PARIS? OUI MONSIEUR

France. It clicked into view as though the TV set had just been turned on. Green fields, odd-looking electricity pylons, hedgerows and trees, scattered outhouses, a barn with the words ‘Vins Olivier’ printer on the side. There had been the sheer blackness of the channel tunnel, and then suddenly, brightly, and quietly, we were in Northern France, the misty countryside of which was racing by the windows of the 11:31 Eurostar service from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord.

I’m here with work - though Sammy skimmed through the next couple of days’ agenda (I shared it with her) and suggested it was basically a three-hour meeting surrounded by what you might call not-work. It might be that. Though I don’t quite think it’s the jolly she thinks it is. There’s team-building and (whisper it) a rumour of karaoke. That’ll go down well.

The first day though has been a stop-over in Paris. What do you imagine when you think of Paris, I wonder? I see a velvet sky over the Eiffel Tower, the ruffle of silk by a shuttered window, perhaps fine cuisine on romantically lit boulevards and leafy avenues. In my imagination there are jazz bands on street corners, guitars and violins, and perhaps tall, stylish Parasians hand-in-hand as they stroll dreamily along the Seine.

“It’s like London!” exclaimed Andy as we emerged from Gare Du Nord, “Only French.”

Oui Monsieur. This part of the city (and to be fair the Eiffel Tower is an hour’s walk from here so it’s not exactly the centre where we are) is basically London. Look up, and you’ll see the distinctive windows and balconies, the ateliers and salons and appartements you’d expect, but at ground level… things are busy, just as they are in every big city. There are cars everywhere, and bikes, and flashing neon signs. There are people hurrying and chatting and eating and smoking, and everything moves at a hundred miles an hour.

“Attention!” cries a cyclist in a green lane as I amble accidentally into his path. “Merci!” says the stylish lady as she crosses at the pedestrian crossing, avoiding the back end of a swerving taxi. A police van comes rooting around the corner with its musical siren.

We did manage to go for a walk to Montmartres last night. From up there you can see the city spreading out. Unlike London, there are barely any skyscrapers in Paris - at least from that direction. Even the famous Tour Eiffel is hidden around the corner. Rain drizzled from the grey sky as we headed up to the village of fairy lights and cute shops behind the Sacre Coeur. It’s nice up there, a bit like a world made out of all the best bits of Café Rouge.

I think there’s always an interesting distinction between your perception of a place and the place itself. For obvious reasons, films, books, TV show you a romanticised version; a version that the place itself then does its best to lean into. All the things are sort of there, all the pieces you expect because you’ve seen them and felt them in a thousand adaptions and stories - yet, the truth is grittier and somehow much more real. It’s like the moment you first realise that your favourite actor in your favourite show is not really much like the favourite character they play. You could think of it as disappointing, I suppose, but only because an illusion is broken. Kelsey Grammar n’est pas Frasier as one might say.

We did see the Eiffel Tower. It was through a gap, between the trees. From that angle, and especially in the rain, this gigantic symbol of Paris looked almost otherworldly, like an iron spacecraft with its feet planted in the sprawl of city around it. I wondered whether it always felt like that to those 19th Century Parisians who had strolled in bonnets and gloves. I expect it did. Perhaps they hated this alien visitor from the future, this ghastly craft of strange iron and steel, not realising how integral it would become to the city.

And yet here I am, over a hundred years later, in a world that has made it integral - romanticised it into a shape, an image, a picture of the city of love, the centrepiece of my velvet-ruffled starlit image. The illusion isn’t so bad. But at the end of the day, I think Andy’s kind of right. Paris? It’s kind of like London. But French.