To be an apprentice is to be a courier. I’m exaggerating but I’m not far from the truth. When you become an arpette, you run around making deliveries. I remember one impossible day. I had started shopping just after a coffee and I hadn’t stopped all day. “You go to Pierre’s, he’s on the sixth floor; then you go to Jean’s, he’s on the fifth floor; I think Yves has some parts for us, it’s on the eighth floor…”. I would go back to the workshop on the fourth floor, put the folds on and leave. I didn’t have a mobile phone at that time, but I had legs! And there were hardly any lifts in the buildings on the 9th floor. That day, I counted, I climbed a hundred floors… Memorable!
J, almost retired crimper
A few diamonds, a ring and a big anger
A few days ago, I was having lunch with an old acquaintance. A very nice man whom I hadn't seen for several years and who knew me as a young apprentice, freshly arrived in Paris in the early 2000s. As is often the case in the neighbourhood where I...