Je me sentais, a la fois, la joie et la tristesse.

Oh Paris, Paris, Paris. I have had a frantic wonderful week, with a visit from little brother and (GREAT) girlfriend, and a weekend filled with aunt, uncle and small cousins. I have done alot of walking up and down the Seine and alot of marvelling at the stoicism of people queueing for EVERYTHING, except the Orangerie which was mercifully and miraculously empty, even on a saturday afternoon. People visiting Pairs, LISTEN. The Louvre is scary. and huge. and exhausting. And sad, because no one seems to appreciate it for what it is, and everyone in their just wants to get to the bloody Mona Lisa, ignoring the Goyas and the Carvaggios along the way, not to mention the countless other galleries of prehistoric art, greek pottery, and Egyptology. Musée D'Orsay is undeniably brilliant, because it is clever, and has a wonderful distilled collection of pretty much every fab impressionist painting you could think of. BUT it is NOT worth a two hour queue. BUY your ticket in advance and skip the queue. Feel smug, look at pretty paintings, then go to the Orangerie and marvel marvel marvel at Monet and how calm it all feels after the hubbub of d'Orsay. You have been told... Gosh I can be bossy!

Showing people Paris, especially people who have never seen it before, is a wonderful thing. It makes me feel smug, happy, proud, excited, and puppyishly-eager. Look LOOK LOOK HERE is the BEST Falafel in the world, right on MY little Parisian street! And LOOK, here is the river, and Notre Dame, and each bridge with its own special meaning and bit of history! And there, of course, is the Eiffel Tower, which alwyas pops up JUST when I've forgotten all about it. Oh, and we simply must have a macaroon from Ladurée or J.P. Hevin, because, well, the ones in Harrods are not the same and seem more expensive in a weird way. And then let's go to the Fripe (vintage) shops near me, because you never know, you might just find the perfect summer dress or fur coat (it must be said here that my time in Paris has been nothing if not a rude awakening for my halcyonic visions of thrift shopping.). And then let's eat in a french bistro, because they are yummy, and reliable and the meat divine.

I am so happy here, so happy in the strangest way. I am unhappy in some ways, far from my group of uni and home friends, with only a handful of people to hang out with, bored by my job, and scare shitless about finals but doing nothing about it. However, in other ways I am happier than I have ever been. Separation from friends and comfortable and established environments, coupled with prolonged time by myself has given me the space to try and work out long buried ambitions ( a definite work in progress) and taught me that only I can fill my time how I wish to. I may not have always got it quite right (the first three months here, my weekends were spent watching american television and weeping), but I am getting there, and it is very satisfying. For once, I feel in control of alot of things - not just my outer emotions, but my inner ones as well, my eating habits (WOO WEIGHTWATCHERS WOO), my habits in general and my daily life. It really is incredibly liberating. Now if only I didn't MISS my best friends, scattered from Birmingham to Hampshire to San Diego (FAR TOO FAR AWAY AND THE TIME DIFFERENCE IS KILLING ME), and long to be able to just call them up without some protracted 'what time shall we skype' arrangement, I'd say life was pretty perfect.

It doesn' want me to uplaod my photos.BOO BLOGGER BOO.
Title taken from Pairs Je t'aime, a film worth watching for the end sequence (from which the quote is taken) alone.

Head in a book

I had a new friend over to my apartment on the weekend. She was astonished at all my books. I was astonished by her astonishment. I grew up in a house with a lot of books. My dream house definitely features either a real bona-fide library, with wall to ceiling shelves and a gallery, à la the Taylorian, or some ingenious book storage spaces. Books are essential to me. On my travels round Greece with the girls last summer, we discovered that even at 7 in the morning, and in a somewhat inebriated state, I would not sleep unless I had read a few pages (..or lines..) of my book. I think this might be a hang-up from insomniac concerns, but the fact remains that for me, a book is the answer to a lot of my whims, desires or needs. When packing for Paris, I knew I would only need three things to make wherever I ended up feel like a home – photos, bunting and one or two books.

In times of stress, an early night with Nancy Mitford’s Pursuit of Love after a run and warming meal of pasta can work wonders. Feeling a little bit miserable and homesick is easily remedied by curling up on my sofa with my geese-print pillow and a new Persephone book. Unable to sleep, a childhood Rumer Godden will always send me off. Chicklit always feels like a deliciously sinful indulgence, and none is more wickedly fun than Jilly Cooper (my favourite author to use in an English theory essay). I stupidly neglected to bring any Mitford with me, favouring Moliere, Rabelais and Joyce in an ambitious (failed) attempt to kickstart my finals reading, but am looking forward to reading ‘Wigs on the Green’, which I will bring back with me after my visit home for Easter. As a teenager, I never used to understand my mother’s passionate devotion to bookshops, and my father’s long-learned resignation to this fact – ‘Oh god, not a bookshop… We’ll go and get a coffee. See you in two hours darling. Please don’t spend all our money’. I found it embarrassing and yet another manifestation of my family’s complete refusal to be who I thought they should be – cookie-cutter Jack Wills Boden wearing parents who went to Rock and Salcombe and had drinks parties. (I know, I know). As I grow up, I realise, typically and with varying degrees of horror, joy, pride, intimidation and astonishment, that in fact I am turning into my mother, and that this is not a bad thing. One of my absolute favourite shops in Paris is the ultimate expat Parisian cliché – Shakespeare & Co. Yes, its full of pretentious pervy Americans in bad glasses, who jizz themselves when you say you go to Oxford and are incapable of having a real discussion about literature, but it is exactly what a bookshop should be – charming, varied, intensely knowledgeable and open to all. They also have a cracking second hand bookshop, where you can find wonderful old editions which make fabulous, intensely personal presents.

