Coming Home

It was my last week in Paris then I was coming home.

Paris had been my home for two years, and I was beginning to feel that Paris was my home, my real home. I had done all my growing up there, it had been my refuge.

I fled to Paris after a bad experience and it had become a place of adventure and new beginnings from which I emerged older, wiser and able to face the world of home.

Paris is a beautiful city, its architecture, skylines and the vibrant cultural undercurrents were, to me, an elixir which I drank in thirstily every day. Even the bad days were better lived in this atmosphere of upbeat celebration of the good life.

Everything was booked. Eurostar would take me to St Pancras; a night spent in a London bed and breakfast; then a train to Beeston, Nottinghamshire, would take me home to Granny, who had already taken delivery of a large crate containing most of my belongings which had been shipped by Norbert Dentressangle and paid for by my American employers.  

Some of the Americans’ friends were travelling back with me, so I would have company, very good company as it turned out to be, and my last days in Paris were spent enjoying the sights with them, including my first trip ever up the Eiffel Tower.

I had numerous memories, mostly good ones, and felt reluctant to leave Paris, but that time had come to shed my chrysalis and fly free in the sunlight.

Jean T