Dropping the sparkly things. Keeping the sparkle. V.O. Non sous titré

 Hey there possums,

I’ve missed a couple of blog posts due to sparkly holidays in Paris, partially up inside the Eiffel Tower at midnight on my eldest daughter’s 13th birthday. But that’s another story...

Scintillating as she is, it’s a satisfying contrast to sit outside with a cool beer at home and write to you.

Here in the Toulouse countryside life has chilled down a bit even though on the calendar it’s not technically Autumn. I love the way that nature doesn’t give a fig (all puns intended) about the calendar. She just does her thing - flowing along like the ‘girl in the green skirt,’ as my friend Simone used to say - never regretting what she leaves behind and resolutely moving on into the future. Happy as the proverbial lark.

That got me pondering whether I couldn’t do with a little of Nature’s wisdom for myself.

Over the last few months I’ve taken the ‘Great Decluttering from Hell’ to new heights; randomly getting rid of STUFF with reckless abandon and revelling in a keen sense of achievement at each permanent removal from the general vicinity of the house. YEAH!

What hit me during the process is that I definitely don’t like to admit to being attached to things, even sentimentally. I especially don’t like admitting this to myself ;)  

Several house moves, including changes in country and hemisphere, a house fire, and a ‘philosophy’ of detachment have forced led me to let go of most things really easily.

Ahem. Or so I thought.

So WHY in heaven’s name have I been holding on to no less than EIGHT chandeliers and 10 pairs of sparkly sconces for so long ? They have been gradually working on their dust robes in my garage for three years. No. Four. Yoiks!

 Seriously, was I ever really going to need EIGHT chandeliers for any future cocoon? You couldn’t exactly call our spacious farm house a château now, even allowing for a little Marseillais exagération!

Then Bang! it hit me (again) just how comforting and irritating it was to have them perched in the rafters taking space.

Sacré bleu!! Do you realise how much ‘possibility’ EIGHT chandeliers and 10 pairs of sparkly wall lights can represent? How much safety ? A back up plan ! If my new venture doesn’t work out… then maybe I could go back to the old one… I wouldn’t have to be, gulp, a FAILURE  if it went kaput. I could sneakily move back to my past life…without anyone, least of all myself ;), noticing.

Do I want to ?

NO !

So last week I mercilessly sorted through my ‘past life’ and said firm tatas gentle farewells to my ‘stuff.’ I whispered tenderly to my chandeliers, old papers, antique glass bottles, sconces etc etc ad infinitum, that I couldn't use them any more but that someone else would. Someone who was looking for just that special object at a bargain price to sparkle up their home, or tickle their ‘inspiration’ bone. 

Dammit ! Ouch! I loved those sparkles and those old papers... Maybe... NO!

I explained to a slightly daunted, very grabby part of me that it’s ok to let go of ‘unfinished projects’ if the right time for that project has definitely past. Not easy to admit that one either.  I need whip away the symbolic safety net in order to jump both feet into my new venture. What ever I don’t let go of, holds me back.

Y’ know, sort of like if Nature decided that the trees should grow new leaves next year yet keep all the old, dead, brown ones from this Autumn. I mean, how much sense does THAT make ?

So last Sunday I bit the bullet. The sparkly things had to go. Beaker packed the car up chokker block with my stuff and I trundled off to join a friend at a huge vide-grenier (car boot sale/flea market) for the ‘Great Letting Go.’

Eureka ! It worked. Sold all of my chandeliers but one that I’m keeping for Lulu Labonne, my amazingly talented, artist cousin who has mastered the fine art of nailing Jelly to walls, cooked for the stars and helps film lions in the Mara when the fridge is empty. Maybe she’ll add some sparkle to a Masai tent with it.

Anne, my calligraphy mentor, and I made a fabulously festive day of it,  with wine and very non diet, exceptionally yummy munchies.  Damn great way to celebrate the new season and  all that incoming space I say :).

So now that I've cleared out, I'm wishing you a spacious and truly sparkly week too. 

