Arriving in Paris blew Dad’s mind. Just not in the way I’d hoped.

On the crowded train from Orly airport to the centre of Paris, I didn’t notice he’d gone quiet. I missed it because I was concentrating intently on getting us to the right Metro station. Alarm bells should have been ringing though, because there were hundreds of things he could have pointed out, like ‘policeman with machine gun’, yet he was staying uncharacteristically silent.

I thought I understood his response. The first time I saw cops with machine guns, on a train from Berlin to Prague, I was shocked too. It’s such a heavy-handed display, usually reserved for the military or anyone in America.

Dad had never seen a machine gun. Dad had never seen a police officer with a machine gun. Dad had never been on a train in a city that required a police officer with a machine gun. I’m sure it had him thinking, ‘What sort of unsafe, overpopulated, machine-gun-needing hell hole has Adam brought me to?’

The train was packed, feeling more like we were headed to the footy at the MCG on a Saturday afternoon. Except that it was midday on a Tuesday. Dad wasn’t used to overcrowding; he drove everywhere, so catching public transport was rare. He lived in the suburbs and worked even further away from the city, so didn’t generally have to deal with masses of people like this. When he did, it was fleeting. Melbourne’s population sits at around 5 million, whereas Berlin and Munich were a comparatively small 3.5 million and 1.5 million. This had lulled him into a false sense that European cities were easy to handle. Paris’s 11 million people had caught him unawares, not least because all of them seemed to be on our train.

Getting around a foreign city’s transit system is daunting. It’s an overload of colours, names, trying to work out which stations connect, buying the right passes, and for us, lugging around a caravan-sized suitcase.

After an hour of very quiet travel from the airport, we arrived at the Hôtel de Ville station in the Le Marais district. I’d been told by a friend who’d once lived there that this was the older, gothic-architectured section of Paris, and a cool neighbourhood to boot, so it would have a lot of good bars and clubs for us to not go to. It was more rustic than anywhere we’d been in Germany; it had a kind of lived-in feeling, like a well-worn couch. Berlin felt almost brand-new in comparison, and I suppose that was courtesy of Allied bombing. The streets in Paris instantly felt a lot busier, both on the roads and the footpaths as people scurried about their day.

Arriving at what I thought was our accommodation, we waited for our host to show up and let us in. And waited. And continued to wait. We stood out the front, checking out the Parisian sights on our street, a bakery and a boarded-up store. We couldn’t even ease the boredom by reading the graffiti scrawled across the plywood.

When our wait drifted out to half an hour, I felt the doubt start to creep in. Were we even at the right place? Were there two Le Marais districts? Had Airbnb closed down overnight? Was this the right Paris? According to my initial email correspondence we had the correct street and number, but it only led us to two huge, solid steel gates. Behind which I assumed was our apartment. The longer we stood there the more my anxiety grew, my brain telling me I’d completely stuffed this up.

Dad wasn’t saying ‘don’t worry about it’ like he did with the satnav in Germany, which only added to my stress. I tried to console myself with the thought that if the apartment fell through, it wouldn’t be that much of a disaster; we were hardly in the outer reaches of Patagonia, discovering the only motel in a tiny country town had been transformed into a craft brewery. We could find someone else.

Then Jose arrived, a young Spanish guy whose name I only remembered from the childhood joke about the Spanish firefighters Jose and Jos-B. Turned out Jose being over an hour late was the least of our problems. Naively, I’d expected him to speak English. But why should he? We were in France and he was Spanish; neither of those countries required English. This was on us.

Had I been a more diligent student it wouldn’t have been a problem, but my Spanish was based on starting lessons on four separate occasions, then giving up each time after learning the numbers, how to ask where the toilet is and the all-important ‘beer please’. My French was even less than that.

Through about three broken languages and excessive hand gestures, we managed to ascertain which apartment we were supposed to be staying in. This aroused pretty significant suspicions on my part, as I figured if it was his place he would more than likely know which one it was. Clearly we were dealing with the frontman for a bunch of apartments, not something I was used to with Airbnb. My previous experiences had been that the person letting the apartment was the person who owned it.

We also worked out that we were now waiting on someone else for the key, adding to the feeling we were being duped, because why didn’t Jose have it? I’d never before heard of a pre-host, the person whose role is to stand around with confused tourists, smiling and shrugging at them until the actual host arrived.

Jose’s blasé attitude didn’t help ease the tension that was steadily building. The upside was that, once we worked out Jose couldn’t speak English, Dad and I talked openly about what a dodgy situation this was. In case Jose had a basic grasp of English he wasn’t letting us in on, I instructed Dad to talk quickly, making it harder for us to be understood.

Even though Dad didn’t blame me for the situation we were in I certainly did, and as I was launching into my one hundredth apology, Key Man finally arrived. Dad stayed remarkably calm, mainly because Jose and Key Man were strangers to him and he didn’t want to lose his cool in front of them. I knew what being ten minutes late could do to him, and this was now out to ninety.

Key Man seemed pretty casual about the whole thing, laughing with pre-host Jose, as though his lateness was routine and we had nothing to be concerned about. He happily took us through the iron gates and into a giant courtyard that led to our apartment, smiling, asking us what we thought of Paris so far. He didn’t get a lot of joy from us.

