open up my eager eyes

hey you mister interview

2012-02-03T21:41:00.000+01:00

I work a weird schedule that comprises of mornings and evenings and a gap in the afternoon, which once, back in lazy student days, would have served nicely for naps, wrapped up in a Zara sale clear out of knits with elbow patches. Now, I at least pretend to spend my days more productively. So here's an interview I did with Jon Cohen (formally of The Doves and The Social Register, now a formidable one man band) for Gigs in Paris.

[ Interview: The Jon Cohen Experimental ]

everybody living in someone else's debt

2012-02-01T11:07:00.001+01:00

All my songs come from Gossip Girl. This is Wolf Gang's second debut on this blog. I don't care. It's my blog. I'm fighting flu. I work Saturdays. Leave me alone. I just want to stay in bed and drink tea and watch rubbish tv and play Fruit Ninja on my iPhone. Instead I have to take very long surveys to see if they'll let me in the States with a very battered 2004, non-microchip, barely machine-readable passport (yes, apparently, although they ask some very peculiar questions) and plan lessons and get over my writers block and constantly mistype everything due to the shift between a qwerty and azerty keyboard. And watch H enthralled over his 3D camera. Seriously: When did this technological advance happen? And when will these photos be of any use, since you can't print them out, or look at them on a computer screen, or even on a tv unless you have a 3D one, which we don't. You may have guessed that this week I'm choosing to wallow in minor levels of self pity, but surely that's acceptable, since we've now officially entered into the really shitty bit of winter when you thought it was starting to get warmer, but then you realise you might have to crack out the ice grippers your parents got you for Christmas after all (hashtag weirdest present ever).

right through that concrete wall

2012-01-22T22:15:00.001+01:00

Confession time: Yes, it was the Gossip Girl soundtrack that hooked me onto Zee Avi. This has happened before: Someone over in their offices has good taste. And there's nothing wrong with liking Gossip Girl. Ahem.

I hear a lot of theories about music and the things we're drawn to: Music that runs at the same rate as our heartbeat, and that we like repetitive patterns. I've always been a little sceptical of the one about patterns - club music and I definitely aren't friends - but then Lali Puna comes along and turns that on its head, and then that beautiful simple, breathy, almost xylophonic sound of Zee Avi throws a final trump card. Uncomplicated, a little sad, but then isn't some of the saddest music some of the best?

looking over

2012-01-16T16:11:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I seriously listened to a noisy band. I think the seeds were set for my descent into mellowness years ago after I went to five gigs in one week, passing it of as an essential part of my journalism degree, and all those bruises and nosebleeds and beer hair just got old. Because you can't really stage dive or crowd surf or punch someone in your enthusiasm with Lana Del Rey or Regina Spektor or The xx playing. Well, you can, but it doesn't really have the same effect because everyone is too busy swaying and listening intently to the lyrics trying to find some deep and significant relevance to their lives. But some people just do these things anyway and everyone else just huddles and sways together and tries not to get a shoe in the side of their head. Yuck has that nice compromise that should satisfy both swayers and surfers. And I hope both of these types of gig goers never get a shoe to the head, because it really hurts.

I also quite like this musty, muffled sound quality of this video. Demos and bootleg copies always make you feel like you've gained access to something shut out from the rest of the world. Those little spots of imperfection are actually very sweet and very real.

you're faking it son

2012-01-16T15:42:00.001+01:00

I feel like this video sums up everything about my life in France. Particularly as there's now a French Weekends rule imposed in my apartment. Don't be fooled by the fact that this could be something really fun and interesting. In actuality, it just means I have to speak French all weekend. It's really making me appreciate Monday mornings.

holiday, oh, holiday

2012-01-11T18:24:00.001+01:00

My Asian geographical knowledge is better than my European geographical knowledge. It's actually probably better than my knowledge of towns in England. One day, in a pub quiz somewhere, this will prove useful; I just know it. My African geography is shamefully rubbish, but I feel that this all of this is directly in proportion with where I've spent my adult life.