Love,

Ange
PS. Have some scribbles to do for a wedding present this week. Will show the results in my next post. If the Mess Monsters get over all their ills that is...

Comment virer le Bling sans perdre l'étincelle.VF non soutitré

Si je vous ai manqué, (et j'espère que je vous ai manqué ;-) c’est parce que j’étais entrain de faire un séjour prolongé à Paris pour voir la magnifique Tour Eiffel étinceler  à minuit. 

Après tout ce *sparkle,* quel bonheur d’être de retour chez moi, dans mon petit coin de paradis campagnard, assise au soleil devant une bière pour vous écrire.

Ici à Toulouse la vie s’est rafraîchie, même si ce n’est pas encore techniquement l’automne.  J’adore comment la Nature n’en a rien à faire du calendrier.  Elle continue sur son petit chemin sans aucun regret pour ce qu’elle laisse derrière, avançant tranquillement vers l’avenir.

Peut-être pourrais-je devenir un peu plus comme Dame Nature ?

Ma fois j'essaye en ce moment. Depuis quelques mois je poursuis mon ‘Grand Nettoyage de Printemps d’Enfer.’  Ce qui se résume largement au fait de vider entièrement la maison me débarrasser d’autant de choses que possible dont je suis convaincue que je ne m’en servirai plus. Lourde tache!

Autrement dit : de tout le STUFF qui m’encombre depuis "des lustres" de mes jobs antérieures.

PAF ! Dehors STUFF ! Et puis. ZEN. Ahhhhh le vide.

Je n’aime VRAIMENT PAS admettre que je suis attachée aux choses, surtout à moi même.

Plusieurs déménagements, un changement d’hémisphère, un incendie et une philosophie de détachement bien ancrée m’ont permis de lâcher les ‘choses’ très facilement.

Tu Parles ! Voilà  une belle histoire que je me racontais !!

Si c'est le cas alors POURQUOI, pour l’amour du Ciel, j’ai gardé pas moins que HUIT lustres à pampille et 10 pairs d’appliques depuis que j’ai arrêté de travailler dans la déco!? Depuis quand ai-je besoin d’autant de pampilles sur les plafonds et murs de ma maison ? Je vous rappelle que je n’habite pas un château ;-)

Puis PAF (encore) ! Je me suis rendue compte que c’était assez rassurant de les voir tous les jours là haut à ramasser la poussière sur les chevrons du garage. Oh dear :(

Non mais sérieusement, vous rendez vous compte des POSSIBILITES que représentent Huit lustres et 10 paires d’appliques ? Je vous assure, c’est ENORME. 

Surtout quand on démarre une nouvelle entreprise car ça représente surtout, en douce, sans rien dire, surtout pas à moi même… un bon plan B si jamais mon nouveau projet ne marche pas. Gloups !

Ai-je envie de retourner vers le passé?

NON !

Alors la semaine dernière j’ai viré mes vies antérieures en disant un ferme Au Revoir à ‘mon Stuff.’ J’ai murmuré doucement à mes lustres, vieux papiers et vielles bouteilles etc, que quelqu’un allait les faire scintiller, mais que ce ne serait plus moi. Quelqu’un avec des doigts de fée qui cherche un peu de *sparkle* (j'adore ce mot) pour illuminer sa maison.

Pour  faire ça déjà il fallait d'abord que je me permette de lâcher un projet afin de pouvoir en commencer un autre, plus grand et plus valorisant.

C’était dur ça. M’accorder la permission de ne pas finir ce que j’ai commencé et avancer sur autre chose.

Pour plein de raisons. Mais surtout parce que  ça me fait peur de lâcher cette sécurité symbolique afin de me lancer corps et âme dans un projet qui a du cœur - mon coeur.  Ce que je ne lâche pas ne fait que m’empêcher d’avancer. Peut-être. Ca ne le rend pas facile à faire quand même!  

Pourtant je le sais: ne pas s’affranchir du passé n’a pas de sens. C’est un peu comme si la Nature voulait conserver toutes les feuilles mortes sur ses arbres tout en s’acharnant à faire de nouvelles pousses vertes. Pas possible.  Y a plus de place !