My grandparents have an astonishing knack for fortuitously picking up first editions, and generously passing them on to me, with the suffix ‘in case you’re ever in a real jam, you can always sell this’. My T S Eliot and Plaths are immensely treasured, special and almost talismanic, giving off this weird ‘Oh my God you are literally one of the first copies of this amazing now-classic ever read’ vibe. Its crazy that a book can, for me, hold so much power, but they really do. A bad book will put me in a real funk, a good one will propel into a soaring, elevated burst of euphoria and result at least three days of me formulating my thoughts in the style of the book (I do not for one second pretend that this is anything other than just plain weird, and that I live inside my head far too much).

In short, I suppose what I am really trying to say is BOOKS ARE MARVELLOUS, and anyone who doesn’t think so will always be viewed with a certain amount of mistrust and bewilderment. Work is horrid at the moment – either frantic, or yawningly dull (or in fact usually actually frantic with yawning dullness) and I am trying to resist the temptation to sack it off for a day and curl up in my apartment with a book. Must stave of this desire until little bro + girlfriend arrive next week, so I can show them all the best bits of Paris. Ach..life as a working gal sucks.XOXO

(Photo - the sartorialist i think...the perfect red coat.)

BONJOUR LE WEEKEND

C'EST LE WEEKEND.. alors il faut feter, oui? Or not.. I plan to spend my evening with a stack of shiny new magazines. Mmm. Vogue. Mmm. Elle. Mmmm. Clearly I am never going to be a bright young thing. Premature middle-age is much more my style. Tant pis. The 'no eating out' vow is being broken tomorrow. I have mulled it over and decided. HELLO BLUEBERRY PANCAKES... I just hope they are good enough to merit this. It will be uber bum out if they aren't. I also feel the no-shopping vow will broken IF I find a red skirt that looks anything like this, only mine will be worn on the waist with a large wide black woven belt -



I am loving all this inserting of clauses into vows. I feel it totally validates the cheating. Good. Now if only I could find the mysterious 50 euro note which has disappeared somewhere in my apartment all would be right with the world.

XxX

Girls and Bikes

The dreaded ennui has returned. Feeling exceedingly 'blah' about most things. However, how great is this girl and her bike from Vanessa Jackman's blog? I have a fox fur stole, and a trench, et VOILA! Perfect weekend wandering outfit. Though I do wish my warm colouring would cooperate with beige/any pastel hue. It just won't, and I find this upsetting. I spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about pale blue, lavender and candy pink, convince myself that they do work on me, that my mother is wrong and that I am in fact meant to wear them, and then try them on and realise, with a sinking heart, that of course, she is right. It is infuriating.

No shopping and eating out continues apace, as does Weightwatchers, though I have a feeling a planned girly brunch this weekend in a much-lauded neighbourhood american diner may force me to bring in the famous 'no eating out unless it is brunch and you have had a shitty week at work and you are doing SO well' clause. The best blueberry pancakes in Paree deserve to be tried, surely? x

Instead of crawling up the wall....

You GUYS!! I have found the cure to the 'never-ending winter' blues, brought about by the bone chilling winds currently sweeping through Paris. Its REALLY SIMPLE.

You just simply must go and see Hot Chip live, and realise with awe and amazement that they aren't just two little men with computers synthesizing all their electro-goodness, but that they are in fact about 8 incredibly talented musician dudes who play every instrument you hear on their tracks - from keyboards to cowbells to steel drums (my FAVE).

Trust me, its what I did last night and it worked a charm. A CHARM I TELL YOU; there I was, filled with ennui (incidentally, that reminds me of another ennui buster - Glee, and the wonderful scene between Kyle and his dad where his dad asks 'What's wrong' and Kyle replies 'I am filled with ennui'. I always appreciated a good Baudelaire reference.), missing the ladies, marks and spencer, having more than 5 friends, having male friends, and my cats, and then two hours later, i was dancing round my flat singing, too happy to sleep. Good live music is wonderfully restorative. I'm not a 'music' person - my Ipod is an embarassment to many but a joy to me, filled with Bublé, broadway standards, Spice Girls, Motown and little else, and I would never think to buy tickets to a gig, or look out for ones I might want to go to, but whenever I do go, I am amazed. Next up, Mumford and Sons in April. Folky-poppy-swoooooon.

