Tuesday 29 June 2010

A pint of Pimms and a bout of Bondi longing

So I am officially wilting. As temperatures "soar" towards 30 (in honour of moi no doubt) I am flagging/melting/sweating/sooking - take your pick.

It is nearly 7pm, the sun is still hot and high in the sky and I have just reached the bottom of what will speculatively be the first of at least three pints of Pimms - strawberry heavy and oh so delicious.


I shouldn't complain but when the weather is this beautiful - and beautiful it is - all I ache for is the cold embracing slap of a Bondi wave. If I close my eyes I can feel it now. Tepid showers just aren't the same somehow, even with my swimmers on.

The weather is set to last for at least the next week, which for my increasingly Pommified LB (he who wears shorts to work when it's 15 degrees out....) is most exciting but as I have pointed out, 10 days of sunshine does not a summer make. Holidays in Turkey however and now we're talking. But one sojourn at a time.

As a post-birthday-still-your-birthday 30th surprise LB and my Maman conspired to organise a jaunt to Paris for me and Le Boy and after days of torturous teasing and nonchalant distraction of the covert kind, I found out last Monday that we were off to Paris on Thursday. I was so overwhelmed I might have maybe cried a little. Maybe. A little.



Paris was beautiful. Stinking hot. But beautiful. Rammed full of tourists. But beautiful. Stinking hot (did I mention that already?) But beautiful. We wandered, we ate, we drank pink wine, we ate some more... pastries from Galeries Lafayette, strawberries from the food market on Ave President Wilson... Mmm mmm mm. Too hot for much culture, we did see the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at the Petit Palais but not much else besides, opting instead for promenading and a few key city must see's that were missed off my last trip to Paris because I was having too much fun with my Mum at Le Bon Marche and Sephora. Ahh happy days.



LB and I stayed at a tres posh, tres lovely hotel near the Arc de Triomphe and would have got tres romantical wandering the streets of Paris hand in hand had it not been for sweaty palms and stinky heat. We did joke about Paris being the city of love and it was lovely and lovey - in spite of my occasionally toddler-esque demands for shade. Rest assured there were also jokes about getting betrothed in Paris but we agreed that it would be rather fromagey to get engaged in The Most Romantic City In The World and we left the topic well alone. And with so many pastries to eat can you blame us?

Getting back to London (thankfully before some numpty tried to board the Eurostar in Paris with a live pre-WW1 rocket he'd picked up at a flea market and that caused epic delays at Gard de Nord) LB had the very clever idea to insist that every time we returned from one holiday we should book another and so.... Turkey here we come. Just not soon enough. 10 weeks and counting baby.


Today was also something of a red letter day. In trying to get my freelance writing back up and typing I got back in touch with a couple of Australian publications I used to write for and one of them, serendipitously, is preparing an issue on public art - and so my dissertation may yet get a serious make over and after some brutal editing, find itself a home and a readership beyond the realms of LB, LB's lovely mum and my own patient thoughtful family.

Until then though, I have a couple of other commissions to get on with and some art to see and some summer ensembles to air. And I definately need another Pimms.

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