The first set of my sound effects CDs are nearly finished, but it irks me that I don't have a recording of the Paris Metro on the disc of subway trains: on an impulse, I decide that I could spare a day to go and record some and the process begins.

 

London to Paris couldn't be easier - just hop on the EuroStar and you're there in three or four hours, breakdowns permitting. First problem - unless you book two weeks in advance, a standard economy round trip ticket on the EuroStar is £270; this is almost twice what I paid the last time I flew to New York and is therefore not an acceptable option. Option two is a cheap flight, which brings with it problem number two - you can't get a cheap flight unless you stay over a Saturday night, which I can't do, so the airfares start at around £184: add the cost of the transfers at either end and you're looking at the same price as the EuroStar, so option two is ruled out. At this point, I nearly abandoned the idea, but a quick check on the SNCF (French National Rail Network) web-site showed that I could get a first-class return ticket to Paris from Calais for the astonishing sum of £62 with the outward journey being on the TGV which does the journey in just under an hour and a half. A ferry crossing from Dover to Calais added £26 and a night in a cheap hotel in Calais about the same again, so suddenly, the game was afoot! The Channel crossing and the rail ticket were both booked over the internet and confirmed in minutes, even though it was 1 a.m., and our office manager found me the cheap hotel in Calais – albeit with some difficulty.

 

The ferry trip is uneventful and yields up some useful creaking noises as we roll our way across the Channel and, after a long walk in the steady rain, I find the hotel, which had been described as “convenient to the ferry.” They don’t have any record of the booking, even though it was made over the phone and our credit card has been billed and the young woman who is in charge can’t do anything until the manager arrives the next day, by which time I will be long gone, so I pay again and drag the kit up to a room the size of a large cupboard, having first arranged a cab to take me to the TGV station. The hotel (like a Travel Lodge, but rather less luxurious) is in the middle of a sort of industrial wasteland, and Calais closes at about 9.30 at night when it’s not the holiday season, so I go to bed without having eaten much.

 

The cab arrives promptly at 6 a.m. and I get to the station well ahead of the planned 7 a.m. departure, present my e-mail receipt and am handed my tickets for the journey. The TGV arrives and departs exactly on time, and by 8.35 I am in Paris Nord station. By 8.45, I’m in the Metro system with all the kit set up and ready to record. This is the simple bit, I hear you say - just sit there and wait - set levels using the first few trains and then that's it. An hour maximum, and then off for a few hours' sightseeing before the leisurely journey back: it's not like that.

 

First, find a suitable place to record: it needs to be mid-platform so that you get a good stereo spread of the train arriving and departing. It needs to be near a set of doors so that you get a good level for door open and close sounds, and it needs to be away from an entrance or exit so that you don't muck the train sounds up with too much people noise. I find my spot, sit down and take out the kit: normally, I'd have obtained permission to record beforehand, but a couple of RATP security guys see what I'm doing and nod politely, so I take that as a tacit admission that it's ok. Fire up the machine, steady Rover (our Rycote pistol-grip and windshield, complete with long-haired cover, looks rather like a small dog on a stick) and settle down to wait. First train comes in and I set a rough level, readjusting when the doors close because they make quite a bang. Wait five minutes for the next train and ignore the odd looks I'm getting from passers-by. Check the level is good on the next incoming train. Wait five minute for the next train to come in. A man sits a few seats away and opens a newspaper; rustle, rustle, rattle, rattle. He has a really bad cough; rustle rattle, hack, snort, etc. which ruins the next recording. He gets on the train, I wait for the next one. The current fashion for Parisian ladies is shoes with high, solid heels; click, clack, click clack, shuffle, scrape, bang: a posse of them arrive on the platform just as the next train comes in - another useless recording. They get on - I wait.

 

Much later…

 

The platform is almost deserted - I can hear the next train coming and no-one is spitting, coughing, arguing in Chinese, singing in Dutch, or having a tantrum in international baby language, all of which have rendered the last few recordings useless. It's now an hour since I started recording and I don't have a usable effect yet, but this one should be good. The train rolls into the station, but there's an odd noise. The train stops, the doors open and a man playing the accordion is revealed. Well, it's very French, except that he's playing some awful pop-song and has a drum-and-bass backing track on a ghetto-blaster, so that's another one down the drain. I finally get a good one - not too many people, clean in and out and I decide to try my luck with a ride and then see if I can get a better one later. The next train comes and is, mercifully, fairly empty so on I get. Two young ladies follow me on and have a long and very loud conversation in German, punctuated with raucous laughter. I get off, I wait for the next train; it has an accordion player on it. I wait for the next train - it's so crowded I can barely move, let alone make a decent recording. Maybe I'll get a breath of fresh air and a cup of coffee. I get off at St Michel Notre Dame and have a look to see if the Cathedral is still there: it is. As the entire crowd in the square in front is made up of English and Japanese tourists, I go back down to the Metro and try for a few more ride recordings, but it's no good; half the accordion-playing buskers in Paris appear to be holding a traveling convention on the Metro today. Maybe later

 

A vague memory stirs that sections of the Metro run over ground and I switch lines and head up to Monmartre, where I spend another forty minutes recording nothing useful except an elderly French gentleman who says " allo, allo, allo" directly into the microphone in the middle of what would have been a perfect take. I smile gently at him, but only because hurling him in front of the next train would ruin yet another recording. I hang around for another twenty minutes or so, and finally get a good sequence, then head down to a street market that I can hear happening. This is much easier, although it's so crowded that I'm forced to carry out a slow shuffle as I'm carried along by the mass of people. This will make good material for a later CD of crowds that we're planning. Even if I get nothing else useful today, this will have made the trip worthwhile.

 

Back to the underground section of the metro and another hour of waiting for a decent arrive and stop to happen; it doesn't but I reckon I have enough material to do an edit and I head off to do some traffic mattes, which just involves finding a suitable bench and waiting, which I do, and manage to get some useful recordings.

 

By now it's midday: I've been recording for three hours and it occurs to me that I haven't eaten yet. I find a café next to the Gare Du Nord and have a reasonable steak-frites then head back down below to grab a quick recording of the RER - the Paris commuter train system, before I have to get my train back to Calais. This turns out to be pretty much a waste of time, as the background noise is too high to yield a useful recording and I don't have time to explore other stations, so it's back to the Gare Du Nord, doing the on-board ride recording as I go, which is definitely usable.

 

Onto the overland train and a journey to Calais that stops in Amiens because the river has burst its banks further up the line at Abbeville and stopped all train travel north and south. SNCF manage to commandeer a fleet of buses and we eventually arrive in Calais at 9 p.m., having missed the major demonstration that closed the town for most of the day. I make the connection to the ferry, settle back in the Club Class lounge (an extra £8 and worth every penny, particularly if you get through three glasses of complimentary champagne) and into Dover, where my ever-patient wife is waiting to drive me back to London.