I have not finished the first draft of the new book I said I would have done by this week. Close, but not quite. Still need some words; still need to fiddle. There’s a magazine piece I’m behind with and I can’t find my “way in”, so nothing has been written beyond scribbled notes. I agreed to do a column for a newspaper, but I haven’t even found time to think about that beyond the three-line pitch. A book review requires me to stop reading crime novels, watching Succession, and focus on a serious tome; to make pertinent comments across 1200 words. There’s a podcast script and a radio documentary proposal. I also need to get the car cleaned, we’re out of wine, pasta, brown sauce and just about every essential! Need to order a shop. My local corner shop doesn’t stock the brand of coffee we like anymore—I need to find another store. There’s some issue with my supposedly “smart” electricity meter, there’s a little leak from the bathroom floor to the kitchen ceiling underneath, the grandkids want to go see Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, and the I need to edit a book I agreed to oversee through to publication.
But I’m gaining eight hours on a trip from London to New York. No great reason—accompanying my partner on a research trip. But there’s always people to see, drink coffee with, beer, an exhibition to see. It’s procrastination really, it’s not essential—nice, but not vital. The Airbnb could be cleaner, but it’ll do. And then next weekend I’ll lose those eight hours flying back home and be back where I started with the books and scripts and the leaks and that faulty meter all waiting for me like I never left.
So June 4th this year was not just another day—a regular 24-hour day. Instead it became a 32-hour day and, like everyone, being always on, all the time—on the Elizabeth Line, in seat 53A, in the JFK immigration queue, in a taxi—the online scroll of remembrance seems longer and more agonising than ever before somehow (even with the unleashed trolls, bots and shills out in full force)—endless, constant, unremitting, following me across the Atlantic, across two continents and remembering events on a third. And that’s a good thing, reminding me that in amongst everyone’s day today so many (even those living just a normal 24-hour day) found time to remember, recall and say/post/voice something. There’s a hope in that, something good, something important.
How to cite: French, Paul. “Just Another Day: Paul French.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/paul-french.
Paul French is the author of Midnight in Peking and City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir. He is currently working on a biography of the inspirational year (1924/1925) Wallis Simpson spent in China, for publication in 2024. [All contributions by Paul French.]
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