Mother on the Orient-Express

Paris is for mothers, I can verify, after a memorable jaunt for two.

The Moulin Rouge, Les Miserables ... I can't think how I overlooked the obvious, flicking from Riga to Reykjavik in a mad brochure search for inspiration. My mum and I haven't holidayed together since Tight Fit stalked the charts. But there are important times in one's life when a short break á deux is just the ticket - and a Ryanair cheapie to Klagenfurt won't cut it.

"Paris? On the Orient-express?" she cried when I divulged the plan. Her Chippenham chardonnay cellar soon flowed in celebration, along with a stream of excited French, alarmingly heavy on words like "Seine" and "bateau-mouche". Some say glamorous travel is extinct. It wasn't at Victoria station that filmy-blue morning: at a safe remove from Burger King, the gleaming British Pullman snorted steamily beside platform two, anxious to canter its carriages of retro-clad travellers to Dover for the tunnel shuttle to Calais, and the waiting Venice Simplon-Orient-Express.

Fox furs and hatboxes, crisp slacks and spats ... if I sensed a slight incongruity in our beachy shirts as we joined the boarding Merchant Ivory extras, Mum was merrily heading down memory lane as our opulent artdeco compartment for two lurched into life and a waiter materialised with champagne. "I remember stream trains as an evacuee," she mused with a misty-eyed sip, while Battersea Bridge peeled past. "Bristol to Tewkesbury - and Malvern, to see great aunt Laura. My uncle Walter used to put us up in the luggage rack." A far cry from our cocoon of patterned panels and sunburst-motif mirrors maybe, yet Mrs R was soon in her element, warbling On the Road to Mandalay between top-ups.

A retired primary school teacher, with a brilliant general knowledge, she found the journey a mine of lecture inspiration. "It's chalk," she announced, tapping her fork on the pane as Kent slid by over lunch. "Part of the Weald. Did you know the North Downs escarpment runs as far east as Canterbury?" Full of celeriac mash, she leaned pensively on the crocheted antimacassar. "Course, it was all under water once ..."

Pudding was another lesson - for Mum. Blueberry-and-chocolate cheesecake, topped with pansies, the cue for a blank look. " Everything's edible," the waiter assured her, "except the plate."

A blonde perm tottered by with a slight sauvignon stumble, then a groomed couple in a fidgety clinch: we disgorged in Folkestone to a trad-jazz quartet tooting Ain't She Sweet, for the tunnel to France - curiously by coach.

In Calais, the Venice Simplon Orient-express glinted handsomely for admiring lenses: all navy/cream livery and heart-stirring destination plaques - Innsbruck, Venezia - which Mum took an awful snap of me beside.

By the time we were Parisbound, she was in Jackie O mode, surveying the cemeteries and cabbage fields of late-pm Picardie through shades and declaring her momentum fully "slowed down". Not that she passed up senior steward Steve's invitation to inspect the train's original coal stove (Steve looked like Jamie Theakston), leaving me alone amid the riotous French deco marquetry of our cabin.

Dinner of buttered sole and cold rosé was a ball of spangly dresses, black ties and two sorry souls in short sleeves. The meringue peaks of Sacré Coeur loomed almost imperceptibly through the windows, shadowed by cherubic clouds. "See, they have got graffiti, just like us," Mum observed, during an enforced spell in a siding south of St Denis.

More than any five-star glitz, the pleasure of Paris was in the detail she detected: the way she photographed the decapitated fashion flowers in our hotel, George V, to shock the Women's Institute in Chippenham, or discussed Cathar religion over croissants, or calmly diagnosed the problem with a loudly shrieking Peugeot passing along the Rue de Rivoli ("That'll be someone's fan belt slipping"). She floored a few facelifted crones in the Louvre with the observation: "Mary Magdalene was in many ways a better role model for women than the Madonna."

She adored the bateaumouche - a floating greenhouse heading west from Musée d'Orsay - and spent the entire trip hogging the stern, craning for arty snaps (Eiffel Tower, lions and winged things on the Pont d'Alexandre III) while timid tourists queued to get a look-in.

The George V - an extravagant Twenties palace of gilt, marble, mirrors and reflected palms, seconds from the Champs Elysées - she deemed, "not too ostentatious - nice and relaxed. I suppose it's what people want nowadays". None of it won her heart, though, quite like the hotel pianist, his tinklings the very essence of my late jazz-loving father. "If I had a wish, I'd wish to be musical," she reflected, as we sipped Chablis beside twangy New Yorkers on Perrier. "People who are musical are so unassuming."

The last night, we passed the pianist a folded note: a request for a special Gershwin tune. He opened it, frowned, then hit the keys: the candlelit salon filled with the strains of Someone to Watch Over Me, while outside a storm fell on the courtyard like applause.

Way to go

Nick Redman and his mum travelled to Paris with Bridge Rail Europe (0870 191 7288; www.bridge-travel.co.uk ). Two-night packages from £1,029pp, including Venice Simplon Orient-Express out, with champagne, lunch and wine, plus dinner, B&B at Four Seasons George V, and first class Eurostar back. More details on VSOE at www.orient-express.com

Late Mother's Day escape