Coincidence Or Synchronicity?
This is a story about a little English girl in Paris.
My story about a small area of the city, between the 5th and 6th arrondissements, that has marked pivotal times in my life from childhood to the present.
I recently read Pour l’amour du ciel (For The Love Of Heaven) by Marie-Pierre Planchon, after seeing her being interviewed on French television. She is a familiar voice on the French radio France Inter as she writes and reads the weather forecast. The author firmly believes in synchronicity and that higher powers, her guardian angels and ghosts send here signs to help her find her path in life, signs that most people would call coincidences.
If you are not familiar with synchronicity, it is a concept introduced by Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, to describe events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related.
For my part, I do not firmly believe in a higher power or guardian angels. Nonetheless I am open to the idea that some events in our lives may indeed happen for a reason and may be the result of unseen influences.
Paris, Summer 2025.
Shortly after reading the book, I participated in a week long workshop at the famous Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. The school has three locations and my summer stage was at the rue Bonaparte site, in the 6th arrondissement or Latin quarter* on the left bank of the river Seine.
On the first morning of the workshop as I walked from the Metro station to the school, it struck me that I was once again returning to the same small area that stretches from the rue de Seine to the Pantheon, spanning only 2,5 kms (1.5 miles). The same small collection of streets that has marked pivotal moments of my life. Could this be just a coincidence?
A Little English Girl In Paris.
I first visited Paris when I was eight years old. My parents had organised a long weekend to introduce my older sister, brother and me to the city. My father’s family were particularly Francophile and my father’s sister had been married to a French man.
We stayed at the Hôtel de Seine, which is still in business, in the rue de Seine in the 6th arrondissement. I remember to this day the décor of the room and my ordering breakfast for my siblings and I, in French from room service, despite being the youngest of the family. The breakfast tray was laid with a white cloth, stacked with white China and shiny metal jugs of creamy hot chocolate and a basket of fresh croissants. Heaven.
In my memories our hotel room looked a lot like this ….
My memories are possibly a little fanciful.
Another scene from that visit, which has stayed with me is the dinner that we had in a small and shabby restaurant in the rue Bonaparte that had murals painted on the walls by impoverished art students, to pay for their meals. Some of whom I believe went on to become famous, although that might be an urban legend. I have searched the web, but I can find no information about this restaurant now, even though I did go back there in the 80s when I moved to Paris.
The table had a red and white check paper table cloth and I ate egg and chips. I was young and still wary of foreign food. I clearly remember a little French girl, who was not sitting quietly at her table. She was running around between tables and went to hide inside a sideboard, where the baguettes were cut up and put into little wicker baskets. Her family paid her no mind what so ever.
I wanted to be that little French girl.
So much so that standing in the street, looking up towards St Germain boulevard, I promised myself at eight years old that one day I would live in Paris and speak French “like a French person”. I had only recently come to understand the concept of thinking and speaking in a language other than English.
A Teenager in Paris.
In my teens I went on two school trips to Paris. I don’t remember much about those visits except the smell of Gitane cigarettes in dingy cafés and hiding bottles of Stella Artois beer in our beds. I do remember my attempts to communicate in school girl French and looking with longing over the zinc rooftops of Paris from the window of a shabby two star hotel.
Although my secret dream was to study art like my mother and older sister, I persuaded myself that I had no artistic talent when I failed the entrance exam for art school. Instead I studied French, Italian and Art History at Canterbury university, seeing this as my passport to living and working in Paris. During my studies I worked two summers in the south of France in a village de vacances to improve my French and that is where I met my husband.
A Student in Paris.
On the very day of my graduation, I left England to live in Paris with my Chéri. Having no French qualifications, I decided to do an extra year of studies at a small business school in the rue Soufflot in the 5th arrondissement. The school was a few steps away from the Pantheon at one end of the street and the Jardins de Luxembourg at the other. The gardens, which I have come to know intimately, became a favourite place to hang out with other students in between classes.
At that time we lived in a one room apartment just outside of the périphérique and I took the metro each day and walked from the Odéon station to the school. In January 1987, my first winter in Paris, a cold weather front from Finland froze France and on January 14th, 15 to 20 cm of snow fell on Paris. The walk to school that morning was unusually quiet with the sounds of the city muffled by the snow. The city looked pristine and magical.
A Teacher in Paris.
Many years later at the beginning of this new century, I taught Translation (French to English) and English culture to students at the Institut supérieur d’interprétation et traduction (ISIT). By this time we had moved to the suburbs to be able to afford a house and garden and I travelled into the city for two years by train. Again I spent my lunch breaks in the Jardins de Luxembourg, catching some sun and leaning a metal chair back against the warm wall of the Musée de Luxembourg, which is next door to the Sénat.
A Student Again In Paris.
And this summer I came back again to what I think of as my own personal triangle d’or (golden triangle) to study painting with one of the renowned Beaux Arts teachers.
Over five days, we painted life models for five hours a day in a variety of different poses that last anything from two times forty five minutes, twenty minutes, ten minutes and to every five minutes for the last hour. The stage was gruelling and I continue to have great difficulties with the proportions of the human body, which is why I won’t be showing you any examples of my course work, but everything takes practice and every practice enriches future work.
A Little English Girl In Paris.
For a little eight year old girl with big dreams, dreams that many dismissed as youthful flights of fancy, I have come a long way. A long way not in distance as such, but a long way in terms of experience, learning and a life well lived.
And I’m not done yet 😊.
*The area gets its name from the Latin language, which was widely spoken in and around the University of Sorbonne during the Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries).
