vincent and fennel
just two buddies, chillaxing on a daybed:
the blocks have arrived!
this building is proceeding at a rate of knots. the builder is extraordinarily organised and things happen like clockwork around him. materials, equipment and blokes arrive precisely on cue and leave precisely on cue. i am enjoying watching it all unfold. he makes it look so easy that one would be tempted to have a [...]
if you received a windfall…
i received a note with an online soap order the other day. to the effect that the note-writer had wanted to try my soaps for ever, and she had recently received an inheritance, so now she was buying my soap at last. i was extraordinarily touched by this; the thought that my soap was on [...]
the extension
we’ve been discussing this for six years and at last the day is at hand. we are building an extension onto our home and what this means is that we will no longer have to live in our bedroom. we live in a very simple shed that is divided into a large room, a kitchen [...]
new look for the website
after years of instructing designers to pare things down and go for extreme minimalism, or should i say mnmlsm?….i have had an abrupt volte-face. i am tired tired tired of arial and black and white and wide white spaces on the page. i’ve done that pale discreet subtle natural gentle whispering simple minimal (mnml) thing [...]
home again
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 [...]
kuala lumpur haircut
i had an excellent haircut in KL on weds morning. i chose a salon at random, and was lucky enough to get a stylist called alexander, who cut each hair individually (almost) and then gave me a pretty fabulous colour job to boot. i’ve never had such a precision cut in my life. he did [...]
some images
from the louvre: at versailles: in paris:
almost home again
we are in kuala lumpur right now, in the largest hotel suite we’ve ever seen. we stayed at the renaissance hotel on the way over, and enjoyed it so much that we booked for our return. upon arrival they informed us that we had been upgraded. you should see this suite! it’s twice as big [...]
versailles
well. now that i have seen versailles with my own eyes, i’ve got some FABULOUS inspiration for my own home and garden. we need more gold around the house. and gilt. and carving. and ornate plaster work. and oil paintings. and furniture with inlays and repoussees and chassees. and murals on the ceilings. and REALLY [...]
obligatory eiffel tower photographs
and some beautiful art nouveau ironwork on a metro station railing:
good to know
just in case anyone was wondering:
more moet
as you drive through champagne and especially around the grand cru villages (there are 17 of those) you see little headstones near the grape vines, bearing the name of the champagne house who will be getting those grapes. it is mostly the big commercial champagnes who have these, and i can tell you it was [...]
some photos
normally i wouldn’t just shove a link on my blog and be done with it…but i am a little pushed for time. this link will take you to the photos i have uploaded so far. some were taken on the little leica and some were snapped on the iphone. things are a little out of [...]
moet in cramant
here are some of the famous vines…..we are staying just up the road and around the corner, a mere three or four minutes walk: and this is the view over the moet vines, to the next village, which is called avise: it is beautiful and green and not an inch of land is wasted. in [...]
le tour again
my absolute best photo of the race…..they scorched past us and i snapped off four photos or so. you can see how close we were….literally right there.
le tour de france
ok, this was SUPER exciting. you never met two less likely sports tourists as maurice and myself…..and our idea of a big morning’s exercise is walking to the patisserie. however, we turned into rabid cycling fanatics for 24 hours when the tour de france swept through champagne. last night, they raced into reims and we [...]
war. what is it good for? absolutely nothing.
yesterday we leapt up early and drove out to verdun, which is actually not in champagne, but over in alsace-lorraine. if you don’t know what went on in verdun during WW1, then get googling, because it’s a gripping read. the germans decided they wanted to capture verdun at any cost, and the french simultaneously decided [...]
the chocolate eclair
when i was a child, back in auckland, when the earth’s crust was still cooling….my mother worked next door to a weird underground coffee bar. literally underground. once you got there though, they had chocolate eclairs. these were feather-light tubes of choux pastry, filled with chantilly cream, and lavished with a coating of sticky, sweet, [...]
moet et foie gras
yesterday we spent the afternoon in the caves beneath moet et chandon. gracious….28 KILOMETRES of dimly lit subterranean tunnels with cellars branching off on every side, simply crammed full of millions of bottles of moet. it was THRILLING. and it was very nice and cool down there after the 36 Celsius afternoon we were wandering [...]
just say no
crikey. maurice bought some andouillette de troyes at the supermarket and cooked them up last night, while i made a russian salad* to go with. they smelled….odd….while cooking. but i sat down with plenty of mustard and i ate one. i wasn’t thrilled, there was a weird flavour i couldn’t quite put my finger on. [...]
ahhhhhhhhhhhhh champagne
we have been in cramant for four, or is it five? days already. time blurs here, what with the long long summer evenings and the constant flow of champagne. i will make a list at some stage of the champagnes we have tried….but seriously there are HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of champagne houses here and most [...]
images of pere lachaise
i took all of these photos with my iphone, in dappled sunlight for the most part. the hazy saturated greens and sudden over exposures are very true to how the place felt and looked on the day. i especially enjoyed capturing the orange cat stretched out on the tombstone and the stone cutter busy at [...]
musee carnavalet
an online soapmaking friend suggested that we visit the musee carnavalet and we found ourselves wandering in that direction today, after a breakfast cooked by maurice, of spanish omelette and toast and that’s the end of the poilane bread. baguette tomorrow! it’s a gorgeous museum housed in two huge old neighbouring mansions in the marais, [...]
pere lachaise and eartha kitt
i struggled up off my deathbed yesterday at last. what a difference a couple of days rest and a hit of antibiotics can make! we strolled down to the river and over to notre dame….the queue was unthinkable, so we walked all around the outside of notre dame and marvelled at the gargoyles (they all [...]
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