Festival of Fuchsia

Dahlings, it's been excitement overload.  I've been participating in the Festival of Fuchsia.  Dear FF, as you no doubt know, has been Over Here on a Garden Tour and to visit her sister in London.  I was thrilled to go to Paris with her and her sister for the weekend.

Dahlings, I felt I had died and gone to heaven as I climbed onto the Eurostar with FF, her sis and their matching Chanel handbags.

The trip was eventful, not least because a dastardly clipboard wielding pickpocket relieved me of my iPhone on the rue de Rivoli.

So no Paris pics from me.

But I did spend an entertaining hour in the Commissariat de police, tormenting the clerk with my French.  I can report that the police in France seem as preoccupied with snacks as the police here: important phone calls took place where the number of sugars in coffee was clarifed; beefy armed cops strolled in bearing cakes and biscuits; other police operatives helped themselves to buns and chocolate.  I innocently asked them if they watched the French cop drama Spiral (Engrenages) and had to dig my nails in my hand to prevent hysterical laughter when the clerk told me in all seriousness that Spiral was an accurate depiction of their professional life.  I must have missed the scenes involving hot chocolate and doughnuts...

Well FF may have shown me Chanel and Hermes, and her sister took us to the most lovely restaurants, but I feel I did my bit by showing them the inside of a police station....


FF gave me this lovely silk scarf from Honkers so I scarfed it up in a jaunty Parisian fashion.

On Sunday we strolled round the Place des Vosges and poked our noses into the Pavillon de la Reine Hotel, in a courtyard off the Place.  Mr B and I spent our first wedding anniversary there. Here's a visual from those days, one of us now has less hair and one of us can no longer fit into that skirt (really wish Mr B would stop wearing my clothes...)

And what did I bring home from Paris?

Sugar lumps.

Yes, I know, odd, but I adore the way the French do the small things in such a dinky, charming way and sugar lumps are one of them.


It was so lovely to catch up with dear FF, we talked nonstop on the Eurostar all the way there and all the way back.  I'd just like to apologise to the man in seat 67 (outward) and the man in seat 32 (return); sorry about your headaches but I do think trying to climb out of the train when it was hitting 150mph was a bit extreme...

Mrs Blighty is a Twit and Other Unsurprising Things

Hi Dahlings!  Hope you are all well.
Still sulking about not getting that Pope gig?
 Get a grip, just having a pair of red shoes and a working knowledge of The Da Vinci Code was never going to be enough!

Here it is cold. Snow is still lying on the ground and small boys are still being forced to wear vests..

Melusine has started a blog http://idbedarling.blogspot.co.uk/ and did a lovely post here -so appropriate for this weather.

pic blatantly stolen from her post - to whet your appetite and send you over there, her blog is visually sumptuous...

This polish is still available - a Classic! I have it. Inspired by Melusine's post, I applied it to my paws. It lasted 6 mins before it chipped while I was doing some light welding making an omelette.

pic from Amazon UK

( In urgent Nail Polish News, I have decided classic reds and pinks are the Way Forward for a woman of my age...tune in next week to Nail Polish News when I announce that ombre nails, lime green and gold and turquoise stripes are the Way Forward..)

In other news I have become Completely Obsessed with Twitter; not the real celeb accounts but the spoof ones.

Here are some more I really like (apologies if you know these already).

https://twitter.com/Queen_UK



https://twitter.com/HonestToddler




Dahlings, let me know if you have any favourite funny Tweeters.
Really important I waste even more of my time laughing at incredibly rude tweets by fake Bill Clinton.  WARNING VERY RUDE DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU
https://twitter.com/PimpBillClinton


Slight problem is that I have them all mixed in with Serious Tweets - updates from Boy 1 or Boy 2's schools, the real newspapers, the hockey club, book blogs, and it's sometimes hard to tell which are which... like this one

schools emergency classroom threat list



Finished this book.

