Good grief. That Carol Vorderman gets everywhere, doesn't she? And now she's all over blogging, in The Mirror - which you can read right here... (via iamcal)

'Isn't there something a little odd about sharing your most intimate moments with the wired world?' she asks.

Just the issue I've been trying to get my head around this week, for various reasons. Which, to cut a long story short, has resulted in the somewhat slimmed-down archives you may have noticed, and the fact that, well, I'm gonna start distinguishing more carefully between what belongs in a private diary where it can't hurt anyone, and what's fair game for the public domain.

Apologies in advance if this makes for dull reading - but on the bright side, it sounds to me like carte blanche to be even more shallow and trivial than usual. Hurrah!

Top Five Things About Parisians Which Are True:

1. It is unacceptable to wear anything other than black. 99% of Parisians are dressed entirely in black, and those who aren't receive funny looks and are pointed at in the street.

2. Yes, it is compulsory to smoke. No exceptions.

3. Parisians are not rude. Provided you make even the slightest effort to speak their language, however mangled, you'll find them as friendly and welcoming as you could hope for. More so, in some cases.

4. That is, unless they are an official of some kind, seated behind a counter in a post office, bank or similar. In which case you can regale them with the entire works of Moliere, perfectly enunciated and with props, and still not raise a smile. The woman who resolutely refused to look up from her book while answering customers' queries at the Museum of Modern Art is a prime example.

5. Nobody carries a string of onions around their neck whilst wearing a stripy jumper and riding a bicycle. That's Brittany, where it remains compulsory.

6. If a shop doesn't sell bags, it will sell shoes. If it sells neither, you're not in a shop at all. Get out of the bakery before you have that 34th croissant.

7. Yes, that is six. Sue me.

And here endeth Paris week, I promise!

Did I mention how much I love Paris? Ah, just the once or twice, yes.

Nearly didn't make it at all thanks to the vagaries of London's buses holding Kelvin up, but once on board the Eurostar it was plain, er, sailing, into Gare du Nord and down to the Hotel Central - which I'd fully expected to be the campest hotel in the world, what with it being Paris' only gay hotel, and having a proprietor called 'Fabrice' - we were thinking pink duvets and rainbow towels galore. Which wasn't far off the mark (well, pink walls at least), but turned out to be a good choice, very welcoming, sooo quaint (as I believe a tourist would say) and handily located right among all the bars of Le Marais for easy stumbling home.

Friday afternoon comprised a lazy lunch at the Open Cafe (a new arrival since my last visit) and a trip to the top of the Pompidou Centre, chiefly for the great views across the city, but also briefly taking in the Musee National d'Art Moderne, if for no other reason than to be able to claim we at least did something cultural that didn't involve alcohol.

Culture out of the way, it was time to hit the bars. Starting with, for old times' sake, My First Ever Gay Bar (available at all good toy shops, from Mattel!), the venue formerly known as Le Subway. Which is now home to 'Le Sun Cafe' - a rather unusual venue which is undoubtedly the product of someone thinking: 'Ok, gay men - they like bars, they like sunbeds - let's have a bar with sunbeds in it!' Which, bizarrely, is what it is - bar on the ground floor, sunbeds in the basement. God, all it needs is an IKEA on the first floor and nobody would ever leave...

From there to the busy Amnesia Cafe, and on to Le Quetzal, located appropriately enough at the end of Rue des Mauvais Garcons (Bad Boys' Street). Traditionally one of the busiest and cruisiest Marais bars, but being fairly quiet I rather suspect it's been superceded by the newer Cafe Cox, where we headed next, and probably the liveliest and most enjoyable of the bunch. Not to mention home to possibly the world's most flirtatious barmen, who appear to insist on mentally undressing you at least three times before serving you (maybe that's why it's so popular...) - Kelvin even returned from the bar at one point with free drinks we'd been given on the grounds the barman liked his nipples. Hey! Hands off - I have exclusive rights on those!!

Saturday: it's actually illegal under Homosexual Law to visit Paris without going shopping, so shop we did, and very successfully too - good grief, I even managed to get four (four!) t-shirts. This is something of a triumph when you consider that under normal circumstances my inability to buy shirts is second only to my inability to keep them on.

After that, Chatelet, the Champs-Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, crepes, the gorgeous Rue Mouffetard (tiny bistros and shops for miles) - where the red wine started to flow at around 5pm. And continued through drinks with a friend and colleague of Kelvin's at Le Dome in Saint-Paul. And continued well into the night, to most of the aforementioned bars and several others, eventually winding up at Le Depot at around 1am, which Time Out describes as 'a colossal disco sin-bin'. They're not kidding.

On the ground floor, a reasonable-sized dancefloor, pretty decent house music, and go-go dancers, much like any club of its kind - busy, enjoyable, but by no means packed. Which, you soon discover, is because everyone is downstairs, in the vast, winding, and thoroughly confusing labyrinth of passageways, dark rooms, and, ahem, darkrooms. Buried somewhere within which is another smaller dancefloor, rather livelier than the first, complete with video screens which seemed to specialise in a type of film I'm dubbing 'Implausible Garden Furniture Porn'. It was all:
'Blimey, that deckchair's never going to stand up to that...'
'That sunlounger's going to give way any minute...'
'Ooh, look, now they're on a hammock!'