In Berlin, staying on the third storey without a lift had led to a fair amount of commentary from Dad. Not necessarily complaining, but weighted remarks, the ones that come across as jokes but aren’t as innocent as they first sound.

‘Fucking lift would be nice,’ he said to me (with his eyes), as we headed up the stairs in Paris.

As we rounded a very tight corner with the world’s still-heaviest suitcase to head up a fourth flight of stairs, I couldn’t help laughing out loud. This whole situation had become a farce; a ninety-minute wait followed by four flights of cramped stairs. I was hoping Dad would see the funny side of it when we sat down with a beer later.

Then the door to the apartment opened.

The overwhelming train ride followed by the annoying wait for the key were both forgotten in an instant. That was a positive. The downside was we were now dragging our suitcases into the single worst apartment I’d ever seen.

Dad was quiet, and I wasn’t sure whether he was holding his tongue in front of the strangers or if he’d been reduced to a catatonic state. Sweat dripped down my temples, either from carrying the luggage up those stairs or sheer embarrassment at what I’d booked. I barely heard Key Man as he explained where everything was, staring in disbelief at what we were being shown. As he left I gathered my senses enough to ask for the wi-fi password, which he provided, and then I closed the door behind him.

I turned slowly to face Dad, finding out very quickly he was far from catatonic and had indeed just been holding his tongue. What he said to me isn’t fit for print, but in short, my reply was, ‘Yes Father, agreed, this isn’t a very nice place.’

Dilapidated would probably sell the horror of the apartment short.

The front door opened straight into the kitchen, which contained a hotplate that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a camping ground, covered in grime from a thousand barbecues and only ever rinsed off when teenage boys pissed on it.

The couch looked as though it had been picked up from the hard rubbish collection outside a Vinnies, the second-hand store having decided it was too rundown and dangerous to sell. It sat on a ceramic tiled floor that at one stage must’ve been the surface for a bowling-ball-dropping competition. Displaced tiles and random jagged edges meant footwear was not optional.

The only window in the place was in the lounge, overlooking the courtyard we had just waited out the front of. A shabby curtain/rag was pulled across it, barely hiding the pitiful amount of light getting in.

The bedrooms contained sheetless mattresses, which in a past life must have been used to soak up spilled colostomy bags. If the mattresses were sponges (which they technically were) I would’ve tossed them out long ago, but at least they were hygienic because there was no way bacteria would have been stupid enough to stay.

As the host left he said there’d be linen delivered later, the cleaners having forgotten to drop it off when they were there earlier. Which, from the looks of it, was 1987.

I’d stayed in worse places. There was a backpackers in Laos that had the shower in the toilet cubicle, a neat design choice I didn’t discover until I picked up a soggy and unusable roll of toilet paper at a moment where I very much needed a dry roll of toilet paper. But I could safely say Dad had never stayed anywhere this bad. His experiences were his house, which he liked, or if he and Mum ever did travel in Australia, hotels.

This apartment had the feel of a half-house you would see in a warzone, and I wasn’t sure if we were in the still-standing half or the rubble. Either way, the bomb had blown the sheets off the mattresses. I was surprised the people of Damascus hadn’t offered to sponsor us.

 

‘Let’s go grab a beer.’ I blindsided Dad with this offer, but I needed to get him out of the apartment so we could figure out what to do. We both knew it was shocking; soaking in all its disgusting features, both figuratively and literally, wasn’t helping.

Fortunately our wait had meant the time had drifted into mid-afternoon, so we found an open bar, ordered a couple of beers and attempted to work out our next move. The quaint cobblestoned streets of Le Marais were going to have to wait.

I desperately searched online for a hotel to stay at, but nothing was available in the area or within our budget, though Dad was willing to expand it, which showed how desperate he’d become. But as it became more and more depressingly obvious we were going to be forced to stay for at least one of the four nights we’d booked, Dad began to sulk. His sense of humour deserted him, and he wasn’t open to any topic of conversation other than the shocking accommodation.

I’d never seen behaviour like this in him, because at home he usually had some sort of control over every situation. Sitting around wallowing wasn’t his style. When he ended up in intensive care because of a serious car accident, his pelvis shattered, arms broken and head trauma resulting in eye sockets as black as coal, he defied the doctors and was in rehab weeks before they thought he’d be.

Now, for the first time ever, he’d basically given up. He was homesick, miserable and probably blamed me for the terrible apartment. Why wouldn’t he? I certainly did.

Dad was adamant we should leave Paris immediately. I was equally firm about staying, reasoning that once we got out of the apartment and started hitting the sights, it wouldn’t be so bad.

Dad wouldn’t let it drop. ‘I’m serious, Adam, I think we should go.’

‘We can’t. For starters, we’ve only been here for three hours.’

‘So?’

‘So? So I’m not getting back to Australia and when people ask me, “How was Paris?” I’m saying, “I don’t know, only popped in for the afternoon.” It’s not going to happen.’

Dad wasn’t happy with my response, but I couldn’t let his rashness dictate our plans. The day had exposed vulnerabilities in him I’d never seen, or even knew existed. He was sore, homesick, and he missed Mum. He wouldn’t even be able to relax at the end of the day because the apartment was so unwelcoming.

