Oh, its wet!

...And therefore good footwear is needed.

I'm going to Bath for Boots. Anyone care to join me?

We can prance around in Empire Lines, dancing Mr Beveridge's Maggot and looking out for ridiculously good-looking men to climb out of ponds and say "Miss Bennett!" in terms of shocked (yet aroused) surprise.


Or maybe not.

Tea and Tattered Pages

Having dinner with my parents last week, we started talking of the time I worked in Paris. Looking back, I realise how much independance I was given. How many parents would allow their 17 year old daughter to live alone in Paris for a couple of months, holding down a full-time job, merely for the chance to exercise her French language skills? (Of course they didn't forsee Geriatric Patrick, but then I didn't choose to enlighten them so everyone's happy).

The conversation sent me meandering down memory lane, and fondly paused at the doors of Tea and Tattered Pages...

This is my ultimate favourite bookstore. For those who have read my rant about Waterstones et al. imagine for a moment the antithesis of those bookstores and you will have an idea of this wonderful little shop.

On my way to work one day I saw a panel advert in a free magazine they give out in the Metro advertising an English language bookstore, located on rue Mayat near Montparnasse. I was hungering for English by this time so the very next saturday I sought it out.

For those who don't know, rue Mayet in the 6th Arondissement is extremely suburban. With growing trepidation I passed along the silent streets entirely made up of quiet houses - no shops in sight - and wondered if I had made some sort of mistake. Then I saw it. Or rather, I saw the higgledy-piggledy pile of books on a little wooden crate. I looked up at the sign and saw the legend Tea and Tattered Pages.

It was tiny, yet held thousands of books. Some without covers, some ancient leather-bound types, some pulp-fiction and some in nearly-new condition. They were everywhere - squashed in shelves, on racks outside, piled in columns on the floor, heaped at the edges of the iron-work spiral staircase and balanced on top of bookshelves. There were a couple of people avidly reading books, and there was a quiet, peaceful, dusty air of companiable calm. A soft squawk made me turn around to stare into the face a benign looking parrot. I was utterly charmed already, but then I heard the clink of a tea cup. I looked towards the back and saw that there was a shabby-genteel tea room. I say tea room, but it was just a few little round tables and chairs surrounded by, yes, more books. I quickly scooted over and sat down and was delighted to have a choice of English teas (if you're familiar with French 'tea' you can imagine my excitement), brownies and fruit cakes. I placed an order with the smiling lady and promptly fragrant leaf tea in a pretty teapot with mis-matching teacup and saucer arrived. She told me to grab a book and have a read while I drank my tea which I duly did. A couple of hours later I drifted out of the book shop with several dog-eared tomes and an amazing feeling of contentment.

Needless to say Tattered Pages became a frequent haunt of mine, and is still to this day my ideal of a perfect bookshop. I sincerely hope it hasn't changed at all, and if you're ever in Paris, look it up and give it my love.

Amphibians

In my unpacking I've found my glass frog lamp and my moorcroft-y pottery frog!

I am a happy person! I've felt all uncomfortable recently and I realise its because I wasn't surrounded by my usual froggy paraphanalia. :) :) Happy! Happy!

I love frogs!

Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs!
Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs!
Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! Frogs!

Gloat

MY phone is wonderful. Look at what it can do....

• display the tube mape
• holds the London A-Z on it
• Play music
• tells me the weather for the week
• holds e-books
• Plays films!
• Can play dangerously addictive Jawbreaker n' stuff
• writes word documents
• displays PDF documents
• has a camera
• has a photo album with editing function
• has MSN messenger
• write Excel spreadsheets
• displays my contacts
• I can read my emails
• I have GPRS
• I have Bluetooth
• I have a lady on it who tells me what my schedule is and who is calling
• voice dial (which now I've put my own software on it rather than the crappy fonix one actually works!)
• Internet Explorer

It is super and I love it.

:)

The Mysterious Art of Shopping

This area is, of course, naturally the province of ladies of a certain type and most men run away screaming at the prospect of several hours of such consumer activities. While I accept this as a given, I've never really understood the (generally) male antipathy towards shopping.

The typical cry of 'but how can you spend an entire day shopping?' is bewildering to me. Where, precisely, is the difficulty? Now I believe that the problem is that many people (and I include women here) do not know how to shop pleasurably. It is an art and I am an artist par excellence. To prove this I recently took a male friend - who previously hated shopping - on a spree and found a firm convert to this most dynamic of art-forms.

The trick for fun communal shopping is to have a rough sort of game-plan in mind. This willy-nilly drifting in and out of shops with no objective in mind only leads to frustration and ennui. However, one should be careful not to go too far in the opposite direction and have so rigid a plan in mind that disappointment is unavoidable and subsequent murderous rage inevitable.

Firstly, no one likes to do the same thing, non-stop, all day. The day should be punctuated with coffee stops, lunch in relaxing surroundings (not Pret a Manger) and mid-afternoon cocktails. Inbetween times should be an assortment of different types of shopping - some clothes shopping, some gadgetry excitement (I once spent a giggly 10 mins chasing my friend on those electric scooter thingies in Selfridges), a mooch around a good bookstore, snaffling freebies in a food hall and of course shoe shopping.

My fame has grown to the point that I am now booked as the shopping companion of choice. In fact this Saturday I'm off jaunting with one friend, and after much persuasion I'm commissioned for Sunday too (but she has to buy me lunch).

One last piece of advice:

Avoid Oxford Street on Saturday like the plague. There is no need to put yourself through that.