petite anglaise

The non-hen night started off well enough.

I caught the Eurostar with my non-bridesmaid Meg. (Admittedly with only seconds to spare. If ever you make a date with Meg, it pays to factor in a degree of tardiness.) We sipped champagne and picked at our Eurostar lunch as we sped towards London under flinty skies. Every few minutes I put down my copy of Heat magazine, with a sigh, to field yet another text message from one of the attendees, wondering how on earth people ever made plans before the age of the mobile phone.

Our plan for the day included a lightning visit to TopShop, an afternoon rendez-vous at The Champion pub in Bayswater, a possible picnic in Kensington Gardens (which was looking increasingly unlikely as London approached and the clouds showed no sign of clearing) and, finally, an evening meet at The Walmer Castle, Notting Hill, for a Thai meal.

My friends had been warned that as this was a non-hen night, strippers, L-plates, chicken costumes, weird headgear, matching T-shirts or other horrorshow props were strictly prohibited. Several male friends had also been invited in an attempt to mitigate excesses of girliness. The only bacherlotte party tradition I did uphold was the Boy’s absence. He was safely on the other side of the English Channel, no doubt playing poker.

3pm saw me sitting on a balding Chaise Longue in The Champion, a pint of cider in my hand, surrounded by half a dozen of my closest friends. The picnic plan had been ditched, and we’d ordered a few snacks to mop up the alcohol instead. I was taking things slowly. All was well in my world.

Then my best friend from university, dismayed at the dismally slow progress I was making with my pint, returned from the bar to remedy the situation, carrying two shots (1 vodka, 1 Sambuca). At approximately the same time, Meg bought a bottle of wine for some random Dutch boys who had been quietly propping up the bar and asked them to do a little dance for me, in return. She then produced a handful of fluorescent mini feather boas, a hideous pink plastic necklace and a hair clip (with pink bow attached) and began to advance towards me.

I raised the first of the two shot glasses to my mouth. And the next five hours – from approximately 5pm until 10pm – are blank.

I’m told I ripped university friend’s top – and have seen photographic evidence to support this claim – but can summon up no memory of the occurrence whatsoever. I’m told I tipped over the back of the chaise longue, landing on the floor with my legs in the air. Again, this feels true, but I have only a vague recollection of the feeling of smooth, cold tiles against my back – there is no visual memory at all.

And yet the photographs and videos I’ve seen show me looking tipsy but functional: sitting, standing, walking, talking, laughing (and drinking). It’s as though the lights were on, but there was no one home. My body switched onto autopilot, ceased to record anything, and partied on without me.

I ‘came to’ in the Thai restaurant and the rest of the night, which ended around 3 am, I recollect with perfect clarity.

On the Eurostar home, Meg obligingly filled in my memory gaps, prompting several ‘Oh no, please say I didn’t’s and a multitude of groans. The only advantage of not remembering was that it was virtually impossible to feel ashamed of my behaviour. What happens in the black hole, stays in the black hole, and frankly it might as well all have happened to someone else.

‘Your mission at the wedding, should you choose to accept it,’ I said when she had finished, ‘is to ensure my glass is never filled.’

Having spent a giddy few hours feeling fabulous with a champagne flute welded to my hand, I spent most of today welded to a mop and vacuum cleaner. Oh the glamorous life I lead…

I’m too tired right now to post properly about this, but I did want to link to the flickr photos. And also to show you the ingenious gift I received from the one and only Frog with a Blog (not to be confused with Mr Frog), who offered me my very own petite anglaise doll^TM.

Behold her dark-rimmed glasses! Puzzle over the fact that she appears to be handcuffed to a bottle of Heineken! (I’m not sure that’s quite the image I want to project?)

According to the back of the box, Frog with a blog, Bookpacker and Blagueur versions are also available.

Update: Oh my! There is video evidence of my tipsyness. Explicit content, viewer discretion advised.

This week has been oh so quiet.

I mean, yes, there were hundreds of emails flying back and forth, and I did have a couple of magazine pieces to finish off, but the fact that my book seems to be in many UK bookshops now (what do release dates actually mean and does anyone pay attention to them?) left me strangely unmoved.

I think it’s worth mentioning here (at the risk of attracting criticism that I am all about the hard sell) that although I don’t endorse any particular bookshop over another, Amazon do have “petite” as a deal of the week this week, meaning that it has a whopping 55% off. If you were planning to buy it, this seems like a good time to snap it up.

I also wanted to give you a heads up about some of the places you may be able to catch me next week, when I embark on a four day whirlwind book pimping trip in London, Leeds and York.

• You Magazine, in this Sunday’s Mail – an interview and book extract.
• This Sunday’s Observer (travel section) and online there should be some sort of associated web content. You’ll see…
• Monday morning, Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.
• If I don’t miss my train (schedule is horrendously tight) I’ll also be on BBC Radio Leeds around 3.30pm and then interviewed on BBC Look North news programme around 6.30pm. (I’m from York, in case you are wondering about the choice of towns. There is a logic to this…)

There’s much more in the pipeline, and I’ll try and update the blog and press page as much as possible while I’m sitting on trains next Monday and Tuesday. For the TV bits, if you are in possession of the kind of technology that enables you to record snippets of TV and post them to YouTube, it might be fun to share some of the upcoming TV appearances (more info to follow) with my non Yorkshire/UK public.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to make a final DESPERATE PLEA to anyone reading this who lives within striking distance of York Library. I’m doing a small, low-key reading/book signing on Tuesday evening (info here) and this is a ticketed event. So far it looks as though I’ll be reading to a small group comprising mostly family members and fielding questions from my grandma. Help!

Today I will be mostly taking deliveries of (indecent amounts of) champagne, ice (60 kilos thereof, destined for the bathtub), and assisting my caterer, the lovely Meg, with the assembly of some very complicated-looking canapés.

Because I had to celebrate this book coming out thing just a little bit, didn’t I? So I’m throwing a little party.

update: My very first review! Ooh!

NB:  The Paris signing on 20 March is not a ticketed event but, in order to give WH Smiths an idea of numbers for room layout and enable them to stock up on sensible amounts of wine, it is recommended you sign up here.

“T’as pas deux euros à me prêter pour acheter un paquet de clopes?” the Boy enquires as we draw near to a tabac. “Sinon je vais aller retirer en face…”

“I was wondering when you were finally going to admit that you’re only with me because you want to get your hands on my money,” I retort with a sly grin.

We joke about it sometimes, but, in truth, whatever I have in the bank is just numbers on a sheet of paper. Numbers that won’t mean much to me until they add up – net of the eye watering amounts of tax and social security I pay with a year’s time lag – to a place to live that means my room no longer has to serve the purposes of bedroom, dining room and living room rolled into one.

In the meantime, my lifestyle has changed little. I’d rather go for beers at the Café Chéri(e) than buy a bottle of champagne at Le Baron or Le Paris Paris (I’ve yet to set foot in either). Most evenings I can be found cooking up a storm in my kitchen or waiting for the Boy to grab some takeaway on his way home from work, rather than eating out in some über-chic restaurant. I treat myself occasionally – clothes, silk underwear, a handbag, a holiday – but we’re not talking Gucci or Dior or a five star beach cabin in the Seychelles. I’m more of an Et Vous or APC kind of girl, and I doubt I’ll ever kick my Top Shop habit. Admittedly it’s really nice not to have to worry when an unexpectedly large phone bill arrives or to have to think twice about taking Tadpole to Yorkshire when there are no cheap tickets left. But, aside from that, little has changed, and I doubt it ever will.

Regardless of our wildly differing salary levels the Boy and I always go Dutch. That is, when he doesn’t insist on paying. If I try to so much as buy a round of drinks he is likely to tell me – mock sternly – to put my wallet down and step away from the till. As a result, he’s not the easiest person in the world to treat, and as his thirtieth birthday loomed, I found myself in something of a quandary. He’d surprised me with a gorgeous antique ring on my birthday, back in September, and it never leaves my finger. I was determined to do something special for him – after all thirty is an important landmark – but I knew he’d feel uncomfortable if I bought him something wildly extravagant.

In the end I resolved to whisk him away for a long weekend, instead. And slipped a pair of lace-topped hold-up stockings into my weekend bag, for good measure.

I’m happy to report that the weekend was a resounding success.

I find a new purpose for my macbook!!!*

If ever, dear reader, you feel just a smidgeon uncomfortable after ploughing through a five course meal in a palatial hotel in Lisbon (cheap deal, I hasten to add, and I’m not sure I quite strike the right tone with my ripped jeans…), I can wholeheartedly recommend setting a warm macbook on the offending tummy for at least half an hour. It’s working wonders as a digestion aid. Truly, it is.

In the meantime, I try to have a foodie conversation with my friend Meg, who is one of those people who – when she can be bothered to actually blog – is able to write reviews of restaurants without resorting to clichés like “doesn’t the foie gras melt in your mouth?” or “don’t these oysters taste of the sea?”

The conversation goes something like this.

“Well, first of all I had this kind of amuse bouche thing, which was a very small piece of beef on toast with some spready goat’s cheese, nothing special really. And then there was a filo parcel-thing with slices of fig and proper goat’s cheese with rind on, inside. And I think the leaves on the side were watercress, they were a bit peppery, and there were pine nuts: grilled ones. Next I had a swordfish medallion with a crispy crust made of prawns and things, and some squid on the side and some unidentified vegetables, a bit like the ones you put in ratatouille. And then a quail stuffed with a special white sausage, on top of some spinach. And it had an egg on top. A quail’s egg. And a sprig of lavender. Which had made the egg taste a bit dodgy… And then…”

I don’t think I need to go on, do I? If I have any writing talent at all, it is most definitely not of the food critic variety. There were more incidences of “and then” in that last paragraph than in the whole a whole page of the Da Vinci Code.