In the past he would’ve carried on stoically, but he’d been worn down to the point of despair most travellers reach at one time or another. A stomach bug might take hold, leaving you drained in the bathroom, desperately wishing you could be sick in the comfort of your own toilet bowl at home. It’s not a fun predicament to be in, and this was Dad’s first exposure to the feeling. He desperately wanted to go home, but I couldn’t let him do it.

There are times responsibility thrusts itself upon us. That’s how heroes happen, like Dad saving someone from drowning; he didn’t think about it, he just acted. Now it was my turn. I stepped up and took full control. Not just the logistics, but getting Dad through this emotionally. I had to use my instincts to make our remaining time as easy as possible. And enjoyable. I didn’t want it to turn into a hostage situation.

Stepping up filled me with dread. I’m never the responsible one. Only weeks earlier I’d been fined for drinking on the train. After leaving one party and heading to another, I decided to take public transport. Turns out the public transit system is not as au fait with the ‘traveller’ as taxis are. Sometimes you just need a drink with you on a journey, in case – god forbid – you sober up.

The moment I sat in my seat, the protective services officer made a beeline for me, deciding a fine was in order. Which was fair enough. I knew it was illegal. Once again I’d flown too close to the sun and had my wings burned.

As the officer wrote out my fine, I absentmindedly took another sip of my drink, which drew his ire.

‘Mate! What did I just tell you about drinking on the train?’

I didn’t help myself when I responded, ‘Can you fine me twice?’

Turns out he could.

 

Before the trip with Dad, the last time I’d been put in charge of someone else hadn’t ended well. Most of my friends had kids, and they assumed because they were responsible enough to look after them, I would be equally responsible. Turns out my friends are fools.

Jess was one of my oldest friends (in terms of the length of our friendship; she’s not 104). She was one of the first in our group of friends to have a baby. I was even asked to be Rory’s godparent, a nominal title that didn’t really mean much other than that I’d shown a keen interest in him when he was born.

The usual spin on being a godparent is that you are expected to take care of the child should his parents die. (Spoiler alert: they did not.) But when Rory got to about two-and-a-half years old, Jess asked me to babysit him for a night while she and her husband went to the theatre. Sensing my reluctance, she attempted to persuade me, saying, ‘You’ll be fine, it’s just for the night.’

I reminded her of my track record. ‘It’s a lot of pressure. I can’t even remember my passport; how am I supposed to remember his allergies?’

She countered with, ‘Seriously, Adam, you can do it. What could go wrong?’

Hundreds of scenarios ran through my head, from losing him to me somehow pulling the fridge down on top of myself and choking on slowly defrosting stale ice cubes (I have a vivid imagination).

On the night, I followed Jess’s instructions to the letter. I entertained Rory for a while (watched him draw), gave up trying to get him to brush his teeth after about forty seconds and finally gave him his bottle as we readied for bed.

Then I put him in his cot. As Jess said he would, Rory called out once I’d left him, summoning me back to the bedroom, where I was instructed to sit with him until he fell asleep. I waited until his eyes closed, then eagerly went back to the lounge to watch Foxtel, which I didn’t have at home. Here I had access to channels I normally couldn’t watch, in particular the modelling channel.

As I sat back down on the couch, Rory called out again, and we began what was clearly a nightly dance. This time he didn’t realise I was determined to stick it out until he fell asleep. I sat beside the cot, just about able to make out his wide-open eyes in the semi darkness.

‘Go to sleep, mate.’

I figured I’d be back out watching TV in three minutes, five at the most. It turned out that the kid had stronger mental fortitude than me. He lasted a good fifteen minutes, staring at me unnervingly as I tried to pretend he wasn’t. I was starting to regret giving him a couple of pre-dinner Red Bulls.

But I had to prove that I could outlast a two-year-old. Eventually I did, something I was way too proud of.

Just as I was about to reacquaint myself with the models, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I stepped into the backyard, not wanting my conversation to wake Rory. I kept it short, in case he woke again and called out.

Ending the call, I grabbed the door handle. It wouldn’t turn. I knew instantly that I was locked out, but refused to believe it. I tried turning the handle harder, which has never worked but I hoped might on this occasion. It only confirmed what I already knew.

Unable to get into the house, there was only one way of checking whether Rory was asleep or awake: getting on all fours and sticking my head through the doggy door. Continuing my luck, it was so low that I couldn’t even reach up and open the door from the inside. Why couldn’t they have had a bigger dog, rather than a now long-gone tiny one? On the upside, there was silence inside the house. At least Rory was asleep.

I stood back up and cased the joint, looking for an entry point into the house. It felt like being a burglar, but one whose only possible means of entry was ‘completely unlocked door’. To my dismay the front door was locked, as were the two front windows. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was expecting; this inner-city house wasn’t going to have lax country security.

Walking around the place, the only window that looked at all accessible was the one into Rory’s room. I knew that wasn’t the way to go. And if I was going to break in and startle him awake, then I’d at least want to be in full clown costume so as to completely ruin him for life.

During my lap of the house, my friend Nat rang to hear how it was all going. Word of me babysitting had filtered through our friendship group, and I had the feeling Nat had been put up to inquire about my progress. I explained my situation in the hope that she might provide a solution, but had to hang up when I was met with howls of laughter.

