Walk like a Parisienne...

We're in Paris for the day, treating my four (and a half) year old niece to a grown-up lunch. First we picked up her mother from work and took them both to Brasserie Bofinger (it was plan B. Turns out plan A, a neighbourhood caf near La Bastille was shut for the month of August - a typical occurrence amongst French businesses).

The Brasserie was everything you'd expect and more: beautiful art nouveau design, first class service (they didn't bat an eyelid at our casual appearance nor did they react to the diminutive stature of  the fourth guest in our party) and the food was great. More about that in a moment.

My niece was treated to a child's menu, complete with crayons and enough games to keep her amused on a transatlantic flight. After lengthy deliberations with her mother (salmon and string beans are a staple favourite at home so she wanted to branch out gastronomically... this is a child who asked to sample our bressaola last night and declared it "délicieux") she settled on an "assiette du terroir" consisting - I kid you not - of smoked ham, foix gras de canard on Poilane slices, and terrine de campagne (a jellied concoction with bits of cooked offal). Meanwhile, I ordered Escargots de Bourgogne (that's snails for the back of the class) as a starter. She ate everything on her plate - minus the terrine - with relish. When the waiter brought my  6 snails, her eyes lit up so being a good aunt I offered her one. Precariously perched on its chunk of bread, the snail (out of its shell), in its garlicky parsley coating (it tastes of garlic bread - get over yourself and try them sometimes) made a bid for freedom bouncing first onto her plate and then her lap. It was reminiscent of Steve McQueen on his motorbike in The Great Escape - except the snail was succesful and eventually landed somewhere under the table, never to be seen again. My niece was mortified and it took her a few red faced minutes to compose herself.

We proceeded with snail number two which we shared without incident. However, not to be outdone in the snail flicking context, I promptly let shell number three fly out of my grasp into a dazzling pirouette. It landed on the pristine starched tablecloth in a flourish of parsley butter splatter that miraculously spared both our party and our rather prissily attired neighbours. A lucky escape. I had a main of Andouillette (that's tripe sausage to you) and some chips (celebration meal of the week on the Dukan Diet...). Yum.

Then we took her for dessert to Les Deux Magots in St Germain des Prés where she sampled the delights of a thick hot chocolate and chocolate ice cream. I had a Mille Feuilles. Double triple yum.

Now, nursing the aftermath of a stonking sugar rush, I am slowly peeling myself off the ceiling.

Vive la France! See you on the other side.

Losing my panties and falling down

I dropped my black yoga panties just outside the 5th floor lifts this morning. And although they were there for no more than 30 seconds, there was a (male) witness when I snatched them back up. Luckily a perfect stranger (hopefully not our CEO whom I get to meet on Thursday... but who else would have been in the otherwise deserted office at 8:30?)

I guess I owe you an explanation.

Let me take you through my new morning routine: I power walk to work in my gym clothes, take the lift to the 5th floor, and change into my work gear in the spacious loos (which are strategically placed on the other side of the lifts from my desk) and then carry my damp gym clothes back to my desk to air dry. Hence the yoga panties (it's ashtanga tonight) dropping (what were the chances of my yoga top slipping instead?) onto the floor unnoticed for the 30 seconds it took me to walk over to my desk...

Now about the falling down. That's just a play on words for dramatic effect. It's about the fact that although it's another 8 days before it's officially Autumn (or Fall in American English... Get it ? Get it?) and despite the fact that today is a rather glorious day in London - it no longer feels like Summer. Something about the air, and the light and the angle of the sun. If I were a bird (which technically speaking I am in English parlance... that's what they call girls here) I would be planning my trip home to sunnier climes right now. If I were a swift for example, preparing to fly back to Africa. Swifts are very common in France (or at least they were when I was growing up. When I was a kid, endangered species were exotic animals like tigers and pandas... now endangered species include sparrows and hedgehogs. What's the world coming to?) and harbingers of Spring. They used to build these very distinctive nests under the roofs at my school and my first teacher took the opportunity to tell us about how they fly all the way to and from Africa. And to me Africa was a bit of desert with yellow sand and a palm tree (an oasis really) or rather a date tree full of dates as food for the swifts.

Life was simple then. Unencumbered. I was 5 years old in first grade. My biggest dilemna was struggling out of my dungarees to go to the bathroom. Like I said, life was simple.

Back to Autumn if I may... about 5 weeks ago, it was a lovely Summer's afternoon as I walked through my neighbourhood but there was something in the air... the smell of browning leaves, the faint smell of burning leaves, a particular golden light and I remember thinking to myself  "that's Autumn coming." And the next day it went back to being Summer.

August is a funny month that way... you think it's the middle of Summer but if you look around there's back to school promotions, and fashion magazines are full of autumn/winter clothes... August is the beginning of the end of Summer. In the same way December always sounds like it's the middle of Winter and that somehow, come January, things will warm up. But no! December is the end of Autumn. Winter starts in earnest in January. They don't tell you that because they don't want to depress you and put you off the January Sales. But now you know.