Breathless - 24 hours in Paris

6.55 am - I wake up to my last day of school. I half-heartedly wipe over the kitchen sink in an effort to make sure that I get my deposit back. This deos not work, I vow to clean the apartment properly before 7.00 tomorrow morning, when I must leave to go to the airport.
8.05 - Arrive at school. Have conversation with deputy Head which indicates that I must clean my office and box up everything, which I thought I had managed to avoid.
8.35 - Coffee. Take shoes off, start boxing stuff up.
11.35 - After getting dust in my eye, have finished office cleanup. Go to Lower school for my exit interview.
1.00 pm - Reception and goodbyes for whole staff. I got a necklace. Managed to hide in the corner and not really get noticed. I ate 8 slices of melon, God it is hot.
3.55 - L and I finally escape, we take the 52 to Opera to go shopping.
6.35 - D meets us, is amazed by our great shopping. We walk down to the Palais Royal, where L has chosen for dinner.
8.00 - We exchange presents, eat amazing food, reminisce, feel sad, feel happy. Wonder what the next few months will bring for us all.
10.54 - Ds new boyfriend picks us up to take me home, but we end up on a night time tour of Paris. We watch the Eiffel sparkle, sing along to Jamie Cullum, hold hands and try not to think about the airport and the morning.
11.29 - I arrive home. I look at a large wad of dusty hair and start to wipe things again, thinking that I can do more cleaning in the morning.
12.44 am - C arrives, she has been out too and did not want me to leave without saying goodbye. She talks about the baby coming soon. We chat about how the time has gone so fast.
2.06 - Bed, I fall asleep.
5.55 - I wake up, exhausted. I have a shower. I pack.
6.55 - I realise that there is no time to clean and so I leave everything. There is small burn on the wood chest and the sink leaks. I realise that I will never get my deposit back, but don't care.
7.06 - I sit on the front steps to my apartment soaking with sweat. All my bags are at my feet and I smoke a ciggarette while I wait for the girls to show up. I don't know it now, but when I get to the airport I will cry when L gives me a card. My face will be covered with kisses and my leaving will knock the breath from my body. I will say goodbye to Paris with a heart that feels like it is going to hammer out from my chest.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
Boyd Palmer

The long and winding road....

Is there is one inch of dust from my office that has not found its way onto my cheek or into my hair then I have no idea where it is. Packing up, dusting off and there are a million things to do. I have been busier in the last two hours than I have all year. In the midst of this, everyone wants to say good-bye to me and I was never able to handle goodbyes.

You would think that I would be used to it by now, but I am not. Since those summers of weeping when I would leave my beloved German penpal in Lohmar, I have never liked goodbyes. I prefer to think that those that are important enough will just sort of stay with me and there will be no problems.

Today I am running on adrenalin. I am tired and edgy, there has been a life too full these last couple of weeks. In a few minutes I will leave to go to our lower school. After an exit interview there is a lunch reception to say goodbye to everyone. After that there is last minute shopping at Printemps to spend the vouchers that we get at the end of the year. After that there is dinner. After that there is cleaning and after that there is C and B. After that there may be a couple of hours sleep before some friends are kindly taking me to the airport.

What a strange feeling, not just to be busy, but to genuinely not have time to do everything. To be overwhelmed, to feel that the world is spinning. I can feel the time whistle as it passes my ears.

Goodbye my lover

There has been only one constant in my life in Paris. One thing that was there from the first day, she has changed every season along with my moods. She has seen me warm, seen me cold and she has watched as everyone else has come and gone. I saw Spring in her arms and watched her hold those summer days close to her.

Last night, L and I left school to go and say au revoir to our coffees and the amazingly grumpy waiters that have characterised our Sundays. The Jardin du Luxembourg has changed over the year and so have we. I have a thousand memories of the place. I took every person that came and stayed with me there. I have pictures of picnics, chunky jumpers, hands being warmed with chocolat chaud and the bare to the green.

When I come back to visit Paris, I know that will be the first place that I head for. The Jardin will be the place that makes Paris feel like home again.

Everything aches

Only a couple of days, a few precious hours left now. I am just exhausted, tired of packing and panicking about the hundred things that won't be done by Friday morning. I have an interview in July that I found out about just before the weekend and it is a job that I would really like.

I am trying to leave my professional life in good order to help the person who will take over my job in September. I am still thinking about my apartment, things have to be cleaned so that I can get my deposit back. I have heard it said that the two most stressful things you can do are change jobs and move house. I have managed to squash the two together to bring maximum feelings of being unsettled.

Am I sad to leave Paris? Of course. Am I looking forward to going home? Hell, yes. Am I scared about what happens after the summer? No doubt at all there. In between the sandwich of emotions, there is still just so much to do. Too much of Paris still left, the Jardin waiting to hold me for a couple of hours, Cador for one last Tarte Tatin.

tu me manques

Is there anything more likely to make a person contemplative and blue than a full rainy day? If there is then I have no idea what it is. From 7.44 this morning, when the rain woke me up, it has not stopped. The sky is white and shows no signs of giving Paris a break. It is warm outside and you end up more sticky than cold.

Over the last couple of days I have felt increasingly bizarre. I have been chatting to friends in the Uk, making arrangements for nights out, nights in, shopping trips and the like. A few of them have said that they can't wait to have me home, back in the UK. It feels strange, even though I have missed each and every one of them it feels funny that they are happy to have me back, maybe I thought that I would just slip back into life at home without anyone even realising that I had gone away in the first place.

I don't know where this story finishes. When I left Poland, I knew that the next adventure awaited me, I had my flight booked to Paris. This time everything is suspended. A big leap into the unknown with a feeling that something will catch me. Suddenly, I am overwhelmed and every word that anyone says sounds like they are far away.

Rainbow whirlwind

I lost count of how many floats raved their way past me and L when we went to support the Marche de Fietres this afternoon as they wound there way down St Germain. What a sea of pink, basques, oiled and glittered bodies there were at the Paris Gay Pride. The overwhelming feeling was one of love, acceptance and liberation. You know that the people who march do so in absolute celebration of who they are. I love the vibe, I loved smiling at the scantily clad men and women, happy that they are happy.

The music was loud and crazy, the streets are now littered with bag upon bag of confetti. A rainbow whirlwind hads sped through the streets and all that is left behind is sunshine and leaflets about safe sex. I myself pushed L forward to get what I thought was a ribbon, but was in fact a condom.

This week, after Fete de la musique and the Gay Pride march I feel like Paris is laughing at me a little bit. She is so much more than other cities, she is everything. She laughs because she knows that I am going, knows that I will miss hundreds of these moments, and she will get to keep them all for herself.

Deep fill sandwich

There is no doubt about it, I have managed to fill the days. So much so that there has been no room for rest or doubt. The last few weeks have flown by in the blink of an eye and now I am less than a week away. This time next Friday I will have landed and the whole experience will be finished.

Every night there is something to do, some-one to see, food to be eaten and goodbyes to be said. I am so tired that my head keeps dropping. This is my last weekend in Paris and I can't wait to relax. I will spend time with D, L and C, but I also want to sleep. I have been steadily sending things home for a while now, but some-how I am still looking at everything in the apartment and wondering how on earth it will all get into my bags.

Now that I am near the end I find that I can think about that and the beginning. The stuff in the middle seems like a blur and I think that the circle will be complete. There are still so many threads around me that need to be tied up, physical and emotional ones. How did it come so fast? How did my leaving, that was planned and given thought upon thought end up whipping past me to the finish line?

"You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven."
Jimi Hendrix