Every scenario I came up with ended with something broken, possible police attendance and a screaming, traumatised child. I stood in the backyard, feeling utterly useless. At least I had my phone with me. As I pulled it out of my pocket, resigned to the fact that it was time to call the locksmith, I was startled by it ringing. It was Jess. I figured that via Nat, word had passed pretty quickly all around Melbourne, the theatre production pausing to tell Jess she needed to call home immediately.

I answered, reluctantly. ‘Hey Jess.’

‘Hi! How’s it all going?’ she asked. The positivity in her voice told me she didn’t know what was going on. I saw this as my chance to play it cool. If I paid off Nat and broke into the house silently without traumatising her son, Jess would never know.

‘He’s good. I fed him and put him down about fifteen minutes ago.’

Then I was overcome with guilt. This was one of my best friends, and my godson was stuck inside. So I blurted out, through peak levels of embarrassment, ‘And now I’m in the backyard and I’ve locked myself out.’

She paused briefly before answering, just long enough to send me through six or seven shame spirals. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a mum for only five minutes, you instantly gain the ability to leave a silence that can cut through anyone.

‘It’s alright,’ she said. ‘There’s a key in the backyard.’

And that was it. She directed me to the key, staying on the phone while I got myself back in the house and checked on her (still sleeping) son. Basically she looked after him via idiot proxy.

Not surprisingly, no one ever asked me to babysit again. Not just within my friendship group – even people who have never heard the story have the smarts to not trust me with their newborns.

But in difficult circumstances in Paris, I found myself with an oldborn, and I had to take care of him.

So I stepped up. Instead of telling Dad to ‘stop sooking’, which is what fathers of his era would have done, I played it delicately. Name calling wasn’t going to help us, having about as much effect as telling an angry person to calm down. I needed to be firm but fair.

‘We’re not leaving, so get over yourself!’

Am I a hero for taking command? Probably not to the general public, but within my family, I had a public holiday dedicated to me.

Dad didn’t like my course of action but there was little he could do. Every time he pushed back he could see I wasn’t going to budge, so he surrendered, for the good of our relationship. It wasn’t worth getting into an argument about it every five minutes. And he wasn’t a worldly enough traveller to just say, ‘Meet you in London,’ and head out on his own, so he had to begrudgingly stick it out with me. Though this came at a cost, because now Dad was gloomy, hardly talking and not much fun to hang out with.

Seeing Dad as vulnerable for the first time was the perfect moment for our first ever hug. I didn’t risk it though; even though he was miserable, I was still fairly sure he had the strength to push me into the Seine.

 

I could tell how much events were weighing on Dad, because in all the commotion we’d forgotten to eat. A nuclear fallout cloud could have been raining down on Melbourne and Dad would still have found time to reheat last night’s roast lamb (using the radiation from the nuclear bomb).

We hadn’t eaten because from Berlin to Paris we’d flown with easyJet. For the first-time flyer, the lack of frills with budget airlines can prove a bit of a shock. Free checked baggage, people to assist you with check-in, allocated seating – these are luxuries for those who can afford the fancy airlines. If you want a good seat on a cheap flight in Europe, it’s first in, best dressed, and get the fuck out of my way old lady.

When the hosties walked the aisle with the food and drinks trolley, Dad was stunned he would have to pay for the cheese and crackers he’d just been handed. As a man of principle, he refused, ‘I’m not bloody paying for them!’, figuring his ticket should have been his right to at least a small amount of processed cheese and three tiny crackers. Reluctantly he handed back the snack, leaving him with the feeling that everyone in Europe was handing out items only in order to rip people off.

It also meant by the time evening came around, he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Snack Disorder. I suggested we go to a restaurant and sort the situation out. But even though we were both hungry, Dad didn’t want to stay on the streets of Paris any longer. We had travelled less than 150 metres from our accommodation, but he already disliked Paris so much he preferred going back to our cell. It didn’t matter that we were surrounded by so much culture and history, nothing made a difference to Dad. Having already had to talk him into staying in the city at all, I realised dinner wasn’t a battle worth fighting; Paris would have to wait.

As we entered the flat, I nearly electrocuted myself on an exposed wire on the light switch. I knew then that we’d be leaving this apartment early, either by choice or by death.

I turned the television on and told Dad not to touch anything. I strolled up the street to the supermarket and grabbed some beers, salami, cheese and bread rolls – the backpackers’ banquet – while praying that Dad wouldn’t be impaled on an exposed couch spring while I was gone.

As I shopped, I couldn’t work out how I’d booked that property. We’ve all seen misleading photos when looking at properties online, using wide-angle lenses to make a room look bigger or having someone with dwarfism stand next to a bar fridge to give a false sense of size. But I’d never been deceived like I had with that Airbnb apartment. Either the photos had been severely photoshopped or I’d booked it after getting home at 4 am one night.

While Dad cooked (cutting rolls and adding cheese and salami), I started an online chat with Airbnb, to let them know our issues and hopefully get us a refund. Amazingly, amongst all the problems, poor wi-fi was not one of them. It was so strong and fast I could’ve downloaded all of the world’s television in about half an hour.

Dad had been miserable, but once I started listing the apartment’s faults, he sprang to life. Now it was game on, Dad relishing the opportunity to find more defects than the ones we’d unearthed right away.

