PARIS Gare du Nord

PARIS Gare du Nord. Where the journey begins. I step off the train from Amiens, and it's in that first step, on the proverbial Paris soil, that I realise the gravity of where I am. The city of love. The fashion capital. The Mecca of art, culture, literature and gastronomy; France's throbbing heart.   

 Reality quickly replaces reverie: right hand firmly on handbag, you've heard about the muggers here. Left hand casually resting into left coat pocket, you ought to keep it chic all the same-  you're in Paris now. 

 The Metro. An underground (ha, of sorts) created solely for the purpose of self-righteous Brits to condescendingly point out at every opportunity possible, the hideous differences between the Parisian metro and cross-border cousin, our personal pride and glory: The London Underground.    Oops. Made a sly remark already there. I can't help it, I'm a Londoner! We have the most superior transport system in the world, didn't you know?  

"Goodness, would you get a whiff of Châtelet station ? Scrubbed down till it sparkles, our King's Cross. You could see your own reflection at Chancery Lane!" "Trains only coming in from the left? What's that about then?" "Hold on to your iPhones lads, heard the pick-pocketing here is rife."  Us and them. The UK and Europe. Brits and Europeans. Our island mentality makes it all too easy to become cynical of the unfamiliar.  

One thing that is as sure as rain in England, is that Paris is beautiful. Not to sound cliché or anything, but it really is a far cry from London. I'm talking that eye-watering, eyebrow-raising, head tilting northward until it can't come back down- type aestheticism .  

Getting off at Passy metro station, it's only a 5 minute walk before you are confronted by the 324 metre long iron monster that is the Eiffel Tower, the most cherished emblem of the capital. A monumental feeling, a very David and Goliath type moment (psst, you're David). Ascending from Charles De Gaulle-Etoile station, and it's love at first sight with l'Arc de triomphe. A colossal arch symbolic of the fortitude of the French Empire, and constructed in the most grandiose of ways only dear old Napoleon knew how.   Tearing your eyes away from this edifice and turning southward lies les Champs Elysées- the most beautiful boulevard in the world. Walking down it's 2 kilometre long stretch feels like walking down an inflated catwalk, and fittingly so, as the avenue boasts some of the greatest haute couture houses in fashion history. You notice a Louis Vuitton store to your right, grand enough to house the entire cast of Downton Abbey, the Queen and the Obamas all at the same time.     Leaving Anvers, you'll enter one of the most visual time warps into the religious importance of Paris. Here lies the Basilica Sacré-Coeur, an ivory-white cathedral in Montmarte, or the Mount of Martyrs. Perched on the summit of the city, walking up the cobbled streets starts to feel like a pilgrimage in itself, but the panoramic view of the capital once you're up there? Indescribable.   Detour to Palais Royale-Musée du Louvre. I am not, and have never been big on art. Having said that, coming face to face with the Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, staring her squarely in the eye, does things to you.    

     Home-time. Making your way back to Gare du Nord, a child-like sadness slowly creeps over you, like when you were younger, in the middle of a life-changing game of "Grown-Ups" at your cousins' house, and your mum comes up to tell you that you're leaving in 5 minutes. The sadness allows you to reflect on the metro journey back, and perhaps appreciate things you didn't care to notice before. Like how the mysterious male/female voice on the tannoy always announces the approaching station twice, and in the cutest French accent: "Réamur-Sébastopol...Réamur Sébastopol".    

Like how Parisian people, as a subtle act of kindness, always give up their seats near the doors to make more space whenever it gets the slightest bit crowded.  

Like how, at least once in your lifetime during a Paris metro journey, you are accompanied by a jolly accordionist/guitar duet/jazz-blues saxophonist, just trying to get by in life but simultaneously loving what they do.   

The city of Lights has a dark underworld. Homelessness is Paris' epidemic; whole families lay strewn on streets and children cling to mothers on rues worth more than the clothes on their backs.  Chronically unemployed youth, dying to kill the banality of their lives, turn to theft and violence; idle hands do make the devil's work after all. Ill-lit alleyways laced with lewd neon lights, where paid sex is promised on every street corner demonstrate more than anything, the ironic cost of living in the world's most romantic city.      

But it is REAL. And coming from London, I am more than familiar with reality.  

Huh. Maybe I should have applied here after all...    

Shirley Ahura

Southbank on the River Thames

That glimpse of escape where the light rays narrow,

that moment you made on the river,

the reflections of orange lamplight

smudged by the waves.

Intrigued, by the moon and the tide -

a symbiosis,

the water offers a reflection to the moon,

the moon offers a journey,

a movement,

a direction.

The water gives vision

to the recluse in the sky,

the river can feel what it’s like to be one,

but without the mirror effect                           

the moon wouldn’t feel so bright

they both shine light on the other

and their connection is

splashed with sparks.

You can almost see the wire stretching from

Earth to sky,

electric, tight.

The boats are grateful too.

Trafalgar Square

“But Miss, squares are boring!”

I am fourteen and in a maths lesson, nodding in agreement at the square related insult.

Why be a rigid, painfully equal square when you could be a smooth, hazard free circle after all?

I’d say that to the class but then I’d be saying shapes have feelings and that might not go down too well…

Fast forward to now and I am twenty, supposedly more mature with a greater intellectual capacity,

And as I stand in this particular square, I can’t help but wonder if a more square shaped world would be a better world – a more equal world,

Where all sides are the same and there’s four points rather than two poles which means there’s more to go round and

As I stand in this square and think about this, I realise that square worlds aren't really an issue for an idle Friday and so I turn my attention to other things.

There’s a calm covered blanket which drapes itself over this square,

Shielding it from the hustle and bustle of the traffic around it.

