The date was set. The 17th of March if my memory serves me correctly. And it might not. I tucked the invitation neatly into my small, casual man-bag. Feeling like a cross between Pierce Brosnan and an out-dated IRA terrorist, I quickly and discreetly took out my battered French mobile, and sent a text message to Tom.
“Meet me in Montparnasse. Six o’clock. No questions asked.”
The operation was underway. And sure enough, come 18:00 hours, Tom was there, sucking on a rolly, and frowning like he didn’t seem to grasp the notion of surprises.
“Where have you been,” he uttered, somewhat grumpily.
“What do you mean?” I replied, innocently. “It’s six o’clock, just like I said.”
“No, it’s four minutes past six. You made me stand in the cold for four minutes. Do you know what that can do to a man’s internal organs?”
I decided to ignore Tom’s irrational irritability. Seeking to calm him down a notch, I slowly reached into my man-bag and took out the priceless invitation.
“I’m ready to tell you my secret now,” I said, in my best Haley-Joel Osmond impression. I handed over the invitation.
“The Tourism Board of Ireland sponsored by Guinness cordially invites you to an evening of fun and craic’” Tom read out loud. He looked unimpressed. “I don’t even like Guinness.”
“Relax, it’s free!,” I told him. And that wasn’t the best part.
“And you do you know where it is?”
I pointed 45 degrees to behind Tom’s head. Tom turned around, his limited enthusiasm preventing him from making visual contact with anything other than a marquee offering free key rings for a nearby telecommunications company.
“No not there. THERE!” I pointed to the top floor of the Tour Montparnasse: a foreboding 210-metre tower of commerce that stares boldy out over the Parisian skyline; a solemn, clean-cut business man of an edifice, to the Eiffel Tower’s sparkling, flirtatious French mistress.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Tom looked impressed.
“Oh you’ve done well this time JP,” he said. “This could be exciting.”
And it was. I mean, there’s nothing more exciting than travelling in an elevator that makes your ears pop, right? Especially when it’s one of those futuristic ones that you find in Berlin or, I imagine, Japan. An elevator fitted with a 21st century plasma screen that shows you video footage of just how high in Paris you actually are, and what the view might look like, were you in fact Superman, and capable of using X-ray vision to see through iron and steel.
Stepping out at the top of the tower, one already expected to be treated like royalty. Complete with invitation – received only due to my affiliation with the press – Tom and I were received with open arms by some charming, if elderly members of the Irish Tourism Board. They pinned on metallic shamrocks onto our button holes, and seemed to say “now you be good boys” although this might have been my imagination.
In hindsight, this must have been exactly what they did say. A few moments later, we were leaving our consciousnesses behind, and walking into the viewing section of the tower’s 56th floor, our eyes drawn not the panoramic view of Paris, but to the enormous, custom-built Guinness bar that seemed to be pouring pints by the dozen.
“Suddenly, I think I like Guinness,” announced Tom.
You have to hand it to the Irish. After centuries of brutal wars, famine, conciliations and reconciliation, they still know how to put on a good spread. And what a spread! Table on table of canapés, amuses-bouches, hors d’oeuvres, nibbles, samples, snacks and just about anything that you can fit ten of into your mouth at the same time. To attempt to describe what exactly I was eating would be to put to shame the delicacy of Irish cuisine. Let’s just say that some of it was potato, others salmon and all of them yummy.
Next to this, there were meat dishes, in – as if we hadn’t had enough already – a traditional Guinness sauce. There were also cheese selections and a vast tray of the most exquisite-looking oysters, which I regret to say, were never sampled by the likes of us, because our minds had been drawn elsewhere.
Sitting aside the Guinness bar, and behind the endless rows of Irish wine, sat the crème de la crème of the evening’s gastronomy: Irish whiskey. And lots of it! There were fancied varieties like Jameson and Wild Geese, and single malts like the excellent Connemara. Several glasses later, and Tom and I were in alcoholic heaven.
Some time later, and my memory hazes a little. I remember appreciating the view, not just of the city, but of the traditional Irish dancers, who had just started tapping away on the wooden floor area. Female French journalists gathered around them, one of whom caught my eye so much, that her jealous ex-boyfriend felt he needed to make his own little song and dance; a potentially violent encounter which could have taken the shine off the evening, were it not for the fact I remembered I was in Irish company, and that fisty-cuffs were considered debonair.
These are the moments that you live and relive in your head over and over again. If you never return to Paris in your lifetime, you’ll always be able to tell anyone who comes to dinner that you once got wasted at the top of the Montparnasse Tower, that you smoked a cigarette on its helipad while looking out across the spring Parisian night, its plumes of smoke and car horns jumping up at you from the distance. And while by then you might have given up on all of your hopes and dreams, those dazzling beacons on that perfect horizon might just stick in your brain, reminding you that yes, you were once young. And that yes, you did spit on a business man from 200 metres up. I mean, come on. It had to be done.
