I have been extremely lucky with the weather. It’s not been so on some past visits, but this time, perfection. On Tuesday I headed out on another glorious morning, to get the #63 bus to the Marais. Many big streets in Paris have dedicated bus lanes, so even if traffic is bad, busses flow through. But there are some streets without and a lot of traffic-snarling construction here, as at home. By the time we got there, I was hungry for lunch. Oh look, there’s a beautiful boulangerie. Would they have anything to take out for a picnic, or just the usual? Well of course — stacks of sandwiches and tubs of salad. The place must be well-known, because just after I left clutching my heated sandwich in a nice box, scores of schoolkids poured in.

I went straight to the Place des Vosges for my picnic — just one of the prettiest, most pleasant places on earth, the green square with its perfect border of 17^th century buildings. Next to my bench, a group of schoolboys were punching and taunting each other in a friendly way, just like my grandsons, whom I miss. I also remembered having a drink at a restaurant on one corner with Lynn, years ago, and a few years before that, how we had a meal at a small bistro nearby that was very good and very cheap, and were never able to find it again.

Onward to the Musée Carnavalet, a fabulous free museum that details the history of Paris. I wanted to see the special exhibition about the filmmaker Agnès Varda, but it turned out to be just opening, only for the press that day. So I explored some of the rest. It has amazing artefacts from all the centuries of this city’s life, including an extensive section on the revolution, the extraordinary step by step process by which the people deposed the monarchy. I thought, these days the Americans need a revolution. An overthrow with some beheading would be good.

LOL.

Off again to wander the tiny maze of streets, including rue des Rosiers, the centre for Parisian Jewish life, where some stores have signs in Hebrew announcing what they offer for Pesach. The usual very long lineup outside L’As du Falafel, the famous falafel place, where one day I promise myself to endure the lineup so I can have one. They look delicious.

I passed a W.H. Smith English bookshop and went in to enquire about the book I’ve been hopelessly searching for, John and Paul. No, they didn’t have it. But wait … there’s one copy at the other Smith bookstore at Place de la Concorde. OMG! Ask them to hold it for me please, and I’ll pick it up, I said, tomorrow or Thursday. But instead, after more wandering in the Marais, I happened on the metro station Hotel de Ville and realized that line goes straight to Concorde. I hopped on, walked along the exclusive rue de Rivoli, and there was my book, waiting for me. I explained about the recent rave review in the NYT, that they should get more copies; they said they would. Had a delicious grand crème in their café as I started to read.

Then the perfect Paris experience — walking across the street to the Tuileries, finding a chair in the shade with a view of the Eiffel tower, and sitting to read for a quiet hour. Sublime — a beautiful spot, Ian Leslie is a very good writer, and this is a very good story. “A love story in songs.”

A few tears, as I thought back to arriving in this city in 1964 as a lonely lovesick 13-year old Beatlemaniac, how I spent the year inventing stories about Paul to keep me alive — as detailed in my first memoir All My Loving — seeing the Beatles’ first movie not far from here, on the Champs Elysées, and seeing them in concert in June 1965. And now, sixty years later in April 2025, here I am, a grandmother, still filled with admiration and love for this band and this one musician. A very long faithful love. Paul and peanut butter have never let me down.

Strolled home along the Tuileries, with its fountains, flowerbeds, and flowering pink Paulownia trees, so lovely — to get a few groceries and rest before dinner, which was another flash to the past.

As I may have explained, my father’s dear friend Jacques Daudier lived with his wife and 3 sons in a small apartment in the Communist suburb of Gentilly. For the year we lived in Paris, Jacques found us an apartment to sublet two floors below. His boys were then ten, eight, and six. Laurent, the middle son, died of an aneurysm in his early forties. The other two took me to dinner last night.

It could not have been nicer — La Méditerranée, a twenty-minute walk away, where we had the luxury of a private room. We met at 7.30 and finally left at 11.15, Jean-Louis heading back to Gentilly where he still lives, Francois – whom I called first by his child name Fifi and who became a commercial artist like his dad, only with far more success — walking me to the rue du Bac before getting the metro himself. Much much talk over fish, two bottles of Chablis, and for me many slices of the best bread, about our past and present lives and our parents. At 18, Jean-Louis visited Canada and stayed with my parents in Ottawa, and still speaks with awe about my father, his “brilliance, charm, and energy.” Francois compared my mother to Greta Garbo, which is apt. Jacques was a reticent, caustic socialist, an artist who did commercial work to support his family; their mother Henriette was the sometimes ferocious engine who kept everyone going, raising her sons while holding a full-time job that paid far better than Jacques’.

A friendship rekindled. I invited them to Canada, but the chances are better we’ll meet again here, when I return.

Because, God willing, it’s sure I will return.

There are so many pictures, I don’t know where to start. Promise I’ll start soon.