Paris

It’s a treat to walk across Paris on Christmas Day. I enjoy the architecture and the views. They are not spoilt by a plethora of Christmas bling.

We are staying near the Sorbonne and walked over to Le Grand Colbert for lunch yesterday. Gun metal grey sky and a chill wind blowing up the river kept us walking briskly. A glass of champagne, half a dozen oysters, Menetou-Salon, Brouilly, kidneys, rum baba with extra rum on the side (from Guatemala)  isn’t a traditional English Christmas lunch but nevertheless hit the spot.

I have been given Hilary Spurling’s biography of Anthony Powell. The photo on the dust jacket of AP beside a car echoes a similar picture of James Lees-Milne and reminds me of Dr Machacek’s autobiography in which he takes inordinate pride in his latest Ford. I never met Dr Machacek but I worked with his son and often had the doctor barking down the telephone at me. He was a great man. He didn’t have to interrupt his medical studies in Brno to escape Nazi Czechoslovakia to join the Allies; but he did with only his mother’s wedding ring and some bank notes sewn into his shirt collar. He didn’t speak English yet he completed his medical course in Oxford and became a doctor looking after the pilots from Czechoslovakia . After the war he went home with his English wife but was soon on the run again when the communists took over. Finally he settled for an easy life, becoming a GP in Canvey Island, only to find himself perched on the roof with his family in the great flood of 1953 and having to swim to get help.