Got the T-shirt

Well, I did the half-marathon and got to the finish line in one piece (as did my four friends who also took part):

My time was 2 hours 16 minutes (and 11 very long seconds).

We nearly missed the start of the race due to queuing up for the portaloos:

But once we'd found the start line and caught up with the crowds, the first half was great - a wonderful atmosphere and a lovely route through Paris from the Bois de Vincennes to the Place de la Bastille (right in the centre of Paris):

From 12km until 16km things got rather harder, and more uphill, but we kept our spirits up by cheering loudly after every kilometre, and making the most of the slices of orange and bottles of water given out to us every 5km:

From 17-20km things were no longer feeling good. My legs weren't really feeling anything at all and had stopped responding to commands. Even stopping to walk was painful, so the only thing to do was to carry slowly jogging on, in a kind of trance-like meditative "feel the pain, love the pain, accept the pain" state, counting down the distance left as each kilometre got longer and longer.

The finish line approaching, I vowed never, ever, to do anything as tiring and as pointless as this again. Helen and I ran the last kilometre hand in hand, managing to keep each other going until the end:

We spent the rest of the day hobbling slowly round Paris wearing our medals proudly:

Now that my legs have recovered, I suppose it wasn't that bad. So much so that I've signed up to do another half marathon in 7 weeks time...

Paris Half Marathon

I'm doing the Paris half marathon on Sunday 2nd March 2008 (that's in 2 days time!), and have decided that as well as it being a good chance to prove to myself that I can endure 2 hours or more of physical suffering and get a T-shirt at the end, I might as well take the opportunity to raise some money for a cause that I think is important.

My charity of choice is Refugee Action, an independent, non-religious national charity that provides help, support and practical advice for refugees and newly-arrived asylum seekers in the UK, many of whom flee to our country from war/poverty-stricken countries in the hope of leading a happy and peaceful life, yet meet with racism, abuse and harrassment when they arrive here.

In the hope that my ears will never again be subjected to the dreadful "they come over here and take our jobs..." crap, I'd like you all to take a look at Refugee Action's website, and if you'd like, to sponsor me to run 13 miles along the banks of the Seine in March on their behalf. I've already raised £250 and even though the run is in two days time, you can sponsor me up until the end of April (or thereabouts).

The website is www.refugee-action.org.uk . To take a look at examples of individual cases, see http://www.refugee-action.org.uk/voices/default.aspx .

Thanks very much for taking the time to read this and hopefully sponsoring me (every little bit counts, if you can't spare much!). Otherwise, wish me luck...

To sponsor me, visit www.justgiving.com/katyyelland

Katy

Bienvenue à Paris, have a lovely day!

The notoriously rude Parisians should perhaps take a leaf or two out of New York's new, friendly book. The city's mayor has launched a campaign called Just Ask the Locals, whose strategies to improve New York's grumpy image include tips for visitors easily accessible via a phone line, special maps on street corners, videos designed for tourists in taxis, 50 street teams of chirpy "ambassadors" and the support of several high-profile celebrities, including a grinning Robert de Niro and an unusually cheery-looking Julianne Moore.

I can't quite see residents of the French capital taking this idea on board, though the odd improvement in their general attitude towards the rest of the population sometimes wouldn't go amiss. It has even been known for a bizarre psychiatric problem labelled "Paris Syndrome" to develop amonst Japanese tourists, triggered by the shock of an aggressive "bof!", an unprovoked "non!" in a restaurant or even a filthy look and a "merde!" during the push and shove to get on the train before the doors shut at a busy metro station platform. Some travellers are left shellshocked and unable to cope, and require counselling on the flight back to Japan.

It seems that the Parisians are aware, maybe even a teensy bit proud, of their characteristic lack of civility towards others, and perhaps their rudeness contributes a little to the town's haughty charms. Television adverts for the city's local paper, Le Parisien, include a scene of a tourist asking for directions to the Eiffel Tower, the Frenchman pointing him down one street, then the camera zooming out to reveal that the monument is in fact just around the corner, in the opposite direction to where the tourist has just been pointed. The scene is accompanied by the words: Le Parisien, il vaut mieux l'avoir en journal!, meaning The Parisian: better as a newspaper!

Learning the hard way

Last year, I lived in Paris for 11 months. By the end of that time I had acquired and polished many different skills. My spoken French improved considerably (I know five different words for "joint" as well as an impressive array of swear-words); I dealt with a wealth of French bureaucracy, studied at university and found employment in a variety of different sectors (including waitressing in a restaurant, serving chizburrgurrs to grumpy Frogs and eating frogs' legs on my lunch break); I found my own place to live, made French friends and navigated confidently around the capital. The thing that I perfected with the greatest success, however, was none of these CV-worthy skills, but was the art of staring expressionlessly into the middle distance whilst on public transport.

I don't know what it is about the underground networks of big cities that reduces their citizens to unsmiling statues who avoid looking at you whenever possible but, like the street entertainers you find above the ground, occasionally surprise you with a blink of an eye or a sudden sneeze. The same is true of London. It seems to be an unwritten rule that you must not acknowledge the presence of others.

Wonderfully inventive and useful though underground public transport is, the residents of a city must get pretty fed up with having to suffer smelly, crowded, noisy trains every day just to get to work and back, so it's not really surprising people aren't at their most communicative when travelling through a city. Things only get worse in the summer months when the hot weather and the tourists arrive, and you're forced to commute with hundreds of other smelly beings, with your nose in someone's armpit. And all this whilst trying desperately not to make eye contact.

Cross-channel cultural differences become apparent, though, when you do inadvertantly look somebody in the eye and acknowledge their presence with a small smile. Whenever I've done this on the tube, I've either been met with a bemused look, a returned smile from another non-Londoner or someone else whose guard has momentarily been forgotten, but in most cases, no response at all.

Being a young woman in Paris, however, a meeting of the eyes or a twitch of the lips, when directed at a member of the male half of the species, is frequently mistaken as a kind of mating call. More than once in my year in Paris, I found myself warding off invitations to "come to my 'ouse tonight" and firmly removing wandering French hands from my knee as a result of nothing more than a polite smile or a glance that lasted a second or two too long.

One time, my landlord was having some building work done on the exterior of my apartment, and for a few days I would wake up to find two or three men clattering and banging around outside the window. It seemed rude to ignore them, so in true English style, I offered them a cup of tea. They looked slightly surprised, but accepted, so I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When I returned, with two cups of strongly brewed Tetleys with milk and no sugar (I'd brought the teabags to Paris in bulk - the French don't really do tea a l'anglais) and some Garibaldi biscuits, I found them perched on the edge of my bed. It was my turn to be surprised, but I handed them the tea, which they tasted with suspicion, put down on the floor and proceded to chat me up. After an hour or so of various not-so-tempting offers, which included an invitation to go and stay in their house in Egypt, I managed to get rid of them. I poured the cold tea down the sink, locked the windows and put the kettle on. They did seem to like the Garibaldi biscuits though.

My experiences with Parisian men then and on the metro taught me a lot more about public transport etiquette, the European method of seduction and French taste in tea and biscuits than any grammar lessons or lectures at the Sorbonne ever did.