When I first came to live in Paris, my English friends had the perception that I was on a short holiday. Nearly a year later, now that I have a job in Paris, a long lease on an apartment and a growing number of French friends, there is a slow realisation that I am indeed here on a more permanent basis. The person who is most surprised about this is actually myself. I have lived with and loved the same man for 26 years. I now only see him every other weekend but when, after the exchange of a number of cryptic texts, I stand at Gare du Nord on Friday evenings awaiting his arrival on Eurostar, the mounting excitement I feel is something I honestly never experienced when we lived together. Our weekend is brief and well planned – a short, sharp shot of two days and three nights, when we have plenty to discuss and explore, in this romantic city, where we happen to have a home. On Sunday nights we go dancing and laugh about the way we used to settle down to watch Antiques Road Show. Life is varied and vibrant now - and romantic (if you know what I mean) but when we take a coffee at one of the early opening cafes opposite Gare du Nord on Monday morning, before he takes the first train to London, the inevitable sadness at the prospect of two self-imposed weeks of separation settles upon us. What am I doing here ? How will it feel if one of us dies and the other regrets the time we chose to be apart ? Well, ‘ne regrette rien’ is our response. We’re not ready for the arm chairs by the fire just yet and in fact we wonder if we will ever be able to live together full time again. We don’t suffer any of the inevitable day to day irritations which come from sleeping, eating and presuming too much in each other’s company. It’s a bit like eating really good luxury chocolate. If you indulge on weekends and holidays it tastes amazing, but if you gorge yourself every day, it really makes you sick. In fact, we agree that although the separation is sometimes painful, the true quality of the time we spend together brings enough sweetness to sustain us both. So, after the 6.45a.m. train left for St. Pancras this Monday, I went home and used the Sicilian lemons we had bought from Bastille market on Sunday and cooked up a jar of lemon curd. This bittersweet dollop of sunshine is just what a melancholy day in late February demands, comfortingly sweet, yet with a pleasantly sharp spike to remind you that more warm days are just around the corner.