Carb loading in Paris

It's been a while since I've managed to do any serious training.  Here's why!

It’s Friday afternoon and we’re on the Eurostar to Paris.  I’ve not been to Paris for over 12 months and for Gene it’s been almost 9 years. Why Paris?  That’s simple: because Robert, Sylvie and Marina live there.  These guys are great mates and we first met in Sydney almost 20yrs ago, through an old friend, Paul Fregosi.  Paul died in January 2001, aged 79yrs old, in Brazil, while on his way back to Sydney from London.  Paul is a whole other story, but it was through Paul that I met Robert and Sylvie, Phil Knightley, Murray Sale (the author and columnist who died in 2010) and ultimately Lucian. 

Marina is now 16 years old.  She’s tall for her age, quiet beautiful and her face was made for the camera. She’s also a force of nature.  She looks somewhere in her mid twenties, is fluent in French and English, was born in Morocco, grew up in Manhattan attending the UN school in Midtown and now lives in the centre of Paris. She’s full of life and would be instantly recognisable to any parent who has managed to survive their teenage daughter.  Life as drama. She’s also one of the most loveable and delightful young women you’d want to meet.  

 Her Mum, Sylvie, has been with Robert since she was 19yrs old and together they’ve managed to travel the globe as journalists and Sylvie as a teacher also. Sylvie is heavily involved in the Association of Language Testers in Europe and harmonisation with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which means she gets to travel to other parts of the world a fair bit and is influential in the languages field. She’s bright, enthusiastic and a brilliant and generous host. And she’s married to Robert.  I checked out some family photos of Sylvie & Robert when they were younger (a few short years back) and I’m left wondering how Robert managed to talk Sylvie into being with him!  He’s quite the handsome young bloke but she could have stolen anyone’s heart with ease.  Whatever it was that she saw in him, she clearly made the perfect choice as they’ve been together close to 40 years and in that time travelled the world on assignment and stayed best friends through it all. They’re the sort of mates you wish lived down the road, not on the other side of the planet.  

We’ve been great mates with them for close to 20 years and I first met Robert when he was the bureau Chief for Agence France Press (AFP), one of the world’s big press agencies, in Sydney in 1990. Here’s a summary of what he’s been up to taken from the AFP website & worth a quick read: His appointment as Director of the AFP Foundation caps a career in journalism spanning more than three decades and four continents. One of his first assignments as a junior reporter was to cover the 1974 revolution in Portugal; in 2001, while serving as UN correspondent, he coordinated the team of AFP journalists and photographers in New York covering the 9/11 attack. Between those events, he spent six years in the Middle East and four years in Australia. He lived in Beirut from 1978 to 1981, reporting on the war in Lebanon for The Irish Times and other publications. He was in the city during the Israeli siege in the summer of 1982. He was Cairo correspondent for The Times of London until 1984. After a three-year spell working for the OECD in Paris, he joined AFP in 1988. He was appointed bureau chief in Sydney in 1990, and deputy chief editor for foreign news four years later.

He later served as AFP’s editor in chief and deputy managing editor. Robert has wide experience in media training. He was a member of the editorial board of the Paris-based Journalists in Europe programme for several years. He has taught at schools of journalism in France and at the United Nations and has trained AFP’s own staff in the Middle East and Africa as well as in Paris. He is a member of the jury of the Alexandre Varenne Prize for scientific journalism and one of the experts advising the jury of the Jacques Chirac Prize for conflict prevention. He has also been on the jury of the Lorenzo Natali Prize for reporting human rights. So you can see he’s been a busy bloke.

One of his many talents, apart from speaking a number of languages fluently, is his intimate knowledge of Paris and London.  So it is that each and every time either Gene or I are in Paris we walk the city with Robert and learn more than you ever could on an organised, official tour. This time (at least while I was there as Gene stayed on longer), we did the Pompidou Centre which is brilliant, Sacré Cœur and Montmartre from a completely different angle to last time, the local market, various cafes (always a treat in Paris), the Arc de Triomphe and the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to name a few as well as the buses, the underground and the Père Lachaise Cemetery which is in the 20th arrondissement. The cemetery has enough famous figures to last a dozen lifetimes: Oscar Wilde (great tomb but not helped by the thousands of lipstick kiss marks covering virtually the whole thing, even the writing), Marcel Proust, Bizet, Maria Callas, Jim Morrison (a small and unremarkable grave) Chopin, Edith Piaf (simple, classy, well kept grave), Delacroix,  Stephane Grappelli, Jacques McDonald (got my photo with him), Marcel Marceau, Modigliani (couldn’t find his grave but he’s there somewhere) and Moliere to name a few. It’s worth a little visit if you get the chance.  

So doing all this with Robert and Sylvie is always a treat. We also consumed vast amounts of fresh baguettes, all sorts of cheeses, and more pastries than even I could comfortably consume (though I somehow managed).  Then it was back on the Eurostar to London for me. Jade came with me as she had to get back to work as well. The weather in Paris was superb: cold and crisp and crystal clear skies with the benefit of it not being the tourist season. Couldn’t ask for much more.

It goes without saying that I’ve not managed to do any exercise since leaving Ireland. Maybe tomorrow.  It’s not the best preparation for Husskie in March, but I'm fueling up on carbs so I'll have plenty of spare energy to draw on in the tri. That’s it for now.  Gene is about to wake up and I’m off to Westminster to meet with Minister for Justice today which should be fun. I’ve got a bit of reading and work to do prior to that.