I love Paris in the Springtime

To tell the truth, I love Paris at any time of year.  I lived there in the 1980s and, although it is over 30 years since I turned up at the Gare du Nord with £400 in traveller's cheques in one hand and a suitcase in the other, it feels like only a few months ago.  I remember so clearly the excitement of leaving home to embark on a new adventure.  Within a week I had found a job - where I stayed for six years - and settled down in my adopted city.

It's hard to say, 'That's what I loved most' because there were so many things to love about the city: the easy access to anywhere I wanted to go (the Metro is great, you are never more than few hundred metres from a station), the flea markets, cinemas, shops, bakeries on every corner selling mouth-watering croissants and other delights.  I think it's easier to say what I miss most now that I am back in England.

I miss the beauty of the city.  I miss walking around it and smiling because even the simplest of neighbourhoods has a beauty about it.  I miss the light, the birdsong and the ever-present rumble of traffic.  I miss the elderly ladies in their fur coats, walking their toy poodles in diamanté collars and talking to them as if they were children.  I miss the casual disdain of shop assistants and waiters who never for one moment believed 'the customer is always right'.  

Most of all, I miss gabbling in French every day, the pleasure of getting a joke in a foreign language, the even greater pleasure when people had no idea I was English because I had lost all trace of my accent.

The shocking events at the Charlie Hebdo offices - walking distance from where I used to live - have brought memories of my life in Paris back into sharp focus over the past few weeks.  I loved my time there, but I was also well aware - even in those days - that it was tinged with an element of danger.  On a winter's night in 1983, a bomb was placed in the car belonging to Ara Toranian, leader of the National Armenian Movement.  He lived in the building next door.  When he put his key in the ignition around midnight, the car exploded.  Amazingly, Mr Toranian was only slightly injured.  I was hurt by broken glass as my window shattered above my head.  Despite that incident - or perhaps because of it - I always felt safe in Paris.  It could have been because after that CRS guards were posted outside the building next to mine and it felt as if I had my own bodyguards.

The best thing about Paris?  Being a part of it, and that's what I miss most - not being a Parisian any more, except in my heart, where it counts.