XxX

Not today, thank you

This 'no shopping for lent' kick that I'm on has really got to me. So far, what with my job, and my new obsession with weightwatchers, it hasn't been hard to resist. This is most strange.

I haven't had the urge to buy something new in at least a month. I don't understand it at all. I'm all about the new, that perfect item which will complete my wardrobe, which I must have. It is perfectly logical to me to take half a day off uni work and go and browse for hours.

H and R have a wise and valid explanation for my ambivalency - I've reached wardrobe saturation point. I need nothing more. There is no social occasion for which my wardrobe would not cater, from a hot date (miss selfridge white and black chanelly dress) to a country walk (wellies, leggings, long toast cardigan and a red bobble hat), from a job interview (wonderful tweed hobbes dress) to a sweaty gig (topshop liberty print playsuit). Its all there, with at least two options for every possible scenario. Lucky me, I suppose, but I feel strangely weird about the whole thing. This post has really go me thinking.

Spurred on by her example, I contemplated my extensive wardrobe. Which bits of it could I hand down to my kids? At a pinch, the stuff from toast, my one cherished designer piece - a black silk jersey Vivienne Westwood number, though I think I will have worn it to piece by the time they come along, some expensive italian leather boots, and a few cashmere scarves. Not much, but then again, I am all of 22 and t would surely be strange if I could reel off a list. Ever since credit crunched 18 months ago, magazines have been banging on and on about investment pieces. I'm a student, on a generous student budget but a student budget nonetheless, and therefore I largely ignored this clamour for quality and lasting pieces. But suddenly, it seems extremely attractive. No, I am not going to be scrimping and saving up for a mulberry or a miumiu for the next 6 months, but yes, I will be thinking long and hard about what I buy and why i'm buying, aiming for the whistles and cos end of the high street rather than the primark/topshop demographic.

My proximity to 4 amazing, musty vintage shops, which I can go to on my way back from work, means that when my thirst for a cheap fix returns, I'll be able to satisfy it quickly and 'greenly' . But even this isn't as simply as it sounds - there's no way of knowing whether there'll be anything I even want in one of them on the particular day I go in. It took me 4 months of diligent rummaging to find my fur coat for goodness' sake. All in all, as with most of the rest of my life, Paris has clearly been wonderful for my shopping habits. On my trips back home, i've stepped into Topshop ready to quickdraw my card from my wallet, to no avail. Everything was too cheap, too mass produced, too..Topshop. The girls were shocked. They could not believe it. But I was happy with what I had, and what I have. And I must say, it's a rather nice feeling. This doesn't mean i'm not still obsessed with clothes. I still see my future life in terms of 'what I will be wearing when...', but currently 'what I will be wearing when I am a 4th year' consists of tea dresses with chunky tights and high-heeled desert boots (check, check, check), skinny jeans with baggy cos tops and interesting scarves (check, check, check), and neat, well cut block colour tunics/dresses with a scruffed up bob and big glasses (check, check, check)

Now I suppose the only thing to do is to sit back and see if it lasts...

(Image from Toast's spring/summer catalogue)

Spring

I have had blinding period pain for three days straight, and work has been non stop. These pains have been eased considerably by stumbling across a wonderful blog called moodboard, filled with inpsirational images for how I want my spring to look. All images, apart from Birdge, are from the same editorial shoot for...Lucky I think. So here you go...


I want floral leggings. Proper, thermal floral leggings, to wear with my see by chloe high heeled desert boots.



More summer than spring, but I can never resist a bit of bridge...



More floral leggings, also loving the forest green coat.



I lost my Zara floral blazer in the move from Montmartre to the Marais, and this picture has spurred me on to find a new one. Also love the woolly tights/wooden sandal combination. Defintiely something to try this weeekend. XOXO

Miscellany

I can hear you, screaming hordes of lourking non-commenters, demanding for an update on this new way of approaching food, adn verily I will give you one. It's going pretty well actually. Very easy to follow, very hard to cheat, totally my responsibility, all in all, a thumbs up. The proof will be in Friday's weighing, but so far I'm feeling happy, undeprived, and optimistic.

Finally getting to see An Education this evening. A vintage frock-fest set in Paris and Oxford sounds right up my street, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book, so am very much looking forward to it. Waht is it about being able to recognise places in films? The final two episodes of SATC (after which of course this blog is named) have so much more emotional resonance for me now that I can recognize exactly where all the shots are taking place. On top of tonight's excitement (!), Spring has finally begun to spring, and there are bright blue skies when I walk to work in the morning. Life suddenly looks a lot brighter. Suddenly it has dawned on me that I only have three months left in la belle Paris, and every moment must be ceased. So this weekend, its off to the hidden corners of the Louvre, and a long walk along the left bank. Who know, a wee trip up la Tour Eiffel might even be in store...XoXo