reflections on returning to France

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I write this somewhere underneath the English Channel. Harry Chapin’s THERE ONLY WAS ONE CHOICE is playing in my mp3 player. We return to Paris. How many people are able to say that?
3 years ago we were due to go to Normandy from Amiens when I ran over a traffic island and shredded 2 tyres. Normandy has had to wait 3 years.
I guess if you look hard enough you can find connections everywhere (just ask James Burke). In 1066 William 1 set sail from Normandy to conquer England. Nearly 900 years later a fleet of Englishmen and their descendants from all over the world returned the favour. We view history in one direction – backwards. This provides us with the certainty of hindsight. But as we live it, history is the great narrative where we have to turn the page in real time to find out what is coming next. Eisenhower, supreme commander on D Day, had 2 media releases ready: one for success and one for failure. And each of our own personal adventures comes with its own dual media releases in our knapsack.
“And as I wander with my music through the jungles of despair
My kid will learn guitar and find his street corner somewhere
There he’ll make the silence listen to the dream behind the voice
And show his minstrel Hamlet daddy that there only was once choice.”
With hindsight D Day was always going to be successful. The cards were stacked in the allies favour. But Ike still had the two media releases.

Paris!!
We are staying in Montmartre. Sacre Coeur is as beautiful and as crowded as we remember it. This time we get to be present for a service (we think evensong but may have been a sung mass). The nuns sing and harmonise (beautifully) while the priests and bishop file in. I take it there would not be any consideration of it being the other way around.
Outside there is a woman sitting in the doorway begging. She appears to have proprietary rights on the entrance. Beggars are Paris’s other signature image.
Outside there is a band of young enthusiastic brass players playing popular songs and skylarking while doing so. Think castanets circa 1979. Further down, a busker is into his patter trying to get people to contribute money. Spontaneously he appears to pull a young woman audience member out of the audience to sing La Bamba. She is obviously a plant and sings and boogies like a professional
We stop and have a cup of coffee on the way back to the hotel.
We decide that a quiet evening is called for. A visit to the Laundromat and a quiet meal before we catch up on some missed sightseeing from last time over the next 2 days prior to Normandy: La tour Eiffel, L’arc de triomphe and pere Lachaise cemetery. On Tuesday we go on a canal/seine tour.

We laundered and ate simultaneously – sort of. We found a restaurant close to the Laundromat and ate outside. Liz would periodically duck across the road to check how things were going. I would mumble in my high school French that of course she was coming back. As we promenade to and from our ablutions/victuals Liz and i note how alive and energised the place is. It’s 8pm and the streets are packed with people. It’s the night economy stupid!!
The other thing that we just haven’t got right is transport. We keep talking about interchanges. What makes public transport work in Paris and London is this: YOU DON’T NEED A TIMETABLE. You rock up to a metro or a bus stop and you know you will have a minimum wait for the next service. This creates a feedback loop. Cause you don’t have to wait, the se:rvice is not going to disappoint you and it is CONVENIENT. AND the service goes gangbusters: standing room only.
Monday
A FULL day. Started with the Eiffel tower in the morning and arc de triomphe before lunch the on to pere Lachaise cemetery. You can buy a map of the famous graves. We wandered around looking at Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s grave is hideously graffitied by supposed fans leaving Wilde quotes all over it. The irony escaped them (you did Oscar you did). I kept thinking as we moved from one celebrity grave to the next that the also rans and non famous bodies had every right to rise up as one and proclaim their right to have their places of rest adorn our photo album. Strangely the graves that took my attention most were the memorials to the concentration camps. Adorned by hideously grotesque yet compellingly intriguing sculptures, they were each a symbolic representation of the holocaust.
The tower is all it’s cracked up to be. Breathtaking views. I still managed to get vertigo on both the tower and the Arc. It was absolutely freezing. Paris autumn days are like Victorian country winters. There is overhead cloud until about 2pm when the sun burns off the cloud and it turns into a reasonable afternoon. We’re now sitting in our hotel room with the balcony door open and feeling a little bit over heated.
We ate tonight at our favourite paris restaurant. When you say it quickly like that it makes you seem like seasoned travellers. Favourite = we’ve eaten there twice. It’s a Lebanese place close to the hotel we stayed at 3 years ago. Back then we loved it but recently we’ve been spoiled by close to the best leb meal we’ve ever had at marble arch in London less than a week ago. I guess it proves the old saying: you can never go back.

Tuesday
If it’s possible to have the perfect day then today was it. The Quai Bray musee is a museum of African, American and oceanic art. It has only recently opened. its design is spectacular – modern rectangular outside but with sweeping curves and circles inside. Part of the building has real plants growing all up the walls. The best part of the day was this young kindergarten/pre-school guide who was this tiny ball of energy. She captivated her audience of 3 and 4 year olds in a way that held me and the kids spellbound. Hers is a rare skill that we often fail to acknowledge or appreciate.
From there it was on to the canal trip. Nine locks lowering us by 27 metres followed by beers and an Indian meal in the latin quarter. Brilliant day
Wednesday
I am writing this in a sauna. The heating in our carriage cannot be turned down.
The journey out of Paris reveals the telltale signs of dormitory suburbs, their station carparks filled with the familiar sight of cars, abandoned by their owners for 9 hrs each day. What a waste this is. We talk about park and ride. Why can’t we just ride?
Every major holiday comes with its own traumas and dilemmas. For us 3 years ago it was the tyre shredding in Amiens. We had experienced such a profound sense of history as we visited the war graves and the writings of Les Carlyon came alive before our eyes. All was good. And then we turned the page and... the lights on the car had been adjusted wrongly, I missed seeing a traffic island and shredded two tyres. And then it started to snow. As a result we missed Normandy. This sojourn to France is an attempt to redress that miss. Of course this year the trauma hit at the beginning. We didn’t even get to the first page.
We arrived at caen (pronounced con) and picked up our car. I love Renaults and we have a twingo. Then it was on to Lion Sur Mer. What a delightful surprise. We have a lovely hotel and the weather has been 26 degrees. The Atlantic ocean is as flat as a tack. Did i mention that my wife is a genius when it comes to accommodation? A trip to Bayeux to see the tapestry and then juno beach on the way back. Lovely pizza meal.

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