Joyeux Noël - Montmartre & St Germain des-Prés

Gloire à Dieu, Seigneur au plus haut des cieux et sur la Terre paix aux hommes de bonne volonté!
- Saint François d'Assise

No matter what you write somedays, some moments can never be fully expressed. As we journey along on our midnight trains, with bags full of heartbeats, our feelings churning like a universe of watching stars, our emotions raw and heavy with missed connections, our souls sparking kinetic at the possibilities looking at us from Platform 2, tired feet, aching limbs, broken bodies that just cannot spell another hour, causing eyes to rise towards the Heavens seeing them heave and haul themselves homeward before the dawn of morning, before the pheonix that comes to show us the angles of Osiris, then we can buy ourselves a return ticket and begin to enjoy setting sail through the silent dreams of glittered oceans and broken shells. Some things you can express. But no matter what you write somedays, when it's -4.c in Paris words will never convey just how cold this can be.

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Despite the brittle cold biting Paris, the streets of Montmartre are filled with warmth. Shops are coloured and decorated ready for Christmas with coloured trimmings, coloured lights, pine trees and Joyeux Fêtes scribbled everywhere. Great clouds of hot air furr and curl above the Métro air vents whilst the trains run underneath to Anvers. Hot crêpes steaming with melting Nutella provide much comfort from street vendors. Brasseries and bistros beckon too. An old woman with a large padded coat and large padded legs, struggles in from the cold, carrying two large padded plastic carrier bags and needs to use the toilet. The owner of Au Pere Rousseau on Rue Caulincourt smiles, and shows her the way. A old man with no voice, sits behind me and throws back his espresso. His friend has just got up and left him alone with only a moustache.

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Down at the Left Bank the temperatures are just as bad. The wind licks like frost and ice from the Seine and sears the skin with blistering cold. Sanctuary whistles down at Île Saint-Louis . Warm and candlelit, filled with incense and the popular shuffles of feet, the Notre Dame de Paris, gathers in hushed shadows and the passing of stained glass light keeping a warmth alive in the December skies. A little further down the shivering island, Saint-Louis-en-l'Île Church still burns with light from prayer filled candles and scented love given at each treasured visit.

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Outside the packed abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés rows of wooden stalls are lit up with Chrismas lights, selling scarfes and tobacco, bebop still sounds down to Boulevard St Michel but outside the abbey the songs of the choir are broadcast, almost holding your hand in the chill of the night. Chestnuts roast in the open square blazing bright with blue lights hung up in each tree, people going places, children wrapped in gloves that reach the floor, the elderly taut in leather and suede and felt hats and beards whilst the homeless huddle up tight, with traffic at a standstill and tear glass chimes as coffee smokes underneath your eyes.

But tonight, words cannot express this cold in Montmartre. Too tired to write now and wanting to sleep all the way home. Fingers begin to ache as a smile boards your face.