C’était dimanche dernier que j’ai enfin fait mes adieux. Je me suis trimballée au vide grenier local  avec tout mon Sparkly Stuff pour m’en débarrasser une bonne fois pour toutes. Succès. Plus qu'un lustre qui reste pour Lulu, ma cousine artiste qui cuisine super bien et filme des Lions dans le Mara quand elle n'a rien dans le frigo. Peut-être elle en aurait besoin pour illuminer une tente Masai...

Anne et moi en avons fait une journée festive avec du foie gras maison et un bon petit rosé de Provence. Tant qu’à faire – autant joindre l’utile à l’agréable n’est ce pas ?

Bonne semaine Possums. Je dois calligraphier des cadeaux cette semaine alors j’aurai quelque gribouilles à vous montrer à notre prochain rencontre.

Ange

PS. Vraiment, j'adooooooooooooore le mot *sparkle* et vous souhaite donc une semaine pleine de scintillements :)

Paris Je T'aime… But Ca M'énerve!

I can't believe I got back from Paris nearly a week ago .There's something about that city that still pulses inside me even 16 years after I first landed.Truthfully, when I'm there in August ...ie: the weather's balmy, 

there are no traffic jams, 

(Champs Elysées, one Friday night in August)
there is almost no doggie doodoo in the streets and we can grab a park anywhere, even on la rue Royale for a quick afternoon tea at my favourite salon de thé

and the service staff are all friendly and smiling!   When I re-discover the artists at la Place du Tertre 

in Montmartre

and the Tour Eiffel sparkles above, waving her magic wand like a benevolent good fairy over her subjects

I am once again filled with wonder and nostalgia for Paris the magnificent city of lights.
But then I remember the gruesome reality of carrying tonnes of (take your pick) food shopping/suitcases, sleeping children up long flights of stairs several times per week (seriously, they used to call me the bag lady and not for my Louis Vuitton!!!), turning for hours to find a parking spot in front of the apartment at 3am or 3pm for that matter (HORROR after finally getting back from holidays and having to lug a whole family and car full of STUFF without waking the building), Beaker always missing the first part of any opera or theatre production because he'd only allowed 1h30 to do the 15k trip into La Bastille from the outskirts and not 2h and WORST OF ALL - constantly forbidding the messies to run in the grass because of all the dog poop.
Funnily enough, those memories don't seem quite so bad now. I could almost move back there… Almost...Helmut Fritz however (below) has a new take on what annoys him about Paris and we giggled away singing this song all the way up there and back ( a mere 7 hour drive each way). It's in French, and quintessentially Parisian, but you might be able to find a translation…It appears that you'll also have to click on the link to see it on You Tube.



As Helmut says, "How annoying all those people who queue outside Ladurée just for some macarons….(I remember saying that to Beaker early on in our marriage, 'I am so NOT queueing outside in the cold just to eat a BISCUIT!!' one winter's evening. But I did, and although they only made the fabulous 'DIVA' from Banyuls and spices that year to my knowledge, I never regretted it!)

Helmut - they really ARE good!"

However, my friends, I still prefer my haven in the south-west countryside. Besides - I bought the Ladurée cookbook (in English) so I no longer have to salivate every time I think of Paris any more ;-)

You can get the recipe book too - from HERE

Looking forward to catching up with you all next week. 

Off to bed for me!

 I have a 6.00am bike ride to compensate for all the sugar ;-)

Much love

PS. you can click on my facebook page for more Paris colour

Love and Do What You Will (while I'm in Paris)

It's nearly 1.30am and if I was a sensible girl, I would already be well in bed catching a few zeds before the alarm goes off at 6am. Sensible, however, is a word that's been banished from my vocabulary due to its palid shade and boring, flat heeled, black shoes. 

Tomorrow is a mission of LOVE - and we all know that LOVE overrides practical sensibility by a long shot. LOVE prevails. LOVE lifts us up where we belong . Oh Goodness, stop me before I start singing the Moulin Rouge soundtrack and wake the newly arrived messmonsters, would you be so kind?

