Paris

My job at Hillingdon Hospital ended conveniently just before the Easter weekend of 1952, spring-time. What a perfect time to see Paris! I had a week before my next job, pediatrics at the Edgware General Hospital. I flew over to Paris, too short of time, impatient and extravagant to take the train and ferry.

Paris was sparkling, basking in warm sunshine with glorious spring blossom everywhere, girls bouncing along in thin summer dresses in sharp contrast to the dour, grey faces and colourless clothes of the Londoners across the Channel.                                                                             
Paris, Springtime, 1952
            
What a revelation! This was my first encounter with life outside the English-speaking world, and although I spoke some German, I had only a few phrases of French.  Obviously France had recovered more rapidly and completely from wartime austerity than Britain. Nothing was rationed, everything was plentiful and even with the rigorous British currency restrictions I had enough to eat and drink and attend several theatres. Through my father's friend Elsie Robinson I made contact with several young people in my own age group, with whom I went to the Follies Bergerges and the Moulin Rouge. Though I couldn't understand and therefore couldn’t laugh as they did at the jokes the comedians were telling, I could and did appreciate the sight-gags, the spectacular scenery and costumes. The great comedy actress Juliette Greco was starting then, a teenager; she appeared fully clothed on stage whilst all the other girls were bare-breasted - yet somehow she managed to look more naked and far sexier than all the others put together. I’ve never forgotten my first sight of her, wearing a white silk shirt, jodhpurs and knee-high leather boots. She flourished a riding crop with which she was flagellating the naked rump of a fat man at her feet. I gathered that the tableau was a spoof on S&M with Juliette Greco as the dominatrix.  Nobody could ever forget that spectacle, and I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace
in the Louvre, 1952

Mostly I was on my own. In perfect weather I strolled the boulevards, went into the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, gazed at halls of paintings of obscure battles and pyrrhic victories. I lingered along the quais by the Seine, I climbed the Eiffel Tower, all the way to the top up the stairs because they were free but the elevator cost several Francs. I posed beside the gargoyles of Notre Dame and another tourist took my photo. I found Sylvia Beech's famous bookshop, Shakespeare and Company – the first of many visits to that magnificent bookshop that resonated with historical associations with Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas and the great expatriate English-speaking writers of the 1920s and 1930s. I made my way up to Montmartre, looked out over Paris from the vantage point of the parapet in front of Sacre Coeur, sipped coffee and bought cheap water colours (that I still have) in Place du Tertre, browsed the book stalls along the Seine, wandered through Montparnasse and the Rive Gauche, where I was staying near the Sorbonne at a pension on Rue de Vieux Colombier. I returned to stay there again next time I passed through Paris a year later. I strolled through the tuilleries. I had then some discomfort looking down from heights, but I overcame this permanently in Paris, standing on the edge of the Arc de Triomph where the parapet is barely up to knee height, atop the towers of Notre Dame, and on other high points all over this beautiful city. I regretted then, as I do now, my lack of French. Yet somehow I managed with English and body language, as I have on many occasions since all over the world. In fact as my comprehension of spoken French slowly improved on subsequent visits to Paris I found that I could understand a great deal, felt sure that if I were to live in Paris for a month or two I would understand almost all of what I heard, and if I lived there for a year or so I would be speaking French.

On my own, I went to hear a performance by the jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet and his band, dropped into strip-joints in Place Pigalle, stood near enough to naked girls to see that close up they lost their charm, had pimply, haggard faces and smelt of sweat, cheap perfume and stale tobacco smoke - and of much recently consumed alcohol. For the entire week that I was in Paris I hardly slept, there was so much to see and do.

At the end of my week in Paris as the plane that would take me back to London gathered speed on the runway, I looked out my window and saw the engine nearest me burst into flames. At the same moment there was a loud bang; then everything happened so quickly I can’t reconstruct events. A built-in fire extinguisher must have come on, and drowned the flames in foam that covered my window; the brakes slammed on, and we came to rest nose down in a ditch, propellers buckled, at the end of the runway. That was one of my narrow escapes from untimely death.  I’ll say more about these escapes elsewhere.

It was the first of many visits to Paris, almost always for holidays and sightseeing, later in life for cultural enrichment. On three occasions I went to conferences or meetings in Paris, once to consult with social scientists and others at UNESCO, once to a mind-expanding conference on complexity theory, once for an editorial conference to design a book that several of us were working on.  I haven’t kept count but I think Wendy and I visited Paris 10 or a dozen times for periods ranging from a day or two to a week or more, and several times when I was working for WHO in Geneva I used the superb TGV rail service that whisked me from Cornavin Station in the heart of Geneva to Gare de Lyon in less than 3 hours.  Each time I felt more at home, achieved an easy familiarity with a few districts and several splendid restaurants.  The last time Wendy and I were in Paris in 2007 it was a different kind of experience. It was at the end of a river cruise on the Main, Rhine and Moselle rivers, a tour that began in Prague and ended in Paris, thanks to bus trips at each end. We had several pleasant days, then on what ought to have been the morning of our final day before returning to Canada, Wendy missed her footing on a low curb outside our hotel, fell heavily and fractured her hip. Fortunately the nearest hospital was Hopital Europeen Georges Pompidou, a superb modern facility, considered the best in France, quite possibly the best in the world. So she and I had a few extra days before I flew back to Ottawa ahead of her to prepare our apartment to receive her, while Wendy stayed a few more days with Rebecca to watch over her.