Holiday plans

We delayed the start of the day for as long as we possibly could this morning.

Mark got up first to take Lucy to work and then we retired back to bed with our coffee, much to the frustration of the dogs, who wanted to go to the Library Gardens to be emptied, and who went to some trouble to make it absolutely plain that just popping out into the back garden in the meantime was going to be entirely unsatisfactory.

In the end we got fed up of growly protests and attempts to nudge us out of bed and got up, and Oliver came with us to splash through the puddles in the Library Gardens.

It wasn’t actually raining, and we had an entertaining half an hour throwing a very dribbly tennis ball for the dogs to fight over and planning our holidays.

We talked about things to do in Paris, and Oliver said that he wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, although he thought it would be too scary to go up to the top of it.

I am not a great fan of believing that things are too scary to be attempted, which may be why I have got myself into so many dreadful messes in my life, and disagreed immediately.

I have been up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, with Mark when we were younger and had fewer school fees to pay, and when Paris in the springtime was something we could do without needing either a terrifying overdraft or being obliged to involve Mickey Mouse at any stage of the proceedings.

It was an absolutely petrifying experience.

I mean the Eiffel Tower, not Mark, obviously, although he does have moments when he is particularly grumpy and it is probably sensible not to argue too much.

I am scared of heights.

Especially I am scared of heights when they are a long way up and swaying gently in the wind.

Especially if they are a long way up.

The Eiffel Tower qualifies on both counts.

I promised Oliver that we would go up it together.

Even now, in the safety of my taxi which is firmly sitting on the earth-bound solid stability of the taxi rank, the thought makes me feel slightly queasy.

There are seven hundred stairs and then a lift, followed by a dizzy sensation and an urgent wish to get down.

I have explained to myself and Oliver that not doing scary things is like building a cage for yourself, and that we have not only got to do it, but to try and work out why people enjoy it and then we will be able to find the enjoyment in it for ourselves.

So far neither of us is convinced.

We followed that up by talking about other interesting things to see in Paris, which naturally led on to talk of the Revolution and the Terror and of course the guillotine.

It turned out that Oliver knew nothing whatsoever about that particular series of horrible events, so we explained, somewhat sketchily and filled in with details which may have originated from vague recollections of thrilling stories from my Girls’ Book Of Adventure Stories rather than any actual historical data. Then when we got back home we illustrated them by looking it all up on the computer, which I rather regretted, because there were several pictures of beheaded people, one of which appeared to be a photograph.

Oliver has all the sensitivity and delicacy usually associated with nine year old boys, and was disappointed to learn that not only are we unlikely to observe a beheading as part of our tourist activity in Paris, but also the guillotine has now been removed from its prominent position on the Place de la Concorde, as it is no longer in frequent usage.

It is very exciting to think that we are going to have a holiday, even if it is beginning to look as though we are going to have to spend significant parts of it fighting vertigo, investigating historical mass murder and then visiting Mickey Mouse, not to mention Lucy’s wish to trawl around the fashionable shops and buy a beret.

I remember what we did when we first visited Paris, that memorably romantic springtime years ago.

It wasn’t any of those things, though.