Smiling

It's just over 50 years since I came to live in Paris, earning the fees to pay the language college by working as an au pair. I hated my work but I got weekends off and I spent every Saturday doing a different Paris walk from the Michelin Vert guide and every Sunday in museums (their free day). I got to know Paris fairly well over six months.

So last night, smiling as I came out of the Gare du Nord where I've arrived in Paris many times since, I felt instantly at home, happy and safe. I'd memorised my 15-minute walking route north from the station to my Airbnb and as I walked I realised that many people wouldn't feel safe. It was 10.30pm and dark and the huddles of obviously marginalised people on the badly collapsing pavements marked it out as a poor (read 'non-white') area. That Parisian smell of concentrated piss rose from every 90° angle, though oddly I'd forgotten it until its memory hit my senses like a madeleine. For the first time in my life (rather surprisingly) I saw someone shooting up in the street. But still I felt safe.

I found my lodging, I slept. (Extra 1 - no doubt where I am on waking this morning)

*****

Today I was due to meet my beloved nephew, J, but he is a commitment-phobe so despite dozens of messages to and fro over the last few days we hadn't settled on a time or place - except that it had been moved from Northern Burgundy to somewhere in Paris so I had hastily booked an extra night here.

After going by metro to dump my bags in my new room (a chambre de bonne on the fifth floor without a lift, much like the one I lived in way back but very much better done up) I decided to walk wherever my two feet and camera led me and find somewhere to sit and eat my last remaining leaving-home-so-empty-the-fridge sandwich for breakfast. Ah, a lovely little shrine-like alcove with a bench (Extra 2). Ideal. Ah, the stench of piss. Not so ideal. The only place I could find to sit was a bus-shelter/taxi-rank in Place de La Bastille.

As my feet took me along the Coulée Verte, J texted to say he'd arrive in Gentilly around 12:30. I suggested meeting there. No, he said. I was north of Gare de Lyon and heading south, I said. He suggested meeting there. No, I said. I suggested Jardin de Luxembourg. Perfect, he replied.

Hurrah! A rendez-vous! 30 minutes' walk later we met. He hadn't responded to any of my suggestions of what we might do together so we walked where our four feet took us, first through the Latin Quarter, then to a Lebanese lunch, then to the massive repairs to Notre Dame which I was keen to see and I thought he'd like too (Extra 3). We both enjoyed the exhibition on the hoardings around the site. I realised we were close to the European Photography Centre so that was our next visit. A very disappointing set of exhibitions but I was amused by the classic French notice, Defense de marcher sur la pelouse (Don't walk on the lawn), in front of the plastic grass on the right while the real grass grew untended and undefended on the left (Extra 4).

Conversation never flagged and J knew a good place to continue it over a verre or two and, later, some excellent tapas. He had never come across chambres de bonne so we walked back to my room, climbed five flights of stairs and I showed him. At that point he still hadn't decided whether he was going to stay with a friend or sleep in his van in Gentilly, but after 8 miles of walking I knew I wasn't going any further.