I’ve lived in Paris for nine years now, but I’m still often not sure what goes on here. The other evening I was sitting around a table in someone’s beautiful house listening to some Parisians having a political argument. One of them was a man who spoke at length whenever he got a chance. Then, the moment he’d finished, he’d get on his BlackBerry and check his messages, ignoring whoever was trying to reply to him.
At first I couldn’t understand why everyone kept responding to the rude bloke. Eventually it dawned on me: he must have status in Paris. I Googled him later, and found that he was a rising young politician. I’d had no idea. As an expat, you are freed from two blights that afflict people who live in their own countries: the “status dance” and the “media bubble”.
When I still lived in Britain, I was a victim of both. As a journalist, I’m a media junkie, and so I always knew who was up and who was down in each day’s British news cycle. I knew who the transport secretary was, and what their scandals were. The British media bubble is so big (almost as big as the British housing bubble) that it enveloped me wherever I went. I remember one day landing at Luton airport, getting on the airport bus and hearing the latest “news” about the Beckhams blaring from the bus driver’s radio. Living in the media bubble means having a constant dreadful ringing sound in your ears. It’s like having tinnitus.