But in an attempt to counteract this, for New Year, H and I went to Marrakech - my first time to Africa. I tend to take photos of a) patterns b) doors and c) my shoes - so that's really all you're getting. H just tends to photobomb, but you're not getting any of that. One day, I'll take the plunge and buy a DSLR camera and photography lessons.

close my mouth, words fall out

2012-01-10T23:48:00.000+01:00

A little late, but since the New Years is very much upon us, January calls for resolutions. I didn't make any last year, and 2011 was pretty amazing anyway, even without the benefit of promises to make life improvements. One year, my resolution was to learn to balance three plates in one hand, so don't expect anything momentous.

1. Run more. My sister has roped me into running 10k with her, although in all fairness, it was something I wanted to do anyway, and was even throwing the words 'half marathon' around. She believes 'we could run 10k no problem', which is probably right. Apparently we can't just go to the pub and get drunk and fall over together like most normal British sisters do.

2. Speak more French. I didn't just say this to win over my French teacher, who made us list our resolutions in our first class of 2012. Mostly because when I have cute half French babies, I want to be able to understand everything they are saying when they tell stories like this.

3. Write more. Both here on this blog, and in the journalism world in general. My irregular work schedule has made this difficult. Also - scrape what is salvageable from my NaNoWriMo Novel into a new novel. I wrote 15,000 words, admittedly in a week, but surely something there has got to be good.

This all, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with This Weeks Song, which comes from The xx, and is indefinitely more relaxing than running half marathons. Demo record, perfect listening for the flight to and from my New Years' Marrakech trip. Pictures to follow.

you've got so much more to dream of

2012-01-06T15:18:00.000+01:00

I always feel that The Shins, like Belle and Sebastian, are something of a go to as far as indie films are concerned. Dream pop before hipsters got their hands on it. Gone For Good headed up my summer soundtrack when I was in Thailand and Laos, whatever the Koh San Road's best intentions to make it Dragostea Din Tei and You're Beautiful were. This week, rather than turning to my age old faithful iPod soundtracks, I decided to just shuffle, which is usually a safe-ish bet, since I've purged it of almost everything I wouldn't skip over. Hence Girl Sailor.

i'm a moving picture and i could be anywhere tonight

2011-12-21T12:29:00.002+01:00

When I was doing my undergraduate degree, which now seems like a shockingly long time ago, The Sunshine Underground released their first album. I remember this, because I trawled around York for days trying to find a copy. CDs back then, remember. No one really knew what iTunes and who Steve Jobs were. Apple was a piece of fruit, and only a handful of universities in the UK had Facebook. People had Nokia phones and black earphones. It was a different world. Apparently, back then, no one in York really knew or cared who The Sunshine Underground were. Eventually, someone at HMV or similar dragged up a singular copy from the back of a cupboard, which I think was meant to be reserved for someone else, but I found joy in the fact that I was about to purchase the only available copy of Raise The Alarm that existed in York.

The Sunshine Underground have that very rare quality of not immediately sounding like anyone else. Last.fm, who are usually my go to for 'I like this band, so tell me who else I'll like' have them pegged as The Courteeners and Reverend and the Makers, which just isn't right.

Plus there're working well to block out the sounds of the builders working on my parents' house. It feels like they are all drilling immediately into my bedroom walls. They're also listening to either Heart.fm, which has the same effect on my ears as an electric drill and an angry warthog having an argument, or Radio 4, which I feel is really inconsistent to the general stereotype of builders, because how can you shout out leary comments at passing woman if you're blasting out The Archers?

let this be our little secret

2011-12-12T20:28:00.000+01:00

It emerges I'm getting pretty slack on monitoring what I wrote and when it was published, because this has probably been up for a while, and I just didn't notice.