 Mr B read it before me and really liked it.  Took me a while to get into it.  Realised Mr B liked it because there were a few references to winter tyres.   Mr B likes a winter tyre angle in his literature.  He is a hopeless dreamer is ole Mr B.  In the end I liked book as very unflashy and well put together with interesting characters and a twist in the plot; quite a bit on legal procedure which I like (yep, I am a hopeless dreamer too).

I leave you with some fantastic pictures of Paris in the snow, taken by my French friend Monsieur
OM.  Paris always looks better than anywhere else, whatever the weather, n'est-ce pas? By the way, still loving Spiral 4 and Juge Roban...wonder if he tweets?  Wonder if he wears a vest?

10 years later

Dahlings how are you?

As predicted Boy 2 returned from his school trip and had the Tantrum of All Tantrums.

Maybe he is affected by the break up of Girls Aloud.

I know I am.

From the Guardian on-line

Girls Aloud is about the same age as Boy 2 -  I used to sit on the sofa feeding the baby Boy 2 (I know, TMI)  and watching Popstars the Rivals, which created Girls Aloud.  So I feel a link between them and Boy 2.

And I have lived it: the tears, the laughter, the arguments, the nightclubs, the footballers, the tattoos, the dodgy singing.. and that's just Boy 2..

In other news I am trying to understand the Harlem Shake meme.  This article explains it.
 here.  The latest is the sacking of the librarian at St Hilda's Oxford for failing to stop a Harlem Shake in the library.

In Haircare News, I have bought this.  Excellent for de-tangling.






And this.  To deal with the ever present worry of Colour Fading/Brassy Tones.

From look.fantastic.com

I know you all will be very relieved, my haircare issues must have been keeping you awake at night.


I read this. It is really quite horrid.  Only read if you really have to, and preferably on hols on a sunbed.  Not on your own, late at night.





I enjoyed this more - Linda in Chile has read it too.

I have done a new whatsit on my sidebar showing what I am currently reading.  I stole the idea from Mrs Peabody and the other book bloggers.  See, I wanna play with the grown ups too.


I am busy preparing for my trip to Paris with Faux Fuchsia by watching this tough French cop/lawyer drama, Spiral 4.

Spiral 4 - from BBC Four websiste

  I can now say in French "Shut up punk, spread them, it's the slammer for you" which should come in handy in Hermes (those sales assistants can be very uppity).



Juge Roban is my favourite character, he is very tall and thin and dinky in a very French way, and look at his hair, I bet he uses Aveda shampoo too.

From BBC Four website

Finally I am LOVING this Twitter thing - makes me laugh till I cry - the spoof prison diary of Chris Huhne (probably not of interest to non-UK readers, he is the ex-Cabinet Minister recently jailed for perverting the course of justice by getting his now ex-wife to take his penalty points for speeding...)


Bye for now, stay strong, Girls Aloud may have broken up but there is always One Direction....yes, quite.

Blighty in Paris

Dahlings, I've just had a mini break  in Paris with Mr B and the boys.

Here's a list of things our trip did not involve:
Hermes
Chanel
Cartier
Louis Vuitton
Rue Cambon
Place Vendome

Here are some of the things it did offer us:
cranes
grumpy waiters
graveyards
strictly regulated grass
some famous painting or other
cakes
architecture

Cimetiere de Montparnasse

Louvre with cranes

Spot of rain in Montmartre

Jardins de Luxembourg - pelouse interdite

Jardins de Luxembourg - pelouse autorisee

Pompy Poo Centre (as referred to by Boys 1 and 2)

Mrs B carries out impromptu nit check at top of L'Arc de Triomphe

Mr B goes all arty with the camera

It was great fun, we had a lot of laughs - some at my expense after I dragged everyone to the Telegraphe metro station as I had read on the internet there were great views from there.  We arrive - yes, we are high up, views no, as we are surrounded by buildings.  I imagine some geeks from MIT caught us on their net cam  - "yay, Eric, we got some more losers who fell for the old Telegraph Metro joke.."

And the whole trip was not in vain either from an educational point of view - once we got home, Boy 2 modestly ventured that he could actually speak some French - and rattled off,
"Peux-je aller aux toilettes, s'il vous plait Madame?"
My bosom swelleth, as they say.