Paris | Going for one thing, coming back with another

An old chap playing Desperado in the station.

We sat in Paul's drinking coffee and watching the crowd ebbing and flowing, filming and moving on. As always, Jamie came to mind. He'd been one of the stars in our provincial city, he'd done an MBA, looked after the managed workspace off Belgrave Gate, drove an old-fashioned and very beautiful red E-type Jaguar that sometimes managed to do twenty-two miles to the gallon.

Curly hair, a Geordie accent, often a lovely woman draped around his neck. They never spoke, the beautiful women.

He climbed, of course, loved the wilderness, would go camping looking for Golden Eagles in the Highlands.

Years later I looked for him, tracked him to an outdoor pursuits centre in Wales, climbing walls and that, made sense. I left a message.

A hesitant woman phoned me back. Jamie had died, she said, a massive heart attack at forty-two, she'd been with him in the car to the hospital, he'd died in her arms. A lovely man, she said.

I remembered his dad had committed suicide, jumped from the cliffs.

We'd worked together on a weekend for some trustees from an arts organisation. It was tense when I arrived on the Sunday morning. He said it had been terrible, he'd contemplated trying to break his leg in the shower so he could bring the whole thing to a stop.

We all survived, came out alive with no broken bones. As far as I remember everyone got paid and no one had to pay anyone else back.

Desperado.

The old chap shifted to boogie woogie.

The left hand playing one thing, the right hand another. I remembered an old, old ambition from childhood to play the piano.

That had got lost along the way, couldn't be done without a piano at home they said, too many girls with talent to find room for you to have regular practice at school. How about the violin? Group lessons, we'll lend you an instrument.

How hopes and dreams are crushed. I asked how you joined the netball team. You wait to be asked was the answer. I was never asked. A fledgling interest, how might a lifetime of aversion to activity have been changed. The joy of running, moving, synchronised, syncopated. Maybe scoring.

They buggered that one.

But the piano now, that was a different kettle of fish.

Still time to get those rhythms and learn the muscle memory, each hand going its own way. Like driving, with four limbs operating independently but in tune.

So two thwarted ambitions still to achieve, the others laid to rest, some after thirty years. Now the final two, one never acknowledged, to have their turn.

10,000 hours they say, to mastery.

The tickle in the throat started in the lounge, waiting to board the train.

Ominous, a cold on the way, meanwhile infecting several hundred people sitting at close quarters with a single sneeze. I wasn't sure whether to feel proud or sorry.

Arriving in Paris we found a place to eat opposite the station, old-fashioned with proper napery and heavy cutlery. Shivering with the impending infection, I chose soup and ravioli and a glass of brandy. The old feller had crab, a whole crab with fries and a beer.

Replete, not knowing where we were and longing for a lie-down, we were easy pickings for Fred who offered us a lift for thirty Euros, cash. It was less than a mile away, we could have walked but Fred didn't have an easy time of it, trying to find a way through the back streets and going round and round the boulevard ... Anvers ... Pigalle ... Anvers.

We took his name and number for another time.

I learned how to use the Metro, only 2.50 Euros for the return to Gare du Nord. We caught a bus from the Champs de Mars, I recognised the destination sign Pigalle and knew it was not far from where we were saying.

French came easily, especially with indignation:

Attendez! Il y a une danger!

A motorist tooting me off the road and on to the double mattress strewn on the pavement.

En garde, monsieur! En garde, s'il vous plaît!

Flagging a burly security guard to help an elderly woman with her suitcase.

And one learned in class I thought I would never use:

La douche est cassée, madame.

Perhaps all showers are broken in France?

Walking about the streets looking for a shop that sold cigarettes, the old feller swapped a pound for one, came back smoking and grinning.

We passed two chaps with a rabbit and some kits on a pedestal with grass and carrots and a tiny tin collecting money. The old feller asked for a light, shared a cigarette with them, universal language.

Sitting in the bright sunshine we watched the park police swoop on an artist busy making a caricature of a little girl in a pink dress. They impounded his pictures, left him with the stool the girl had been sitting on. I wished we'd bought the one of Snoop Dogg. Now it was sitting in an evidence room bringing pleasure to no one.

The old feller picked up three berets for ten euros at the Metro. Cheaper than the Portobello Road, he said.