My desires for this year are really very modest. I just want to visit Paris again. Covid has delivered many nasty and tragic blows to many people: it has also kept me away from Paris for the first time since I was 16 years old.
At that tender age - long before the purpose of the Erasmus scheme had ever been imagined - my ma took me to Paris because she believed, quite simply, that everyone should go to Paris once a year. Preferably in the spring. Because Paris was the centre of civilisation. And I ve been there every year since then - until our beastly plague intervened.