Eating, I can do. Describing the eating experience, I cannot.

So – to cut a long story short – I’ve popped over to Lisboa for a few days while Tadpole is spending a second week of quality time with her mamie and papy, and I am suitably excited about the prospect of meeting long time blog buddy Lucy Pepper for the first time, tomorrow. The point of this trip was that it should act as a carrot of sorts, to help me through the pain of finishing tweaking the book (yes, it’s not quite over, but nearly, I hope) and to tide me over until Boyfriend and I escape to the Cyclades for a fortnight at the end of August.

I cannot begin to describe how confusing I find the notion of having someone knock on the door to “turn down the bed” for me. At 6pm. But give me time, and I’ll have these luxury ways off pat. You’ll see.

*Permission to use opening line format obtained from JonnyB.

So, if I were to be planning a sun, sand and (ahem) sex getaway in late August and was considering the Canary Islands as a possible destination, what would my dear readers suggest? Any info on tourist traps to be avoided, well-equipped but untacky hotels, most picturesque spots etc would be extremely welcome.

We (ah yes, we) have a pretty decent budget, don’t drive (I daren’t, he can’t), are keen to take in more than one island over a 10-14 day period, and we’d rather book it ourselves than get some sort of horrid package deal.

Of course, if any of my dear readers has a 5* villa with pool and would like lend it to me…

Now all I have to do is keep all my most horrifying and repellent character traits well and truly under wraps for the next month or so…

update:Gave up on the Canaries and am going to Greek Islands instead. Have only booked flight so far, so all advice still welcome…

“Look at my little girl!” I say, handing Mr Frog the cake box over Tadpole’s head and motioning to him to hide it in the kitchen. “She’s four years old!” Tadpole executes a coquettish little twirl in the turquoise dress I bought the day before in an Indian shop, with its silver thread and sequin detail. Any dress with a skirt big enough to curtsey in finds favour with my daughter these days. But god forbid I try to dress her in any sort of skirt which doesn’t have “corners”. That will simply not do. At all. And as for trousers, well, we simply don’t go there.

I had staggered down the rue de Belleville earlier that morning, leaving a mojito scented fug in my wake, and collected the Chinese sponge and whipped cream monstrosity I had thankfully had the foresight to order several days earlier. Now, complete with garish Disney princess decorations purchased on my last trip to England, it is suitably hideous. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Tadpole will approve.

“But mummy,” says Tadpole frowning, “when I did wake up this morning, I was not more-ler bigger! My legs are the same. My face is the same. My hair isn’t longer. I can’t be four years old yet. Because when I’m four years old, I’m going to be extremely big. Much biggerer than this!”

“Ah,” I reply, looking askance at Mr Frog, who shrugs and peers inside the cake box, his face registering first horror, then amusement. I dig inside my jeans pocket and hand him four glittery Barbie candles in nauseous shades of pink and purple, then turn back to Tadpole, my head spinning. “Honey, did you think you were going to be all grown up when you woke up this morning?”

Tadpole nods.

“Well,” I say reasonably. “Nobody grows that quickly.” A sly smile spreads across my face as I realise I can turn this to my advantage. “Especially not little girls who don’t eat their vegetables. Because no one can grow if they don’t eat green beans, and carrots and broccoli.”

“You’ll never guess what happened to me last night,” I call to Mr Frog, who is busy melting candle ends in the kitchen with his lighter and sticking them in the plastic holders I have already inserted into the icing. “I got asked if I wanted a student rate on my way into a club. Imagine?!” I for one am not looking forward to the birthday when I suddenly begin looking my actual age overnight. I take a step into the kitchen.

“Don’t come any closer,” says Mr Frog sharply, “you’re probably flammable!” Clearly the lashings of perfume I applied and half packet of chewing gum I’ve put away this morning have masked nothing. “Let me guess. Rum? Mojitos?”

At that moment, Mr Frog’s parents appear at the front door, his father brandishing a bottle of champagne. My stomach lurches at the prospect of alcohol, reloaded and I begin to feel light-headed.

“Hair of the dog,” I mutter under my breath as a generous flute of bubbly is put into my reluctant hand. “And don’t you dare translate that,” I caution Mr Frog as he sets down the cake.

“Wow!” says Tadpole, her eyes like dinner plates. “Qu’est-ce qu’il est beau, mon gâteau…”

At least, I think to myself, taking a celebratory swig of champagne and managing to stifle my grimace, my horrorshow cake was worth the considerable effort I had expended that morning.

Maybe I’m not such a bad mummy, after all.

The pic-nique was soooo much fun. My favourite moment being when Hugo unpacked his rucksack to reveal Pimms, apple, lemon, mint, strawberries, cucumber and a knife and chopping board. There was I, with my enormous cooler, champagne on ice, more modest Pimms effort (cucumber, mint, orange), thinking I could never be upstaged…

Reports say that up to sixty people showed up – whoever had the guestbook thing, please confirm, I’d love to know – and a good time was had by all.

We’ll definitely be doing this again, so if you couldn’t make it, get your act together next time. That’s an order.

update: video footage here. Parental advisory – includes scenes of ear nibbling (ahem) and other debauchery.

update#2: Financial Times (?!) write up here. Curiouser and curiouser.

Do you blog? Are you in Paris on Saturday 9 June? Do we look like the sort of people you would like to spend quality time with?

Details here, including email for signing yourselves up…

I have two simultaneous conversations on gmail chat (also known as a three-way) with my two favouritest and best gay friends. The only background information you need to know is that we had lunch at the Trésor prior to one of my recent dates.

zemickelino to me:   rhino and I said a little prayer for you at Notre Dame des Médailles Miraculeuses after we left you yesterday

me to zemickelino:   wha?!?!

me to rhino:   you *didn’t* really say a prayer for my punani in church yesterday? I’m sure Mickelino is winding me up…

rhino to me:   of course we did! It was the Church of Miracles. bit spooky actually

me to rhino:   you are officially on pre-date praying duty from now on

zemickelino to me:   did he have nice fesses?

What would I do without these guys?

I knock at the door. Mr Frog answers, wearing his bathrobe. There is no sign of Tadpole, and I raise my eyebrows and look around with a bewildered expression. I have yet to partake of that important first cup of coffee of the day, so verbal minimalism is de rigueur.

Mr Frog leads me into his bedroom, where Tadpole is prostrate on her bed, wearing pyjamas and an extremely wide smile.

“She’s still in bed?” I shriek, “but we have to be at school in twenty minutes! It’s the thing where they are running in the park today, the thing I’m supposed to be supervising.” The thing which seemed like oh such a good idea when I signed up, but coming as it did after a bumper celebratory drinksfest (with some of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet in honour of Anna’s birthday) I was considerably less enthusiastic when it involved me hauling my sorry carcass out of bed at 7.15 this morning.

Mr Frog smiles and shrugs in that very expressive French way he has; one twitch of his shoulders worth a couple of dozen words: well, you know, she’s tired, look at her, she doesn’t really want to get up, and anyway it’s not my problem because you’re the one taking her to school anyway, he he…

Meanwhile. I. Pace.

“What’s got into you today anyway?” says Mr Frog. “You’re making me dizzy. Look at the state of you. Did you stay out last night or something?” I feel the colour rising to my cheeks.

“What? No! Même pas!”

“So what was that thing on your gmail chat status about a date?”

Note to self: must stop being so informative on gmail chat. The whole world may not need to know that I have just picked out all of the chocolate flakes from a box of Nestlé Fitness breakfast cereal, or even (on a more cryptic note) that I have all my bases “uncovered”. And if they do, I should probably do this on twitter, which Mr Frog hasn’t heard of yet.

“Ah, so, um, you saw that, did you? Yes, well. I might have had a drink or two. A very nice drink or two. That’s all.”

Mr Frog smiles a knowing smile. “Well, good for you.”

When I get to school, the running thing is cancelled due to filming in the park. I try not to look too crestfallen at the idea of being able to go back home to bed.

This post is dedicated to Uncle Norman, author of this rather sparsely punctuated comment on my last “post”: “Stick to writing about your kid and being shagged in work time leave real life to the grown ups.”

So, I’ve written about my daughter, which is a start, and just leaves his second request. Anyone fancy distracting me from my deadline today? Conveniently, I’m working on my bed at the moment (although one end is currently propped up with Le Petit Robert.) So?

Tadpole’s latest obsession is with Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola.

After the prolonged agony of her Dora the Explorer phase, hearing Tadpole trying to mimic characters with proper English accents comes as a profound relief. And there is something about the way Lola is drawn, with unruly hair falling across mischievous eyes, which reminds me of Tadpole.

The books have names like “I am not Sleepy and I will not go to Bed” or “I am absolutely too small to go to School” or “My Wobbly Tooth must not Ever Never Fall Out”, and cleverly deal with a lot of the issues toddlers have, like having their hair cut (Princess No Knots) and eating vegetables (which seem to go down a whole lot better when you say they are from Jupiter).

