Arrival

I thought this day would never ARRIVE!!

I am jetlagged after over 30 hours on planes, cues, smelly bodies on cattle class, with overweight , smelly, passengers, not to mention crying babies, and snotty nosed kids. BUT AM IN PARIS !!!! I had not been here for ten years, when I came with my (then) husband who was on sabbatical and we were travelling in luxury... I just followed like a lamb in those days,(he would choke on that one) and here I am, all growed up, arranging the trip all by my self, and divorced!

I was met by my son Sam in Charles de Gaulle airport, and then back to his apartment in the fifteenth arrondissement ...you don’t say it like that, its Arrhondismuh, of course, all guttural and incomprehensible.

He lives in a shoe box, one that all my shoes would never fit in. But he is very much unaware of this little fact at the moment.

My one important mission was to give the BIG TICK to his French girlfriend Helene. Of course I had already fallen in love with her, purely because she puts such a silly dopey look on my serious boy's face!! He is never been so happy, so that makes me also one very, very happy maman!

Being a little bit of a perfectionist (total understatement from this virgo) I'm finding the lingo so frustrating, because although Spanish is my first language, I have never learnt French, and find myself a blubbering idiot when someone addresses me, and it is debilitating and strangely humbling. I am at the mercy of these people with their fast talking charm. "Yo no compro pan" is what I say, which in Spanish means "I don't buy bread" but thankfully it is phonetic for saying in French "I dont have a clue what you are talking about"! It gets me by.

I got taken by Sam, soon after arrival, to....

THE MARKET

Have you smelt those baby vine tomatoes, let alone let one explode into your taste buds?? And the radishes!! And the flat peaches, and the sausage from the swarthy dark, and a little bit greasy guy who sells all parts of the pig, cooked and uncooked. The smell of the lemons, the smell of the coriander, mint and parsley, the overall atmosphere just has blown me away, all amidst the most beautiful architecture. Wrought iron fancy balconies with pot plants and multicoloured geraniums draping themselves, almost calling out LOOK AT ME!!

I walked with a baguette stuck under my arm, of course, in Paris, as Parisians actually DO, and needed to pinch myself to tell Daphne, YOU ARE HERE!!!!

Am nearly comatosed after only 3 hours sleep in over 40 hours, so bonsoir, not bonsee like I told the smirking lady I bought antacids from this arvo.....