Paris is reputed to be the city of Lurrrrrrrrrrve n'est ce pas? I've decided to whip up there on a whim and verify that for myself for a week. Ok - not really on a whim… but definitely  on a mission of love. Chickpea has landed on the home shores of Paris at last and is waiting, safely and patiently (Even a little too patiently for my liking: MUM DON'T COME TOMORROW PLEASE BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO GALLERIES LAFAYETTE!!) at her best friend's place for the remaining messmonsters and excited parents to drive up and drag her home kicking and screaming reclaim her.

It's a seven hour drive… which will get us there just in time for afternoon tea at Dalloyau and a wander round Boulogne Billancourt where we used to live. There's a great Lebanese restaurant there which is handy so I don't have to plan dinner! Excellent, that's tomorrow's food taken care of ;-)

Then it's four days jam packed with Angelina's on the rue de Rivoli (for the bona fide best hot chocolate in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD), Berthillon Ice Cream on l'Ile St Louis for the bona fide BEST mango sorbet and chocolate ice cream in the WHOLE UNIVERSE. Honestly, if chocolate grew on trees - that's what it would taste like! And KOBA for the best Japanese meal outside of Japan or Australia in the rue Michodière.  You may be wondering why I am going to Paris and not thinking of escargot or cuisses de grenouille...

Dash the frogslegs. I shall heed St Augustin's words once again and indeed do - or in this case EAT - what I will.  May I suggest you have a wonderful time doing the same :)

Should I reassure you that we are planning to do things other than eating? Like visiting the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, Jardin des Plantes for the paleontology department -blame that on Pokemon and his dinosaur craze, Notre Dame... We may even take a ride on the Bateau Mouche and OH GOD! NOT. eat the food!

I've an extra little secret to share with you. Funnily enough, every time I go on holidays 'back home,' coincidence would have it that another Aussie blogger happens to be holidaying in the same place. On Saturday I should be lucky enough to meet up with Julie from Being Ruby in Versailles. where we will see the Grandes Eaux Nocturnes (you can find out more about what it is if you click on the Versailles link). Sigh...  Fitting! The paper that inspired this phrase in Roman Capitals is an old ledger dating from 1715. I must look more closely to see if it isn't the deed to a magnificent chateau! ;-)

Au revoir and see you in a week all chubby cheeked and eyes a sparkle with the late putty recipe. Gloups :( sorry - you'd rather I go to Paris wouldn't you? ) 

The girl who wore ORANGE - Nearly

If you don't like something, change it. 

If you can't change it, change your attitude. 

~Maya Angelou

I was going to write a post about the 'The girl who wore orange (Christian Lacroix pants to chase away the winter blues).' But I watched 'Slumdog Millionaire' first. Full of orange and yellow and every bright colour in the rainbow. It's about ATTITUDE. And Luck. And Love. A winner. 1 in much more than a million. Too much for me for tonight.

My flippant Paris Episode on that girl who wore orange will have to wait for tomorrow. Can't do flippant straight after sad (insert more appropriate word here, I'm speechless), whether shrouded in a happy ending or not...

I share the same opinion as Maya Angelou. Normally, I'd concentrate on making my own world full of sunshine. At worst that makes us one less household to worry about on a global scale and at best maybe even an inspiration for others who in turn can inspire even more others, sort of like the butterfly effect... But tonight, that sunshiney world just feels like a very very inconsequential drop in that huuuuge ocean that we're all part of.

Full of gratitude that my messmonsters are tucked up safe and warm with cuddles and laughter, and they only want to kill each other once a day. Hopefully they will have 'enough' around and within them to have grown out of that by adulthood ;-)

Better go nurse the attitude so it comes back tomorrow
in full flippant force!

A domani

The Paris episodes: Laying the first stone...

For a dream come true, I have, surprisingly, no real recollection of the day I actually arrived in Paris...

I vaguely remember being picked up from the airport by my very kind and gorgeous ex boyfriend, and still life-long friend, who I had met at l'Alliance Française in Auckland (yes girls, it IS a hint!) a couple of years before.

