Deborah's Backpack

Arrival Paris. MORNING: Grim weather and no thermals but determined to conduct worthly tour including homage to old home on Isle St Louis.
Lucas: well i couldn't believe my eyes when i saw the hotel bath it was the tiniest smallest puniest bath i have ever seen in the world and when I tried getting in only my head didn’t fit in it was so small and I’m telling the truth “Honest”! The room was tiny too but we have BBC prime and i caught Theo watching big chef little chef.

AFTERNOON: Like a wrinkle in time, we were standing outside our old home on Quay de Bethune and Madame the concierge came out. She looked exactly the same and I still don't know her real name.
Louvre unaccountably closed on Tuesday which is weird for capital city but they do have this 35 hour week thing to contend with. However, the most important (for me) place was the least known - the memorial to the French deportees, 200,000 of them, at the tip of the Isle de la Cite just by Notre Dame. This is not flagged in many guides and is the most moving, appropriate piece of architecture (opened 1961) that evokes powerful emotions. The centre installation, a long corridor lit by a single light, is lined with 200,000 glass beads or lights, each one a soul killed in deporation camps during the war. Impossibly not to be moved to tears - thus no photos as mascara not holding up. A stark contrast to Notre Dame, where we herded around with thousands of tourists (the Russians being best dressed for this weather). Suddenly realised this was down to Mr Dan Brown and secretly cursed. Taxi driver on way home will vote Segolene Royale...we will conduct straw pole (we're coming out as covert Sarkozies but strangely are keeping quite on this, not sure why).

Tony: Sitting in Jean Paul's favourite seat and trying to compose a sequel to 'L'etranger' involving the post modern irony of Paris on a rainy day with children, I was affronted to be photographed by a tourist who did not even ask for my signature.

Allow us to add to the white noise of the 21st century. Permit our (very) short term blog to intrude on your already exciting lives. Dear readers, those of you more used to Dee Dee von F's apercus will have to read between the lines; this is the Orchard-Clark's collective toe dipping in the waters of blog-dom and children are present. I fear that it may fizzle out under a barrage of male hormones, "self-medication" and shopping but let's all see....together.
Take it away, childer-beasts:
Lucas: I'm bored beacause I'm not allowed to bring my laptop, "bored". The only fun thing will probably be when we are at the park at Rome!
Theo: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah boring boring blah blah
dont read it blah.
Me: Oh my lord.
Tony: What am I looking for in a whistle stop tour of France and Italy? I want: vespas, low-life, riviera, flesh, pasta, sad eyed madonnas, oranges and lemons, flesh, sunshine, bonding moments the children will re-live forever, flesh...[at this point camera pans out to lengthy wait at Exeter airport; Deborah being a travel-ubercontrolfreak. We have 12 rail connections ahead of us after short flight into Paris. That's 36 hours in Deborah-wait-time.]