Calm down, calm down.

It was just a joke.

**!%^**!!??*?!!***

Words fail me...

Does he look sheepish or what ?

**!? What the ...??!

Is this just too much, dahlings?

Don't get me started on this ......

I've seen dogs in handbags, dogs in supermarket trolleys (in the FOOD compartment!), dogs in bread shops, dogs on buses, dogs in the metro (and just let your mind linger on the consequences of that...), dogs in restaurants attacking passing ankles from their hideout under the table but this was the one that did it.

She was sharing her food with it.

The dog is wearing a pearl necklace.

Would you like to sit on that barstool next?

Where do all the colours go?

This is the walk from the carpark to the market at Mèze. I can't tell you how different it is from my habitual walk to the market.

We're are just back from a fabulous week's holiday near Pézenas in Languedoc with friends. I was hoping for unseasonably cool weather and , by George, she got it! There was always a breeze but, when it did get hot, I had ways and means to keep out of the sun.
Our accommodation was on a wine-growing estate, now largely grubbed up as no longer a viable economic concern, and we were in one of the three newly renovated farm buildings. It was a treat for the eyes. Colours, flowers, birds, butterflies, Templar castles .... I am used to the greys and beiges of Paris and these wonderful sights were astonishing. No wonder Vincent went barmy after the grim skies of the Belgian coalmines.

We spent an enchanting hour/half hour? at this old cornmill next to a Roman bridge. There was silence, fishing, frequent flypasts by kingfishers and even a graceful passage of a blindingly white egret. Magical.


Back in Paris, and it hasn't stopped raining but that's fine. Sluice those pavements !

A nice bit of wrought iron.

There's nothing the French like more than a nice bit of wrought iron and I must admit that I'm a bit of a fan too. Roccoco overload is all right by me. This is the best example I have ever seen: fluid, elegant and functional. No way is anyone going to climb round or over this little lot.

If you go to see the film about Molière, you will recognise this.

Unexpected trip back home.

We hadn't expected to be back in the UK quite so soon but No 1 son was admitted to hospital for some intravenous treatment. He was in for one night and decided that, after the worst night of his life, he was better off outside and returning the next day for more treatment.
We arrived hot off the Eurostar in time to pick him up outside the hospital, take him home, feed him up and watch the colour return to his face. He had been in the Geriatric ward.

He is fine now and planning a trip to Paris.

But the bonus was that I got to see my garden in mid-May. Plants that I had never seen in flower were blooming. My roses had survived periods of drought with only sporadic emergency attention and were flush with pale blooms. Lavenders were just poised to show their colours. Aaaah ! Gorgeous.

And all's well that ends well.

More friends !

After the Lalique exhibition , which was just gorgeous, our next outing was to Giverny. Coachloads of people turn up but the garden is so arranged with no open vistas, that they disappear after a while.
The water garden used to be separated from the main garden by a railway line but this is now a road and an underpass gives access.
Every season produces eye-watering displays. We arrived just as the lilacs and tulips were waning and the irises and roses were blooming. The nasturtium alley in October stops you in your tracks.

Our next day out was to Auvers-sur-Oise, where van Gogh painted like crazy just before he shot himself.
This is THE wheatfield - minus crows.

We stopped off here for a swift half.
Absinthe was not a good thing.

After being caught in a deluge, we sheltered in here to dry out and decide what to do. Good job Steve checked the opening hours of the van Gogh museum !
This café commemorates Kirk van Douglas, who was giving Vicky the eye all the time we were there.

No, I don't understand it either...

During Dave and Vicky's visit, a contemporary Art exhibition was being installed in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
What is all this about , then? Cardboard cutouts of a man in a suit, who is masked by sheets of paper, holding a pair of red stilettoes and being held back by a musketeer? What are the references here? The statue is of a 17th century French queen. Any offers?


