RSS

Contact us

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Parisian heights

Charles Spencer on seeing Neil Young in Paris

Mrs Spencer had to spend five days in Paris during half-term observing ballet classes, so my son Edward and I tagged along too, on the strict understanding that watching dance lessons was absolutely not on the agenda as far as we were concerned.

It came as a jolt to realise that my first visit to Paris had been 45 years earlier when my parents took me there at the age of eight. I can’t remember much about it except the pungent smells from the drains, buying a much loved penknife and the evening when my mother was taken ill in a restaurant while tackling a particularly glutinous bowl of onion soup that trailed yards of elastic cheese.

My father went off to help her in her distress and I was left alone at the table, only to be joined by an overfriendly American who offered to buy me all the sweets I wanted and to take me on a trip around the world. He was probably only trying to cheer me up but I had been warned about strangers who promised sweets if you went away with them and began to shout, loudly, as I had been taught to do if such circumstances ever arose. The manager bustled over, the man promptly disappeared and I felt I had had an exciting adventure, and greatly enjoyed being the centre of attention. As far as I know my mother has never eaten French onion soup since.

Ed and I suffered a serious overdose of French Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay, as if we had pigged out on chocolate, and spent a lot of time climbing things, ascending to the gargoyles and belfries of Notre-Dame, the cupola of Sacré-Coeur, and the top of the Eiffel Tower. From the last we watched the sun set, corny, perhaps, but truly magical, too, and what a reproach to London the beautiful, unwrecked centre of Paris is. Apart from the blocks of skyscrapers on the periphery, the view must be much the same now as it was a century ago, the only significant blot on the townscape provided by our own Richard Rogers’s ridiculous Pompidou Centre.

Nevertheless, I noticed some startling changes in Paris on this trip. Firstly, the Parisians have mysteriously become much nicer (the reverse seems to be true of Londoners). I don’t think I saw a single example of that contemptuous Parisian shrug, nor did anyone’s face register pain when Ed or I attempted to speak in our fractured schoolboy French. We were made to feel genuinely welcome.

More articles from: Charles Spencer | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved