Moleskine ® - Legendary notebook - Talking about Paris with a...Petite Anglaise

Catherine Sanderson is perhaps better known as Petite Anglaise, the blogger who made headlines in July 2006 when she was fired from her company in Paris. Her boss had discovered postings on her blog which he felt brought the company into disrepute. Catherine went on to sue them successfully for wrongful dismissal, in what proved to be a groundbreaking case of its kind.
Since then every publisher and agent has been hot on her heels to persuade her to tell all and finally, at the beginning of March  PETITE ANGLAISE, the book, was published.
We ask her to tell us about the blog, the book and her relationship with the city of Paris.

Reading your Blog (one of the most visited on the net, sometimes 40,000 visitors a day) We read about your relationship with Mr Frog, how it  began and ended, about your daughter "Tadpole" your sensational sacking......... now, your memoirs have been collected together in a book: what are the differences from its pages and a computer screen?

I was adamant all along that I didn't want to publish a compilation of blog entries in a diary format.  I wanted to re-tell my story, filling in all the gaps I'd intentionally left out along the way, and shape it into a memoir which would read like a novel.  It was a lot more work, but I think it was the logical way forward for me: my blog entries often took the form of slices of life or snippets of dialogue.  I was already halfway there.
The style I'd developed for the blog - taking "snapshots" of emotionally charged moments - needed adapting for the book.  Knitting scenes together was a challenge.  The biggest shift was moving away from the present tense I'd used a lot on the blog, so I could look back at the events with the benefit of hindsight.
Readers of the blog who have now read the book say that it gives them a different insight into me - as opposed to petite anglaise - it fills in all those gaps, and also gives a lot of behind the scenes glimpses into the difference between what I was blogging as opposed to what I was living at the time.

Petite Anglaise tells us about your life in Paris, what relationship do you have with the French capital? What do you love and hate about this city?

I'm a right bank girl at heart, and I love the eastern quarters: Bastille, Buttes Chaumont, Belleville which are lively and more interesting than the picture postcard neighbourhoods.  Now that I'm working from home I don't leave Belleville very often, and I love the village feel of this neighbourhood. I like the little things - the noise your navigo pass makes when you go through the turnstile, the smell of baking bread outside a boulangerie, the local food shops (so different from all the chain stores in England), café society.  But above all, I just love the fact that I'm living my life in French, which makes each day a little bit of a challenge.   I'm addicted to being an eternal expat, and even after 13 years here, I still have so much more to learn. 


You live in Belleville, if you were to take a group of foreign tourists on a guided tour, which itinerary would you follow?

I think I'd start near the métro station in Chinatown, surprise them by peeking into some of the private courtyards just off rue de Belleville, then take the sidestreets (rue Desnoyez, rue Piat, rue de la mare) to show them how different Belleville once was before the high rise blocks were built in the seventies.  The view from the top of the Parc de Belleville is a must-see, and it's worth going up to Jourdain to see what was once the centre of Belleville the town, before it got incorporated into Paris.

There are some lovely areas between Jourdain and the Buttes Chaumont Park too: there are funky shops in rue de Vilette and the passage de l'Adour, leading off it, is lovely.
After showing them the unexpected view of the Eiffel tower from where rue de Belleville intersects with rue des Pyrénées,  I'd take them along rue Rebeval, past all the trendy restaurants, and back to Belleville métro to one of the better Chinese snack bars (my favourite is a closely guarded secret, as it is tiny).
 
Petite Anglaise was your first book, and you're already working on the second, what can you tell us about it?

It's fiction, although in some ways it will read like petite #2 as the main character (not me) is a single mother living and working in Paris.  I'm interested in the dilemma posed by being a single woman who is also a mother, and the way people react to that and their expectations about how she should behave.  I'm working on it now (or trying to) but it's early days at the moment.  Hopefully due for publication in the spring of 2009.

 What does the future hold for your blog? I've heard it still has over 4,000 hits a day......

Yes, a little more than that at the moment.  I think I'll continue writing it for as long as it gives me pleasure.  I enjoy writing it, it's very different to book writing.  I enjoy the immediacy of pressing 'publish' and then getting feedback straight away.
 
What grabs your attention when you visit a new place?

When I travel, I love strolling around and getting a feel for a place (not necessarily going inside museums or anything like that), but above all I like eating and drinking.  I'm also keen on trying local specialities, and my holiday destinations are often heavily influenced by the attraction to the local cuisine.  Which means I usually come back a few kilos heavier than when I set off...