This square has its own solar system,

With itself at the centre, and bus and taxi shaped planets in noisy orbit all around it,

Yet even in the midst of such chaos, this square finds solace.

This square is no sun of ours.

That sun burns angrily even though it’s centre of attention,

But this square sits quietly as people place their faith which means something in tiny coppers which mean nothing and hurl them into the fountains, drowning wishes they’d rather surface than sink to the ocean floor.

If this square had a voice then I’d like to think it would say to never judge a square by its cover

Because it’s what goes on inside the square that counts.

And as I stand on this idle Friday and observe this interior it hits me that this is a square that’s as unequal and unpredictable as the world around it,

Where as one person smiles for a photo another sighs because they've just missed the last train home,

Where one person throws their rubbish on the ground for the man who gets paid to put it in the same bin he chased a pigeon away from only a couple of minutes ago.

It’s these instances that make this square more interesting than any circle,

And it’s these moments that turn this square into a little child trying to get the attention of its father who’s high up on that column looking elsewhere.

And it’s all of this which means that whenever someone says squares are boring,

I tell them to reconsider.

Jack Whitbread

Norwich

Norwich Bloggers, buyers, sellers, hipsters, grifters, grafters, funeral directors, specsavers, uneven pavements, cobbled stone church yards full of bones, phones4u. 

Churches, pubs, clubs, subway. Tattoo parlours. Flower sellers. Secret tellers. 24 hour buses that come every half an hour. Locals. Carrow road football. Schools.

Fools in leather jackets with pierced ears and tea spoons for fingers. Taxi drivers who love Terry Pratchett and The Royal Family in equal measures; read ‘The Colour of Magic’ in the car when bored.

Artists who measure their success in how much coffee they can now afford. Bored teenagers who are more fringe than face. Middle aged retired police officers who drink wine because they’ve got too much time,Very little crime. Occasional rows between mothers with tightened brows, fathers with permanent frowns. Kids so angry that there’s still spittle collecting around their mouths. 

Town? 
City. 
Weird but kind of pretty.

 Lewis Buxton

Underground

If the underground
were turned upside down
we’d see the guts of the city
splayed across our streets
The innards of Camden Town,
The gizzards of Dalston Junction,
The offal of Greenwich,
on the surgical table
of London streets

Lewis Buxton

The Quay, Exeter 4/02/2014

The Quay, Exeter

I was not born by the water.

I was born in a packed out,
built up, cholesterol filled
borough of London.

The nearest I came to water
that did not come from sky or taps
was when it was a sunny weekend,
and the mood struck Dad to pack up the car
with the blue and white ice box,
two half-finished lemonade bottles,
a bunch of bananas,
and some ham sandwiches,
before heading to Southend.

Currently, I am stood on a bridge
over the River Exe.
It is windy,
I lick my fingers,
tasting the scalped top of the sea.
I want to find a corner of it
to peel back like wallpaper
that has come unstuck.

The banks have overflown again,
last year it rained 652 millimetres.

Am I the only one who names each wave Noah?
Watching them break
like sins against an angel’s breast. 

Aisling Fahey

MapMyView - About the Project and How to Get Involved

What is the project about?

MapMyView is a project that aims to bring spaces and places, as we know them personally, to life on a digital map. Using GoogleMaps, I want to get to the stories behind these streets, counties and cities that you may have never travelled, and may never reach. This project hopes to be a stimulus for creation, and a place to share stories with people from various locations. It is a mapping of place through the eyes of individuals, not corporations or businesses.

If you want to be involved, please email mapmyview@gmail.com and briefly explain why you want to get involved, and the place that you will be responding to. I will then send out the details so that you can access the Googlemaps account.

Your role in the project: 

STEP 1: Choose a place

Think of a place that you want to respond to. You must be able to physically get there. It could be somewhere that has significance to you, for example the street you grew up on, your favourite place, or a place that you have always wanted to go but never been.

STEP 2: Experience it

Travel to this place. Once there, experience it in whatever way you want to. Walk around, look around, take in whatever and whoever is there. Take time to do this and don't rush.

• What does this place make you think of? 
• What is in this place? 
• What do you think is the most important thing about it? 
• What memories does it provide?
• Does anything funny happen when you're there? 
• What do you do there?
• Do you interact with anyone else?
• What do you see/hear/smell/touch? 

STEP 3:  Respond to it

Respond to the place. This can be done whilst there or when you return home. And can also be in any form you like. Some possibilities include:

• taking pictures of things that stand out to you
• documenting your time there through film or pictures
• writing about the place - responding through poetry or prose
• you can return there at    another time and video yourself performing your poetry

The possibilities are endless and each of them create interesting ways of capturing your personal experience and reaction to the place you have visited.

STEP 4: Map it! 

The next step is to share what you have produced so that other people can experience it from a distance.

1. Log into the MapMyView googleengines map account using the logon details I emailed to you.
2. Tick 'Physical Places' and for now untick 'Memory and Routes' - it is now possible for you to add a Placemarker to show where you were.
3.  You can:

• search and find the location that you responded to
• add your response to the map.
• plot the route that you took, or create shapes which signify the larger area you were in.
• add photos, videos and text to the map.
• use the Blogger account to create a post with your poetry and prose, and then link this in the description box of your placemarker so that viewers are guided to that post when they look at your area.

You can respond to as many places as you want, the idea is to fill the map with various experiences and different places, so that the digital map becomes a site of stories which bring the static street names to life.

STEP 5: Further Ideas

Once you have completed the 'physical response', there are other ways to respond to the map, and to other people's stories, if you would like to get more stimulus and ideas for responding, please contact me on afahey@hotmail.co.uk and I will send them to you.

This map is yours to use and to share what you want to. However, please be respectful, do not upload any inappropriate material and do not interfere with anyone else's posts.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy taking part in this project :)