Now, this reference is plain. We are in Joan of Arc territory. Jeanne d'Arc, whose surname is "Brûlée-par-les-Anglais". I have lost count of the times I have been reminded of this particular crime.

Monet, Monet, Monet!

Just a little taster of another outing with more visitors.

Click on those photos, mes amis.

Visitors!

After an aborted first attempt, Russ and Nettie finally made it to Paris for a weekend.
We started off at Madame de Sévigné's house, now a museum, in the Marais and then had a lovely lunch in the dappled shade of the plane trees.





I feel this photo should have a jagged rip down the centre, separating our two friends, with the caption: "Frosty relations in the City of Romance. Is divorce on the menu?".
Nettie was studying the carte and Russ was in touch with a Cabinet Minister.





Then off for a walk around the islands, a boat trip on the Seine and a stroll along the Champs Elysées.
Some people had a snooze before the evening outing .


Next day Russ took us on a walk in the Bois. No, I still don't like it. Roads and paths, traffic islands and a lake that everyone walks around in single file.
But we had mates with us and it was great!

Such a lot to catch up on

This was a walk we did in Paris in April on a day that turned into a scorching hot afternoon.
We have places to go before we leave Paris and Père La Chaise cemetery was one of them. Perhaps because of the summery weather and fresh green leaves, it was absolutely gorgeous. We found Jim Morrison's ugly slab of a memorial, surrounded by metal crush barriers but these old 19th century gravestones reflect more the dignity and atmosphere of the place.


We walked on to the Canal St Martin, which I had high hopes for.
The Amélie bridge area was pretty but as the canal is still being squatted by the homeless of Paris, the pervading smell of urine was heavy in the air . See ! No Canal No. 5 joke.





We took the metro to more familiar ground and went to this favourite café at Palais Royal. This is THE friendly waiter in Paris. Remember his face. He smiles.
Steve had warm Tarte Tatin and I had Fromage frais with rhubarb compote.
The building on the right is the theatre of the Comédie Française. We really should go.





Just behind the waiter's hand is this metro entrance.
Have you ever seen such a jewel-like structure? Just beautiful.
You really should click on this photo to appreciate it..












Then a walk through the Tuileries, passing through the Louvre arches from where you can look down into the inner courtyards of the museum to catch your breath at the sight of this.



And then further on through the gardens, passing the Maillol sculptures, which I had previously ignored, until a drawing lesson in the Musée Maillol, when I had to concentrate on them for three hours and came to appreciate their heft.

Water leak at our house finally resolved

Well, well, well ....... who'd've thought it?

Water Company expert no. 3 turned up today as we haemorrhaged water while, at the same time, not using any. The first thing he checked was ........ if our meter was, in fact, connected to the supply pipe for our house. Ha, ha, ha!

No, it was not.

Was our meter registering the consumption of our ecologically aware neighbours. Or the neighbours with a swimming pool .... WITH A LEAK ?!

Yes, we have paid our water bill in advance for the next 62 years but we intend to get it back.

Caught in the act.

On my 5 minute walk from my painting class opposite the Pompidou centre to the metro at Hôtel de Ville , I pass this shop window. It is full of beautiful blue glass syphons and papery white ceramic vegetables. They are irresistible. I took lots of photos, flash and non-flash from different angles .


They required very close inspection to appreciate fully the delicacy of the execution of leaf and root so I got closer and closer to the window , still snapping away ....

...until the net curtain behind the glass shelves was gently pulled aside by the gentleman I had been blinding as he ate his lunch. He was gracious enough to smile at the woman, who had been peering into his face and food at a distance of 30 cms.

Deep breaths ....

An English Oak.

I prefer torpor to stress.

For some unfathomable reason I pressed the "Update" button on my blog and hoped that the improvements would function without any effort on my part. I have delayed further blogging because I'm not sure I'm in control of it any more - just like lots of other things.

