Oysters With My Father

"I'd like to see Paris and die," my father announced, rather unexpectedly one day. 

My mother had travelled no further than the Isle of Sheppey in her entire lifetime, and made no secret of the fact that she had no interest in going anywhere more exotic. So, after her death in 2002, dad had taken stock, and decided to take off.

He got himself a passport and applied to join a trip organised by The Gloucester Citizen, to Berlin, but that was cancelled for lack of numbers, and dad set his sights on the city that never sleeps (Or is that Chicago? I don't know, but I like it.)

For some inexplicable reason, I can't actually remember how we got there: but my money's on Eurostar, as my father was a railwayman, in one o his iterations, and remained a great fan of the iron horse. 

My sister and her family came too. we budged up in a budget hotel not too far from the Gare du Nord and set about exploring.

Versailles was extravagent, but exhausting. I remember queuing on the stairs, with a rest stop in an alcove, and glitz. I don't remember dad being particularly impressed.

Inevitably, we got lost, but for a reason that no-one could have anticipated. We were on the Metro when an an urgent announcement sounded and everyone started to leave. I stretched my utterly inadequate French to its limits,and dug deep.

"You know what people, I think 'incederie' is, 'bomb', and I think we should follow these guys ... "

The Metro then closed down for a spell, and after  a fruitless search for our hotel, during which Dad became very tired, we piled into taxis.

Dad insisted we stop at a wall that was pocked with bullet holes, where Resistance fighters had been executed, to have his photo taken. I thought this a rather macabre request, but then realised, the Second World War was HIS history, and THIS was his homage, to men and women whose heroic stories he'd heard as a teen, and who died fighting for him, too.

Ray and I took him for a meal at a restaurant, where dad was treated as a hero. it was so special. I ordered a table and exchanged greetings in the same inadequate French that had spotted a bomb, but the attention of the waiters was entirely on my father. They welcomed him in English, helped him choose his food and drink, and made him feel like an honoured guest: he revelled in it. It gladdened my heart to witness it.

We did all the other things, too, The Louvre, boat trip down the Seine, but the outstanding moment for me was the trip up the Eiffel Tower. 

I had one of those moments when I stopped time. I took in every detail of being with my father, who unknown to me, WAS to see Paris and die, ravaged by cancer and gone within two years.

There was something so beautiful, so incongruous about sitting opposite my father in a restaurant half-way up one of the most iconic structures in the world, slurping down oysters. 

The six-inch model dad bought to take home is mine now. It sits on my window sill and carries me beyond the mundane to the hour when time stood still, and I ate oysters with my father.