Paris

Paris is the city of love.

I know it, you know it, and the Parisians certainly know it. Coffee pots for two; red wine bottles with two wineglasses; romantic hotels with four poster double beds; chocolates on pillows; trips down the river; Le Louvre and the tiny, disappointing painting that is the Mona Lisa; the lights of Le Champs Elysse; glowing faces in the windows of Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent; heart shaped photos at the top of the Eiffel Tower; bicycles ridden in wiggly couples, laughing exactly as they laugh in Amelie. Love is in every brick, every glass, every window; romance is in every chocolate, every coffee pot, every garlic bulb (strung around the neck of people who say hawhehawhe a lot).

And when a relationship is floundering, Paris is the one city in the world that can save it. It is the one place that can heal a broken heart: can force a couple back together again, and fix the gaps between them. That can give hope to something that has fallen apart; can shine the light of romance back into something that has grown dark and dull; can lift a couple that have fallen into deep levels of miscommunication back into a place of heart and companionship and trust again.

So - with this in mind - I have just booked two tickets in a beautiful boutique hotel: to eat, to drink, to wander, and to gaze lovingly at each other in the sunlight. To put together the pieces of our broken hearts and our broken relationship. Because it is not too late for us. Where there is love, it will never be too late to stop trying.

"Will you stop calling it a romantic weekend?" they asked me yesterday. "Seriously. Stop calling it that or I'm not coming."
"It is a romantic weekend! Me and you, red wine, bread, fake moustaches: what's not romantic about that?"
"It's not even a weekend: we're going on a Monday."
"Okay, romantic non-weekend then."
"But it's not romantic either. I'm your best mate. You haven't got a chance in hell, frankly."
"Pfff. Let the lights of Paris shine into your heart and then say that."
"There's not going to be chocolates on our pillows are there?"
"Don't know, but we get a free boat trip. Very exciting."
"Are you going to make me get a photo with you at the top of the Eiffel Tower?"
"Yep. And then I'm going to put it in a heart shaped frame. Just watch me."
"Did you get separate beds?"
"Does it matter?"
"I'm starting to think it might do."
"Then yes, I got separate beds. But me and you, Grimbott: we're going to have the kind of weekend we haven't had since we were 19 and living on borrowed money."
"We're going to drink too much wine and then vomit and pass out in the beds of strangers again and wake up not knowing where we are?"
"Exactly. Although we have a nice hotel so maybe we should get them to pass out in ours."
"It's not a romantic weekend, though. It's a non-romantic non-weekend. Okay?"
"We'll see. A trip down Le Seine might just swing it for me, I reckon. I'm extremely charming when I'm wearing my fake moustache."
"Pff. You're going to need more than a fake moustache to win me over, Smale."

I've always wanted to go to Paris for a romantic weekend: I've always wanted to prance around playing with shower gels and little chocolates on a white linen bed and take photos with the Eiffel Tower that cunningly play with perspective and make me look really big with the Eiffel Tower in my hand and eat cake until I feel nauseous and then get into a fight about some really old art because we don't agree about what it all means. And I'm sick of waiting for the right man to find me and take me there and have the kind of weekend I want to have: fun, and relaxed, and sweet, and ever so romantic. I'm sick of waiting for the right man full stop. I'm sick of waiting for life to come and get me before I can start living. Because while I'm waiting to start living, my life is wearing itself and me out.

So I'm taking one of my best girl friends instead: a friend I've not seen in a year. To bond together a relationship that has slipped somewhere too dark; to have fun with a relationship that means more to me than any silly boy. A relationship that will always be there for me, and a love that will last whatever else my heart does; that will still stand up in twenty years when I'm divorced and chain smoking 30 cigarettes a day and claiming dole money while wearing tracksuit bottoms covered in toothpaste and baked beans (admittedly it might struggle a little at this point: she's very elegant and works for the government and might not be too impressed with my continual inability to work a washing machine).

Love is worth fighting for and working at: no matter what kind of love it is. And if a ten year friendship isn't worth a Romantic Weekend in Paris, then no relationship is.

Regardless of what you call it.