It had been determined that I would arrive in Paris long before he would have finished his VSN "military service" in NZ. The vagaries of the French Administration whose tentacles extend even as far as Sydney put paid to that, and I finally arrived 5 months after his return to his parents' place in Sceaux. The said parents were kind enough to 'shelter' me while I looked for lodgings inside the Paris I dreamed of. Little did we all suspect, they would be my guardian angels more than once during my first month!

Their house was all I could have imagined. An enormous, stately, stone building full of antiques with a huge park on a lovely street in the very up market 92 suburbs. I had the whole of the very spacious and airy top floor to myself with a gorgeous Marie Antoinette blue and white bathroom comprising a huge old claw foot bath tub. With the exception of the house not being inside the Paris city limits, it was EVERYTHING I had pictured in my mind.

So you can imagine my intense astonishment when said ex-boyfriend started taking me to visit affordable apartments... (the exhorbitant rental prices and 2 month deposits we'll get to later).

With his friend Henri, we spent many hours during that first week brainstorming over which quartier would be best with respect to where I was working, in Boulogne-Billancourt. Of course, they thought Boulogne would be best (Logical). But not being in Paris seemed to me like I was falling short of attaining 'the dream' so they capitulated at my insistence and we agreed on the 5th or 6th arrondissments between Metro St Germain and M° Cluny La Sorbonne. The artists' and writers' haunt... 

Defining where I lived by my Metro station was very novel of course. I mean, it sounded a bit dubious and, well, proletarian:

Moi, rapidfire questions: "What's the Metro? Why do you define your situation by a train station? How will people know how to get to me by car?"

Ex: Silence. OK - it's easier to move around by metro. You normally count two minutes travel time between stops. Even people with cars prefer the metro...

Any one else cringing here? I'm wincing as I re-read this!

Full of enthusiasm, we hit the real estate agents. That's where the dream took on its first bit of patina. Where were the old wooden floor boards? Where were the high ceilings with Gustavian cornicing? Where was the REST OF THE APARTMENT?

Example Apartment Type 1, ( 2, 3, 4 and ... ad infinitum until enlightenment):

6th arrondissement, M° St Germain

Gorgeous Hausmanian building with 'pierre de taille' and 'digicode.' (very positive point)

2nd floor, no lift (fine by me, good sport)

Me: "It's very light, and very pretty." Note to self: kitchen a bit poky and surprisingly, no fridge or oven yet. "Where's the bedroom?" We were standing at the door facing the windows at the rear of the apartment. I had been wondering how they had artfully hidden the doors leading into the rest.

Real Estate Agent, not amused: Hmmhmm. Zis is ze bedroom, mademoiselle.

Me, confused: "Pardon? Was my French really THAT bad? Where's the lounge room and dining room then?"

REE with very raised eyebrow via Ex : Zis is ze bedroom and ze loungeroom and ze dining room and you ere very lucky as zis apartment has just been refurbished so ze sink and shower stand are bof new... I can assure you zis ees quite a big apartment for someone of your means age."

Me, incredulous: 'There are apartments smaller than this? You mean people actually sleep in the room they cook and shower in? Wow! Merci, we will look around a bit before I make my decision."

Was Ex playing a practical joke on me? Naaaah. The new girl just wasn't going to fall for it! Certain that we were being too limited, I marched him smartly out of there, determined that we would find something more acceptable.  So we visited... And we visited... And we visited...
...

Until I fell in love with a gorgeous run down apartment with a 'cuisine Américaine' (that definition underwent a French transformation too), and a SEPARATE bedroom, in a 16th century building with a fabulous crumbling staircase, right in the middle of the Latin quarter.

18 rue St Séverin

75005 PARIS!
Digicode: 8E6D0

There it is! You can see the dark green 'distressed' door just before the Japanese restaurant on the right. In front of the very aptly named 'St Séverin' bar where you could buy French Onion soup at very unconventional hours... and eat it to the chimes of the church bells next door.

