62/5- A Sunday kind of love

Sunday 15th

Have I mentioned how NOISY it is here? The Scottish pub down the road closes its doors at around 2 am and that’s when all the drunken Scottish/English hoons with bottles in their hands congregate at our end of the street. So I’m woken up at 2 am regular as clockwork…and though the hooners are gone within half an hour it takes ages to go back to sleep. Beloved doesn’t hear it because A) he sleeps the sleep of the innocent and B) he’s DEAF!!!
Our Apartment is two doors in from the corner. If we turn right at that corner we are 20 metres to the Rue Rivoli; if we turn left we are 100 metres to the river Seine, 200 metres to the Ile St Louis and about 400 metres to Notre Dame Cathedral where we had actually planned to go to church this morning as they have a gospel choir singing. 400 metres…but there’s no way we can make it. It is pouring with rain….not just the light showers which have shown their faces almost every day since we’ve been here. This is torrential, turn your umbrella inside out, RAIN. Serious stuff. We’ve forgotten to buy extra bread ( France doesn’t bake on a Sunday) so Tony races down the street, with the umbrella, and all he can get is some English muffins and two of those half baked loaves from the supermarket. Despite being gone only 5 minutes, tops, he is soaked to the skin. Through the window we see tourists, perhaps only here for the weekend, getting soaked to the skin but wanting to make the most of every moment. Paris in the rain is better than no Paris at all. We are lucky - we have five full days left. That’s more than most people spend in Paris in total. There is only one thing for it. We take our coffee and English muffins and we climb back into bed. And there we stay for the day - or most of it. We play some great jazz, Tony reads, I do Sudoku, and we doze. In the evening we cobble together some dinner - pasta with ham and cream - drink a bottle of wine and watch a Harry Potter movie - one of only 4 DVDS in the flat. WE discuss whether to also watch Pirates of The Caribbean but decide against it. After all, who knows how long the rain will last. Besides - the weather’s quite cold and the bed is so warm!