Hello everyone, you're listening to the Earful Tower podcast. It's brought to you by French today.

More from them at the end of the episode.

But first, I'm sitting at the tip of an island in the Sen River.

But no, not down in the Maori, not down in the fourth, fifth, sixth, hour on this month.

I'm in the middle of Nowhereville in a suburb called Leveloire.

And it's a long story, but you're going to hear in this interview with John Baxter that I say at the very start of the interview,

I'm having one of those days, John, I left my keys in my scooter when I went for a coffee

this morning.

Well, guess what?

When I stopped recording with him, I got a text that I left my keys in the front door of my apartment and someone who'd taken them trying to be helpful

told me they'd headed out to the suburbs of Paris for the day and they'd bring them back

at the end of the day. So instead of waiting to the end of the day, here I am sitting in

Levalois finishing off the podcast episode.

I've been all over the place today.

It's been one of those crazy ones.

But what a treat it is to be here.

If you've never been to Levalois, I need to tell you something, northern suburbs of Paris,

so above the 17th, sort of above Batignolle, the Sen River, once it goes past the Eiffel Tower

out at the west of the city, it curves around

and passes northern Paris again. And where I am anyway, you can come right out onto this little

island and practically dip your feet into the river. It's just like the square galon or ver galon

that I've talked about on the show before near the Notre Dame but this is empty

...