Paris is always a good idea

When life gives us lemons, many smug and annoying optimists tell me, we should make lemonade. That’s all well and good, as long as we also have sugar to hand.

My dear friend Lady Howmany recently had a crate of lemons hurled directly at her head from a great height when she was least expecting it. She had to fly urgently from Sydney to Paris as a result. The chances of her making lemonade when she arrived were slim. At face value, the situation involved a lot of sour surplus citrus and very little sugar.

Even before she’d left for Sydney Airport, I’d booked a train to Paris and one of the few remaining hotel rooms available in a city embarking on Fashion Week. I had no idea what use I would be to her, but at the very least, I hoped I might be able to provide a sugar cube or two. What a welcome change to feel useful and present when a friend needs a scaffold. So much better than my default ex-pat response of sending well-meaning text messages across the 16,000 kilometres that usually separates me from my nearest and dearest when life gives them lemons.

Unfortunately, I had to deal with some lemons of my own en route, thanks to Dutch Railways, who deftly turned a scheduled four-and-a-half-hour journey into an eleven-hour debacle. Lady Howmany got from Dubai to Paris in considerably less time. Hamstrung by the foibles of online travel bookings, I stomped around Antwerp for four hours waiting for a train that would accept me. I was in no mood for making lemonade from my relatively meagre (and frankly, embarrassingly trite) influx of personal lemons.

Then finally, Paris. Gritty, fraught, chic, refined. 

Beautiful, complicated Paris. She wouldn’t dream of making lemonade, a drink she would surely deem bourgeois. No, she is a tarte au citron, lemon madeleines kind of city. For the most part, she’s zesty and pithy and vibrant. And dammit, Lady Howmany and I decided, so are we. We would make the most of our time together, despite the circumstances.

We started in familiar territory. Gin and tonics (“sans citron, s'il vous plait”) in a cute bar. Over the following days, Lady H, her supremely gracious mother, and I progressed through traditional crisis management territory: cups of tea, trips to the boulangerie, washing up, wiping down, making small talk to fill the silences, making slightly bigger talk when the opportunity arose. In such situations, it’s hard to make an impact beside the formidable pragmatism of Lady Howmany. 

She’s a frighteningly efficient full-time working executive mother of four young women, carer of two energetic dogs, and fairy godmother to anyone who needs one. She's the first to arrive on a friend's doorstep when trouble looms. Plus, she finds time to do fun and frivolous things with her adoring and adored husband. 

By the time I arrived, 24 hours or so after her, she’d already swathed the Paris house and its residents in love, compassion, sensible ideas, gentle suggestions, and unspecified other magic. Here, among her kin, she was in peak form.

While I sat mutely wondering what I could do to help, I marvelled at the generosity of her kin, who knew me only by association but who welcomed my daytime visits to their home, who invited me to lunch with them, who shared their stories with me, who courageously and generously let me peek into their lemonade factory while it underwent a major reconstruction. For a lot of the time, I wondered what I was doing there at all. My contribution mainly consisted of making the dog bark hysterically and vociferously whenever I arrived or left, which I hope everyone found to be a helpful distraction. 

I also reorganised the plastics drawer in the kitchen, the importance of which can hardly be understated for people whose lives have recently been torn apart. When I triumphantly held up a half packet of couscous that I discovered in the back corner of that same plastics drawer, the family smiled encouragingly and assured me they’d all been wondering where that had got to. So, so, very helpful.

Lady H and I revelled in the unexpected opportunity to spend time together, even though her focus was firmly on her extended family. We talked of blessings in disguise and clouds with silver linings, and before we knew it, we were making lemonade, tarte au citron, AND lemon madeleines.

We managed a trip to the centre of Paris for half a day. It was cathartic and fabulous.

We had two breakfasts an hour apart. So hard to choose one Parisian café over another.

We stood on bridges and laughed out loud at the mere fact that we'd come from Sydney and Amsterdam to be in Paris together with three days notice.

We inadvertently wandered into the middle of a Fashion Week photo shoot and experienced some rather fruity French instructions on how quickly we should move along. Apparently, two middle-aged women, each adorned with a single layer of mascara and a smear of lip gloss and wearing sensible shoes and waterproof jackets, didn’t quite fit the image the director was aspiring to. We left them to it, once we'd stopped shreiking with laughter and could stand up straight again and walk.

We were overjoyed and overawed by the spectacular stained glass of Saint-Chappelle.

Gasp-inducing light and colour in Saint-Chapelle

We ridiculed each other’s appalling French. We ridiculed the stupid social-media tourists on every corner who pouted and swivelled and posed in a manner that, frankly, deserved our grumpy-old-women disdain. Oh, how we tutted. 

We were moved by the sight of Notre Dame Cathedral, burnt and bowed after the 2019 fire and now embraced by supportive scaffolding. But we were also heartened by the idea that burnt and bowed does not have to mean permanently destroyed. And so she rises again.

It's hard to keep a strong dame down

We missed metro stops and caught connections in the wrong direction. We blamed each other for these amateur oversights. Then, giddy with childish excitement, we collapsed in uncontrollable giggles.

We visited the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, now on my personal list of Favourite Places on Earth. Walking into this labyrinth of paisley sofas, velvet cushions, antique typewriters, and worn timbers, all shrouded in silent stories, felt like the literary equivalent of a fresh croissant dipped in a bowl of café au lait. I thought I saw Hemingway out of the corner of my eye, but then I realised it was merely his ghost. I heard Virginia Woolf whisper. Oscar Wilde tapped me on the shoulder, but when I turned around, he’d vanished. Overcome by bookish emotion, I spontaneously decreed that Lady H and I must peruse the shelves independently and select and purchase a suitably meaningful book for each other.

The front cover of Shakespeare and Co.

You had me at "I fell..."

For her I chose The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette Leduc (1965). Besides featuring the Eiffel Tower and the name of a French feminist author on the cover, either of which would have been sufficient reason to buy it, the story allegedly provides "A stunning portrait of Paris, of the invisibility we all feel in a big city, and ultimately of the hope and triumph of a woman who reclaims her place in the world".  I hope it will always remind Lady H of a glorious few hours wandering the streets of Paris, when we felt both hopeful and triumphant.

She gave me Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (1956). It’s about a “smart, supportive woman … who gets embroiled in the lives of her neighbours.” Setting aside the chance that there is a subliminal message there about the appropriateness or otherwise of my arrival in the midst of her familial tumult this week, I love the premise. I also love the cover and would quite like some cushion covers made in a similar fabric. (I will report back here when she provides those because, dear reader, I assure you that she eventually will. I told you, formidable efficiency).

On excellent interfering women

And so a tradition was born. Whenever the stars align to place a friend with me in a bookstore outside of our respective home cities, we shall gift each other a specially selected book.

Such an exchange need not always be in response to a life-giving-you-lemons situation. However, it shall henceforth be called a “literary lemonade exchange”, out of deference to its sweet, sour, Parisian origins. And for the same reason, it most certainly should always be concluded with a tarte au citron or a lemon madeleine. Or both. And if you must, lemonade.

Authors note: For further information about Lady Howmany, refer to A "framily" affair