‘That’s not a bloody dryer,’ he cried, as I listed the clothes horse that was advertised as a ‘dryer’.

Forensically combing every centimetre of the apartment searching for faults, Dad even pried up a loose tile from the floor, insisting I photograph it. The anonymous person at Airbnb was exceptionally helpful and as Dad headed into the bathroom to find more evidence I told him I was already fairly confident we’d be getting our money back.

‘Adam! Look at this!’ he yelled, letting me know there was something amiss with the toilet. As I stood up to walk in and have a look, he was getting more excited. ‘The water’s coming right to the edge of the bowl!’

I reached the door to see him standing precariously on tiptoe, transfixed by whether or not the water would go over the edge. It didn’t, but he demanded I add it to the list.

It’s a well-worn expression to be careful what you wish for, and from the moment we’d agreed to this trip I’d wished Dad would show some passion for anything we did. I could not have guessed it would be this apartment that would ignite something within him. Berlin Wall? It’s a wall, sure, whatever. Clothes horse listed as a dryer? HE’S ALIVE!

The apartment was so bad, it probably didn’t even have the hinges Dad liked. We didn’t check, too scared to open the window in case it fell out of the wall and crushed someone in the courtyard four storeys below. No way Dad was going down that many flights of stairs to check on someone’s health.

Having compiled a comprehensive list of the apartment’s failings, I thought there’d probably be one more to add – I wasn’t overly hopeful the fresh linen we were waiting on would be delivered by the time we were ready for bed (it wasn’t). This wasn’t hell, but if there was a place just outside of hell where Satan let his friends stay during the holidays, this was it.

 

The shambolic dealings with pre-host Jose and Key Man set the tone of Paris for Dad. He wasn’t about to get fooled by anyone again. Those two untrustworthy men were why he didn’t carry a wallet (unless it was a passport wallet). This was why he lived in suburban Melbourne and didn’t venture beyond it. Anything could happen, and was probably about to. Paris had burned him and he wasn’t about to forget.

I knew what I was up against. It’s hard enough reversing your own opinion, let alone someone else’s. Sometimes we not only judge a book by its cover, but buy a thousand copies of the book so we can burn it on a huge pile. But I had faith that if any city in the world could bring Dad around, it would be Paris. Why else would so many millions of people, including the Romans, go there and romanticise it? It must be doing something right.

By the time we finally ventured further than 150 metres from the apartment the next morning, Dad had seen enough to sum up the city of love. ‘Smells like cat piss.’

The odour was just the beginning of his dislike for the city. Everything Dad saw reaffirmed his prejudices.

Dogs in shops.

Dogs shitting in the streets, with no one bothering to pick it up.

People shitting in the streets. Probably.

This was exactly the type of city he’d read about, or seen in the documentary Paris Will Knife You in the Back and Dump Your Body in the Seine.

I felt bad that he hated it so much, but his desire to leave was overridden by me not having been to Paris before. I wanted to actually see some of the sights. I took Dad’s feelings into consideration, considerably trimming down the list of places we were planning to go.

First stop: the pièce de résistance of Paris’s tourist attractions – if not the world’s – the Eiffel Tower. I had faith it would win him over.

‘Thought it would be bigger.’

Those were his words as we rounded a corner and the Eiffel Tower came into view.

I can’t imagine what he was expecting. The Eureka Tower, Melbourne’s tallest building, is 297 metres tall. On a worldwide scale, it’s splashing around in the shallow end of the pool compared to some of the buildings in China or the Middle East, but it’s a standout on the Melbourne skyline and Dad’s not seen anything bigger in person.

The Eiffel Tower is the same height, even though it was built over a century earlier. I didn’t know how he couldn’t think it was impressive. Sure, it wasn’t the most amazing thing ever built, but it’s not like Dad had travelled the world comparing grand structures. Though he had seen a lot of things on television, so perhaps by his standards he had.

For some reason he was itching to move on, but considering I was his tour guide he was stuck until I said we could leave. Not that I was planning on milking it, but I wanted to stick around a bit longer than a single derogatory comment.

One of the activities available at the Eiffel Tower is to climb it. We both knew that wasn’t going to happen – for a very good reason.

 

During summer holidays our family always ended up at the carnival in the seaside suburb of Dromana. Carnivals are supposed to be fun places for kids. Being young means you’re blind to the fact that the rides are being assembled and operated by carnies, people who can barely look after their own teeth, let alone the safety of hundreds of people.

We’d hit the carnival with family friends, and there was always a split into two factions: one group of children wanted to go on all the rides, the other group wanted to remain on terra firma. I say the other group – it was only me and our friends’ daughter, Rennae. Mum and Dad knew I was terrified of heights and wouldn’t let me go on anything, for fear of the consequences. And as much as she wanted to be in the cool group, Rennae was only four years old, so she was relegated to Group Lame-o for safety reasons (by the parents – for the right price, the carnies would have let her operate the rides).

The fun group took off quickly, trying to get through as many rides as possible before closing. Rennae and I were left with the rides that were deemed safe. We quickly discovered what can only be described as the baby ferris wheel. Rennae was all for it, and Mum, after much consideration and convincing from me, decided it was small enough that I would be comfortable riding it.