Due to the level of exciting disrepair, the rental price fit my monthly budget, in other words, exactly half of my French salary!  This was actually almost illegal (and still is; it's normally and very sensibly 'advised' that rent be limited to a third of total salary).

All good! I could pay for it! And I DID have a bedroom that I didn't have to cook in! That was a definite positive, given that I didn't even have a quarter of the deposit necessary to sign. My 1000 AUD that I had been sure would last me through a while, seeing as I was working straight away, was just enough for the first month's rent, but not for the two month's deposit and 1 month's agency fees that no one had told me about during my interviews over the phone. Let's not even mention buying furnishings and hotplates, oven, fridge - for my cuisine Américaine - and SHOWER CURTAIN for the unfinished bathroomette.
But you remember, I had guardian angels on my side... TBC

 NOte: Didn't get this out for Monday. It's just after midnight so I nearly did though!. May I plead guilty and be forgiven as a writer for traditionally missing my deadline ;-)

Tuesday Afternoon Tea for two...

La Vie imite l'Art...

... bien plus que l'Art n'imite la vie,

Oscar Wilde

Je suis bien d'accord avec Mr Wilde!

Vous voyez? Je viens de surprendre 3 de mes tasses à thé, chinées dans les brocantes entre l'Australie et la France, essayant de se faire passer pour de l'art... Elles ont même détourné mes pots d'encres et gouaches pour se camoufler!

Pendant que je peins, je ne me permets que rarement les distractions du genre 'petit afternoon tea entre amies.'  Mais aujourd'hui je fais une exception! C'est Plumed Pen qui m'invite et j'en suis ravie. Ahh le luxe! Je me permets le temps d'une pause avec des amies - sans quitter la maison!

Alors installez vous le temps d'une respiration profonde et

permettez moi de vous offrir un Yogi Tea aux épices et  des bonbons AMORiNo venus de Paris via ma copine Sabina!

"Allez Ange, au boulot! Finie la pause. Ton nouveau tableau dans les couleurs douces des bonbons à la violette requested by the Dear Dr M n'est pas encore fini, et les messmonsters ne vont pas tarder à arriver..."

Voici la voix de la raison qui me sollicite!

Revenez demain, et je vous montrerai le tableau fini. Mais CHUUUUUUT, c'est une surprise! Dr M ne peut pas le voir avant jeudi 19 novembre..

Ce fut un moment de détente bien agréable mais toute bonne chose à une fin.

Mais "Les folies sont les seules choses que l'on ne regrette jamais"!

N'est ce pas Mr Wilde...

The Paris episodes: If you have built Castles in the air ..

... Your work may not be lost; that is where they should be.

Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

My Monday posts from now on will be dedicated to my Australian friend Julie, and her alter ego Ruby (Amelia Earheart).  For the real-life adventures she lives every day...

The Paris Episodes start in March 1995, 6  months before the public transport strikes that brought the country to a halt, when a dreamy eyed Kiwi/Aussie girl who had clicked her Ru(g)by shoes finally landed on the other side of that well sung about Rainbow ... in Paris, France (not Texas, and not Kansas either ;-).  WOW! A dream come true.

This random phrase from an old school friend still on the Sunshine Coast, Australia, is what first got me thinking:

'You live in PARIS? How GLAMOUROUS!' It must be sooooo much more exciting than HERE! You've really MADE IT!"

To some extent, she was right - but not for the reasons she imagined!

Julie, along with Les Champs Elysées at christmas time, drinking the world's best hot chocolate at Angelina's, the glittering Eiffel tower and afternoons on the Ile St Louis eating icecream from Berthillon, what made Paris such an adventure, is all that I could never have imagined:

The Grind!

 Yup! The frustrating, every day, not-on-holiday-but-living-here Grind (and no I'm not talking about some exotic French horizontal dance)!

- Tiny, run-down, expensive, bedsits with no kitchen, not even a shower curtain...

"That's IT? The WHOLE apartment? Wow! They never showed those in the movies I saw!"

