About me

My name is Libby.

I came to Paris because I had one of those dreams. 

A three year old infatuated with the haunting musical scores and the romance of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. 

Memorising the lyrics before I could read. 

Hours spent lying on the soft, cream carpet in the living room by my parents’ record player. Admiring pictures of the Opera Garnier. 

With such wishing, I could vividly picture myself there. 

Sending letters to the tormented Phantom out my bedroom window; letters embarrassingly my father found as he cleaned the dry, wrinkled leaves from the spouting when I had assumed the Phantom had taken them.

 

At the age of eleven, I walked the streets of Paris with my father. 

We had to go see the city that I had admired for such a significant portion of my short life. 

I sat in the auditorium of the Paris Opera House looking up at the chandelier, the critical piece for Gaston Leroux’s story of the Phantom. 

The ceiling painted by Marc Chagall diverging with the opulence of the Baroque exterior. 

I remember wanting to run off and try to find the labyrinth below the opera house where the Phantom resided.

 

I grew into a young woman with this sense of curiosity and adoration for a foreign land that always seemed so far away and just out of reach. When I was old enough to go alone, I bought a plane ticket.

A beautiful view from my apartment on Rue de Lourmel; my small balcony offering a view of la Tour Eiffel. The sun dimming over the skyline. A brilliant orange hue setting over the little ceramic red chimneys of the most romantic city in the world. 

The city of lights. Just uttering the word Paris conjures up unrealised dreams and endless possibilities.

Cobblestone streets. 

The hustle and bustle of la vie quotidienne. 

Les petits motos zooming past and the sound of ambulances wailing. 

Dogs are immaculately groomed, obediently sitting at their master’s feet whilst they sip on a cup of coffee in the café on the corner. 

The robust odour as I pass my local fromagerie is enough to knock me over. 

Every Parisian knows, the smellier the cheese the better.

 

An afternoon walk in the warm sunshine conjured up images of Audrey Hepburn dancing down the banks of the Seine or Jean Seberg selling newspapers down the Champs-Elysees, Belmondo by her side. 

I could imagine Edith Piaf singing in the worn-out streets of Menilmontant in the north east of the city. 

I loved visiting Shakespeare and Co, where penniless writers would exchange their stories of despair to the owner to have a place to rest their head at night.

Countless writers and artists have used Paris as a backdrop to some of the greatest work the world has ever seen. 

How many people have fallen in love in this place?

Photo credit: Florent Cottier