home again

Posted on | August 7, 2010 | No Comments

we’ve been home for only nine days and it feels as though paris was a lifetime ago already.
really, you couldn’t find two environments more different than the middle of the marais and the outskirts of malanda.
fortunately, both places have their compensations.

usually when we go away, by the last week, my husband is ravingly homesick….asking me what i think the cats might be doing right now (the answer is always: sleeping or eating), or how much rain do i think the place is getting.
he is usually the one who has to be coaxed onto a plane for the next adventure, because he truly is a happy homebody.

in a bizarre turn of events, he is the one who is heading back to paris in about 4 weeks’ time.
yes, i am aghast!
he was home for four days and spent the entire time on the phone telling his mum how beautiful paris is…..and to cut a long story short, early next month he is taking his mum to paris for 17 days.
o and just to make me completely sick, they are going via tokyo and will be staying in the ginza.
yes, i booked it all for them.
it is going to be an awesome trip, flying right into charles de gaulle airport, armed with opera tickets and paris museum passes.
i am choked at the thought of all the art in the louvre that i missed purely because of time constraints….but i know that my mother-in-law will have the time of her life, and she has a great guide.

meanwhile, i am trying not to be too overtly jealous and to find some joy in life.
i picked a bowl full of brazilian cherries which are covering a tree outside my office window right now.
they are an acquired taste, kinda tart and sweet and herbally/eucalyptus-y at the same time.
but once you have the taste for them, you salivate when you see them ripening on the tree.
i have tried something different….putting them in the fridge.
i read on the internet that this makes the eucalyptus flavour go away and the sweetness increase.
we shall see.

they really are cute:

and here is a picture i took at hampton court, with my back to the thames, looking in to a thundery sky.
we had the most perfect summer day there, picnicking under the trees, wandering the house, and zipping around the maze and suddenly there was this roiling sky behind the gold gates.