If I might put in a couple of requests though, Lauren, would you consider writing “I will not Ever Never wear trousers to school” or “I am absolutely too small to do my poo poos in the toilet”?

Our latest game is to speak in the style of Charlie and Lola – I am, of course, always cast in the role of Charlie – her sensible but wily older brother – and usually end up saying “but Lola!” rather a lot.

Yesterday Tadpole came out with the following gem, which still has me sniggering this morning:

“I am absolutely ever never good. And sometimes I am naughty”

“Et si on se disait 20h00, au Bar Hemingway du Ritz” suggests my blind date.

I google the Hemingway Bar, note in passing that cocktails cost a cool twenty three euros, and read about “The Orchid Ploy”.

Sitting at a table in the Ritz Bar one day with his friend Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald spotted a ravishing young woman, unfortunately (in his view) not alone. He had a bouquet of orchids sent to her table, but she sent it straight back.

Before her stunned gaze, Scott Fitzgerald promptly began devouring the blooms, one by one… until she gave in and agreed to meet him.

And there was me thinking that being wooed online by a person who claimed to have fallen in love with petite anglaise before he met me was impossibly romantic. In future I shan’t take a suitor seriously unless he can polish off an entire floral arrangement in one sitting: petals, leaves, stems, cellophane and all.

An invitation to the Ritz represents something of a departure from the norm, and is not a little intimidating. Working from home means that I rarely leave my beloved Belleville. I roam the streets in my bobo uniform of ripped jeans, layered t-shirts and trainers, and on a good day I may drag a brush through the knots in my hair. My social skills have atrophied, the smart clothes section of my wardrobe is poised to make someone at the Red Cross very happy, and I’m unused to paying more than three euros for a Chinese beer.

I arrive, wearing a simple jersey dress and flat shoes, and ask a liveried doorman for directions. The Hemingway bar, it transpires, is at the far side of the hotel from the entrance. I follow the gilded signs, traipsing along (what feels like several kilometres of) carpeted corridors lined with display cases. Inside, gaudy Hermès scarves nestle alongside quilted leather handbags with gold chain handles. I stride on, feeling smug about my choice of sensible footwear.

The bar is tiny, wood panelled, and frankly not as lavish as I’d hoped. I spy no lone men – although at one table there is an unattended coat and motorcycle helmet – so I take a seat at a table alone, and pick up the menu, which is styled to look like a newspaper. A few seconds later, a uniformed barmaid brings me two tiny bowls of apéritif snacks and a glass of something transparent in which pieces of cucumber bob among the ice cubes. “I haven’t actually ordered yet,” I point out, thinking there must be some mistake.

“This is just the complimentary water, Madam,” she replies, pursing her lips at my lack of worldliness. I feel like Vivian Ward crossed with Eliza Doolittle.

I take a sip of my complimentary water, and begin to hanker after a cold, uncomplicated, two euro beer Aux Folies.

Tadpole sniffs heartily as we trot along the pavement in the direction of home. I feel around in my coat pocket for a tissue, but draw a blank. Permanently unprepared for any eventuality whatsoever, that’s me. No wipes for if she dives head first into a crotte, no umbrella should it rain, no tissues for sniffles or tears, no spare clothes for accidents, and my mobile phone battery is resolutely flat. My fingers are permanently crossed instead, but somehow – touch wood – we seem to get by.

“Mummy” says Tadpole in her ‘I’m about to say something extremely profound which changes the way you see the world around you’ voice. “When my nose gets sniffy. That’s because the winter, it does get stuck in my nostrils.”

Well that’s one way of looking at it. And not a worldview I feel equipped to challenge, as my powers don’t extend to explaining airborne viruses and bacterial infections to a three-year-old. That little pearl of wisdom doesn’t top my favourite quote of the weekend, however. Which I love, even though I don’t really understand it. “I had a dream,” said Tadpole that morning. “Not a dream in my eyes, but one inside my head. We can have two different sorts of dreams, can’t we mummy? Head dreams and eye dreams.”

I glance at my watch. Six o’clock. Plenty of time to get ready before the babysitter arrives at eight, as long as Tadpole shows some mercy and remains moderately compliant throughout. Although the check-list of “Things to Do Before the Babysitter Arrives” is long. Going out on a non-Tadpole free night can be something of a military campaign.

In no particular order, I must:

• Feed Tadpole (cook nutritious meal and somehow ensure fruit and vegetables are eaten using carefully dosed combination of distraction/persuasion/coercion/threats)
• Bath Tadpole
• Tidy flat (abridged version involving throwing piles of things into wardrobe and closing doors)
• Wash up and empty decidedly whiffy kitchen bin
• Log out of my profile on computer and put it into guest mode to avert possibility of snooping and cookies inadvertently taking sitter directly into bank statements/blog backend/gmail
• Hide manuscript
• Put away Tadpole’s toys
• Hide my toys
• Agonise over what to wear to vagina-themed birthday party (don’t ask)
• Supervise Tadpole’s making of home-made (non vagina-themed) birthday card
• Write down contact numbers and dig out spare house keys
• Get changed
• Apply make up
• Text door code to sitter who always forgets it

7.45 finds me at the end of my tether. Every single familiar gesture of our evening routine has been a battleground. Tadpole ate precisely four forkfuls of dinner. She splashed water all over the bathroom floor while I hastily applied make-up. She is now running around naked, refusing to have her teeth cleaned or don her pyjamas. I am dressed, and in between yelling threats and promises I am fiddling with my hair, spraying on perfume. My shoulders are sagging. I wonder how I will muster up enough energy to take the métro and actually spend four hours making small talk at a party before the clock strikes one and I leave before my carriage turns into a pumpkin/my babysitter’s bedtime.

At 8.00, when the doorbell trills, we are ready. Tadpole is sitting on her bed with her library book, the only French book in the house, her mouth minty fresh, patiently waiting for the babysitter to come and read her a story. I am ready, my bag packed with drink, present and card, money for taxi/babysitter. I did it! Against all odds. Cinders shall go to the ball.

I glance at myself in the full-length mirror and do a horrified double take.

Those tights, those magic tights I pounced on in Monoprix which make slightly wobbly tummies disappear, with their “control top” panel? Bad idea. My tummy is flat as can be, there’s no arguing with that. My bottom is also reined in to great effect. But where the controlling part bottoms out and my thighs begin? Oh dear god. I now have saddlebags. Second hips located halfway down my thighs as though there has been some sort of subsidence. It’s too late to re-think my entire outfit. And I don’t have any other black tights to hand.

There is nothing for it but to haul my two pairs of childbearing hips out on the town.

2006 was nothing if not eventful.

I got dumped.
I bought my first home.
I got fired.
I got outed.
I was given an exciting opportunity.

2007 should be a little quieter, less turbulent. A few important dates loom on the landscape. A hearing at the industrial tribunal on 19 February. A first book to deliver by 4 July.

But the thing which I’d most like to happen sometime soon, the thing I finally feel ready for, is the only thing that you can never plan. The thing which you can guarantee will only happen when you stop hoping; when you look the other way; when you least expect it.

I’d like to meet someone. Someone I can lose my appetite over. Someone who fills my head with silly daydreams. Someone who has the power to make me smile at complete strangers in the métro. Someone who doesn’t follow this blog, ideally, as I’d like to be discovered little by little, not offered up in one king-sized serving.

I spent much of 2006 keeping men I met at arm’s length, or pushing them firmly away. Partly, I suppose, because no single person I met was “all that”. Partly because I’d been badly burned and no longer dared trust my instincts. But also due to the simple fact that there was so much going on, so much that was new and terrifying that I wanted to come to terms with all the change before I let someone else in.

Taking stock, as 2006 drew to a close, I was forced to admit to myself that there is something a little empty about this life I’ve been leading. Spending hours alone, writing about events in my past, by day. Partying a little too hard by night, whenever the opportunity presented itself. I’m no fool. I see the binge drinking and bad behaviour for what it really is: a symptom of my malaise, escapism, a temporary stress release mechanism.

It’s time to set my life on a healthier course. Time to let go of my anxieties and enjoy the opportunities which have come my way. Time to let someone in, should a worthy candidate present himself.

Time for petite anglaise to take a step back and let me do the living.

The petite anglaise is mainly nocturnal at weekends, or at least on those weekends when she does not have the care of her offspring. This weekend was a textbook example.

On Friday night I started off the evening at a bloggers get together Richard’s beautiful loft apartment in the Marais, where I met a whole host of contributors to The Paris Blog. Much seems to have been made of the fact that I arrived with my own gin, tonic and lemon but this was all part of a master plan – to stick to the same drink all evening – which I’m sure my body was grateful for the next day.

Once the party was over, I went on to dance a good portion of the night away with a girlfriend in the distinctly grungy Batofar where the first Friday of every month is “New Wave Day”. I love the Batofar for its lack of dress code, the fact that the people are all there for the music, and get wildly enthusiastic when certain French crowd pleasers (Indochine, Visage) are played, but I must say, now that I’ve been to a few of these nights, I’m starting to notice a distinct lack of variety in the playlist. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Siouxsie and the Banshees “Peekaboo” nonetheless…

Best chat up lines of the evening were:

To Meg: “You dance in a very 80s style. Do you like New Order?”
(One of the safest possible approaches to adopt at New Wave Day?)

