60/7 - There is Superstition!

Friday 13th

I’m not superstitious, well….not most of the time. But it has been an odd kind of day. Today is the last chance we have to catch up with Phillipa, who has moved with her galpals from Bagnoles to Montmartre….which is the trendy place to stay if you are 21 and a Mosman girl! We arrange to meet at Sacre Couer, as I have candles to light and promises to keep. Then the plan is that we have lunch together. No sooner do we get to the top of the hill via the funicular, than it starts to rain. Not a light shower - it’s torrential. Thank heavens for the umbrella. We wait, and wait, and wait until Philly appears - by which time we are pretty wet. Sacre Couer is incredibly beautiful and looks more like a mosque than a church. It’s actually only a couple of hundred years old but it totally dominates the landscape in Montmartre. I have promised to light candles and say prayers for a number of people and I do - adding one for family friend Cath who has suddenly collapsed with viral pneumonia and is in critical care in hospital back in Melbourne. And then we leave and join the milling tourists outside. Cameras aren’t allowed in the church, and so people are snapping anything and everything outside. The view is spectacular but from the hilltop Paris looks flat and grey and gives no hint of the charm in the streets below.

We all go to lunch at a restaurant that had caught Tony’s eye on the way up. It a good Carte Formule and only 13 Euros. 5 years ago such menus were 18-23 euros, but the prices appear to be tumbling in an effort to drum up business. WE order French onion soup and beef Bourgignonne, but Philly wants A la carte - and orders Escargots and Salmon. I start to panic until I realise she has every intention of paying for herself. Go for it kiddo!
Phillipa is doing a fair impression of Paris Hilton - without the money- as she tells us how she and the girls went to the Hemingway bar at the Ritz Carlton. It’s rated in Forbes as the top cocktail bar in the world!!! The cocktails START at 30 euros ( there’s a Bloody Mary at 200 Euros….for that money it would have to be Queen Mary’s REAL blood for me.) So the girls blew a few hundred euros ( each)just so they could say they’d been there. Hell…they could have done the Orsay for 13 Euros!
When we get home mid afternoon it’s clear Tony is feeling what he calls “lumpy” which is generally unwell but with vague symptoms. He falls asleep for a couple of hours but when he gets up at six he looks terrible and says he needs to go back to bed. No dinner, not even a drink of some kind. That’s when the shivering starts. He wraps himself in a blanket, cocoon like and goes back to sleep in minutes. There’s no sweating, no sign of fever - just the shivering in spite of the blanket around him. I don’t know whether to call a doctor, make plans to shorten the trip and fly home, wake him and make him eat. When in doubt, do nothing. So I sit, and I keep watch. And I’m still wide awake - sitting, watching, till 4.am. That’s when he throws off the blanket and I can see that he has stopped shivering at last. Only then do I sleep.