A First Class adventure

Two lovely friends of mine tied the knot this weekend in a beautiful setting, in Boston, USA. Audrey and Chris met at Camp Lakota in Wurtsboro, in New York state, which is where I also met them both. Along with around 100 others, we were counselors (obligatory single "l" as we are talking about the USA here) on a summer camp which lasted two months. The friendships we made during the camp have lasted seven years and counting, and Audrey and Chris are two of the most genuine, kind and loving people I have ever met.

The whole experience for me was a real adventure. To begin with, I was flying standby from Paris (a buddy pass courtesy of another great friend) and I had to take a connecting flight in Cincinatti on the way, and in Atlanta on the way home. None of these flights would be guaranteed for me, but I would get an above average shot of being put in Business Class.

As luck would have it, I was put in BC from Paris to Cincinatti, which was really a fantastic experience. The seats reclined to 160°, there was free-flowing champagne (that I didn't sample until the way home actually), and food of better quality than some restaurants. I was clearly travelling business class for the first time (my yelps of pleasure on finding free toothpaste in my little flight gift bag were pretty telling), but I didn't care, I was comfortable and relaxed, and the seat was mine all the way to Cincinatti.

On the next flight, it was totally full and I wondered if I was going to get on. Luckily I got the very last seat, on the back row next to the toilet and a rather silent old lady.

I'd like to say that I arrived in Boston as fresh as a daisy, having slept in my luxurious business class seat, but even though I enjoyed every minute of the flight, (minus a few bumps during turbulence) I still didn't manage to sleep at all, and arrived with grey circles under my eyes and my hair in a cloud of frizz.

I do recommend business class though. And do you know, you don't get your food served on a plastic tray?

All is safely gathered in

It's the harvest in Chablis at the moment, and all is safely gathered in, as the song would have it. Much like a Playtex cross-your-heart bra.

I was there for some of last week and the weekend, and it was quite fascinating to watch it all happen. There are three enormous machines to press the grapes as they come in, and these machines (pneumatic pressure - no feet unfortunately) are used on just 8 days each year. They must take up the space of a small two-bedroom terraced house, but are really only useful for 1/52nd of the year. Amazing really, but without them we'd all have been pulling off our shoes and socks and contaminating the year's vintage with skin particles and the odd fungal infection.

Work-wise things are shimmying along wonderfully, I'm busier than ever with my translation/ interpreting business and aside from a rather hair-raising interpreting job that was way out of my league, I've been bumbling on quite well. It's a bit frustrating to know that the tax man is going to cream off a rather large slice of it all pretty soon, but that's France, and things could be worse than guaranteed health care, cheap public transport and free professional training.

It's pouring down now for the first time in weeks, which doesn't bode well for the rest of the harvest, just over 100 miles away. Rainwater in wine is apparently even worse than the odd athlete's foot breakout...

Goodbye Mumblers

Our band said its final goodbye last weekend, at a rather chilly but very friendly and enjoyable wedding in Poland. Krakow is a beautiful town, relatively unspoilt by the WWII destruction that went on in Warsaw and many other places. It has beautiful sculpted rooftops and shady squares with fountains...

Of course we didn't see any of that because we went straight from the airport to Nowy Sosz, which is neither sculpted nor fountainous.

The weekend began with a rather dramatic event. Our lead guitarist turned up at the airport with only an out-dated ID card; outdated by 6 years! Of course, not even Transavia, the budget airline we used, would allow him to travel with that, so he had to go back to the city and take a train, chuffing through Europe by way of Cologne and Warsaw. It wasn't a disaster in the end, because he arrived ten minutes into the wedding ceremony and managed to play the song he'd been supposed to play. Still, we were all a bit fraught and worried that he might not make it at all, and our repertoire really relies on his playing to sound anything at all like how it's supposed to.

Why he thought he could travel with an ID card that expired in 2002 is beyond me, but all credit to him, he braved the Eastern European train network and managed to get there in time, so that's the main thing. Of course he had to take the train on the way back too, so he spent 40 hours out of his weekend sitting on a train. I think he started to understand why there was a murder on the Orient Express.

So now it's time to hang up our microphones, stay in one more night a week, and leave the world of rock'n'roll behind us. Well, for now anyway. All bands have their life cycle, and this is the end of ours for the moment.

This weekend is a lot calmer, too. I'm in Chablis today and it's nice and quiet. I'm working on my website for my translation business, but it's much harder than I expected. I have new respect for designers.

Next trip, Boston...

Tahiti

As my only and very right commenter put it, yes, I'm off to Krakow this weekend to sing for my band's final gig - my friend S's brother's wedding. So my journeys are not at an end just yet. In fact it'll be followed rather closely by a trip to the States for yet another wedding in Boston in mid-October then hopefully the last trip of the year will be to London for, yes, another wedding.