- Dealing with feelings of powerlessness at not being able to help so many homeless people eg: the time I offered, in frustration, a guy the carrot I was going to eat instead of money, and the shock I  received back when he flashed a 'frustrated' toothless grimace!

- Coping with going to work on the metro in the dark and coming home in the dark

(Metro Boulot Dodo, as we say in French)

- Dog poo! 'O Merde!' They made a film about this, do you remember?

- Conflicting cultural definitions of the words 'impossible,' 'efficiency, and 'today.'

- Confrontations and helplessness before that great mastodon which is the French Administration (which started with getting the visa in Sydney for that matter...)

- Being 8 months pregnant, dying for a pee, and never being able to find a public toilet I could 'fit' into!!!

Wouldn't have traded 'the Grind' for all the macarons in Ladurée... It's how I found myself! It's how I learned, thank heavens, that life is not a magic carpet...  but a much richer tapestry with all the little plain threads holding those few silver and gold ones into place.

So RdV every Monday for the Paris Episodes and a wee giggle; 'cause, in spite of what my darling adoptive France mistakenly believes, you can laugh and work at the same time!

A Julie et tous, I hope this will entertain you and inspire you and even bring forth a few of your own tales... for where ever we go in the world, what ever 'exotic' country we live in, we can't escape from ourselves!

See you tomorrow for a cuppa with Silken Purse and hopefully a new piece of wooden inspiration if I can only get off this keyboard ...

Wine boxes, book boxes : Necessity is the mother of invention!

Eureka! The messmonsters' bedside tables are recycling history!
 It always seemed a shame to send all those gorgeous French wine boxes to the cinders but I was at bit of a loss as to how to use them otherwise.

Hurray for messmonsters then! No matter how much I tidied their room, there was always a pile of books on the floor next to the bed (not necessarily an indication that they were reading them but hey, there's always hope!)

Typical weekly scenario:

Me (with vaccy cleaner in hand) - Kids, would you please tidy your books into the book case?

Messmonsters - Sure Mum! Grumble grumble, but I'm playing.

Me - If the books aren't picked up in 5 mts I will vacuum them up! (hoping that the 5 year old wouldn't tilt)

Messmonsters - Get real The books won't fit up the vacuum cleaner Mum!

Me - (Not silly are they? Must be mine ;-)

After a quick visit to Bubble in Paris and a subsequent tour of Ethan's room - I spied a fabulous invention that would put paid to my nagging, tidy the books, and make vacuuming easier: THE BOOK BOX.

Recipe: 1 wooden wine box, 4 funky wheels, paint (non toxic obviously) an hour or so to throw the lot togther!

What do you think?

Lilibelle got pink but I just couldn't resisit a splash of orange in Pokémon's one!

From footings to brushings: an Antipodean discovering English in France

This morning while I was out doing my daily weekly footing (you remember that, it's the French word for jogging) I had a flashback of that first year in Paris when I barely spoke the language and as such, even the most banal every day situations were opportunities for embarassment adventure.

Particularly fond memories are those of my regular 'English Lessons.' Wonderful French people taking pity on that Antipodean girl with language challenges.

Following are transcripts of two conversations that I will never forget, mostly because they got a giggle out of me.

Triathlon Coach - Alors Angela , on va faire un petit footing dans le parc?

Moi - pardon? (read: what on earth is a 'footing?')

Tri Coach - Un FOOTING! Un FOOTING. In ze PARC.

Moi (Park, I understood) - Ok. Euh, what's a 'footing?'

Tri Coach - (with a smirk) Ah la petite Australienne don' speaka de Enlish?

Moi - Si, but I don't know what a footing is (although by this time I had cottoned on a little)

Tri-Coach (jiggling up and down alternating feet.)

Moi - ohhhhh, you mean going for a jog.

Tri-Coach - Oui, c'est ça. Un FOOTING

The same week at work:

Florence was explaining to me how to ask for a hairdressing appointment. Luckily I got to practice on her before picking up the phone. It was when she asked me if I wanted a 'brushing' or just a cut that things got curiouser and curiouser...

