FRENCH KISSES

Writing about flying this week got me thinking about the happy years I spent in Paris, a city for which I feel a greater affinity than any other in the world. It’s my soul mate, and every time I return feels like the first time.

   

As I said in the last blog, I went there following 9/11 when, thinking about what my one regret would be, had I been on one of those doomed planes, it was that I had never lived in Paris. A week later, I was on the rue des St Pères in my apartment.

   

I had been in the UK putting together a TV show for the new television channel UK Food. It was very simple: celebrities would be invited to my apartment and cook for me. I would sit on a stool, drinking wine and interviewing them (I wonder who could have come up with that format, eh?). 

The channel was launching in Paris in the same week as I found an apartment and, when the producer came to see it, I said: “Let’s do the show right here.” Literally. And we did: 15 programmes in 21 days. Celebrities flew in, we shopped for the meal, had drinks or lunch in a hostelry, then returned to the apartment for drinks and a meal.

   

It was hilarious. Sue Johnston’s wig kept falling off as we argued over how much chilli to put in the pasta sauce. Julie Peasgood had a complete giggling fit when I was under-impressed with her dessert. Basically, she melted some butter in a pan, threw in some bananas and marmalade, and . . . er, that’s it. “What does it taste like?” she asked. I said: “It tastes like you’ve thrown some butter, bananas and marmalade into a pan.”

   

Sam Giles (currently Emmerdale) was the funniest. She’d been a last minute replacement for Sue Johnston, who had (Take One) arrived at the airport to discover her passport was out of date. Guests were required to explain the significance of their dish, so we had to hastily throw a story together for Sam, who had to cook a seafood risotto (all TV is fake, people). “Just say you had an Italian boyfriend who made it for you,” I said, time being of the essence.

   

“Okay, but whatever you do, don’t ask me what his name was.”

   Red. Rag. Bull.

   Champagne cork popped. “Welcome to Paris, Sam” (handing her a glass). “What are you going to be cooking for me today?”

   “Seafood risotto.”

   “And why is that?”

   “I once had an Italian boyfriend who cooked it for me, so it’s a very special dish.”

   “WHAT. WAS. HIS. NAME?”

   “Errrrr . . . J . . . R . . . A.”

   

Then, we were in complete meltdown. The more the director told us to get it together, the less we were able to perform. Sam’s story expanded with every take. Now, Roberto (as he was now called) had a grandmother who had come to his house one Christmas and . . . ” On and on. My back was to the camera and with every new detail, my eyebrows reacted with wonder at Sam’s extraordinary narrative.

   

We decided that maybe it was the word seafood that was setting us off. Or maybe risotto. Whatever, we just couldn’t do it. Three bottles of champagne and 17 takes later, we had it in the bag.

   

“Hello, Sam. Welcome to Paris. What are you cooking for me today?”

   “A rice dish.”

   

You had to be there, really.

   

It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had in a city that never loses its magic for me. 

The warmth and smell from the Nutella crepe stand as I ascend the steps from St Germain des Prés metro, where the posters are nearly always advertising another performance of Mozart’s Requiem; the Hausmann influence of Boulevard St Germain, where the buildings never cease to awaken a sense of history, their gentle curves smiling like friends who are always glad to see you; the scent of rain and the flash of a red umbrella that turns the city into a work of art; the cliché of traditional waiters at Les Deux Magots – no place in the world, for me, awakens the senses like Paris.

   

I always felt I belonged there. As a child, my imaginary friend was called Andre – actually, not so imaginary; I WAS Andre. Despite never having been abroad or had any experience of France, even from reading books, it was my world. When I first landed there, many years before 9/11, I wept uncontrollably, as if my spirit was crying in relief that I had come home.

   

Even today, and loving my life in the USA, I feel as if I am merely on leave of absence from Paris. A bit like Gertrude Stein: “America is my country and Paris is my hometown.”

   

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I remember those who lost their lives on that truly terrible day in world history; but I also give thanks for the gift of Paris it inspired in me. 

