I will be away now for about two weeks. Just saying.

We are going on the Eurostar to Paris, first class, and then staying in a millionaire art-dealer friend of my husband's flat near the Louvre. Oh Gosh, how spoilt and lucky you are, I can imagine people thinking. It is so crap that in fact it isn't THAT much fun. I didn't have any kind of summer holiday this year and haven't been anywhere except back and forth to here for over a year. My husband, meanwhile, zooms about the world 'on business' which involves lots of eating and generally looks, to the untrained eye, very much like a succession of short vacations. He gets 'frequent traveller' discounts on the Eurostar which you have to use within time limits so the first class thing is actually almost free. I was so excited the first time we used it, coming back from Avignon to London with my son. I was expecting some 'Orient Express' romantic voyage. In fact it is just like being on a normal, decent train as you would like it to be; rather than cramped up with hundreds of back-packers covered in vomit which has been my Standard Eurostar experience.

Last time we were in Paris, a couple of years ago, my son bought some replica Japanese swords at the Clignancourt antiques market. In usual overprepared mode I rang Eurostar and asked about their policy for transporting weapons. They said that we must arrive at the station extra-early and they would put our parcel in some locked box-thing. It was freezing cold and very annoying to go THREE hours before the train left. At the barrier we checked in and they said they knew nothing about transporting weapons, locked boxes, phone calls or indeed anything at all you stupid English fools. We should wait 'over there' until a manager arrived at some normal pre-train time like half an hour before departure. Our inter-family relationships reached a new low, with mutterings of 'F@cking swords', sulking and disappearing for ages without a word evenly distributed amongst us. Eventually millions of people arrived, queued, and boarded the train. 'Where is the manager?' we asked. Gallic shrugging. We were the only people outside the barrier and the Eurostar left in 15 minutes. The staff had drifted away leaving just a weedy youth. 'We are about to miss the train', my husband screamed. The youth looked puzzled, 'Why don't you get on to it then?' he asked, holding the gate open. We passed through with the swords in their brown paper wrapping which we placed in the luggage rack over our heads. No one checked us or them during the entire journey or when we disembarked with our dangerous cargo and vanished into the London night.

To finish off. The millionaire's flat is used by him about once a year and he has some random reciprocal arrangement with my husband. Every time I have been to or lived in Paris I have stayed in some cheap hotel right in the middle of the Left Bank. The 'other side' of the river is alien to me and also somehow less romantic and a bit dull. This is not only a serious and 'grown-up' flat, it is a showcase for his antiques collection. Many of which, I am not joking, are upholstered in WHITE VELVET. My son, who is hoping to spend part of his time drunk, will be sleeping in NAPOLEON'S CAMPAIGN BED. Obviously wandering through the flat with a cup of coffee, or - Nooooooooooo..... put it down - a glass of red vin ordinaire, will not be an option. Also last time we were here it rained in a cloudbursty way for the entire holiday and Paris entails constant walking.

Okay, I am spoilt and ungrateful and anyone else in the world would be thrilled to have this opportunity. Of course, (surely), it will have many happy and exciting moments and we will find all our Christmas presents and my son will go off on his own and have amazing adventures and speak some words of French. And we won't get bored to death with each other or f@ck up the flat or not find my daughter's perfect boots, (' the only present I really want'), or get ill or insist on buying replica swords again. And we won't mind that the flat has no television and that when we get back, wet, in the evenings we will have to sit there, very still and not holding a drink, and talk to each other although we have been together all day already. And my son's internal clock will instantly swivel round so that he springs up smiling at 9.00 am rather than after some hours of shouting, cursing and even crying (on my part); he is just asleep.

Yes. Yes. I can tell. It is all going to be just great.


- posted by Iris @ 11/24/2003 11:28:00 AM comment