Pre-Epic Edit Prologue to my novel 'From there to here: via Paris'

…I fall in love with a Frenchman…
There’s a good likelihood that I should have been French. Like a lot of you out there, I’m a sucker for anything French. I don’t know why, it makes absolutely no sense at all, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I was born and raised on entirely the wrong continent. This is the only way I could possibly explain my fixation with all things French. Other than that, I’m completely at a loss as to why a girl from the western suburbs should feel more at home in Paris than she does in her home town. But it’s true. The only other possibility is that I was switched at birth with a child who surely grew up in a 17th century apartment on the Left Bank with an inexplicable longing for eucalyptus trees and red dirt. It may have been an early exposure to Madeline books or the little Golden Book entitled ‘Come over to my House’. Those books resonated with me from a very young age, so I must have been pre-programmed for travel.

As a kid, I dreamed of the exotic places I would journey to; the Greek islands, Mexico, Paris, Scotland (yes, Scotland is so exotic.) I was very dramatic. I felt stifled in the western suburbs and I’ve always wanted to go to other places, exotic places, mainly because they were different from where I come from. Like London, for example. Or Paris. Or New York City. I know London is wet and grey, and Paris can be frustrating, and it’s noisy and crowded in New York City, but those things don’t matter when you are a tourist. If it mattered, well you just wouldn’t go there would you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m an Aussie girl, to the core. I love the beaches and the outback and the blue, blue sky. I’ve snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef and travelled across the Nullarbor by car and by train. (We drove across but when our car blew up we had to catch the train back. True story, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) We have the best of everything here in Australia, but there is something about Paris that just draws me towards it, like a magnet, or one of those ‘tractor’ beams on Star Trek. I can’t shake the feeling that something is missing here; when I look at a mountain here in Australia, I can’t help but imagine how it would look topped by a chateau or a crumbling medieval fort.

My love for Europe and Paris especially, is legendary in my family. Everyone says that I have been obsessed with Paris my whole life. I think, for me, it all started with Encyclopaedia Britannica and Claude Monet’s waterlily paintings. I love those paintings even though I know it’s not fashionable for anyone under forty. I’ve been like this for years, and it’s not the only time in my life I’ve fallen for an old Frenchman, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. While other girls at high school were etching pop stars names into their metal rulers in shop class, I engraved the words ‘Claude Monet’ into mine. My brother accidentally took it my ruler to work one day and one of the other blokes picked up the metal ruler and asked “who’s Claude Mon-et” (with a hard‘t’ on the end). My brother immediately knew it had to be my ruler!

I can’t say exactly what it is about France that gets my blood pumping and feet itching, or why a girl from Ipswich should love it so much, and I’m not ashamed to admit, even though I probably should be, that sometimes I may even shed a tear if I see Paris on a travel show or documentary. For me France has it all. History, art, romance, intrigue, and people getting their heads chopped off! What more could you want? I’ve been learning French for over ten years on and off and I will be fluent before I die. I love the markets, the architecture, the wine, the art, the history and the culture, and most of all, I love Paris. I fell in love with Paris a long time ago. (The city, I mean, not the girl in the magazines who forgets to wear knickers sometimes).

Since my first trip to Europe, my love affair with Paris has become a little more complicated. I have broadened my love to include all of France, and now I’m two-timing with Italy. And don’t tell anyone, but it’s possible that I love Italy almost as much as France and I suspect I will also love Spain and Greece. It’s all very confusing and it must be a Mediterranean thing. What’s more it’s contagious. I have passed this obsession onto my husband and child. My next trip will also include Vietnam, and maybe Morocco, too; places I have wanted to visit for a long time. The worst thing about this travel obsession is that I’m easily led. Every time I read a book about a country I want to go there. I just read Yoga School Dropout and now I want to go to India and Eat, Pray, Love just beckons me back to Bali.

But I digress. We were talking about Paris weren’t we? As I said I credit M. Monet with sparking my interest in Paris and probably with art in general, two of the driving forces in my life. But why? Why am I so in love with the place? Is it fate? A karmic thing? A past life memory? Who knows? As far as I know I have no French heritage, no Italian Blood, no Spanish ancestors, well not in the last couple of hundred years. I did grow up believing I was Dutch, but, once again, that’s another story altogether.

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Tags:

autobiography, betts, christine, france, novel, paris and writing