We left England on Sunday, knowing that we were paying water rates at four times the cost of our neighbours, who use more water than we do. The Water Company checked our meter, which was 6 inches under water at the time, after 2 weeks without rain and in a position on top of a hill. That seemed perfectly normal to them and they decided we had no leak.
"Oh , yes we do!"
"Oh, no you don't!"

Today Team 2 appeared , poked about with a rod in our meter chamber and a jet of water spewed up into the air.
"Yes , you do have a leak."
A neighbour said that as the day wore on and the water continued to gush, flooding friends' garages and electricity junction boxes, people at the bottom of the hill were able to use canoes to cross the road. Are we paying for that water ? Yes, I imagine we are.
We await the return of Team 2 tomorrow. Is the leak roadside or homeside of the meter? Is this the only leak or is there another one under our drive? Whose idea was it not to take out leaky pipe insurance?

This same evening Son no 2 phoned to say he had had an accident. A bus had pushed up against his car on a narrow one-way system, denting and scraping his door and back panel. He is fine but shaky and worried because the bus drove on and he has no witnesses.

I hate not being in control. Long-distance problems cause more stress. And I haven't got a photo for this post.

Please take a chair.

It looks like the Sixties to me: the era of orange plastic and chairs you either slid off or stuck to. This was a display at the wonderful Museum of Decorative Arts, housed in a wing of the Louvre. The building is newly renovated and the recommended tour of the exhibits is marginally more complicated than the route out of the Labyrinth.

Just what the doctor ordered.

My bad cholesterol level is too high so the doctor told me, amongst other advice, to avoid alcohol - apart from 2 glasses of wine a night! Honest, that is what he said!
Now, that's the kind of doctor you like.

Yes, very beautiful.

- We are very beautiful, non?

Animal or vegetable?

Have you ever seen a French poodle in its horticultural form? Well, here it is: pruned, trimmed and tortured to within an inch of its life.


This tightly shaped shrub has no merit. It is as charmless as a Victorian corseted waist or a bound Chinese female foot.
I feel no pleasure in looking at it, only dismay that successive gardeners have spent years forcing it into this ugly, humiliating shape. It reveals no love of the natural world, simply a desire to dominate, tame and bend to the human will.

Feast your eyes on the Best of Breed parade on permanent display at Versailles.

Feeling a little woozy.

I have been having dizzy spells lately due to nano particles in my inner ear swishing about in the wrong canal. So imagine how I felt when we came across this sight on avenue Georges V last weekend. I could barely keep upright.
There is no crazy mirror trickery going on here. This is how Parisians deal with the sight of "not beautiful" scaffolding. In the stylish and expensive 8th arrondissement, ugliness is not tolerated in either human or architectural form so with panache and wit they construct an outer skin to hide all the dirty, messy, untidy process. When the Gucci shop was undergoing a similar process, the whole building was enclosed in one massive Gucci suitcase complete with metal locks and leather trim (or so it appeared).


The windows are recessed and glassy. The corbels are three-dimensional. It is a very disorienting experience - take it from me, as I lie flat on my back on the pavement.

Back in the Land of Plenty.

I don't see much of the Winter sky in Paris. Light pollution and tall buildings obscure most of it. Consequently I can't judge what the weather is going to do apart from sticking my head out of the window to see what the locals are wearing for the day.
This lovely wintry sky will keep me going.

Remind me again where I live. Darfur? Zimbabwe?
Oh yes, Paris: gourmet capital of the world.
Then why do we insist on bringing back with us Red Cross food parcels of groceries?!!? You cannot see the kilos of porridge oats, boxes and boxes of Shreddies, jars of curry pastes and marmalade.


And this! Will I be able to make any sense of this? After today's attempt, obviously not. These are remote headphones, which should enable me to listen to podcasts of Radio 4 plays while I do my ironing. The reason I cannot listen directly from the computer speakers and iron in the same room is too long and involves melted plugs and metal prongs welded into a socket.