The Moveable Feast

John and I have escaped to Paris for a long weekend. His birthday is coming up this week, and we thought it would be fun to get away considering how hard he has been working.

We barely made it.

We had reserved seats aboard the Eurostar from London's St. Pancras Station to Paris's Gare du Nord at 10:28 AM on Friday. We got to the station with an hour to spare--bought some sandwiches before passing through security. We were in no rush. Just as John was withdrawing some Euros from an ATM, I heard the final boarding call of a train to Paris and rechecked our tickets. It was our train!!! Some how our train was leaving 20 minutes earlier than scheduled and no one had had the goodness to tell us!

Mercifully having packed light, we scampered up the rolling ramp to the platform, found our carriage and seats, and sat down slightly out of breath and little peaved as the Eurostar pulled out of the station. It turns out that due to the fire in the Channel Tunnel on September 11 last (some of you may have read about it), trains are running through the Chunnel at much reduced speeds. That means that much of the schedule has been disrupted, but no one had told us and I had not had the foresight to verify the timetable.

In any event, we were soon flying down the rails at 180+ mph (mostly) in glorious weather on our way to Paris. The trip under the English Channel took more than half an hour in place of 20 minutes, but it was still worlds better thank flying and all that that entails. Once aboard the only serious drawback to our train travel was a 2-year-old English girl named Jemima. She had beautiful golden curls and reminded me quite a bit of Shirley Temple in her heyday. She also had a voice and scream that could etch glass. She was traveling with her parents and an older (calmer) sister.

After dear Jemima had subjected the entire carriage to her screeches, screams and yells for more than an hour, a Frenchman across the aisle from us had had enough. (He swore outloud in French which tickled me no end.)

"Putain," he said, "Ce n'est pas possible!" (Fuck! I can't believe this!) He continued in English with a gallic accent: "Please--could you calm your children?" he asked Jemima's mum and dad. They said they would try. Jemima informed her parents that she didn't want to be quiet, but somehow they got her to color, and she was pretty calm for the rest of the trip.

I appreciate that it's very difficult for children to be cooped up on a train (or plane) for hours, and it's amazing the control parents can exert when they are engaged.

More on Paris later.