No regrets. 

To leave one’s life saying Non, je ne regrette rien is what I hope for. 

It’s a cliché, but La vie est courte. 

You see? Even Life is short sounds better in French.

  

FLYING AT THE EDGE

For 11 years, only chloroform would have got me onto a plane. I’d never been that big a fan of flying sheets of metal anyway, but something in me snapped and I decided I would never get on one again.

   

The irony is that 9/11 changed everything. I wondered what, if I’d been on one of those doomed planes, would have been my one regret in life. It was that I’d never lived in Paris. Within the week, I was on the Eurostar and renting an apartment in the city I would come to know as home for the next six years.

   

It was also around that time that I went on my first cruise, writing about it for a travel piece. There, I met Lisa, an amazing woman who has remained a great friend, and she gave me this piece of advice: “Travel while you’ve got your health.”

   

Since that day, you cannot keep me out of the skies. I’ve been to so many places, met some incredible people and now live in New York, from where I travel regularly to LA on the opposite coast, catching planes in the same way I do buses. If it all ended today, I’ve had a better life than most people in the world.

   

My impending 60^th birthday has set me thinking about everything I’ve done but also everything I still want to do. I’d love to see India, Australia, China, Japan (I’m still planning to go to the Rugby World Cup there). I want to see the Northern Lights, Lake Como, the fireworks in Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve. I want to live and breathe so many riches before time runs out: to travel, physically, mentally and spiritually - while I have my health.

   

Since selling my house in Wales and apartment in Spain, people keep asking me whether I would be wise to invest in another property. With deep frowns, they question whether my renting is “dead money”. I tell them that the years of being tied to interest-only mortgages was dead money, too, and that my advice to any young person today would be, don’t do it.

   

I’ve invested in living. That’s probably the single most important thing I’ve learned in my six decades on the planet. I haven’t been irresponsible. My dad told me to take out personal pensions because I was self-employed, and the fact that I did (three, to be precise) is the main reason I am able to enjoy travelling as much as I do now. 

Having spent years with banks on my back and sleepless nights worrying about mortgages, I’m enjoying freedom. I genuinely don’t feel any different being in a rented place from how I did in any that I owned (well, the bank owned, really). Heck, I’m writing this from my apartment in mid-town Manhattan and looking out over the Hudson.

   

I’ve been writing a book about money and our relationship to it (to be honest, I need the money!). I’ve written about the tough times I’ve endured and no one really knows just how bad things got. Within the past three years, there were two occasions when I was, literally, crying because I had no food and I was really, really hungry. With absolutely no money and an empty fridge, I also resorted to taking toilet rolls from the rest room in my building (not to eat them, but you don’t need to know the gory details why I needed them).

   

Now, don’t get me wrong: I know I brought this on myself. I could have stayed in my gorgeous house in Cardiff and Spanish penthouse and carried on until the end of my days. Nobody made me take an apartment in the most expensive area of New York City; nobody made me jump ship to a whole new life before I’d wrapped up the old one.

   

But I have carried with me a piece of blue paper that goes with me everywhere. I was in my twenties, in London, on the dole, stealing chicken drumsticks from buffets at events I gate-crashed (some habits die hard) because I couldn’t afford to eat. 

I lived like that in London for over four years and it was tough. I met a guy called Nathaniel (I’ve tried to track him down and, alas have not been able to) who, in an instant changed my life. I’d been bemoaning my fate, my foolishness in moving to London without a job, and he took my notebook and wrote this poem by Christopher Logue, often wrongly attributed to Guillaime Apollinaire:-

   

   “Come to the edge," he said.
   "We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
   "Come to the edge," he said.
   "We can't, We will fall!" they responded.
   "Come to the edge," he said.
   And so they came.
   And he pushed them.
   And they flew.”

I'm not saying I'm soaring as well as I might, but I found my wings.

And some of them give me Air Miles, too.

What more could I want?