[ Seven Secrets of Paris ]

five smartphone apps to help you navigate paris

2011-12-05T16:08:00.001+01:00

(Guest post by Lela Lake from AnyTrip.com)

Unlock the puzzle of Paris with phone apps for the Paris Metro system, get the low down on current cultural exhibits or navigate the infamously confusing selection of flea markets. Be aware that Paris is notorious for smartphone theft, so use an extra dose of common sense when pulling it out in public.

Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later

(Photo credit: App Store HQ)

Paris streets are notorious for open air markets, but zeroing in on precisely the right ones is the when the Brocabrac app becomes invaluable. Not only will it categorize them into neat little groups by region (arrondissement), date and hours of operation, it calculates how far you need to travel. Although quite user friendly, you still have to know enough French to know the difference between vide-greniers (attic empting), marchés aux puces (outdoor markets), brocantes (second hand markets) and foires à tout de votre département sous un format pratique (fairs of a practical format) -- otherwise you can to set out to find vintage antiques and wind up at the stamp collectors’ swap!

Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later

(photo credit: iTunes Apple)

The granddaddy of all touring apps, the only drawback of the Paris 3D app is that it takes a big chunk of memory-- a whopping 454 MB – to operate, which often means dumping other programs to give this high-maintenance app room to work. Judging from all the rave reviews that use the word amazing quite liberally, every MB of space is well spent – you can virtually fly over a 3D Paris to your destination like Superman. The precision GPS quickly responds to interactive instructions with eye-popping displays that are almost as entertaining as the journey itself.

Compatible only for iOS4 users with an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4

(photo credit: iPhone FAQ)

This ultra-handy little app not only shows you every station and route of Paris Metro, it has an interactive geographically accurate map with press and zoom features with dazzling details on where you are, where you're going and what to expect when you get there. Another high-tech feature is its ability to send you a bulletin when there are disruptions in Paris metro even if your app is turned off.

Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later

(photo credit: iTunes Apple)

What sets this app apart from the other museum guides (besides the fact that it's free) is the constantly updated list of current exhibitions made possible by Paris museums on a daily basis. Paris M&M allows you to mark your favorites on your itinerary and notifies you of any free dates the exhibition in case you want to reconsider your schedule. It will let you know of the cost to get into the exhibit. If requested, it will automatically search for links to English versions of the websites for details on the show.

Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

(photo credit: David Lebovitz)

Finding public restrooms is considered a skill in Paris – not only are they rare but their location is kept as discreet as possible to minimize traffic. That’s where the Whizzer app comes in handy -- not only does it tell you locations, it rates the cleanliness, lists the amenities and gives a security level rating. It does not, however, distinguish between free toilets and those in stores and restaurants requiring a purchase to access their customer restroom – a common rule of thumb.

About the author: Lela Lake is a life-long Paris lover and writes for AnyTrip.com, the budget travel specialists. You can browse the site’s selection of cheap hotels in Paris.

at times it is just unnerving

2011-12-04T20:46:00.001+01:00

Is it against the rules to have two Maccabees songs almost back to back? I have a build up of songs I want to showcase on here - some of them that have been kicking around my iPod for years, but this is a newbie to my playlists, even though it's an old song. Surely I can't be the only person who suddenly decides to dedicate whole afternoons to digging up the b-sides of a band. Which means all those other songs will just have to wait.

I am horribly aware that all my postings recently have been music rather than Paris related, but bear wth me: All will be explained when I can finally finish typing up my post on how to end a CDD contract early which should, in any other situation, be simples, but for reasons that I'll later divulge, can be made extremely difficult. I don't want to post it early in case I jinx myself but I'm just forever grateful that I live in a country where strikes are the norm and unions kick arse: The CGT are about to become my best friends. I'm also learning that I never, ever want to come up in court against H, because I would definitely lose.

swinging with the old stars

2011-11-25T09:55:00.001+01:00

Lana Del Rey. I read, somewhere, a comparison between Lana Del Rey and Amy Winehouse, but I think this is too easy, and too swift a judgement to make. Notably; yes, both female singers and yes, both soulful and rich in tone, both often sombre in mood. But rather than pull out our favourite soul musician playing card, it might be nice, for once, to look elsewhere for comparison. Lana Del Rey is the more serious side of Regina Spektor, a splash of Laura Marling, Romy Madley Croft, and Laura Stevenson and the Cans. Hauntingly sad, with that voice which almost trembles with emotion.