To me: “I think you are the most beautiful girl in the room. What’s your name?”
(taken with a pinch of salt the first time, due to enlarged state of suitor’s pupils; even less flattering the second time, less than half an hour later)

On Saturday I roused myself with some reluctance at 5pm (having missed daylight altogether) and managed to muster up the energy to attend a friend’s leaving party in the Paris office of the Daily Telegraph, housed in a beautiful apartment with panoramic views overlooking the Tuileries. It was well worth venturing out for, and I was even introduced to the British Ambassador and his wife. I pondered over whether to talk to them about Left Bank and its ending involving a dashing, single British ambassador, and then thought better of the idea.

The last outing of the weekend was a pilgrimage to the left bank, to the Café de Flore, to meet up with some Australian friends for a spot of Sunday brunch. If rude, incompetent waiters and indifferent, overpriced food is your thing, I can heartily recommend it. Personally, I think I’ll stick to an occasional hot chocolate upstairs in future. After that brief but ill-advised outing during daylight hours, I retired to my boudoir for a nap before the return of Tadpole.

Now, your turn. I’d like to shamelessly pick your brains and hear about where you would eat/drink/dance on your ideal weekend in Paris. Hopefully a subject which will give me a much deserved break from the very wearing comments box vitriol I’ve been experiencing lately. So?*

*Second consecutive post without punchline. Please proceed to paypal if you require a subscription refund.

We alight from the taxi on avenue Matignon, our destination a trendy fusion restaurant called Market. It’s not somewhere it would ever have occurred to me to go, being more of an East end, quartiers populaires kind of girl, but I’ve been invited to join a group of people, two of whom are former colleagues of mine, and I’m tagging along purely for the pleasure of their company tonight.

The girls wear gauzy dresses and high heels, the men wear designer jeans and expensive-looking shirts. I have thrown on my patterned wrap dress (TopShop) and favourite brown boots and pray I don’t look too out of place.

I had been scheming to use this outing as an excuse to buy something new, with a half-formed plan to venture over to the Comptoir des Cotonniers, but in the end I spent the day with Tadpole, and it didn’t seem fair to drag her out foraging for clothes. I’m sure the day will come when shopping will be her favourite pastime, but right now she would rather we played with her new dominos and ate chicken fried rice in our regular haunt where the waiting staff don’t seem to mind if she draws on the paper tablecloths with felt tipped pens.

Market is beautiful: the lighting is soft and flattering, the table booked for our party of eight is set in a discreet oval alcove overlooking a courtyard. It manages to feel private and intimate, yet achieves this without cutting us off from our fellow diners. In the impeccable toilets, individual cloth serviettes are piled up in neat towers by the sink. I study a menu nervously, forcing myself not to look too closely at the prices, telling myself through gritted teeth that this is a treat; I deserve it. But solvent or insolvent, there is a part of me that will always shy away from spending € 120 on a single meal. It’s the way I’m wired, and I’m far from sure that it’s something I want to change.

I sip a kumquat mojito, then sample warm foie gras and wild mushrooms, velvety soft deer with quince purée and some sort of vegetable and cheese “emulsion”. I have no idea what the wine is that I am drinking, chosen by a connoisseur at the other end of the table, but it is heavenly. I finish with a fig tart served with peanut ice cream (although I confess I wish I’d plumped for the chestnut soufflé with caramel ice cream instead, a masterpiece).

We stagger out of the restaurant at around 1am, fed, watered and tipsy and begin to cast around for a reasonable bar in which to have a final drink, or two, before we go home. But this part of town is a wasteland of wide sterile avenues and closed luxury goods emporiums. The only watering holes whose names I recognise are the sort of places with door policies, merchant bankers and queues. They are places one goes to be seen. Nothing could be further from my definition of a fun place to kick back and have a drink.

After a spot of futile wandering and a watery, overpriced cocktail in a bar tragically mis-named “Success”, I wend my way home in a taxi, dropping a fellow diner off at the Ile St Louis on the way. I can’t help feeling that I have spent an evening on a different planet, instead of a mere fifteen minute taxi ride from chez moi. Dogged by a gnawing feeling of disquiet, unsettled somehow. I don’t belong: not in that place, not in that arrondissement.

At the familiar sight of Bastille, my body starts to relax. The taxi speeds along the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, above the concealed Canal St Martin, and my lips begin to curve upwards in a smile. Weaving through narrow, dimly lit backstreets we emerge onto the boulevard de la Villette and I feel gnarly knots of tension unravelling in my shoulders.

Belleville: shabby, dirty, teeming with life, ablaze with garish neon signs. As the taxi labours up the hill I make a silent vow. No more trying to be someone I’m not, no more frequenting exquisite, over-priced places that make me feel like I don’t and never will fit in. This is my neighbourhood, my world. As I hand the fare to the driver, the smell of my local kebab shop teases my nostrils and I breathe deeply.

I’m home.

“So, what do you do in Paris?” says the friend of a friend I’ve just been introduced to.

“Oh, I’ve been here for eleven years now, and I was a secretary for most of that time,” I say. “And now, I’m, um, writing this memoir…” I let my voice trail off in a way that will make it sound like I’ve just said the most boring thing in the world, hoping to nip any further questions in the bud.

“You’re slowly getting better at this, see?” whispers my girlfriend, with a wink.

“Well, maybe, but I’m still blushing, you just can’t see it in this light,” I reply doubtfully.

I live in constant dread of having to tell people just what it is that I do for a living.

Since April, the question has been one king-sized can of worms. (Can one buy cans of worms? Aren’t they maggots? For fishing?) Because “I’m between jobs right now” or “I got fired” usually snowballs into more questions, and yet more, until the whole grisly truth comes out. It’s long, it’s involved, and I end up feeling oddly like I’m being interviewed rather than actually making conversation.

Ever since contracts were exchanged and it all became terrifyingly official, I have no longer been able to truthfully play the chômeur card, and so now I have to admit, bashfully, that I am writing to earn my bread and butter. “Admit” probably isn’t the right word, but the only other phrase which springs to mind right now is “own up to”, which isn’t much of an improvement, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Of course if I mention writing, the questions come even thicker and faster. And although I’m going to be a writer, one day, when I’m published, I don’t feel like I own that title yet. So I play it coy, hide behind my hair a lot (at least until that fifth drink, when my alter ego takes over and I probably say something along the lines of “I’m a little bit famous, can I grope your bottom?”) and attempt to keep everything as vague as I can.

Because book leads inevitably to blog. And my name is now connected to this blog in every conceivable search engine. Nasty pictures taken by photographers in the pay of tabloids who were clearly given the brief that they should attempt to look down my top, or up my skirt, are on display. Anonymity, however relative and fragile a concept that was, is no longer an option. And that is not always a good thing.

Twice recently I received worried emails the day after meeting someone new, the senders fretting about whether they were about to find themselves the subject of a forthcoming blog post (they won’t, I don’t cross those boundaries without permission of sorts). And those are the ones who knew what a blog was before we met. Those people who don’t know must undoubtedly think I am some sort of narcissistic self-centred weirdo when they hear that I share slices of my personal life with the internet at large.

And yes, those people were boys. And yes, what I’m really concerned about here, is whether it will hamper my chances of success on the dating market, my chances of finding someone a bit special once I’ve got my current teenage phase well and truly out of my system. Because you’ve got to admit that things are a little unequal, not to say unbalanced, if menfolk that I meet are able to read about my whole life on the internet before our second date, a state of affairs that leaves me feeling at something of a disadvantage.

So, it will have to be a blogger. Apparently there are currently three million blogs in France, so hopefully at least a handful are not written by teenagers and girls.

I’ll keep you, ahem, posted.

Saturday evening saw me going to the Festival Music Allemand at La Bellevilloise with partner in crime and girl about town, Meg. Thankfully it was all about electronica and beautiful people with artfully distressed hair, rather than lederhosen and sausages.

“Is it just me,” I asked Meg, eyes like saucers,”or is there an uncommonly large quantity of good looking menfolk in this room?”

“There is indeed,” she replied “I wonder where they all hide during the day?”

“Well, glad to hear it’s not just me. Because occasionally I get a hormone attack and find everyone attractive, even when they clearly can’t be,” I explained. “I think it’s the human equivalent to a dog being on heat.”

I surveyed the room. All the girls had über cool fringes. If I’d had a pair of scissors to hand, I would have dragged Meg to the toilets and begged her to cut my hair there and then.

As the night wore on and the expensive beer flowed freely, things predictably degenerated, and we found ourselves regressing to behaviour I can only describe as “teenaged”. What else could possibly explain:

• Meg popping out to buy cheap cans of beer which she tried (and failed) to smuggle back into the venue in her tights. I didn’t witness it, but I’m told a can dropped from between her legs in front of a bouncer as though she were laying an egg. I don’t think her puzzled “what on earth was that doing in my pantyhose?” look fooled anyone.
• a bottle of vodka finding its way off the bar and into our possession, which seemed like a strange sort of justice given that there had been supposed to be a free vodka open bar earlier in the evening, which never materialised.
• me groping people’s bottoms. Two male, one female. Apologies to all concerned. (All I can say in my defence is that I watched Shortbus the previous night and it had a profound effect on me).
• me getting into the spirit of the festival by snogging a rather attractive German boy in the middle of the dancefloor (yes, snogging is the only appropriate word which can be used to describe that kind of drunken, swaying liplock).

I came down to earth with a bump the following day with a distinctly thirtysomething hangover, the likes of which I have rarely experienced. But it was fun, and oh so refreshing while it lasted.

