A Sunday like we used to have

What feels like months of painfully hard work are becoming manageable, if not coming to an end. We moved mid-August, into a flat with no floor in the main room, full to the newly smooth ceiling with boxes and furniture and little by little are touching up, arranging and unpacking. On Sunday we had our first lazy day in three months, wandering round the quartier from café, to bar, to steps of the Sacré Coeur. Edging back to normality, happy faces!

Sarah is also in DIY heaven at the moment, the last I head they were priming walls and sawing bit off kitchen units. pink milk will be a little more lively soon, once I have located the pink milk box and created some sort of area. I found a vintage scarf I'd sold to a girl in the States on Portobello Market when stranded in London because of the Eurostar fire, the other week. I also bought an ealry 70s hairclip still in its packaging whch will be photographed and listed soon.

Stop, start, stop...

We've been working really hard this week - especially D - and treated ourselves to a nice lunch in a sunny garden mid-week featuring the café gourmand above, yum yum.


Unfortunately, the electrician hasn't been doing the same and at the half-way point of his job, we still have huge slashes in the walls, all ready for electrical cables, yet no actual wiring.


We've started to paint where he won't need to touch and the kitchen is already transformed form the yellowing, poky space it was before. Units won't be staying like that by the way, but not really a priority when we still have no floors and minimal walls painted so close to our move date... which we're having to extend by a week, but the electrician doesn't need to know that, does he?

The quest for a level floor

Think my cold is coming to an end and I may venture to the appartment today. D doing a great job single-handedly removing all wallpaper to reveal old, weak plaster unfortuantely so we will need to put up lining paper before painting. Today's task is to scrape off the glue from the carpet and have another go at re-levelling the floor with levelling agent and the help of our expert friend. If not, we have professionals on stand-by to lay a skin across half of the floor on which the flooring people can lay our floor.

I like the levelling compound, close-up it looks like lava.

Ps: Look! Two doors! In the same room!

The wall comes down...

We had the keys on Friday and our friends helped us to knock down the wall on Saturday, for which I love them all dearly as it was highly nerve-wracking!




More dust than I have ever seen...

Four days in Paris

Sarah and the Iron Lady.

Ostensibly here to watch Lenny 'the gorgeous' Kravitz play the Zenith on Wednesday night (Sarah, see pics for 07/02 and weep) pink milk Sarah and her husband Jools spent four happy (and two rather damp) days pottering around Paris while we were at work.

Lunch in the Marais, note the Hello Berlin necklace.

I joined them on Friday for lunch in the Marais and a quicker-than-expected whiz round the Richard Avedon expo at the Jeu de Paume, a solid retrospective of his portraiture and in particular, work produced in the early eighties on the American West, then a walk through the Tuileries. I enjoyed it so much I think I shall go again and think you should too if you are in Paris this summer.


Evening activities included drinks in the Fourmis, poker and plenty of good food and wine.


A short Saturday - due to over-indulgence the night before, as I celebrated my winning poker hand above - was spent pottering around Abbesses having coffee and doing some uncharacteristically restrained shopping with a poke around La Cave à fripes for vintage and Bel Air for new.

Thank you Sarah for my littleanorkagirl birthday necklace!

We topped the week off with dinner at Hôtel du Nord on the Canal St Martin, my favourite Parisian dining establishment, with an apéro ou digestif (pourquoi pas les deux?) at Chez Prune over the humpbacked bridge on the other side of the water.

As always, we had a delightful meal, to round off a delightful few days. And after three short hours of sleep, they left for the aiport early the next morning.

Thank you for coming, let's not leave it so long next time!