We boarded, all smiles and excitement, which lasted approximately twelve seconds before I lost what can only be described as ‘my shit’.

I’ve since learned to cope with heights – planes don’t bother me, I’ve even sucked it up and nervously flown in helicopters – but on that day, any semblance of being brave in front of a four-year-old went out the window. It was pure, unadulterated hysteria, so full on it set Rennae off too. Now it was two screaming children aboard the Ferris Wheel of Death.

Credit where it’s due, the carnies flew into action, stopping the ride immediately and beginning the rescue mission. On a normal ferris wheel, they’d have to wait for the ride to complete a full rotation to get someone off. Fortunately this one was so small, the carnie basically reached across and lifted me out, like taking a kid out of a particularly tall high chair, ending the most traumatic moment of my young life.

Deep down, I know that horrific (for me) and embarrassing (for Dad) memory was the reason neither of us wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower. We happily settled on the mutually agreed excuse that the line was way too long.

Dad remained eager to move on. He must have thought that if we got through the tourist attractions quickly, we’d be able to leave Paris earlier. He couldn’t have been more wrong. My motto for the whole trip was fast becoming, ‘We’re only here once, so . . .’

That was one of those moments. I didn’t want him to glance at the Eiffel Tower, say something dismissive, and then walk away within two minutes. I wanted him to stand there, taking everything in. Admiring it. Appreciating that when it was built it was a great feat of engineering and construction. As touristy as it had become, I imagine as a Parisian it would have been pretty cool at an earlier, less busy time to be able to sit on the grass that surrounds it and look down to the river or read a book under one of the world’s most iconic structures. Now it’s anything but, with thousands of people trying to do that ‘look like you’re holding the Eiffel Tower between two fingers’ picture or the hundreds of peddlers trying to sell dinky, cheap souvenirs.

I kept trying to draw his attention to the tower, but his mind was elsewhere. Standing at this beacon of hope for the occupied Parisians during World War II, Dad fired off a bunch of questions within a minute. I answered them as rapidly as they came. ‘Yeah, there are a lot of those guys selling the miniature Eiffel Towers.’ ‘They probably are a rip-off. Who cares?’ ‘I don’t know where they’d get that many.’ ‘Why should they be arrested?’ ‘How about you forget about them and look at the actual-sized tower right there?’

Eventually I managed to get his focus back to the tower and, as he stood there finally taking it in, Dad managed to give it some praise.

‘That’s good steel that.’

All of a sudden I was travelling with the head of Rio Tinto.

 

The Eiffel Tower summarily shut down by Dad, as though he was on an engineering Tinder date and would only accept 400-metre-plus structures, I wanted to give other famous Paris sites equal opportunity to disappoint him.

As we made our way up the stairs to the Sacré-Cœur church, I heard Dad mumbling to himself. I figured he was urging himself to go on, the pain of the climb becoming too much for him but refusing to quit.

I asked what he was saying, curious as to what mantra was helping him push through. By now, I should’ve known this was a dangerous strategy; I didn’t really want to go back inside that head of his, but by this stage of the trip I was concerned about his welfare. Perhaps he genuinely was in we’d-better-stop-for-his-long-term-health kind of pain. His safe return to Mum weighed heavily on me, so I didn’t really think of the consequences when I asked.

‘I’m counting all the stairs we’re going up.’

Sacré-Cœur will always stay with me for its look-at-me value. I could tell its architects had gone all out to impress, building it out of white stone, loading it up with five domes, a huge bell tower and massive columns on the portico leading to the entrance. On the top of a hill overlooking Paris. This church wanted to be noticed and they nailed it. The interior was just as impressive, incredible stained-glass windows casting people in various colours as a mural of Jesus watched over everyone.

For Dad, it will live on only as the number of steps he had to climb to get there.

To this day, Dad could still give a stair count for each of the major tourist attractions we went to. The numbers have never changed, filed away in the vault within his brain alongside the beggar who stood up out of his wheelchair and the great fish and chips he later ate in London.

He justified counting steps as helping take his mind off them, the constant up and down causing him angst. I completely understood. We’ve all been in a position where we need to dig deep to carry on, struggling through a run, mid-winter at work or season three of Orange Is the New Black. What couldn’t be justified was his need to turn to me and say, ‘twenty-seven,’ every time we ascended a flight.

Or discussing it with me later. ‘A hundred and eighty-two stairs! Bloody hell, that’s a lot, isn’t it?’ is not the gateway to meaningful conversation. It’s the gateway to the room in hell you never want to end up in: the Meaningless Dad Conversation Room. Where on a loop you’ll hear about the weather, your brother’s car, how footy’s not as good as it used to be and the weather.

Even when I asked him directly, he still wasn’t saying anything about the pain I knew he’d been in since Munich. Short of telling him I’d eavesdropped on his conversation with Mum, and that I knew for a fact that the walking was hurting him, I didn’t know what I could do to help him if he wouldn’t admit it. Frustrating as his silence may have been, at the same time I was impressed by his not quitting. As a kid I was exceptionally prone to a good old-fashioned quit.

After a few schoolyard scuffles, Dad and I agreed (95/5 split his way) that I should take up some form of self-defence. He decided to teach me boxing, but this ended quickly, after he attempted to make a floor-to-ceiling speedball.

