Sunday Blog 242 – 19th July 2026
Last Sunday blog, I was checking into my Airbnb at 7am on Tuesday 30th June, thanks to my kind host who took pity on me, a long-haul flight survivor. I didn’t dare test the wheeled backpack-plus-suitcase combination on the metro from Charles de Gaulle airport, opting for a taxi.
Just a few streets shy of our destination, the van in front of us stopped in a small, impassable street and the driver descended and proceeded to load and unload fifty boxes. Finally I was deposited at the approximate location of my accommodation. Then I just had to peer at the map, check I was travelling in the way the arrow wanted me to, wrangle a door code, ascend two flights of stairs twice (because, baggage), and voila, I’d reached my home for a week.
For my next book project, I’m researching the period 1850-1920, with a keen interest in the Paris Siege of 1870 which culminated in the Paris Commune of 1871. A post-Revolution Revolution if you will, to tackle the unfinished business of the French Revolution we all envisage, with the guillotine and Marie Antionette heading to her doom. The Paris Commune of 1871 was a diverse group of soldiers, students, women, artists, looking for the egality, liberty and fraternity, even sorority that hadn’t quite been delivered.
For my precious Parisian week, I toggled between knocking out the work to keep the dollars rolling in, and hitting the streets for my book research. Out into Paris I would go, shedding those dollars more rapidly than they could accrue.
I’d made a haphazard list of places to visit, and at the top of it was the Musee Carnavalet of Paris. I headed there the day after the big flight. A bit like IKEA, the Musee Carnavalet made me walk through all the previous galleries until I could get to my desired historical period.
With that ticked off, next on my list was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, but did I visit Jim Morrison’s grave? I did not. Instead I found my way to the Mur de Federes, the site of the last stand of the Paris Commune. Here the final rebels were cornered, lined up and shot and buried where the wall now stands. That brought La Semaine Sanglante – the Bloody Week to a close, where French government troops executed between 20,000 and 25,000 (no precise figures are available) of the Communards, without trial. Not before the rebels had seen imminent defeat and murdered a Bishop being held hostage, and torched much of Paris, so there were atrocities on both sides.
But still, it’s a forgotten civil war I had never delved into it prior to this book project. I sat next to the Mur de Federes and re-listened to the podcast episode from A Journey Through Time on the end of the Commune, imagined the last battle raging between the headstones, and the desperate last stand.
After this still and sombre moment, I dined nearby, consuming a very indifferent and expensive salad, not the last one I would encounter in France. And I made my way back to my atelier, my lonely garret for one week.
How glorious it was.