Of course, we now must deal with the inevitable fallout of the sound competition from the Bombay Bicycle Club and Kasabian covers. Covers are tricky. Messing with someones song is a bit like riffling through their diary. Songs are personal. I always see Modern Way as belonging to The Cribs, because that's who I heard play it first: Kaiser Chief's original has always paled in comparison as a result, like listening to the song with earmuffs on.

Covers, as a rule, either shockingly fail to live up to the original - pretty much anything covered by a Mouseketeer or, more accurately, ever made by a Mouseketeer; or destroy all creditability of previous ownership - Cake's I Will Survive, The Maccabees' Boom Boom Pow, Klaxons' It's Not Over Yet, Arctic Monkeys' Love Machine. And Radio 1's Live Lounge are often the ones responsible, usually hosting at least a half decent cover.

But then there are those rare niceties where both original and cover can be appreciated - think This Must Be The Place, if it's acceptable for me to say I like the Talking Head's version (my dad used to play them in the car on a cassette when I was seven, okay? Don't mess with my childhood memories).Video Games, luckily, falls snugly into this category, because I'd hate to hear it butchered by a bratty child star turned grown up brat. Maybe, in Bombay Bicycle Club's case, it just comes down to the clever use of pretty glockenspiels, or Jack Steadman's sweetly shaking vocals, usually only glimpsed on their more mellow B-Sides (think Will You, Won't You, or the epic You Already Know).

Gossip Girl and TOWIE producers have eagerly snapped up Lana Del Rey's version, and even though there's a little part of me that will always associate it with high level tans and false eyelashes, who cares, because life with her music, and with false eyelashes is just so much better.

and we're going back to where we came from

2011-11-23T23:01:00.001+01:00

The Maccabees. Let's start with the name. Just savour it a little bit. Maccabees. They are, arguably, one of my favourite bands in all the world. Possibly, dare I say, my...favourite band in all the world. Each year I tell myself I've seen them numerous times already, and I should spend my hard earned euros on another band, and yet each year I find myself there again, all glossy eyed and dreamy in Maccabees-induced happiness, numerous times. But this time, there's a brand spanking new album, so it's only fair that I go, surely? Added to that, H's work has some weird inexplicable French bureaucracy complex thing that means I get 50 percent off gig tickets. I feel like this is a piece of information he really shouldn't have told me about. Who needs to pay taxes when you can start going to five gigs a week again, but only pay for two and a half?

sit and drink pennyroyal tea

2011-11-21T09:42:00.001+01:00

Another piece I wrote for Quirky Guide on La Mosquée.

[ La Mosquée ]

I went here for my last 20-something birthday. I've never been a big one for birthdays - my friends had to arrange my 21st, or I would have just chosen to ignore it entirely. This is not because I fear getting older, but because I hate all the fuss. It's strange; the day when you realise you'd rather do something sophisticated and relaxing to celebrate getting older instead of drinking your weight in alcohol and waking up fuzzy headed and wondering whether you had a good time or not. I now fear going back to London knowing my limit is probably a drop in the ocean compared to my friends', and that by the time it gets to about 1am, I start making noises about going home and going to bed.

but I'm a vegetarian so it's a frozen pizza pie

2011-11-18T14:30:00.001+01:00

Here's a piece I wrote for the International Herald Tribune, which also appears online on the New York Times website. There is a part of me that wonders how many people stumble across this article thinking it might be about a Harry Potter character. Quite possible.