This consisted of a netball wrapped in a cloth masking tape attached to two occy straps, one rising to the ceiling and the other secured to a spare tyre on the ground. It almost worked, aside from the exceptionally rough tape used to secure the occy straps to the ball, which shredded my knuckles and cause them to bleed in an instant. If my bloodied and weeping hands weren’t enough of a hindrance, the occy straps would regularly come away from the tape, or work their way off the tyre, the loose end snapping back at a speed that almost took my eye out. Although that taught me mongoose-like quickness, I gave up boxing because I didn’t need the extra attention an eyepatch would bring me in the schoolyard.

Instead I chose tae kwon do, based on my love of martial arts (mostly from the TV series Monkey Magic) and the fact that our neighbours did it, giving me easy (free) access to uniforms. I figured a few roundhouse kicks would sort out any issues that came my way in the foreseeable future.

Lessons were paid for and off I went, gaining a yellow belt in relatively quick time. While this sounds like an achievement, gradings at that level were nothing more than a basic walk-through involving a couple of punches, a random kick or two, and some well-placed yelling.

Stepping up to the next level involved shadow sparring with more experienced kids in the class. During one such shadow spar – shadow being the operative word – an aforementioned roundhouse kick landed firmly in my stomach. A literal kick in the guts. Blows were not supposed to land (SHADOW!!!) at that stage of our development, and though it was an accident, I’m not convinced the ninja I was sparring couldn’t have held back a little.

Seeing me go down, the instructor came over and asked what had happened. Hearing my explanation, he merely said, ‘You should have tensed up.’

It was advice I should have taken on board, and would have, had I not already quit tae kwon do halfway to the ground.

Since then, I’ve gained a steely resolve at becoming the best quitter I can be. Spanish lessons, careers in IT and PT, drums, relationships – I’ve quit them all. The one thing I never quit was comedy. I’ve stuck with it through some truly horrible moments, including performing late at night to tiny crowds, dying an awful death, and being introduced as a ventriloquist then performing to bewildered people who couldn’t work out why my lips were moving or why my puppet was invisible. There’d be flickers of hope, but on the whole the early years were a slog.

When I moved back home, jobless, struggling to make any money, even Dad openly questioned what I was doing – ‘You’re wasting your life!’ – obviously worried about my future but not putting it particularly eloquently.

Comedy was something I loved, though, and the determination and stupid inflexibility I’d witnessed in Dad shone through. I gritted my teeth when all signs were pointing me in the direction of quitting.

The wheel eventually turned and comedy became a career. The more ‘flying hours’ I got on stage the more confident I became, which in turn led to more work, and eventually a job writing in television on The Russell Gilbert Show. I started to discover my voice on stage and my stand-up improved because of it. I knew who I was and looked forward to expressing it.

Dad became a regular at my shows, always asking when I was on. Mum still hasn’t seen me perform, due to my choice of content and her long-held belief that ‘you don’t have to swear to be clever’.

I’ve never aimed to be clever.

 

Though I’m not overly sentimental, I would always try to grab a souvenir from each country I visited. A steel dragon paperweight from Laos, a chunk of Machu Picchu, an improvised explosive device from Afghanistan. They didn’t have to be expensive or functional, but they were always nice reminders of a particular period in my life.

My favourite were Che Guevara brand cigarettes I bought in Peru. ‘¡Viva la nicotina!’

Fridge magnets are probably the easiest souvenir to grab, a cheap trinket that can be thrown in the suitcase, proving it’s the I-grabbed-this-in-the-departure-lounge-at-the-airporton-the-way-home thought that counts. The choices presented to you are often cheeky or quirky, like a penis-shaped bottle opener, or a tiny bottle of Champagne. In the shape of a penis.

Dad wasn’t one to buy that sort of thing, or as he’d put it, ‘Not wasting my bloody money.’ Not even for Mum. He’d had his choice of a hundred mini Eiffel Towers if he so desired, but no, his choice of souvenir was something that wasn’t for sale. And it was something that he hated.

Though stairs had become Dad’s mortal enemy, they weren’t the sole focus of his hatred. When he wasn’t climbing steps, cobblestones were also wreaking havoc. Dad complained that he was constantly rolling his ankles and jarring his knees, which I found strange considering I was walking the same streets and hadn’t even thought about them. I checked and he wasn’t wearing high heels either. So they made his list, and if you’ve ever been to Europe, you’d know cobblestones are like Dave Hughes; they’re everywhere.

Cobblestones are remnants of cities being built hundreds of years before concrete was readily available. In Australia, they’re pretty much confined to inner-city laneways, but in Europe they’re a staple of most streets. Dad hated them, mumbling, ‘Oh, these bloody cobblestones,’ as we made our way along them.

Occasionally his focus would shift to complaining about the stairs, but once we’d ascended/descended – and he’d given me the obligatory ‘forty-eight’, just in case this was the time I wanted to know – his mind would shift back to the pavers under foot.

Therefore, of course, it stood to reason that if he hated something so much he had to bring some home with him. It made no sense to me – I couldn’t imagine Schapelle Corby bringing home a mattress from Bali’s Kerobokan Prison – but that’s what Dad did. He chose a cobblestone as his one souvenir from Europe.

