Portobello Road, Paintings, St Pancras & The Papillon Club

Well the fun quota is about to reach maximum toleration levels this weekend.  Later today, I get on a train to London with Sarah, to go and meet Jennie Armato and Paul Clarke, for dinner. I’m interviewing Jennie for my new Money Gym book and then we are going to one of my favourite restaurants in London – Galicia in Portobello Road for aperitifs.  Real Spain and full of local spanish people especially early every evening.  Then onto Osteria Basilico – which is Italian LOL -  for dinner.

Then off very early on the Eurostar from St Pancras, which has the longest champagne bar in Europe, Judith tells me, and which opens at 7am I notice from the website.  We leave at 8.30 sharp so best not go there….

To Gard Du Nord in Paris where Heather is meeting us and taking us to our hotel – for some reason she doesn’t trust us to make it through Paris on our own.

Not sure if we are seeing “Carmen” on Friday or Sunday, but on Saturday we are going for dinner at a charming and apparently marvellously eccentric restaurant & rooms on an island on the Seine, described by the owner Odette thusly …

“Our medieval house, located on Ile de la cité, one of the best area of Paris, was built in 1512. It became a restaurant, as well as a guest house during the 18th century.  Odette et Georges welcome you in their french restaurant where all products come from french organics farm every week. You will discover the Odette’s specialities like “Hot Foie Gras”, “Mini Scallops”, “Duck breast with Orange sauce”…”

I have no idea what else is planned but I’m sure it will be great!  Our package included tickets to the Louvre, and as the last time I was in Paris was before the Triangle thingy was built, I will definately want to see that as well as revisit the Monet paintings.

We are staying at the Antin St Georges Hotel, which looks perfectly nice and is in the Bastille area, pretty funky from my recollections of previous visits, with lots of live music bars.  Very close to the Opera House which is essential so Heather can look after us LOL.

Don’t you just love the way you can look everything up on the internet nowadays?  I think it takes a lot of the fear out of travelling if you can visualise where you are going.  Well it does for me as I’m a bit of a worrywort (now there’s an old word for you Judith!).

I’m struggling to write this as I’ve hooked up on Facebook, with a dj who DOMINATED the South Coast in the 70’s and 80’s and funny enough, his name is Paul Clark too (see above for my dinner plans).  Paul use to play in every decent soul and jazz funk club in the South East and had a residency at both the Inn Place and the Papillon club.

The Inn Place is legendary and lasted through Soul, Jazz Funk, Punk, Hard Times & New Romantic, so you get a feel for how popular it was and how long it lasted. The loos opened out onto the lane behind, and the cistern was ALWAYS leaking, so it was very swamplike in the ladies.  You had to enter the club via a precipitous staircase that was practically vertical and felt more like a ladder, hell in high heels and they always were high in those days (unless they were silver sandals!)

Now, if I told you that Kim and I used to go to those clubs from Worthing, and that £1.50 got you a return train fare, and a coca cola AND get you into the Inn Place (35p as I recall), then you will realise we are talking about my teens here!

We used to go to jumble sales and buy mad stuff and rush home to put it through the washing machine and tumble dryer before wearing our amazing outfits that evening.  My dad used to wait at the bottom of the stairs to see what we were wearing this week and CRACK UP!

Good days, great clubs and the music was awesome.  Check out this page of their Top Tunes – it autoplays so just sit back and enjoy – I’m talking to you Peter Stanley!!

We are missing their first reunion event in Brighton on 6 August because we are off to Spain for August, but I will certainly be checking out the next one.

Have fun, we always do!

(But I don’t know how much more I can take LOL)

Nicola

p.s. RIP “Elias”, the huge but generally gentle doorman at the Inn Place and the Escape Club.