Summer of '96

Vicki, a friendly English colleague at the Opéra branch invited me out with her friends for the 'bal de Pompiers'. Meeting point was the bridge at Châtelet. I knew she had also invited another friend of hers, a new teacher who had just started at Berlitz. As I was waiting the arrival of my friends I noticed a tallish girl waiting on the opposite side of the bridge's footpath, on the west side nearest Châtelet.

She was wearing jeans and a really cool, if weathered, black leather jacket and tattered ankle-length leopard-skin Converse All-Stars. She had a kind of lofty imperious look about her, as well as something else entirely more mischievous. Kinda like an obscure aristocrat that decided to bum it. I thought it might have been Vicki's friend but I was too shy and intimidated by her coolness to go over and test my theory.

When Vicki arrived with her friends and promptly waved to the tall girl across the way. She walked excitedly toward us. "Hi, I'm Val", she sang as her face cracked into an infectious dimpled grin.

Sitting nearby at a bar, about 5 minutes into a conversation, she impressed me when she blurted " you're Irish!" in disbelief. Everyone I'd met up until then assumed that I was either American or English. (Note for my non-Irish readers: This is an excellent way to become friends with an Irish person)

We were having a lovely evening, in the nice warm knowledge that we were going to have a lot of fun that day. Then Vicki and her troops announce that they are going to run for the last metro (before midnight at the time). I felt quite disappointed as living quite far away I had planned on going home in the wee hours and had certainly not been expecting to run for the last metro only to run for the last SNCF or RER! I looked towards Val and was met with an equally disbelieving look. Then the edges of our mouths curved upwards and and in that instant we understood that we weren't going home just yet.

The following account is only going to be an approximation, for lack for any sober witnesses. Bar followed bar followed bar followed fire station followed disco followed bar etc. We ended up in a very, very small bar on the edge of the Marais, whose name and whereabouts would remain a mystery thereafter for many years. This is what I recall, the heavy 5'10" barman Séan was wearing what would otherwise been an elegant gold and black sequined evening dress, with a low cut back. He was sporting a pretty obvious blond wig on his great shaved scalp. Apparently 'cheap blond' night was a regular event there. I think we must have stayed there a while because he remembered us years later. Val and I discussed for years the theory that we could only find this pub on condition that a) you were not looking for it, and b) you had to be completely drunk. (This theory was thoroughly tested on many occasions but too much emphasis was on the latter).

We spend the night wandering around the quais, the streets, the arcades of the Louvre beside the Jardin de Tuilières and somehow got to talking about Star Wars. I now had a new best friend in Paris. The world was good and we were young, invincible and a little tipsy.

Dawn then came all too quickly, the trains were working again and cars filled the streets. Tired looking party goers everywhere were returning home like weary vampires, having done their night's work clocked out and headed home for a good-day's sleep.

A couple of weeks later Vicki and I celebrated our birthdays together in her place near Crimée. Val had prepared mini-birthday cakes for both of us. I am still touched by that small but important gesture. Just goes to show how far chocolate sponge and Smarties can go.