It wasn’t the familiar Australian-sized bluestone, but more the size and shape of a Rubik’s cube that had let itself go a little. He picked it from a pile when we were walking past some road-works, as though he was plucking a ripe peach off a tree in an orchard. From the literally thousands of things that could serve as a reminder of our trip, he chose the one I’m almost certain no one has taken home before: unlaid street. As if Dad’s suitcase hadn’t been heavy enough, from Paris on it had the added weight of street paving.

 

Against all odds, we made it to a second full day in Paris. We woke to the news that Airbnb would give us a complete refund on the apartment, so Dad was happy. Having seen how miserable a time he was having, I told him we’d leave a day earlier than planned, making him even happier. Money back and leaving Paris – it was all coming up Tommy!

With a spring in our steps, we hit the streets of Paris once again. Only it was pouring with rain, and the heavily overcast sky told us this wasn’t a passing shower. (Our apartment window faced into a roofed courtyard, so we’d had no idea.) It didn’t have to be said out loud that this would be added to Tommy’s Great List of Terrible Things about Paris. The upside was that at least it would wash away some of the cat piss.

We bought umbrellas, a new experience for Dad. He had a car, why would he need an umbrella? None of my childhood memories involved Dad and an umbrella. I’m not talking about anything extravagant, Dad twirling one as he skipped down the street enjoying a sun shower. Just using an umbrella. He never owned one because his theory was, ‘Getting wet won’t hurt you.’

Even at the footy, when it was bucketing down with rain, we didn’t have an umbrella. Dad had access to rolls of thick plastic from work, like a super heavy-duty Glad Wrap, and would hand-cut human-sized sheets to drape over us, which actually did a pretty good job. Here his argument was that the humble umbrella wasn’t up to the job. Apparently normal rain did not warrant any kind of protection at all, but once it got heavy, a custom-built solution was required. Which would explain why I was only ever offered help on the paper round once the storm had been given a name by the weather bureau. So while everyone around us dealt with umbrellas being turned inside out by high winds, or being told off because they were restricting the views of those behind them, we sat bone dry in our own personal bubbles.

Though Dad was never worried about water, he’d have a meltdown if we ever sat on cold concrete. According to him, this was a recipe for piles. In my entire lifetime I’ve never heard of a kid with piles. How cold does it have to be, and how long do you have to sit there, before piles becomes a thing? Even though I doubted its existence, I avoided sitting on cold concrete, because I lived in fear of missing out on my under-12s footy grand final, listed on the injury sheet as ‘A. Rozenbachs: Piles.’

I tried to enjoy the scenery as we wandered around Paris, but was distracted by Dad’s animosity towards the whole city. His sense of being overwhelmed when we arrived on the train had not dissipated. To him, Paris was in a constant state of peak hour. The roads were jammed and the footpaths never-endingly busy, keeping us both on our toes in case we bumped into someone racing somewhere else Dad wouldn’t want to go.

The trains were always full too, not allowing Dad the respite a seat might have brought him. I’d have liked to slow down, to read a book in a café or sit in a bar with no intentions, but that wasn’t something I could do with Dad. It wasn’t his thing, and we were now constantly on the move, trying to tick things off so we could leave the city as soon as possible.

I still hoped that somehow his attitude might suddenly change against all odds, making him demand to hang around an extra day as he was overcome by the glory of Notre Dame. But when we arrived we saw the line to get into the 700-year-old cathedral was at least 200 metres long, and we both knew instantly there was no way we were going inside. The wait to simply buy an entry ticket would have been at least an hour, and Dad was already aware no one was giving up the names of the cleaners, so he wasn’t about to be sucked in by that again. Instead we just stood around outside, half-heartedly admiring the gothic arches and meticulously detailed figures in the architecture. At least when the roof was destroyed by fire a few years later, we had the cherished memory of sort of seeing it from the outside before moving on.

When we reached the Louvre, Dad gave it a bit of, ‘I’ll go in if you want to.’ My experience of the last few days had taught me that looking at old artwork with him would be a waste of time. If he thought the Eiffel Tower was rubbish, I don’t think the world was ready for his take on the Mona Lisa. Which probably would have been: ‘What’s the frame made out of?’

As much as he hated it, Dad kept on trudging around through the pain. We walked along the Champs-Élysées, full of expensive touristy cafes and luxury stores we’d never go into. If I’d had more time, or less Dad, I would’ve liked to try and get off the beaten tourist track, to see what Paris truly had to offer that wasn’t superficial and aimed at people just dropping in. I wondered what it would have been like if we’d had a great apartment, if Dad might have enjoyed it a little more. I felt bad that he hated it. I’d dragged him there and he wasn’t having fun, so I tried my best to keep his spirits up and our time there short.

Dad did surprise me by walking up to the terrace at the Arc de Triomphe. Perhaps my message of ‘you’re only here once’ had sunk in, making him suck it up and check out the view. Or maybe it was only because the terrace gave him sweeping views of the city, so he could hate more of it at once. It also gave him a new set of stairs to complain about/count.

The driving rain and wet shoes eventually forced us off the streets earlier than I’d have liked, but Dad was happy to be back in our hellesque apartment. It meant it was time to pack, ready to leave Paris in the morning.