Darren Kennedy

DARREN KENNEDY is a TV presenter and stylist. He says: ‘MY MUM Val and I have had some great holidays together but the one that stands out was when she came to visit me for a weekend while I was living in Paris. She had been to Paris a f ew times before that but never without my dad. I think my sister was supposed to come with her but something had come up. So we got to spend some really great quality time on our own, just the two of us.

We had a gorgeous weekend together, checking out shops, going to nice restaurants, kicking back outside cafés on the Champs Elysées watching the world go by. She stayed with me in my apartment near Gare Saint-Lazare, which was a 15-minute walk from the Champs Elysées. I remember it was really warm that weekend so we just relaxed, people-watched and took in the city. We popped into a few shops and went to Boutique Merci, which has a library room and a coffee shop adjoining it. It does a really small edit of nice clothes, some homewares and even though it’s quite small, we found ourselves there for a few hours before we left. I think especially when you get older it’s hard to get that quality time with your parents. There aren’t that many times outside of Christmas where you get to spend a few days together. I’m either working or Mam is cooking dinner, that kind of thing.

So it’s really nice to completely remove yourself from your usual environment and to just kind of connect with your mother as a friend.’