Small Eiffel Tower tattoo behind the ear

The lift in Hartley House has been broken since Tuesday, so I have been climbing to the eleventh floor with your postcard in my coat pocket like a rosary. The one with the tower on it, lit gold against a navy sky. Mrs Okafor on the sixth says it looks like a giant bent pencil, and I told her that is exactly what a clever man would say about it if he had never been up it.

You asked in your last letter whether I still think about Paris. I do, though not the way you think. I think about the summer your mother and I stood under it on the wrong side of the Seine, arguing about whether the thing was ugly, and how I lost the argument and then pretended I had won it for forty years. Sometimes I think the tower only stood there so we would have something to disagree about.

Here is the news. The council has promised to paint the stairwells. They painted them grey last year and called it a refresh. I have been drawing the tower on the kitchen window with a wet finger, the way I used to draw it in the steam when your mother ran the bath. It fades by the time the kettle boils, so I draw it again.

Come at Easter if the trains allow. Bring the good camera. I will take you up to the roof, where the wind is rude and the whole estate spreads out like a map. Then you can tell me the view is nothing like Paris, and I will agree, and we can both be right.

Love, Grandad Edwin