The thing One of the things that I really didn’t expect to happen when I started blogging, back in July 2004, was that it would kick start my social life in quite the way it did. Sitting on the Eurostar as it hurtled under the English Channel this afternoon, feeling a little melancholy – as you always do after something you have looked forward to for weeks has finally been and gone – I mulled over the part people I have met through this blog now play in my life. Some are but fleeting acquaintances, others have become firm friends. What they all have in common is that I doubt I would have met a single one of these lovely people if it hadn’t been for this peculiar internet hobby we have in common.

God bless t’internet.

Tuesday:

lauren maîtresse
elisabeth coquette
meg blagueur

Thursday:

hugo
iain baseball

Friday:

mrs bobby
mr boat

Saturday:

In no particular order (and apologies if I have forgotten anyone)…

andre, mike, jonnyb, one track, mimi, unluckyman, greavsie, anxious, tim, girl on a train, lovely leonie, monkeylady, meg, karen, pete, pixeldiva, damian, clare, robin, hydragenic

So many lovely people in one single pub I never did see before. If it had fallen to the centre of the earth (although I can’t think why it would have done), there would have been one hell of a gaping void in the blogosphere.

It is Saturday evening, a little after 10 p.m. My gmail status – currently one of the most reliable windows into my soul – reads “manshopping”.

Despite the fact that it is a Tadpole-free weekend, somehow I have managed not to sort something out for Saturday night. My inconsiderate friends have watertight alibis: in Australia, watching the rugby at the Stade de France, having friends over to stay. There has been a text message exchange with an antipodean boy I haven’t seen for a while, but even that trail seems to have gone cold.

The previous evening, a “quiet night in” to eat curry with friends spontaneously combusted into an all night chatfest, after which I slept on the couch, stayed for both a (midday) breakfast and an afternoon tartiflette. This should have made me feel better about the small gap in my weekend entertainment schedule. Should have, but hasn’t. I’m bored and borderline desperate. Although slightly hung over, and with my right nostril dripping accusingly, I still feel the need to get out. I crave company.

And so I sit in front of my computer feeling lonely, and it’s probably no coincidence that I’m back on an internet dating site for the first time since May, looking to see whether the shelves of the supermarket of sleaze have been re-stocked since my last visit. A cup of tea steams by my side and I frown at it, wishing I could wave Tadpole’s fairy wand and turn it into a medicinal mojito. My skin is rosy pink, fresh from a short, hot soak in the smallest bath in the world (TM); my towelling bathrobe keeps sliding off my dejectedly drooping shoulders.

Thankfully a girlfriend is home alone too, and available to chat:

a: In on a Saturday, duckling? Everything alright?
me: No! Bored. And ever so slightly man-achey.
a: Man-achey?
me: I need a man for, er, stuff
Wow. The pinnacle of articulacy. I’m sure you can see why I got a book deal now?
a:ah
um
ah
mm
mhm

[A six minute gap. I start to worry.]

me:I scared you off? You went to fetch a toy? Or your best Gainsbourg impression?
a:nono
a drink
similar
but less
you know
frotting

We shoot the breeze for a while, and then I plead fatigue, stick the kettle on for the last brew of the day, cast around for a DVD to watch in bed. Suddenly my mobile phone trills. It is the occasional antipodean boy. He sounds tipsy, and slurs something apologetic about his phone battery and the lateness of the hour. He is in Ménilmontant, it transpires. In a bar, with a big group of male friends. Would I like to join them?

I look at my tea, my bathrobe, and back at my tea again. It’s a ten minute walk, I would need another ten or so to make myself presentable. Hmm. A big group of male friends, he said?

* * * * * * * * *

The next day, my gmail status reads “itch duly scratched”.

a: good GOD
did you hire a male prostitute or something?
or am I going to deeply regret that question?

I take my seat with a group of girlfriends at L’Apparemment Café, an old haunt of mine deep inside the Marais, opposite the Musée Picasso, where you can choose from a long list of mouth-watering ingredients – sun dried tomatoes, artichokes, fresh marinated anchovies – to build your own salad. Except it is Sunday today and I had completely forgotten that on the day of our Lord they serve only brunch.

This would be perfect if I hadn’t already ploughed through a copious Pain Quotidien brunch the day before, a major blowout involving lashings of praline spread, confiture de lait and other sinful concoctions which, if they didn’t taste so good, might as well be applied directly to the thigh area with a palette knife.

Waving my healthy salad goodbye, I settle in for the long haul: juice, coffee, a boiled egg, mountains of crusty bread, pancakes with maple syrup, a cheese platter (the French always seem to add a random unnecessary savoury dish into every brunch menu, which I never have room for), fromage blanc and blackberry coulis… and conversation.

“I can’t believe you snogged two guys on the dancefloor last night. Seriously, you are a menace to society!” My friend blushes, as she has only just arrived, doesn’t know the other ladies present particularly well. She should be used to me by now.

“No”, she says, recovering her composure remarkably quickly, “they were the menace to society. Fancy reaching your mid-thirties and not knowing how to kiss. Appalling. One of them had a technique like a washing machine. His tongue went round and round in a clockwise motion, then suddenly went into reverse and swept round and round in the other direction. It was so, well, mechanical.” She shudders at the memory.

All this talk of domestic appliances calls to mind the last person who chatted me up: a Darty man who delivered my new cooker. Granted, I indulged in a little eyelash fluttering, but only because I wanted him to take away an old refrigerator left in the apartment by my predecessors, and that wasn’t strictly his job…

The result was ten or more messages left on my mobile in semi-literate text speak before my suitor finally drew the appropriate conclusions from my resounding silence.

“Men just seem like too much trouble right now, I don’t even have time to do all my own stuff, let alone take anyone else into account,” I say, almost thinking aloud. “Mind you, I kind of wish my favourite toy hadn’t gone missing when I moved.”

Because, yes, of all the things that could have inexplicably failed to materialise when I unpacked my boxes, it had to be that. I live in fear of it turning up at an inopportune moment (say, during a visit from my ex-mother in law).

Embarrassment potential: critical.

You know you are starting to get old when, at a music festival, you:

• sensibly take care not to drink large quantities of beer, mindful of horror of festival portapotties;
• elect to stand well back to get a decent view (of the suspended screen) rather than braving the teeming mass of sweaty bodies at centre forward;
• time your departure just before the end of the last set so that you can catch the métro before the mad rush begins;
• feel secretly relieved at festival’s proximity to Paris which excludes need for camping and Glastonbury-style personal hygiene involving daily swabbing with a lemon scented wet wipe;
• do not indulge in any illicit substances, and therefore remember every single act;
• do not indulge in any illicit substances, and therefore feel need to eat regularly;
• realise, as you see a stallholder empty large quantities of raw mincemeat into his vat of bolognaise, give it a cursory stir, and start ladling it into people’s plates, that you would probably have been safer indulging in illicit substances;
• overhear a younger friend confessing that they have never heard a Smiths song, whilst you surprise yourself at Morrissey’s set by knowing every word to “Panic”;
• hear yourself start a sentence with: “When I saw The Orb at Glastonbury…”

Petite’s potted review:

Radiohead: masterful. Beck: puppet show and dinner party percussion thing very, very clever; man himself oddly lacking in charisma, but still wouldn’t kick him out of bed. Kasabian: not bad. The Raconteurs: not bad. Dirty Pretty Things: not bad. Morrissey: not enough Smiths. Burgers: undercooked. Churros: yum. Chili hot dog: a vile and dangerous invention. Earplugs: useful for blocking out sound of microwave next to pillow following morning.

I am meeting two old university friends at a pub by Hammersmith bridge, and I squint through my sunglasses at the swarms of drinkers soaking up the last lazy rays of the day by the riverside, fervently hoping it will not be too difficult to spot them. A little of my schoolgirl shyness tends to rear its timid head when I find myself scanning a crowd for familiar faces.

As it happens I needn’t have worried, there they are, pints of lager in hand, propping up a wall in front of me. I grin widely, enquire as to the whereabouts of their girlfriends, who are conspicuously absent, then deliberate about what to drink. The afternoon – spent with a handful of “friends I met on the internet” – has drifted by in a comfortable haze of Pimms and lemonade. Pacing myself has now become imperative.

We shoot the breeze while I pick at my pub food (fish, chips and mushy peas, my second platter of the weekend, which tasted all the better for being eaten outdoors), and I realise with a pang how much I have been missing platonic male company.

Back in my university days, with the exception of one special girlfriend, my closest friends were male. There was rarely any ambiguity in these relationships, as I was seeing someone for much of the time, as were they. The contents of our underwear were therefore refreshingly irrelevant. So many memories from that happy time make me smile when I replay them in my head. We were on the same wavelength. Our friendships were marvellously uncomplicated, yet rarely shallow or superficial. And in the case of present company, they proved to be enduring.

Arriving in France, and, in particular, falling in with a French crowd when I met Mr Frog, I realised that being “one of the lads” was no longer a very popular option. However well I might hit it off with his male friends, they remained his property. If there were girlfriends in tow, I was expected to gravitate naturally toward them, leaving the boys to their own conversations. On the rare occasions when I did allow myself to indulge in a little harmless banter with one of the boys present, his girlfriend was liable to frown and place an impeccably manicured, restraining hand on his arm, silently voicing her disapproval. Despite my own attached status, I was, in some way, perceived as a threat.