It seems to be all change at the moment. I have one friend getting promoted to the dizzy heights of business in Hong Kong, another leaving Dubai for Hanoi, another getting knocked up with twins no less, and yet others getting married left right and centre. With childish moans I'm crouched in the corner whining "when is it my turn?"

Paris is lurching back to life after the August population penury, which I have to say I always love. We missed most of it because we were busy cleaning up and decorating the tower in Chablis, but I caught the last week and it was so nice to not have to share your metro seat with a flabby thigh or laptop corner. People occasionally half-smiled at each other instead of the grumpy, "come near me and I'll bite you" looks that are usually so generously shared among Parisien metro-users. But now we're all back and even grumpier than ever because we're no longer on holiday and it's a good eight weeks before the toussaint holiday on November 1st.

One rather spritely metro driver came on the PA the other day while I was on the line 13 at 8am and said "Right ladies and gentlemen, we're off again, next stop, Tahiti. Not really, but you can always dream...". It wasn't particularly funny, but I smiled up at whoever was there and I swear no-one else even blinked an eyelid. If he had said that in any other place on earth I'm sure people would at least have smiled, but in Paris we're so engrossed in not socialising that I think sometimes we forget to live.

Anyway, the train didn't end up in Tahiti or anywhere remotely similar. It regurgitated me in Clichy which is somewhat less enthralling, but at least I didn't get sunburnt.

...and before you know it, it's back to school

My month of frenetic jet-setting around Europe is at its end now; I got back from Stockholm yesterday night and now it's back to the grindstone again (well before a trip to the States in October...but that's for a wedding).
I'm realising that the reason I feel so frazzled when I'm working is that I'm trying to squeeze in a full month's worth of work into just a few weeks, all the time.
Stockholm was fantastic, I loved the city, the people and most of all, the way you say "hej" - pronounced like "hey" - whenever you go into a shop or get on a bus. It just feels so cool and laid back. I was ready for a bit of Parisian sun though, but looking out my window this morning there doesn't seem to be an optimistic outlook; grey and heavy clouds ready to drop their loads.
So after a summer of Chablis, Warsaw and Stockholm I'm feeling very European and also very guilty about my huge carbon footprint. No more European flights in 2008.

Country Living

Things are going quite nicely in the countryside. Last night I invited G's family over for dinner and made a traditionally English dinner:

Deep fried breaded mushrooms with garlic mayonnaise

**

Roast leg of lamb with mint sauce and honey cider gravy

**

Apple crumble with ice cream

I was in the kitchen all afternoon, especially for the breaded mushrooms which took ages, but it was worth it because they all loved it! I was quite surprised because the lamb and mint sauce was quite sweet (the recipe I found had a honey cider gravy with it) and the French aren't usually big fans of the sucré/salé (sweet/savoury) combination.

Anyway, even G's grandmother was impressed, which was nice, because her cooking is simply fabulous. It took much less time to stack the dishwasher than in did to make the meal, but G's help in that area was greatly appreciated!

So today we're winding down and getting ready for our trip to Warsaw on Tuesday with my parents. We're going for five days and it should be really nice to discover a new city again. It won't be long when we get back before we're off again, this time to Stockholm. But that's a whole other smorgasbord.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the French delight at Alain Bernard's gold medal in swimming. Let's see if Laure Manoudou can match it....

Escape to the Country

I'm currently ensconced in my tower -literally. G and I are in Chablis for most of August, trying to set up our new home in the countryside. The "tower" is attached to his grandmother's house, but is still independent, so we have our privacy as well as being conveniently placed to go around for nourishing meals twice a day...

Chablis is extremely quiet during August, give or take a few passing tourists, but with a bit of sunshine and a few lengths in the pool it's really the relaxing time that I needed after a rather hectic spring and early summer in Paris, setting up my business and trying to hold down two jobs.

I'm still living in Paris too, but from now on will be spending much more time here in Chablis. Not only to see G a little more often (he's here Mon - Fri) but to try to establish a life for myself here too. Make friends, join some clubs, find a band maybe, and perhaps a diving centre.

For the moment it's nice just to relax and concentrate on decorating our house, while keeping my translation business afloat, which is much easier away from Paris.

Right, it's dinner time.

A wreck!

No, I'm not describing the most fantastic week that I've just spent in Anguilla, but the next kind of dive that I've been able to notch up on my (rather short) list of diving experience.

Anguilla was truly amazing. The whole experience. Sunshine everyday, fabulous food every night, amazing wine, interesting people, turquoise seas and azure skies. Truly, it was an experience I will never forget. On the photo I took (above) you can see the hotel's private beach, the main house and the Michel Rostang restaurant (circular) which overlooks the bay on both sides.