[ Soy Substitute Edges Its Way Into European Meals ]

but what will you be and when

2011-11-14T15:47:00.001+01:00

Guess what? Craigslist isn't just a way for dirty old men to get their kicks. It also helped in the formation of Freelance Whales, which means a return to the more traditional indie this Monday. I was originally going to pick Hannah as This Week's Song, but The Great Estates puts forward the more mellow mood I'm trying to hold onto at the moment. This is music to lie in a rowing boat, or snooze in the grass to or, if you're me, music to de-stress to after risking life and limb by going to a house party in Saint Denis, Paris' answer to the recent London riots. Of the many people I saw hanging out casually in the street, I would say about 80 percent of them were probably doing something illicit or illegal. Hooray for Paris suburbs.

Freelance Whales remind me a lot of Delays, another band I feel is incredible, and yet massively underrated, except on this blog, where I mention them all the time. Maybe a smidge of Young The Giant, a dreamy Noah And The Whale and a mellowed out The Naked and Famous too. Definitely a Skins soundtrack in the making.

illusions come illusions go

2011-11-07T12:49:00.000+01:00

Confession time: I've sort of been putting off including this band in my This Week's Song list for about six weeks. Why? Perhaps I'm a leeetle bit embarrassed that I've been caught listening to symphonic rock. Isn't that the modern day equivalent of saying you like Queen? And trust me, if you've ever seen me in a karaoke bar (probably another thing I shouldn't be confessing, but I used to live in Indonesia and that is just what you do at the weekends, okay?), you'd see I do not like Queen. I spit nails at Queen. I upend my drink at Queen. I leave the room at Queen. Six minutes of Bohemian Rhapsody? Which is actually just a really crap nonsensical novel condensed into a series of falsettos and tempo and style jumps that don't go together. You can do so many more better things with your time in six minutes than listen to Bohemian Rhapsody: Like listen to two Wolfgang songs, read a LUVandHAT blog entry (or several, if you're a supremely fast reader like me), make everyone in the room a cup of tea and round of toast, try and tempt next door's cat into your apartment, or make the perfect inbetween-y boiled egg.

But it's okay to like Wolfgang. Because if you're cruising The Naked and Famous on Last.fm, and you click on Similar Artists, there they are. So, you see, by proximity, liking symphonic rock is fine.

Also, is it just me, or does this song remind you of Game of Thrones? Just me? I'll shut up now.

time to wake up, find my soul

2011-11-02T01:33:00.001+01:00

I always mean to listen to Patrick Wolf, and then it’s a bit like I keep forgetting, or getting distracted by NaNoWriMo planning (I use this term loosely, as I have no plot for my novel). Which is sad news, because I really should put in the time. I’m floating ever closer to this semi operatic feel, this orchestrated ambience, this symphonic rock meets indie meets techno pop meets hey, here’s a pretty talented guy who can play a lot of instruments. I was directed towards Time Of My Life by someone I follow on Twitter. I think I started following her because she wrote a comment about writing about unicorns and rainbows or something for her English GCSE and got an A. I’m easily swayed. So I guess this falls into the already glittering category of why I like Twitter. Also to follow, for updates on their blog, @LUVandHAT. LUV the writing, HAT the fact that I probably couldn’t write so entertainingly about Haribo.

This is the last time I’ll do this, sadly, but I couldn’t really have This Week’s Song without including Sophie (links only, it seems X Factor are big on this no embedding rule). I don’t usually watch the X Factor for many reasons, but the one that riles me most at the moment is the clearly scripted plan they have for the contenders. I’m sure I’m echoing many people’s opinions on this that have already been well voiced on Twitter, but creating a controversial X Factor outing the week after Simon Cowell said X Factor needed to be more controversial probably says more than enough. There are about three people left in that competition who can actually sing.

i'm rich like a hot noise

2011-10-24T17:01:00.000+02:00

Here's a horror story to chill you to your very core. There's a girl - let's call her Lucy, because I can't actually remember her real name - out walking in the 16e arrondissement on a sunny afternoon. Now the 16eme is basically apartments and bourgeois. And posh schools. The streets are clean, the people are rich, and sometimes they put small dogs in their (real) designer handbags. Remember, in Paris, je t'aime (obviously the fountain of all Parisian knowledge), the posh lady with the baby lives in the 16eme. If the 16eme were a London suburb, it would probably be Kensington, except without the accent, and a bit more boring, because no one ever really goes to the 16eme unless they're lost. Or unless they're Benjamin Franklin, who lived there for 10 years (fun fact).