I do have a few male friends, these days. They are invariably expats. Or gay. Or gay expats. Which does little to dispel my theory. I resolve, hurtling back to France on my Eurostar, to seek them out more often.

Because for all her eleven years in France, this petite anglaise will never change her English ways. And she still yearns to be one of the lads. Sometimes.

Thursday – “The Stripper Who Came to Tea”

The doorbell rings, and Tadpole shrieks with delight, always ridiculously pleased to welcome a new visitor. At the door, an elfin slip of a girl with a rucksack twice her own body weight. And a laptop bag. Definitely a blogger. Hot, slightly flustered: it’s Mimi in Paris!

We eat. We drink. We wait impatiently for another blogging friend to arrive bearing multiple bottles of champagne. The conversation veers from the banal, to the satisfyingly crude, and back again, with many shades in between. Utterly fascinating.

Afterwards, I was thoroughly pleased with myself for having thrown caution and convention to the wind, by welcoming yet another online acquaintance into my offline life, letting my gut feeling guide me, poo pooing my mother’s objections on the telephone.

Mum: “A stripper? Will Tadpole be with you?”

Me: “Mum, she’s an Oxbridge graduate stripper, and anyway, she’s hardly going to teach Tadople how to hang upside down on a pole while my back is turned for five minutes, is she? And even if she did,” I add mischievously, “I’ve always thought children should be made to earn their keep…”

My only cause for disappointment, on this particular occasion, was that I couldn’t entreat Mimi and her sister Piu Piu to stay on in Paris until Saturday, the night of my upcoming party.

Because no party is complete without a stripper…

Friday – “proceed to checkout”

Mr Frog calls from the airport to say that he has landed on time, and will be able to take Tadpole for the evening after all. It is Friday night, and due to his previous uncertainty, I have made no firm plans for the evening. I resign myself to a night in, catching up on “Grey’s Anatomy”, my latest addiction, and trying not to think about the boy who wants to be friends without the addition of inverted commas.

A friendly little message arrives on meetic chat, out of the blue. In English, which is very refreshing indeed, as participating in chat, in French, on meetic, is comparable to having your fingernails slowly pulled one by one.

A little light-hearted banter ensues and before I know it, I have agreed to go out for a drink that very same evening. I will draw a veil of mystery over what happened next, but suffice to say that there were mojitos. Many mojitos. And a hasty “walk of shame” come Saturday morning, just in time to attend a fête with Mr Frog and Tadpole at her future playschool.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Saturday – “throwing quails’ eggs at parked cars” or “does my bum look big in this age 3-4 fairy outfit”

It is 3pm. I am immersed in a cool bath, having just taken 2 nurofen tablets, and am massaging my throbbing temples to no avail. In my kitchen there is a forest of mint, a dozen or so limes, and a large bottle of rum. Because, of course, the plan had been to make a vat of mojitos for my party. And now, quite frankly, I wouldn’t be sorry if I never have to smell another mojito as long as I shall live.

Bad planning.

Thankfully, by 9pm, when the guests begin to arrive, I have perked up considerably. The apartment is however like a furnace, on account of the rather too clement weather we have been having, so we all repair to the balcony at regular intervals to admire the view and cool off.

“Look at my gorgeous view – it’s my masthead image!” I cry.

This elicits blank looks from most people, bloggers included, and I realise that the mojitos are causing me to speak in tongues. And apparently no-one else present speaks xhtml or css.

5.30 am. Only the hardcore remain, including nardac and steve, elmer and chris. I don’t remember clearly what possessed us to fetch all of Tadpole’s headgear from her toybox, but everyone seems to share my enthusiasm for donning reindeer antlers, bunny ears, elephant and monkey masks and sparkly tiaras. Elmer in particular looks very fetching in Tadpole’s fairy outfit, complete with wand.

We throw quails eggs – which no-one seemed to want to eat, and why would they? – at parked cars, and pose for a series of deeply unflattering photographs.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Monday: still tired. Wondering if I will be able to afford rehab if things get too much. Slightly apprehensive about the prospect of a sweltering day at Disneyland Parc tomorrow for Tadpole’s belated birthday celebration.

But every time I think of my weekend, I have to stifle a delighted giggle.

Thank god for the internet.

The teeth-grittingly cheerful chime of my mobile phone (Mr Frog laid claim to the alarm clock, and the coffee machine, and I haven’t got around to replacing either) awakes me from a deep, dreamless slumber and I groan theatrically, playing to an invisible audience.

Thankfully I didn’t overdo it the night before, limiting myself to a couple of sedately sipped cocktails with a new friend; heading home soon after the clock struck midnight. This morning sees the return of the Tadpole, after a week long holiday spent with her grandparents in Besançon. Moderation was a necessity: I will need my wits about me today.

A family of moths seems to have taken up residence in my stomach, and I realise to my own amazement that I am nervous about being reunited with my own daughter. Not only are my nerves jangling, but I am also aware of a unpleasant, needling sensation of guilt. The fact is, I pretty much forgot Tadpole’s very existence this past week, slipping effortlessly back into the skin of the girl I used to be, long before she came along. I became re-acquainted with this long lost me, a girl who followed her every selfish whim, who threw on her party clothes and headed out on the town with no fear of having to deal with both a toddler and a hangover the morning after.

How I cherished every second of my temporary freedom. First, there was Nice. Leisurely meals and long drawn out evening drinks, all the while shooting the breeze with my traveling companion, who I now consider a firm friend. Hours spent hypnotised by the gentle tapping sound of waves against the pebbly shore, the sun teasing my cheeks, as I searched patiently for the smoothest, most perfect pebble to take home in my pocket. Not glancing at my watch, living to no-one else’s agenda. Upon my return to Paris, outings to bars with friends, to the cinema, an evening at home with boy plus take-away sashimi, and all that it entailed.

I hadn’t telephoned Tadpole during all this time. Not once.

I justified this neglect to myself by saying that as she doesn’t really show much interest in phone conversations, it can be a somewhat frustrating, pointless exercise. Took shelter behind the excuse that it still feels rather awkward speaking to the ex-in-laws. But the truth of the matter was that I simply wasn’t missing my daughter, and feared that if I did call, that might change. Dared not risk tainting my enjoyment of the here and now.

So here I am, catapulted back from a carefree parallel universe into a weekend of full-time motherhood. On the menu: an Easter egg hunt in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a baby swimmers session, lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Belleville en tête à tête (our new Sunday ritual, involving much hilarity with chopsticks). Possibly some finger painting, if the weather is inhospitable. Pleasures of a radically different kind.

It’s not that I prefer one state to the other. Simply that being petite the single girl one moment, then petite the mother the next takes some adjusting to. I now live two parallel lives, which rarely overlap.

The appointed hour is close, so hastily I wash the scent of bar smoke from my hair, remove the traces of last night’s makeup from around my eyes, take a deep breath and head out into the street.

As I thrust my keys into the pocket of my jeans, my fingers close around a smooth pebble.

Just a little note to say that if anyone who dropped me a line to say they wanted to come along on Saturday 1st April has not received the meet up details by email, due to my poor dizzy blonde head being all spinny and full of interest rates, please drop me another line on petite.anglaise@gmail.com and I will forward you the info.

Once upon a time, I suggested a little bloggerers’ get together, in a bar in Paris. About fifteen female expat bloggers showed up, along with one – very fortunate – male, and a good time was had by all. A few months later, we had a picnic in the Buttes Chaumont. I met lots of lovely, interesting people, even if my very noble intentions about keeping in touch with many of them regularly fell a little by the wayside, what with the to-ing and fro-ing between Paris and Brittany I was indulging in.

It’s been quite a while, and I thought it might be time to envisage another meet up. For girls, boys, expats (or not) who blog and would like to meet up for some drinks, at a secret venue yet to be thought of announced. I’m thinking maybe Saturday 1st April, off the top of my head.

Anyone fancy this?

Drop me a comment or email if you do, and I will send out meeting point details by email nearer the time. All suggestions most welcome, but I think somewhere one can partake of small, alcohol-absorbent nibbly things like tapas might be a good idea. (Because, ahem, I’m a lightweight.)

And I’m hoping that, in addition to the usual suspects, we might even attract some of the new Paris-based bloggerers I have noticed commenting in these parts of late?

This weekend, I will be meeting the “friends” referred to below. The very idea of this meeting has me in a turmoil.

extract from email from Lover, May 2005

“When I went back to England last month, I was moaning to my friends about Mad French Bird. As they are all nearing or indeed at 40 and in stable conventional relationships, none of them could see what on Earth my problem was with dating a mixed-up 22-year old. Eventually, I said “Look, the person that I REALLY like, the person that I feel completely compelled to, is someone I’ve never seen, who lives in Paris and has a partner and a child. I don’t know her name or what she looks like, but (…) I can’t get her out of my head.”

It is less than a year later, and by some bizarre twist of interweb fate we have been together for several months now. No twenty-two year old is any match for a petite anglaise with her glad rags on.

So, why the inner turmoil? So far, those of Lover’s friends I have met in France have all been lovely people, which bodes well. I do not doubt we will be in very good company.

What’s more, I am really looking forward to getting to know Lover better, as tongues do tend to be loosened by alcohol, and, with luck, some interesting stories about his schooldays in Sheffield will emerge over the course of the evening. And it’s always revealing to see a person in a new context. We all behave differently depending on who we are with, do we not? Among our oldest friends, we get back to the basics of who we really are.

