We'll always have Paris..... We love the little side streets in the "Quatier Latin"....for our last few visits we have always stayed within stiking distance of Rue Mouffetard, with it's cobbled road of bars and restaurants - surrounded by the Sorbonne.
The gardens and shops - creperies & gelaterias - champagne bars, street-performers, and the hubbub of the left bank.
This is what we do well -- sit in restaurants, eat, drink and laugh about it all.
We wandered around the gardens, and river banks of Paris. Trying to walk off the restaurants that punctuated our lives. Having both lived in Paris at different times of our lives, we loved the city - and tolerated the people. Jean was lacking energy since coming back coming back from a Malaga holiday with her sister a week before. She had consulted doctors in the UK, but ECG's and various other tests had found nothing wrong.
One of the reasons we met up in Paris again at the end of May 08, was for Jean to see the family of Francoise, the doctor for whom she worked as an au-pair many, many years ago.
We visited them in the XVI arrondissement when the French Tennis Open was on.
These are the two "babies" she wheeled around the Luxemburg Gardens
Jean loves walking - and she can out-walk me.
Staying opposite the "Jardin de Plantes" in Paris, we did our usual wanderings - but she was tiring easily - and she resolved to see our doctor, on return to Gozo.
Ten days later, Jean saw our doctor, Robert Sciberras, on Friday 13th June 2008, and he realised that there was a lot of fluid on her left lung.
This one and a half litres of fluid was drained the next day.
Here is Jeannie, on her way to Malta for her first MRI - to try and find out what was happening to her - and why she was overtaken by this new listlessness.
We met up with our best friends on Gozo - Frank and Betty Plunkett - who'd we've known for 25 years.
Frank & myself on the ferry with our ladies - happy as sand-boys as usual - little did we know.
This is Jeannie, waiting for her first MRI at St. James' Hospital Malta, where a tumour with plural diffusions was diagnosed on Monday 15th. Many drainages, chemo- and irradiation treatments followed at the Boffa Hospital in Malta. It was a hot, tiring summer for her, and the tumour was receding.
She received permission to travel to the UK - to the wedding of Sade and John in December - and then again for Christmas and New Year with family and friends.
Unfortunately she collapsed on January 2nd, at her sister Betty's house in Felixstowe.
At Ipswich hospital she was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism on her GOOD lung!
I made it back to see her at 12 am on Friday the 9th - she recognised me and smiled - as she fought for oxygen. Unfortunately she passed away that afternoon at 18:00 hrs - just 210 days after Robert's first diagnosis.
Her lovely best-friend Betty passed away quietly, five days later.
Frank and myself were devastated.
We went to a demonstration of "sabrage" - opening a champagne bottle with a sabre - at a famous wine farm in Franschoek, in the S.A Cape.