So there we have Lucy, walking through the 16eme on a busy road, when she falls over, cracks a bone in her leg, lands on her phone and smushes it into un-useable oblivion, and sprawls dazed and confused and broken-legged onto the pavement. Can I please remind you that it's a) the daytime and b) not raining or snowing. How long does Lucy lie there on the pavement, waiting for some kindly passerby to help her up? Four hours.

Now you may think that Lucy was perhaps a terrifying looking, tattooed and pierced Goth; or she couldn't speak French, instead screaming hysterically in Mongolian or something; or she spent most of her time on the pavement passed out and the people walking past just thought she had over indulged on the good stuff. But no: Lucy was a perfectly normal woman in her early 20s, who spoke French, and asked, repeatedly, nicely, for someone to help her, or even just to phone an ambulance - they didn't even need to talk to or look at her. But they didn't. They left her, on the pavement, with her broken leg. For four hours.

Honestly, Paris. I can guarantee that if she had done this in my old hood, Barbès, she wouldn't have even landed on the pavement without someone catching her, and then insisting she swig from their €1.09 bottle of wine to help deal with the shock.

kids stay out tonight

2011-10-24T16:34:00.000+02:00

I wish I could say that I found Airship all by myself. But that would be a lie. Marcus, the guitarist, is a friend of my friend Sally, so when they came a-touring to Paris, we went along. Gig. Indie. Guest list. Skinny jeans. Hell, I was there in spades.

What I love about Airship is the return of good old fashioned indie. The type of indie that doesn't require a constant synth, so that when they do use a synth, it actually sounds original. The sort of band that all play at least two instruments. Music that relaxes you into that immediate foot tapping evolving into crushed-up-next-to-eachother-dance-jumping. The sort of sweaty basement music of my youth (am I old enough to say that yet? Oh probably). Of course, they're from Manchester, as so many of Britain's greats are. Think early Idlewild, or Sunshine Underground, with snatches of Delays. Or maybe a less electro-fied version of Cloud Control.

And in-keeping with tradition, here's Sophie. PS. I'm not really sure about this working the name of the song/artist into the title of the YouTube video thing that the X Factor YouTube uploaders have got going on. Craig Colton is in his own private Oasis? Cher and Cher alike with Sami Brookes? You're not The Sun headline writers, you know.

the district sleeps alone tonight

2011-10-23T20:58:00.001+02:00

H has gone to India. Having long considered the vast expanse of Asia as my second home - even, at times, my first home, I'm experiencing some slight jealousy issues.

Oh, I know that when I went to India, some Israelis had to rescue me from a sex pest on an overnight bus; my friend got bitten by a dog and we had to spend most of our time in questionable hospitals getting her rabies jabs ('oh look, that guy in the bed next to us is bleeding all over the floor. Nice'); and after a week lying spaced out and unable to move, we realised we probably should've pumped for the more expensive malaria tablets. And I know India was hot and stressful and being blonde was the single most idiotic mistake I could have made. Being blonde is a bit like handing out an invitation which says: 'Hello! Please touch me as much as possible! Just me! Make sure you ignore all my brunette friends!'

But if I wasn't a starving journalist slash teacher slash soon-to-be NaNoWriMo writer, I would be bumming round there too, jungle trekking and temple gazing; wearing the same clothes every day; collecting pieces of red string around my wrists; and buying millions of throws for the imaginary furniture I don't own.

But I'm not. I'm here, in pretty Paris. So to avoid becoming one of those really crap girls who sniffles a lot about absent boyfriends. I started thinking of things I could do in a boy-free apartment. Like:

- Watch X Factor without a running commentary on why X Factor is rubbish, why all the contestants are all clearly mad, and how in France, they don't parade their prize nutters on national television for all to see. Obviously untrue if you have ever seen Secret Story. Also, H likes Supersize vs Skinny, so he clearly loves trashy television as much as the next Brit, even if he does complain every time they say stone 'instead of' kilos.

