SIMON BECOMING SIMON

Simon Becoming Simon

When Simon realizes that the swanky red Porche his father gave him a few days previously, was nothing more than a bribe to get him to lie under oath and say he was with his dad on four seperate occasions in the past, he panics.

But when his father's lawyers force him to rehearse what he'll be saying in court over and over again, until he is word perfect, he knows he'll have to come up with a plan to get away from them.He's afraid because he knows that his father has gone after people in the past, who refused to cooperate with him, but he also knows he could never stand up in court and lie, even for his father.

On the fourth day of the rehearals, when Simon feels he can't take any more prodding from the lawyers, he decides to make a break for his freedom. So he goes upstairs to his room, where he packs a small bag, straps his easel to it, takes money and his passport from the safe and then quietly slips out of the house.

He then calls a taxi to take him to the airport, with no particular destination in mind. Then later when he is on a plane to Paris, which happened to be the first available flight, he decides that Paris will be good for him,as he'll be able to paint pictures and sell them to tourists along the River Seine and earn himself a living. Earning a living, is quite a scary thought for Simon, since he has never previously had a job and has always relied on his wealthy father to pay his bills.

Once he has booked into a modest hotel in Paris, he walks down to the river and watches as a small boy sails some paper boats in the shallows and this gives him his first inspiration for a picture. Later, when the child's mother wants to buy the painting, he suggests that she buys him lunch instead and says he'll then give her the picture. They soon become friends and lovers, but theirs is a stormy relationship, because she is married and soon she returns to her husband.

Along the way another woman enters his life, and after she has established a friendship with him, she tells him she is his mother, whom he has not seen since he was four years old. She tells him that she recognised him due to his remarkable likeness to his father when he was young, and she also shows him some of her own paintings. Simon says he recognises that she is the artist that painted the pictures hanging on the wall of his childhood bedroom. Along the way Simon also meets many of her artist friends, who later help him to get ready for an exhibition of his work

And since the story is set mainly in Paris, this is also a love story about the other woman that come into Simon's life, some of whom leave him and then return, only to leave him again, but in the end Simon has to say goodbye to a special friend and he does this in an unusual way, by sending a fleet of paper boats down the river, because this is how he first met her, -on the day that her son sailed his own paper boats in the shallows of the river.

He has a breakthrough after this and soon finds there are many of his friends out there who are willing to help him organize a second exhibition of his paintings and also a couple of woman that are really interested in getting to know him better.

With this he decides he has now definately left his stormy past behind him and that he can now move on to having a happy life, filled with fun, laughter and friendship..