A very cold Paris

Europe is covered in a cold and chilly blanket of ice and snow and penetrating rawness and Paris was not any different. We froze, we persevered, but did not go up the Eifeltower, just looked at it from the frozen pavements and pitied the people standing shivering in a queu. We had another (expensive) cup of hot tea instead and sought refuge in the Notre Dame, admiring the beautiful rose windows, the sun’s casting of the red light through the wonderfully intricate patterns of the leaded stained glass windows onto the wooden panels high up in the nave.  I felt exhilerated when I managed to catch it with my camera.

We visited the bookshop Shakespeare and Company and marvelled at the number of books piled up and stacked together. There are more titles in that one little shop than there are in large mainstreet sellers such as Waterstones, although, with the drop in the pound the prices for a tourist from England are horrendous (well, the same goes for a glass of wine, a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, let’s be honest). Nevertheless, I came away, appropriately I thought, with a copy of Montesquieu’s ‘Persian Letters’. The author, Charles-Louis de Secondat inherited the barony of Montesquieu, hence the publication of the Persian Letters under that name. Apparently, the book was published anonymously in Holland and it ran into ten editions in one year. I am not actually in any great hurry to read it, it is more of a curiosity and it has the stamp of the bookshop on the front page….

Meanwhile, I have worked my way through almost half of Les Miserables, but am not sure whether I can stomach more misery and the activities of horrible characters, Javert (the policeman), never giving up on the poor b…. Valjean, forever on the run from this most horrible creature who is trying to make sure that once in prison, never out of it!  And Valjean is now carrying Cosette (the eight year old daughter of the now dead Fantine) on his back as well, through the backstreets of Paris while for some reason or other I have also read about the idiosynchrasies of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.

Back home, I  picked up a book of short stories by Ali Smith ‘The Whole Story’ and loved the first one ‘The Universal Story’ – what a wonderful writer she is.