It’s been a busy couple of weeks and will continue to be busy, but I wanted to catch a couple of thoughts about Paris while I still could.
My sister and I went early on Wednesday morning and came back late on Thursday night. The weather was perfect and sitting outside of the Louvre beside the reflecting pools, in the park that stretches out in front of it toward the Arc de Triomphe, I said again that Paris is the place for me. We walked from Anvers, where we were staying, down to the Latin Quarter on Thursday morning, weaving in and out of the streets until we came to the river. We ate lunch on the Seine, next to Norte Dame.
I’m not sure that I would be able to live there with the family: it would be too much for all of us, I think. But maybe Marseille. Or in 20 years, maybe, after the girls have moved out and we have some money.
But for now, Yoko’s brother and his family are here, so I will be running around with them for the next couple of days. When they go home, I will have to pivot back to my project, marking for Birmingham, and starting this new project with my boss at Middlesex about gender and language in parliamentary talk in N. Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Good things all around, but I am still letting my mind wander back to cafes and shopkeepers smoking in the door frames of their stores.