Much fun though, much dancing (yes, of course we stayed on the dancefloor the whole time. Well, nearly...), though we didn't make it quite as far as the 8am closing time, the vast quantities of alcohol having taken their toll...

Sunday: a lazy breakfast at the bistro opposite our hotel, followed by visits to Sacre-Coeur, St Michel (the Latin Quarter), more of Le Marais, and in the evening, dinner at a gorgeous old restaurant Kelvin had secretly booked for us, the old romantic (he was just so adorable all weekend, as ever - there aren't many people I could spend every waking minute with for four days without even the slightest argument, but already I'm kinda sad I won't get to see him now until Sunday - god this is getting serious!) Followed by further partying, of course...

And back to London yesterday, thoroughly exhausted, but thoroughly happy. And planning the next trip already...

Back from Paris. And a truly perfect weekend, more details of which tomorrow no doubt but right now I need to be horizontal. Again.

'WildTop' is not, as first impression might have it, a refugee from the aforementioned Gaydar, but the sender of this:

From: WildTop
Date: 11 November 2001 11.35
To: ds25uk@hotmail.com
Subject: Ice Rescue

Hi,

I found your email address on your website at http://davelondon.blogspot.com

Regarding the site, you might be interested in my invention "Ice boat and a car top storage combination".

The winter's first ice is already skimming lakes and ponds and with it comes ice tragedy season. I invented this boat to be used effectively for Ice rescue.

Ah yes. You've clearly picked up on that falling-through-ice-while-fishing fear that I have. Very intuitive.

Questions In A World Of Blue - just because it's one of my favourite David Lynch/Julee Cruise songs too.

Anyway, definitely off now, I got A Real Indication of some packing comin' on...

My second venture out into the Paris nightlife was equally memorable, for different reasons. Armando, who’d already been in Paris several weeks on an exchange from California, volunteered to show me round on a bar crawl of Le Marais, to which I readily agreed of course…

Which began at Le Duplex, a tiny, art-themed bar on the north side of Le Marais where you’d tend to find writers, artists, and anyone else who felt themselves a little too ‘intellectual’ for the thrust of the more boisterous bars. Including the rather lecherous architect-in-a-black-polo-neck (is there any other kind?) who I had to, quite literally, run away from on a later occasion. But, despite that, it rapidly became a regular starting point for our nights out, by virtue of its relaxed ambience, ease of getting to the bar, and being small enough to find each other instantly.

From there, it was on to Le Piano Zinc, a real Paris institution, wherein you’d find possibly the world’s tiniest bar upstairs, and downstairs every night, local singers (or anyone who wanted to have a go) would take to the microphone alongside the eponymous piano and sing their hearts out, to the chansons of Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf et al, to an appreciative and, more often than not, participative audience.

Which sounds potentially excruciating, but was, due to the sheer talent and infectious enthusiasm of most of the performers, thoroughly entertaining.

And there, sitting at the bar, watching the show, a vision. Kinda smartly dressed, wavy dark hair, the most piercing blue eyes and one hell of a smile – now, I always picture him as looking like Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love, but then, I just thought he was the most stunning looking guy I’d ever laid eyes on.

So I was more than somewhat surprised when, on the way to our next port of call, (Le Subway again), Armando said to me:
‘Did you see that guy at the bar?’
‘Which one? The really gorgeous one – to our left a bit? Yeah of course I noticed him!’
‘He was checking you out the whole time.’
‘He was not!’
‘Didn’t you see he kept looking over?’
‘No way….’
‘No really, he was!’

This went on for some considerable time, but a couple more drinks, and a couple more bars later, we went back to Le Piano Zinc. He was still there. And this time there was definite eye contact. And smiling. And more eye contact. And more.

Which, finally, resulted in him coming over and enquiring as to whether I spoke French (I still cringe to remember how, at that same moment, I involuntarily picked up my jacket, like he’d just said ‘Get yer coat, you’ve pulled’ or something – god that must have looked cheap!). Fortunately, at that time my French was considerably better than it is now - witness the slow progress of my attempts to book a hotel room the other week - so conversation was reasonably easy, or as easy as it ever is in that kind of situation (numerous bieres blondes had helped) so I soon found out he was Adrien, a year older than me at 22, and a part-time security guard when he wasn’t studying literature at The Sorbonne.

Armando was busy chatting with some fellow Americans by this point, so we said our goodbyes, and went, ostensibly, for a walk – but one which I was rather happy to find let to Adrien’s studio flat, seven floors up, right in the heart of Le Marais (and almost directly opposite where we’ll be staying this weekend).

The rest I don’t think I need to document – you’ve got imaginations. Let’s just say no stereotypes about French men were contradicted that night…

And suffice to say I practically floated through the streets the next morning, stopping only to grab a croissant for breakfast, on the way back to the (rather less romantic) Universite de Paris X.

That was just the first two of many, many pretty damn incredible nights and days that spring – so, unsurprisingly, I’m rather happy to be going back, even if it is just for four days. Paris, officially, rocks.

So, I'm outta here - blogging unlikely for next few days, back Tuesday, have damn good weekends y'hear?

Blogs re-organised alphabetically. The disorder was offending my Libran sensibilities.

That is all.