On a cold New Year’s Eve morning, Colette (famously portrayed in film by Keira Knightly) stood at her window at 9 rue de Beaujolais, looking out over the bare trees of the Palais-Royal gardens. From that apartment she wrote Rêverie de Nouvel An, a meditation on winter, time, and renewal. She takes a stroll with her two dogs, and meditates on the cold, childhood memories, and fleeting moments. It is a work born of stillness: the city slowed, the year pausing before it turns. I think of this work often at this time of year, especially as I brave wind and rain to walk my (much larger, much more boisterous) dog in these very gardens.
As the year draws to a close I find myself roaming Paris with a similar attentiveness. I am tying up loose ends and lingering deliberately in these last days of 2025, which has possibly been my best year in Paris. I came here to research a book about trailblazing French women, and with that very nearly complete, I want to make the most of Winter in Paris, which is fast becoming my favourite season.
