What can a winter in Paris teach us in Perth about ‘not seeing’ the homeless?

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In January–February 2012 I spent several weeks as a tourist in Paris, experiencing apartment living in an interesting quartier, walking the streets like a true flaneur (turning left, and left, and left again), visiting galleries and famous department stores and generally delighting in everything that this culturally rich, historically fascinating city has to offer.

The only thing remotely challenging was the weather: an extreme cold wave had begun sweeping through Europe two days before I arrived.

France was far from the worst affected country (many people died in others), but Paris was freezing. I’d spent a month at a writing residency in rural Scotland in the previous northern winter and that didn’t even come close.

And I think it was the weather that made me more aware of the existence of another Paris: people sleeping rough in métro stations, in doorways, on icy streets over métro vents emitting warm air. This Paris sat in stark contrast beside the Paris of tourist indulgence that I, from my privileged position of comfort and safety, was experiencing.

Those impressions lived on in my mind after I returned home and became the seeds for my novel Six........

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