The very Englishness of the weekend is also appealing, as curry and/or fish and chips and/or a full English breakfast are bound to be on the menu. An opportunity to worship at the altar of The Holy Grease. Not to be sniffed at.

But, despite all these positives, I appear to be rather nervous. This I know because when packing for a weekend away, I do not generally make a habit of trying on the entire contents of my wardrobe in front of a full-length mirror. It’s one thing being anxious about making a good impression (and striving to minimise the impression made by my disproportionately large rear, lest it steal all the limelight), but this level of panic (a code red alert) seems a little excessive, even to me.

I’ll admit to being slightly apprehensive that I won’t be able to take the pace (being woefully out of practice at drinking in pubs, all evening long, standing up) and a little uneasy at the prospect that, a few drinks into the evening, I might be an embarrassment, or a little too lairy.

But there are bigger issues here. Will I be a disappointment in some way? How do I compare with the ex-wife that they all knew so well, or the terrifyingly sexy girlfriend who helped him pick up the pieces, post-divorce? One of the most attractive things about an older man is that he knows who he is, and is comfortable in his own skin. The flipside of that coin is that he is bound to have some pretty weighty baggage; excess baggage, which in an airport would cost you dearly. And so I must deal with the ghosts of wives and girlfriends past.

Last, but not least, there is the small matter of the situation I was in when we met, as evidenced by the phrase: “who lives in Paris and has a partner and a child”. Our relationship was born out of the ruins of another. There was all kinds of fallout involved. I have taken my child away from her father, and plan to uproot us both next summer, in order to be with him. When I meet a friend of his for the first time, I sometimes wonder: are his friends simply happy for him, or do they feel slightly uncomfortable with how it all came about? Will they be judging me (as some of my commenters do)?

As usual, my mind is working overtime, creating problems, amplifying things out of all proportion.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I want to be cremated when that time comes, I think the phrase “petite anglaise – she thought too much” would have made a fitting epitaph.

The afternoon stretches interminably ahead of me, twice as long as usual, a piece of elastic pulled taut. I gaze blankly out of the window, barely registering the mass of pale grey clouds rushing past. There is a vague ache in my temples, and for some reason my fingers are stiff and painful when I type.

A flashback to a kitchen in Vincennes this morning, around 1 am. I am tackling a mountain of washing up with with a surprising amount of (admittedly alcohol-fuelled) enthusiasm. My friend has nipped across the road (wearing a green paper crown from a Christmas cracker) to heat up a Christmas pudding in her neighbour’s microwave. The other guests are watching an Alan Partridge Christmas DVD.

It doesn’t get much more festive than this.

The only thing which puzzles me slightly about the snapshot still I can see in my mind’s eye is that I seem to be wearing a gauzy turquoise pair of skirtpants on my head.

Skirtpants: item of seriously negligent underwear consisting of a virtually non-existent g-string attached to a transparent mini-skirt, with dangly ribbony bits at the sides. Falls into the category of underwear which is not actually intended to be worn under anything. Nor for very long, if all goes according to plan.

Unless, of course you are wearing them on your head, whilst fully clothed, and washing up, and they are not even your skirtpants in the first place.

I can’t quite recollect how they got there. But I do vaguely recollect the glare of a flashbulb or two.

Oh dear.

A mobile phone rang in someone’s pocket. The owner glanced at it and looked up with a sheepish, apologetic grin. “It’s sitemeter. Sorry, I’d better to take this,” he mumbled, before turning his back on us momentarily so he could talk about Very Important Things in private.

The kind of banter one would only expect to hear at a blog meet.

The regular patrons of the Champion pub in Notting Hill Gate may well have wondered which planet this strange assortment of nervous looking people were from, when they started sidling in, one by one, on Saturday afternoon, often with a copy of the Guardian tucked under an arm. A private handshake of sorts.

As for yours truly, I did cheat by meeting a couple of people at a secret location beforehand, so as not to arrive alone, but after a couple of glasses of wine on an empty stomach, my butterflies were stilled and I mostly flitted around the pub repeating “I’m just so excited! There are so many people here I was dying to meet!” like a broken record to anyone who would listen.

But I was excited. Because without exception, everyone I talked to was lovely. It felt more like a reunion between old friends who hadn’t caught up in a while than a meeting of strangers. Because we Know Things about one another. More about some more than about others, admittedly, but their voices seemed familiar. They talked like they wrote, or sounded just as I expected them to sound. I asked after their building work or other half as if we’d met many times before. People asked me quite personal things (usually prefaced with “Stop me if this is too personal, but”) and I replied, honestly, because it felt perfectly normal to do so.

One person had a very exciting device and he let me hold it. Others plied me with alcohol (and if I forgot to reciprocate, please excuse me!) and potato wedg(i)es. I resisted the urge to throw a pair of (clean) undergarments at That Man From Norfolk.

I’d love to do it again. On the condition that a few other people I really, really, really, really want to meet come along too…

I have come to the conclusion that music festivals and migraine headaches do not good bedfellows make.

Tadpole safely deposited with Mr Frog for the long French bank holiday weekend, the time had finally come to accompany my Lover to the Route du Rock music festival, held in an eighteenth century fort near St Malo. I hadn’t been to a fesival since Glastonbury in 1995, and was no longer sure I had the required stamina, but it did sound very tame indeed by Glastonbury standards, and the Lover can be very persuasive when he wants to be.

We arrived early Saturday evening, and pitched our brand new Decathlon tent. Time to pitch tent: 2 seconds. My scepticism when examining the instructions was unfounded: all you have to do is throw it into the air and watch it spring into shape, as if by magic.

I thought back to my Glastonbury experiences, where, by a combination of bad planning, inebriation and stupidity we often ended up trying to put up devilishly complicated tents in pitch black fields, with only a cigarette lighter or a box of matches to guide us. I have a less than fond memory of waking up and realising that I had pitched my tent on/slept on the deep imprint left by the treads of a tractor tyre. But pitching a tent in the dark and swearing/giggling a lot is what festivals are all about, so Decathlon are making it just a little bit too easy with their magic tents, in my opinion.

Headliners at this year’s Route du Rock: The Cure. It was their only date in France this year, and if you have spent any time in France at all, you will realise that The Cure have always had an ENORMOUS following in this country. So this was quite a big deal. In fact, for the first time in the festival’s history, Saturday night was sold out. All 12,000 tickets.

I was rather excited myself. I must confess that I did go through a Cure phase of my own, in my late teens and early twenties, and a black and white Boys Don’t Cry poster adorned the wall of my university bedroom (later to be replaced by Kurt Cobain). More recently, whenever I have indulged the ipod and let it have a little shuffle, it has shown an alarming prediliction for Cure tracks, so albums like Faith and Disintegration have undergone something of a revival in my household. I’d never seen Bob and Co in concert, however, hence my eager anticipation.

There were Cure fans everywhere. It was a fantastic people watching opportunity. Hours of backcombing. Litres of hairspray. Metres and metres of black satin and lace pulled tightly over bulging thighs and middles. Brides of Dracula. Rather rotund Robert Smith clones. Official and unofficial band T-shirts in every direction. Clearly the unwritten, tacit rule that one does not wear a band T-shirt at the band in question’s own gig is not one the French are aware of.

The other bands played, and struggled to make much of an impression on me, however enjoyable the general festival vibe. I rarely get into a band at a festival, unless I am already familiar with their music. Otherwise, it tends to wash over me a little.

And then The Cure arrived, and launched into… an album track. A long, swirling hymn to doomed relationships and depression. Followed by another, in a similar vein. Or an obscure b-side. These gave way, occasionally, to catchier, crowd-pleasing tracks. But it was a self-indulgent set, which seemed to be aimed more at the brides of Dracula than the festival going public at large.

After about an hour, I realised that a flashing red bicycle light, which some considerate person was wearing on his head, was bothering me. In fact, now that it was dark at the festival site, all the stage lights were vivid and glaring, and I was actually having trouble focusing my eyes. People moving through the crowd suddenly loomed in front of me, appearing out of nowhere. I was confused, disoriented, and wondered, idly, if one of my drinks might have been spiked with something chemical.

I struggled on, valiantly, for a while, but the visual disturbances were getting worse, not better, and the Lover and I retreated back from the standing room to a place where we could sit down. “It feels a bit like the aura I get before a migraine attack,” I mumbled, brain addled by too many lagers to realise that it wasn’t “a bit like” a migraine; it was a migraine.

When the feelings did not subside, we decided that heading back to the tent would be the best course of action. The headache struck just as we were zipping our sleeping bags together by the backlight of a mobile phone. Indescribable pain, which made me claw and clutch at the right hand side of my head in futile desperation, rocking forwards to wedge my head between my knees to stave off waves of pain-induced nausea.

Through a veil of throbbing, pulsing pain I heard my favourite tracks. A Forest. 10.15 Saturday Night. Boys don’t Cry.

I realised I was crying.

We sang carols outside a friend’s bedroom door, in the halls of residence, accompanied by an improvised shepherd, in the form of a vacuum cleaner wearing a makeshift head dress fashioned out of a tea towel and a roll of sticky tape.

We drank mushroom tea, and you saw furry spiders crawling all over my blue bedroom walls. Meanwhile I climbed into the linen cupboard and peeped suspiciously out through the slats in the wooden door.

