Good timing

We arrived in London ten minutes before we left Paris.  A case perhaps of things being better ordered in France - though the one-hour time difference had something to do with it. Whatever, our final transcending of time was emblematic of the whole trip.

It started well.  We drove straight from work to Gatwick, flew to Charles de Gaulle airport, took the train then metro, and emerged from an Art Nouveau-y exit to find ourselves a pierre's throw from the Seine.  In a little under four hours we had passed from suburban England, home of the quotidian, to central Paris, abode of all that is civilised.  Though the physical distance we had travelled was slight, in that short time we had exchanged worlds.

Perhaps time proved such a recurrent theme because the overall duration of our trip was a mere three days.  Forced to concentrate everything within that span, time itself became the prime medium and material: it could be pushed and pulled, dilated and dallied with.  And where better to dally than at the Café Les Deux Magots, erstwhile haunt of the existentialists.  As we sat drinking one of the inimitable cafe cremes of the city, opposite the gnarled and crumbling face of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, their philosophy of intensity of experience seemed inevitable.  Of course life must be drained to the last drop, with each drop; especially when those drops were such coffee, drained in such a Café.

Time also regained a new power by being unconstrained.  Freed from our daily routine, set loose in a new land without preconceptions, the day moulded itself around our will, which in turn responded to the ebb and flow of the passing hour.  We drank bottles of wine in our hotel room at three in the afternoon; sat on the boulevard and snacked at ten o'clock at night; stopped and drank yet more cups of coffee morning, noon and evening.  We travelled by foot, by metro and by taxi; without plan or premeditation, but as the mood took us.  By varying the means of transport, distance was telescoped, and with it absolute time distorted.

Perhaps too, the scale of Paris contributed to this shift.  In London, that great sprawling metropolis, everything is diffuse, in separate pockets.  You have South of the River, the West End, the City, each of which subdivides many times before reaching the human level.  But in Paris, the majority of sights and sites are bounded by the girdling boulevards built by that great tidier Haussman.  You can walk from the Latin Quarter - say Chelsea - to the Fauborg St Germain - Mayfair - to the Louvre - the British Museum - to the Pompidou Centre - the Barbican - without strain.  Which cannot be said of the equivalent areas of London.  In Paris, time is endowed with a density which is unavailable in England.

In the end this thickness of time comes down to what and how much you do.  If those three days seem unexpectedly rich in positive milestone experiences, it is a measure of the bounty which Dame Paris offers.  And an indication of the extent to which she continues her millennia-old role of noble hostess-cum-knowing whore, intent on giving those who are receptive to her manifold charms a civilised good time.

(21.5.86)

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