- Continue with operation steal next door's cat. I don't eat tuna, and there's now a can of tuna in the apartment. Coincidence? I think not. Although as I now have nothing to eat except for some fennel, a tomato and two bottles of wine, I may have to sacrifice the tuna for the greater good (It's Sunday, ergo everything in Paris is shut).

- Stop pretending I'm not slightly afraid of violent Xbox games.

- Arrive home drunk in the way I used to when I was a student i.e. Do all normally quiet tasks REALLY LOUDLY. Throw things everywhere, especially shoes, and breakable things, like iPods and mobile phones (why I own a Samsung circa 1999 - would probably survive a nuclear fallout). Wake up wearing inside out pyjamas on top of going out clothes with eye makeup like Taylor Momsen and neon paint cat whiskers and nose. Get Lauren to come and stay, so she can do the same.

- Apply face masks and not have to hide in the bathroom. Sometimes I wish I still lived with one of the guys that I lived with at uni. He used to like face masks and got us to wax his leg as a 'test' to see if he could keep up chest waxing for the rest of his life. Needless to say, he screamed like Kitty from X Factor, and turned out to be a nob.

- Wear my trilby, just because it's a trilby kinda day. Or what's a bad hair day, without being looked at like I am a completely insane person.

- Sleep starfished. And swiss roll the covers. Not when Lauren is here, obviously.

- Apply fake tan without worrying about fucking it up on the tricky bits because no one is ever going to see now it is minus 10 degrees outside.

- Have a bath. With bubbles and candles. Of course, in real life, this occurs for about three minutes, by which time I remember I really hate baths, because they require constant hot tap topping up.

- Eat cereal three times a day instead of cooking balanced meals. Switch to Lion Bar Cereal when Lauren is here.

- Finish the orange juice. And sneakily drink from the carton, even though I hate people who do that.

- Get back to the laundrette before the washing machine stops. Surely I'm not the only one who is paranoid that someone is going to swipe my clean clothes if I'm not there the moment the washing machine finishes. Last time I arrived, a man was sat in front of my clothes watching them go round and round. I don't think he even had any of his own clothes to wash.

- Wear makeup without being directed to this link.

- Stop spending my morning washing H's beard trimmings out of the sink.

PS. I am, of course, allowed to complain about how I'm not in Asia. It's so cold in Paris I might have to start skiing to the Metro pretty soon. I'm starting to understand people who wear snuggies. I'd like one with cat ears please.

our aspirations are wrapped up in books

2011-10-20T17:20:00.003+02:00

If you've never lived abroad for a significant length of time, you may find the following sentence a little hard to relate to: Today, in WHSmith in Paris, I almost cried. Not, I hasten to add, because I was sad (although probably my bank was after I spent - eep - €14.40 on a paperback), but because I was overwhelmed at being surrounded by books I could actually read without wondering if I was reading the actual story, or just creating my own work of fiction. I'm talking wobbly lower lip, shining eyes wide as saucers, clutching firmly onto Bright Shiny Morning as if it was suddenly about to bite me and scurry away, Harry Potter book style.

I love Paris. I really, really do. But as we've passed our one year anniversary, there are lots of little things about England that I have begun to miss. Looking left when crossing the street without running the risk of being run over. The British sense of humour. Watching X Factor in real time. Ordering tea in a café and it arriving with the hot water already poured onto the teabag (the world in general outside of the UK makes this error. Sort it out). Spying effortlessly on other people's conversations. And, amongst other things, books. Now I know there's Amazon; plus my dad is a publisher so in theory should be sending me stacks of books and franking the postage on the company expenses (I say in theory - this hasn't happened yet. Ahem). But there's something about an Actual Book Shop. It's perhaps because I'm one of those people who likes libraries and newspapers and took a long time to get used to buying music online, whilst secretly still preferring CDs. So me and kindles are a bit like anyone who hasn't switched over to a Mac yet: You know you should be using them, you know they make sense, but you're so stubbornly stuck in your old ways.