Florence/hairdresser: Alors Mademoiselle, qu'est ce que je vous fais aujourd'hui? (what am I going to do to you today? Inspires confidence, doesn't it?)
Moi - Ummm (lost for words)
Florence - Une coupe ou un brushing?
Moi - Une coupe, and, and, and (thinking: how do you say wash and blowdry as well and what is this brushing you want to do to me?)
Moi - C'est quoi, un brushing? (Vaguely wondering if it wasn't some wierd French initiation rite)
Forence- You don' speak Enlish???
Moi - (groan, again?) Si, c'est quoi un brushing?

I finally worked out that it was a style or blowdry but she regarded me suspiciously for weeks wondering, I imagine, if people really spoke English in the Southern Hemisphere...

These, friends, were my reflections during my footing and subsequent brushing. There are countless other English nouns that the French hitch an ING onto in order to make it a French noun too (you don't go footing, you go for a footing.) And it's a delightful adventure in itself trying to discover them all...    

Bribes de Doris

Dites bonjour à Doris. Vous vous rappelez d'elle? C'est mon cochon volant qui vient de Brême. Et  depuis, elle a déjà fait le voyage 'blingbling'/Rothschild à Paris. Sa couleur jaune soleil à heurté la sensibilité du chic parisien (car rare de voir la couleur jaune là bas, surtout dans le ciel ;-) Tant pis, c'est ça d'être révolutionnaire.  Je ne désespère pas qu'un jour même la sobre bubble finira par l'aimer ...

On chante Doris? Que sera, serââââaâââ ... Mais comment? Vous n'avez jamais entendu un cochon volant chanter? Vous allez voir...

... et demain il pleut à Paris

I'm Dreaming (on) Mr King

Morning possums - and I MEAN MORNING, it's after 1am and my coach has long turned back into a pumpkin! Paris was as Bling Bling and fleeting as ever; a blur of activities and emotions. Sleep was but a dream of an occupation...


Speaking of dreaming and keeping occupied, I have been negotiating with my new blog now for at least 3 hours. Stimulating, frustrating, ...tiring even this blog stuff! And after all this time I find myself harbouring the same reflections I usually reserve for a particularly complicated piece of newly renovated (by me, of course) furniture:
"Where did the three hour's time go?"
Well, I managed to change my 'reactions.' GOOD POINT. And in doing so, delete all the previous reactions you had left me. BAD POINT.  Then, I did an Alice in Blogland. 'What's that?' you say. It's the art of falling through the computer screen and getting totally engrossed in a whole new world of wonderful people, places, ideas and lives (check them out in my list).  I wonder what Lewis Caroll would have made of it...
'Yawwwwwwwn.' Oops, pardon, Paris and Blogland are catching up on me.
It's time to go and live the dreams that Life defies me to live! Hmmm - and that's my garbled French to English translation of a quote attributed to Martin Luther King which, I must have somewhere in English already but am too buggered to go hunt for.
Ooh la la... bonne nuit!

More Cheese Please or Happy Endings

- Ca a l'air bon! C'est quoi?
- Un cheesecake!
- Hein?
- Un cheesecake, un gâteau au fromage!
- Tu nous a fait un gâteau salé pour fêter ton anniversaire?
- Non
- Alors ce n'est pas du fromage mais du fromage blanc que tu as mis dedans.
- Et non, du St Moret en fait!

Suddenly, tous les yeux fixaient mon gâteaux. Gloups. Il faut au moins le goûter pour faire plaisir... (lire - 'qu'est ce qu'elle nous a encore sorti, le kangourou?')

- Mmmm c'est bon, t'es sure qu'il n'y a pas de fromage blanc dedans?

- Oui

- Je peux avoir la recette?

A ce moment même je savais que le futur de mon gâteau à la carotte était assuré!

Pour finir sur une note... une note... enfin juste une note, merci SkippY pour le film suivant et de me présenter Mr God DJ. Comme quoi, tout le monde à son rôle à jouer...

Et sur cette note sucrée, Have a Great Weekend! Ange is off to get some inspiration from glittering Paris!