You should always keep an eye on the date!

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I met my first wife, Hilary, when we were students at Bangor University. Her degree course was in French, which involved spending a whole year in France. While there, working as a language assistant at a school in northern France, she became friends with a German student, named Greta, who was doing the same thing. The two of them kept in touch and, not long after Hilary and I had got married and were living in West Sussex, Greta invited us to spend a couple of weeks at her home in southern Germany. We travelled by rail to Stuttgart via Paris, which meant arriving at Gare du Nord and leaving from Gare de L’Est, the two stations being almost next door to each other. Given that we thought we had plenty of time in which to make the connection, we decided to do a little sightseeing while the opportunity presented itself. We therefore found ourselves walking down the Rue Royale towards the Place de la Concorde, from which we hoped to stroll along the banks of the Seine and into the Tuileries Gardens. We were not alone. Indeed, the street seemed to be full of people, all walking in the same direction. The further we walked, the denser the crowd grew, and we eventually realized that it would not be possible to go where we wanted because the end of the street had been blocked off and all the people we had seen were trying to get as close as they could to the barriers. We then heard the sound of a marching band and could just see a parade of soldiers making its way across the Place de la Concorde, much to the delight of the crowd of flag-waving spectators. However, we had a train to catch and had no wish to join in the celebrations. Turning round and walking back the way we had come proved to be very difficult, given the size of the crowd that was now behind us, but we eventually struggled our way through, much of the annoyance of many Parisians who had to make way for us as we fought against the tide. As I said before, Hilary had spent four years studying French at University and in France, on top of her O-level and A-level at school. So why had it never occurred to her that booking a trip that involved spending time in Paris was not all that clever on Bastille Day?