AN EMAIL email drops through the ether, followed by a flurry of emails – they flutter in like a cloud of butterflies – and they're all from people I haven't seen for 25 years.
Where have the years gone?
All that time ago, I spent a year in Paris with journalists from all over the world – Japan, Poland, India, Nepal, South Africa, Colombia and from Lithuania, Germany and Italy too.
It was not long after the wall came down in Berlin and eastern Europe was turning western – you could measure the progress by the slow march of big brand shops like Benetton all along the wide grey communist boulevards.
The kind people in Journalistes en Europe gave us sets of plane tickets and the cash to fly off and spend a fortnight on reporting adventures.
I tackled psychiatric hospitals in Romania; found out about the decline of protest theatre in post-communist Poland; investigated women's changing roles in former east Germany and drank deeply of the sherry bodegas in Seville, Spain.
That is one year-long freebie, my friends told me.
And so it was. There were adventures a-plenty – and a few tricky hair raising moments.
In a far-flung corner of former eastern Europe, dog was definitely in the soup and we may have had a few nights in a brothel, but we were a little too naive to realise it.
Paris was a love affair all on its own.
What would you not give to live in an old fashioned French apartment with a parquet floor that squeaked at every step. There was a wrought iron balcony and if you craned your neck, you could just about make out the tip of the white dome of the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre.
Trip trot down the spiral staircase of a matin and sitting in the little office playing typical French aloof was Madame la Concierge.
Was it romantic? Yes – not least visiting the local boulangerie of a morning and dandering home with a baguette tucked under my oxter.
The walk along the Seine was beautiful, coming up from the underground at night onto the bright lights of Place de la Concorde was breathtaking and quiet moments in the Orangerie in that underground room feasting your eyes on Monet's water lilies will never be forgotten.
In the evening, the street outside the apartment was a-buzz with shoppers – the smell of roast chicken from the outdoors rotisseries wafted in the air and the brightly coloured vegetables and fruit were a thing of wonder – deep reds, daffodil yellows and emerald greens – fresh from the farmers of France.
My mother visited and marvelled at the colours and the smells as we strode along the streets of Paris together.
We visited the Sainte Chapelle – a kaleidoscope of shimmering colours – and she even got her picture taken with her head through a hole in a fake portrait of the Mona Lisa, just to make me smile.
It was the opportunity of a life-time. We went to Strasbourg and Brussels – had access to the workings of the European Parliament and the commission – and had precious time to spend and waste in local bars, in fancy cafes, sipping chocolat a la parisienne.
It had its moments. Put 30 journalists in a room together, give them beaucoup de free time and watch them talk stories and freelance opportunities and get jittery over what everyone else is doing.
There was that slight edge of paranoia that comes with the shift from the frenetic world of work to having to create your own stories.
We had some great nights out too in the company of buckets of north African red wine.
So that, when the emails fluttered into my inbox, the memories took wings again.
And then, the stories trickled in.
Two journalists will not be joining us.
Spyros, the Greek, had a smile as sunny as his homeland and a passion for science fiction. He once shared with me the secret of his favourite small island in Greece... how I wish I could remember the name.
Waldemar, from Poland, seemed more serious and aloof, intent on his journalism, on getting on with the stories.
And that was then.
Both have died. Spyros got pancreatic cancer and Waldemar was shot whilst reporting in Iraq. He had been thinking about giving up that kind of international journalism, they said.
Strange, the fates that await us all and that we never dream of when we are young and striding out along the boulevards of Paris, intent on telling a story, intent on the future ahead.
So, unless fate has another hand to play, I shall go and meet up with my fellow journalists at the end of June and share tales of what the last 25 years has thrown our way – love and sorrow, children, ageing parents, adventures – and raise a glass to the two of us who didn't make it.
