Gardenia perfume
Lingering on a pillow
Wild strawberries
Only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings,
These foolish things,
Remind me of you

These lines are from the famous song where a man wanders around Paris to find that the sights, sounds and smells all remind him of his lost love. When These Foolish Things was written in London the 1930s a trip to Paris was still an exotic thing to do. Having breakfast in Kensington and lunch near Les Invalides as I did a while back would have been something that would have astonished previous generations. But while Paris is still Paris, we have lost something in the process of globalisation and mass transport. There are fewer things that you can only get by traveling to particular places. Continue reading →