Walk On By

Walk On By, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

Did you know that if you add yellow and green, you get blue? No, hang on a minute; if you divide purple by red, then multiply by the square root of orange you get a rainbow? Wait, that's not right, oh dear. i should never have taken up painting - the grade i got in my maths A-level ought to have told me that...

Anyway, witness Paris' latest freakout, courtesy of the 'mangerbouger.fr' initiative. OK, sorry, let me explain. On practically every food ad in France these days there's what must be an obligatory mention of the aforementioned site, in small letters, somewhere near the bottom. This site encourages you to do exercise and stuff to counter the effects of the crap we're being incited to swallow by the ads on every spare bit of wall space all over the place. A bit like cigarette companies sponsoring sporting events, that sort of thing.

So anyway, the intention is at least honourable, and here's their latest wacky idea; to put walking signs up around Paris and other cities telling us how long it'll take to get to such and such a destination on foot. The idea being we walk to places more often.

As someone who spends an enormous amount of time tramping the streets of Paris i'm vehemently against it of course; the last thing i want is thousands of fervent foot soldiers clogging up my favourite solitary strolls. But the general word i'm getting 'on the street' is cute idea, but of dubious effectiveness. And some of the timings are treacherous. See a cab, anyone?

(A Paris iPhone street photograph by Sab Will for the 'Paris and I' photo blog @ paris-and-i.parissetmefree.com )