The only obligation we had during the week was to be present at dinner each night, to talk to the eight other people on our table about whatever they wished to know about the wine, the pairings with food and all the other things that rich people care to ask about. I discovered an enormous capacity for making up ludicrously inaccurate descriptions for wine and food and nodding sagely while people gave their own (also wildly creative) opinions on the pairings. By the end of the week our world had reduced to whatever would be on the table that night, and during the meal on the fourth night, the criticisms began to creep into the conversation (not ours, we were like kids at Christmas every night!)

One particularly pompous Englishman let it be known that "the food and wine pairing in the starter was a disaster" - please! Nothing about spending a relaxing seven days on a tropical island (short of a shark sampling the way your leg tastes when paired with salt water) could be described as a "disaster." Losing your house, falling ill, getting fired; these are disasters. We took the light view and just rolled our eyes and changed the subject when comments like these threatened to spoil the incredible efforts that the six chefs had made.

There really was no need for criticism. The six chefs were really incredible and the food was consistently wonderful. It was like eating at a high-class restaurant every night, without the hefty bill.

The highlight of the days in Anguilla was the diving. We did 8 dives in total, over four days, and we did several different diving spots:

The Sarah
The Oosterdiep
Frenchman's Reef
Frenchman's Reef (west)
Crystal Reef
Shoal Bay Reef
Blowing Rock
Anguilita

They were all fantastic experiences. We did our Open Water diver certification in Egypt last year, and I thought I would have forgotten everything, but apart from a few water-in-the-noses panicky moments, it came slowly back and we enjoyed every minute of the dives.

G was especially proud to have seen a nurse shark, the first shark he has seen while diving. Unfortunately I was in front and didn't see it, and no sooner did it appear than it had left. He has another witness though, so I have to believe him.

So on Monday morning last week it was extremely hard to get back into the swing of real life. I did overtime at work and translations were coming in thick and fast, plus the jetlag really didn't subside until Thursday.

I can't complain though, only two more working days and it's holiday time again, this time low-key, in England and at home in Chablis and Paris.

Right, time to get that ironing done!

Lucky Girl

I have just had a wonderful two days, I went to a hammam to get my skin buffed up ready for the sunshine, had dinner with friends, went to the beauty salon for a pre-holiday manicure and basically enjoyed a relaxing couple of days, with a bit of translating here and there.

Tomorrow, G and I are going to a wedding, a friend of his from school is tying the knot in the rather beautiful Pavillon Dauphine, in the Bois de Boulogne. I have never been there before, but from the website it looks really stunning.

Then, on Sunday our dream holiday begins. We're flying to Anguilla, a small island off St Martin, for a week of gastronomy and relaxation. G's Chablis wine estate exports to the US, and his US importer has organised a week where master wine producers and master chefs come together to blend their talents, with a dinner each night created by a different chef, using wines from the producers. The Malliouhana, where we're staying and where the event is organised, is well-known for its food (apparently) and so it's a safe bet that we'll eat well.

I'm very excited about the whole event, not least because I'll get to spend a whole week with my lovely G, but also because this kind of opportunity does not come up very often and it's vital to enjoy it to the full.

Our friends from New York are also coming to the island at the same time as us, so we'll be able to catch up with them and perhaps go diving together, sip cocktails on the beach and leave our busy working lives behind us.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and sit on my suitcase.

Hélène Darroze

On Friday evening I enjoyed one of the most delicious, luxurious and expensive meals I have ever had. Perhaps simply the best.

Hélène Darroze is a young chef who recently received her second Michelin star. I may be wrong, but I think Pic in Valence is the only other woman who has received this accolade. OK, she is now a trendy name in the gastronomical world, and she has prices to match, but I really believe it is worth it.

We decided to go for the tasting menu with a delectable selection of 7 courses. After our scrumptious pink champagne apéritif, we started with small lobster slices and vegetables, drizzled with almond gazpacho. The second starter was foie gras with asparagus and crispy artichoke. This was followed by an aubergine caviar ravioli with sheep's cheese, with tomato and basil. Then came the fish course, which was a fantastic tuna fillet which melted in the mouth, surrounded with a duet of piperade and balsamic vinegar sauces. The meat came in the form of a stuffed tomato, but here the stuffing was duck confit and foie gras. The cheese trolley came next with a selection from the south west and then the grand finale began with a panna cotta with strawberry sorbet and strawberries and a final chocolate grenache with raspberries. Coffee and delicious truffles followed, as well as macaroons and nougat of all kinds.

The experience of this dining extravaganza will stay with me for a long, long time. I did wonder if it would be worth the price tag, and of course there is an argument which says that a month's rent should be spent on housing and not splashing out, but it was such a pleasure to treat my parents to this experience that I think it's worth the pasta and butter meals I'll be eating for the next two months...