Car carousel: old and rundown but I love it

I love all carousels – old and new, big and small, galloping horses and now one with cars!

There are many carousels in Paris. The French love the carousel, the merry-go-round: le carrousel, la manège. And I love them too.

The turning-rides and round-abouts may have been around since Roman times, but the English word ‘carousel’ originated from the French word. It originated from an eccentric 18^thcentury Frenchman, Guillaume Joseph Roussel (1743-1807), known as Cadet Roussel. He was a bailiff in the city of Auxerre, where, it is said, he lived in a small, curious house or three.

In the 14th arrondissement of Paris, in the Place Gilbert Perroy, is a small, old, ‘car’ carousel – with a range of transport vehicles. It has a Porte d’Orleans green and white public bus, a fire engine, a pink Florida convertible, a Batmobile from the Batman television and movie series, a blue Jeep, a rocket, a bicycle, a swan, and a couple of speedboats. It also has a motorcycle like the ones made famous by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson in the 1969 film Easy Rider with the extended front wheel – known as the Harley-Davidson choppers.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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