Hello. Here I am in 2013 leaning against a bus stop post in Montmartre, outside a grand building with green shutters, just up the road from the Sacre Coeur. We went to the Sacre Coeur on the day we arrived, sheltering from the rain. The nuns were singing and we lit a candle for Sonny. Up the road the other way, although we don't know this yet as we're still at the bus stop, is a beautiful street with food shops all huddled together; the butchers, the greengrocers, the cheese shop with the man outside promoting truffle cheese.
Tracy says she'll take a photo so I lean against the bus stop and decide to write something down but I don't know what. As I stand here, the bus arrives full of passengers and I think, I hope he isn't stopping for me, what with me just being here for a picture, which can't be taken right now because there's a bus in the way and should I get on and go one stop to just be polite? At this time I haven't written anything apart from 'ah, Paris' and 'O Montmartre', so it isn't going that well, but the bus stops, the doors open and a woman and her little girl, dressed in a brown cord coat, step off onto the cobbled street and as they do so the girl waves at the bus driver. And right at this moment everything feels right with the world. Then she and her Mum make their way down the hill, across the crossing and out of sight. And the bus glides around the corner and the street is quiet again.
And so that's what I write down.
