My Favourite Things – Rodgers & Hammerstein 1959

Ever felt like the very ground under your feet is falling away each time you take a step, like in a scene from a Roland Emmerich movie? Ever had to declare your taxes in France earning a PhD in fiscal legislation along the way? Ever been in love with a man who doesn’t love you back?

In short, the last two months have been a quite a rough ride; in the style of a Parisian taxi journey in peak hour, more twists and hairpin bends than the Old Bathurst Road. An exploding volcano preventing me from returning to my home may actually have been a red-hot igneous warning sign – WRONG WAY GO BACK.

Well I didn’t, and I haven’t.

But when I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary doesn’t sing to me, although Mother Bear has been putting in overtime on the early morning phone call shift; instead I try very hard to surround myself with my favourite things. Things that, inanimate and rather ordinary to others, bring a smile to this wearied face.

Oriental Lilies that smell.

This bunch, costing almost as much as the flight from Nairobi that brought them to the Monceau Fleurs down the road, smell of summer, sunshine and places far away from the destroyed wall they are almost covering. That wall, destroyed about 5 weeks before Christmas, is waiting to dry out before the nice insurance people will come over and fix it. The upside is the nice insurance man, a surfer, who visits every 8 weeks to jab needles into the wall while asking the world’s only non-surfing Australian detailed and intricate questions about the best places to surf in Australia. 

As for that rather unfortunate variety of Lilies that don’t smell, I’ve been tricked a few times, so jamming your face in the buds before handing over your cash is the only way to be sure. You’ll also notice that being as anal-retentive as I am, I remove the stamens carefully with a tissue as each flower opens. The smell, wafting past as I write this, is second only to the aroma imparted from what sits in front.

 Jo Malone Black Pomegranate candles.

I like smells, flower smells, baking smells and clean washing smells. Clean sheets drying in front of open windows providing a cheaper alternative to designer luxury candles that are so precious and criminally expensive, I only burn them for 30 minutes each evening.

So that is the olfactory covered, onto the auditory.

Glee.

A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet, and if the show were called Misery, Morose or Suckity Suck Suck, I am sure it would not lift the spirits quite as much as it does. I love a good show tune; especially of the flipping the bird at the world variety like Everything’s comin’ up Roses and Don’t rain on my parade. A definite benefit of exercising so early is singing Barbra or Bette at the top of your lungs, safe in the knowledge that no one will hear you scream.

The visual. Spending as much time as I do typing, for pleasure and profession, looking down at my hands moving deftly across a keyboard (yes I still look at my fingers when I type), leads to vague thoughts of aging hands that spent too much time in harsh restaurant dishwater and harsher Australian sunshine. So I have camped it up a little with the new Chanel limited edition, Nouvelle Vague. Turquoise fingernails instantly make the wearer feel hip and youthful, all the more so because the truly hip and youthful don’t have enough pocket money to buy it.

  

Touch.

Peter Alexander’s big undies and sheepskin boots are a definite starter, but now I have this.

  Peter recently sent me a fake fur home sweater …WITH EARS. I admit, I am a child, and the notion of wearing half of a pretend Koala suit and turquoise fingernails around my very Parisian home listening to highschool kids singing show tunes helps to offset the very real and very adult problems occupying the rest of my time.

Then there is the surreal. Moments in time that if you didn’t have a Smartphone camera handy to capture it, you might not remember it happened.

After a particularly inebriated welcome home meal with the Fashionista, just back from 3 months in the jungle, we walked, somewhat carefully and windingly back to our joint metro line at Concorde. The faint sound of music as we approached, coupled with a small crowd, signalled that something was happening. A fight? A tour group? A guy juggling fire with a fishbowl on his head?

 

It was a group of dancers, gathered in front of the Obelisk, at dusk, measuring out the Tango, completely focussed upon the face of their partner and not the 30 or so faces gathered around them, smiling in wonder at the absolute magic of such an unexpected sight.

…and then I don’t feel so bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Inner Pickle]

Gorgeous. All of it. Particularly the turquoise. xxx