Back in Paris from a brief stint in Marseille:

Funny, the difference 800 km makes. Everything is so much dimmer up north and continental.

The once-homeless and still clearly jobless fellow who sits at the corner of the escalator coming up into Montparnasse train station, has a bright smile and a handshake ready every day, at nearly any hour I head into the laboratory. I think he is Eastern European in origin, given his accent. The top of his pate shines from the top of the stairs that I take down to pass him and head to work. I wonder if he has ever taken the TGV*.

*(train a grande vitesse = high-speed trains leaving from all the major Paris stations)

The passage Vaugirard brings one efficiently through a city block and comes out facing a street that leads right into the ambulance emergency entrance to the Necker Children’s Hospital. I head in after lunch, after the flight back to Paris with my children. I missed the man who daily, mops the tiles of this semi-outdoor passageway, but it’s only normal as he has a schedule to follow. He’s an equally cheerful sort to the gentleman I described above, seemingly from the Caribbean but with a pure metropolitan French accent, also always ready with a handshake. Or a clasp, to be more precise. This is the working man’s clasp, a break from the mop. Vacation coming up? Had a good weekend? Bon courage!

When pigeons strut across my path along down there, as they are fat and happy from the crumbs scattered by people breaking off the ends of the baguettes they purchased at the chain bakery at the top of the stairs, I divert my path around theirs. I dislike making pigeons or sparrows expend extra energy, or adrenalin, or otherwise cause stress in their little birdbrains. Perhaps they will not sully my hand-clasping friend’s handiwork quite so quickly, if I don’t make them shit in fear? But the toddlers on their way to the creche along there are quite happy to make up for lost occasions.

No point to any of this musing, just noticing.