You sent me weird, wonderful, nonsensical letters during vacations, and, when she overheard me telling you I loved you on the phone, my mum started to wonder if her daughter wasn’t, in fact, a lesbian.

We went on missions to Safeway, with your shopping trolley, John, and the badly drawn felt tipped pen drawings of Magic Roundabout characters on his belly.

We went to Glastonbury, and each year was slightly more surreal (and expensive) than the last. Although the lemon scented hand wipes in lieu of showers remained a charming constant.

I used to bury my head under my pillow when your boyfriend came round, wondering how it was that sex had to involve rattling every cupboard door and banging into every piece of furniture in your room.

We danced until dawn at Renaissance, convinced that we could see bursts of rainbow coloured sounds and catch them in our hands if we could only move fast enough.

This weekend, we sat in your conservatory, watching our little angels roaming around the garden and occasionally breaking up heated squabbles over favoured toys. We discussed toddler taming techniques and new beginnings over cups of PG Tips and the odd cheeky half of lager.

So much has changed since those university days – the best of my life so far – but you never do.

Thank you for being so unconditionally happy for me.

This petite anglaise is going to be a very busy lass indeed if people keep organising bloggers’ soirées left right and centre. And the babysitter will be able to buy herself a new posh handbag on the proceeds, no doubt.

I’ll definitely be going to Paris blogue-t-il on 31 May – especially as I hear there will be an opportunity to sample Clotilde and Scally’s wares. Arriving fashionably late will not be an option as I’m sure the nibbles won’t faire long feu. I found out that do today, after having sent an email out last night to get thoughts on possible dates for another expat drinking do.

Saturday 25th June is what we came up with, and it sounds as though there are plans afoot for a daytime picnic, as well as an evening meetup. Feel free to come to either or both if you are an expat of any nationality or flavour and you blog. Drop me a gmail or post a comment here to be included on the mailing list. And if you have suggestions for a cosy evening venue, pipe up!

Oh, and as well as being a party girl, according to google I’m a bad mummy. Try it at home. Type “bad mummy” in google.com or .fr or whatever and then hit “I’m feeling lucky”. Not sure how long I will retain this dubious honour but it was funny while it lasted.

I went to see ‘I am Kloot’ at the Nouveau Casino last night, as promised. The choice of venue was perfect, the sound crystal clear so that every single poignant word of every song hung shimmering in the smoky air before us, the relatively small size of the salle adding to the intimacy of the performance. I’m only sorry that due to my overindulgence after the concert, my words are not flowing as they should and fail to do ‘Kloot’ justice.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I listened to the melancholy acoustic ballad Astray, how it must feel to know that you are the subject of a song, the muse at the source of the songwriter’s inspiration. I sneaked a peek at the singer’s girlfriend as he sang “and still the bold raging flame of your heart is making me stay” and felt a lump in my throat.

Thank you guys. I loved every minute of it.

My hair hurts. I used alcohol as an antidote to my habitual shyness at the ‘Paris blog-t-il?’ soirée held at the Entrepôt last night and am now feeling as if I may shatter into lots of small, dehydrated pieces if I move too quickly. I hope you will forgive me for the brevity of today’s post.

Over two hundred Parisian bloggers had signed up for the event, and the turnout was impressive. There were lots of MALES, which surprised me, as when I organised the expat blogmeet (remember that Eiffel tower poster which everyone thought I had doctored to look like a g-string on purpose?), it attracted an overwhelming majority of females. Mind you, some of the men were not wearing stickers showing the name of their blog and may just have been there hoping to seduce young bloggeuses.

I met lots of very nice people, caught up with a couple I already knew and had my picture taken with a very fetching and well-travelled teddy bear.

I only hope that the blogger who said he actually preferred seeing people’s avatars to meeting them in the flesh wasn’t referring specifically to me…

I had such surreal, cocktail-induced dreams on Friday night, that by Saturday morning I was no longer sure which conversations had actually taken place at the blogmeet and which were the warped inventions of my pickled brain.

Sadly I think I really did quiz La Coquette about the virtues of Colgate whitening strips for about ten minutes (my apologies). And for your information, we two were the last standing – but, to be fair, this had more to do with many people having to dash off to catch the last train home to the ‘burbs, and should not be construed as a reflection of their staying power in general.

I arrived at the bar – Klein Holland in the Marais – a little after the appointed hour and was afflicted with a severe case of rabbit in the headlights syndrome as I walked hesitantly over to the large table around which (what I supposed was) our group had congregated. “You’re petite right?” someone guessed, (I wonder why?). I nodded affirmatively. Introductions followed but I remained in a state of shellshock for several minutes and I don’t think I managed to form a grammatically viable sentence until I’d had a few sips of my first cocktail. There’s something very surreal about meeting people in the flesh who are privy to your innermost thoughts, yet have no idea what you look like, or sound like in person (awfully British apparently).

Inevitably, because of the fantastic turnout, I didn’t manage to have a proper chat with everyone present, and for this reason alone we will have to do it again. Iain deserves a special mention for daring to join us at all – although thankfully a couple of bloggers did bring their other halves, so he wasn’t the only male for long. One thing I did notice is that I found it easier to continue calling people by their blog pseudoynms, as the labels seem to have well and truly stuck.

As for me, I felt absurdly comfortable being ‘petite’ and, after referring to Mr Frog and Tadpole by their real names a couple of times, I soon reverted back to using their blognames as well. I think blogging takes place in a sort of Donnie Darko-esque parallel universe, and the blogmeet definitely took place in that other place.

Saturday morning can best be summed up using the term ‘tired and emotional’. Or as the French sometimes say, “j’avais mal au cheveux” (my hair hurt). Mr Frog phoned from the TGV to say that his train would be delayed. I decided to press on to Gare de Lyon regardless and settled myself in a café opposite the station to people watch and eat the closest thing to an English breakfast on the menu: a croque madame. (It doesn’t really come close, but I found it helpful all the same.)

I was impatient to see my daughter again after our longest separation, but it wasn’t until a girl only a little older than Tadpole, with similar curly blond hair, stopped in front of the café window and stared in my direction that the desire to see her started to feel like a physical craving. I waved and smiled at the little girl, and then headed into the station to stake out the platform and start my waiting vigil. When the train finally pulled in, I ran (people who know me well will realise how out of character this is) to voiture 13 and immediately caught sight of Mr Frog. I leapt up the steps and a little warm bundle hurled itself into my arms. Suddenly the floodgates opened.

Granny p (see Friday’s comments) was right. Motherhood and schizophrenia have a lot in common. Some people had commented the previous night that they couldn’t quite imagine me as a mum. And I had been secretly feeling rather guilty that I hadn’t spent the whole week pining. Was it normal to feel gleeful that I could get up a little later, and run errands after work? Was I totally selfish and un-maternal? But as soon as I laid eyes on her, the shockwave hit and it was like being punched in the ribcage.

Last night, vegetating on the sofa in front of a DVD (Paycheck: I like Philip Dick’s novels but I hate plastic ‘Ken’ Affleck so verdict is not good I’m afraid), I felt such a sense of relief and comfort to know that my little girl was sleeping right there in the next room. I could go and peek any time I wanted to, and listen to her gently snoring.

That has to be my current definition of happiness.

I’m all in a turmoil today.

Mr Frog has now departed and is chaperoning my long lost Tadpole back to Paris tomorrow afternoon. In fact he’ll be seeing her in a couple of hours and will be able to cover her soft red cheeks with a multitude of tiny kisses while I sit typing in my office trying (no doubt unsuccessfully) not to feel insanely jealous.

It has been rather odd her being away for so long. I have coped by kind of “switching off”, winding the clocks back twenty months or so to a time when I wasn’t yet a mother. I’m sure I will think that she has changed and grown up beyond belief when I see her again. A whole host of new words will greet me. I will have missed important things, like her building her first snowman. Apparently she has a new pair of fur-lined boots that grandma bought. She is so fond of them that she refuses to take them off at bedtime. I hope they are not too hideous, but nevertheless fear the worst as belle mère and I do not exactly see eye to eye on questions of infant fashion.

The last time I phoned, Tadpole refused to talk at all, handing the receiver back to mamie with a brusque “C’est fini!”. I know I shouldn’t read anything into this, as toddlers are anything but predictable, logical beings, but all the same it was a bit of a slap in the face. Her voice sounded so distant and so, well, French I suppose. I’m looking forward to our trip to the UK at Easter to redress the language balance with a liberal dose of Yorkshire.

But before I get to the tearful reunion at the Gare de Lyon, my stomach is all a-flutter about the fact that I’m meeting all these expat blogger strangers in a bar at 7 pm tonight.

kim francophony | nardac holy smokes | la coquette | vivi dispatches | katia aussielass | sarah wooden | clotilde chocolate & zucchini | aimee flare | sierra le oli | lauren 35 | oiseau anglais | iain baseball diaries | jonathan powerfactory | auntie m | pat zraidi | aru | antipo déesse | tami

Who would have thought that there were so many of us, or that some souls would be willing to hop on a TGV to come and meet up. Oh lord, I hope the bar is okay… I hope everyone gets on. I only facilitated the whole thing, like a kind of expat friendship matchmaking service (maybe I should go into business?), but I do feel a teensy bit responsible for the outcome.

And I have no idea what to wear. How I want to be perceived. That sort of highly superficial thing that shouldn’t be important, but IS.

Does my bum look big in this?