So there I was, glassy eyed in a sea of English books, looking around at all the other English speakers buying English books and English magazines. Even heat magazine, which is ridiculous, because I don't even know who 80 percent of the people in that magazine are any more. Although I am beginning to feel like I have a huge TOWIE-shaped hole in my life. I was in awe. And then I wondered upstairs where there were gravy granules and custard and ginger nuts and galaxy chocolate and mince mies and Christmas cake and jelly and by then I was about done for. It's probably quite lucky I was a) late for lunch and b) poor, because otherwise I would have acquired the entire contents of WHSmith and fallen into a sort of sugar-and-book induced coma.

I was also considering posting a photo of my WHSmith buys, which may be an indication as to my levels of excitement. Expats would totally get this. Residents of the UK would have just wonder why I'd bothered to posted a picture of a sherbet fountain and a 2008 James Frey.

the hope that pieces would take shape

2011-10-17T23:46:00.001+02:00

This isn't the first time The Naked And Famous have landed on my blog. But they were lost in a blur of Reading Festival, which is ridiculous, as they are more than worthy of their own post. One of things I like so much about this band, apart from the fact that they're from New Zealand, is that although I suppose you can generally throw them in the indie category, and every one of their songs has a certain TNAF feel about it, they manage to cover a lot of genres without overstepping the mark. Everyone needs more of this band in their lives.

Also, here's another video you should probably be interested in.

red wine, headaches, mythology

2011-10-14T19:41:00.001+02:00

The first of three pieces I've written for Quirky Guide. This is my ideal kind of travel website - takes you away from the yawn-could've-been-anywhere and plunges you straight into the unconventional. I'm sure I've mentioned this place somewhere along the way: Wine in baby bottles. Need I say more?

[ Le Refuge des Fondues ]

lately she's a first aid kit

2011-10-13T18:29:00.001+02:00

The other morning, I woke up with a sore throat. You know, the kind that turns grown men into sniffling wrecks, such is the power of man flu. Of course, if you're a girl, you just take a strepsil and get on with your day. But I'm telling you now: British men who regularly suffer from man flu would love it over in Paris. I mean really, really love it. Because the French hand out medication with such enthusiasm you would think it was all your birthdays and Christmas' come at once. Instead of returning with some honey and lemon, staple British get well soon fare, H went into the bathroom and reemerged with enough flu, cold and throat medicine to sedate a small horse.

Of course, I already knew about the Aspergic Hexaspray Rhinofluimoucil et al. thing we had going on in the bathroom. Because early that week, I unearthed what I like to call The Chemists. This was no first aid kit. This was a virtual storage box worth of medicine. In my bathroom. I don't think I've taken that much medication in my life, and given that I was one of those children who was at some sort of doctors every month, that is definitely saying something. I thought I was doing well with owning plasters, some very dated acetazolamide (2003 - eep! - probably doesn't cure AMS any more), and an old codeine prescription from when my friend Matt broke my toe.

This isn't because H is a hypochondriac, but because in France, if you have a cold, the doctor will prescribe you a month's worth of medicine, plus give you sick leave for a week. Can you imagine what would happen if something really serious was wrong? They'd probably assign you your own personal slave to take care of you. Of course, given the battle for the Carte Vitale, I'm strangely sympathetic of the French's acceptance of such large doses of medicine. Put it this way: If I'm going to fight that hard for health insurance, I'm taking everything they give me.

Of course, in a moment of total (but nonetheless expected) French irony, did you know that if you break your leg in France, you don't get given crutches for free, you actually have to buy them? I love you, Paris.

and it'll be love love love

2011-10-13T17:33:00.000+02:00

[ Franco Files: The Do's and Don'ts of Dating French Men ]

Here's an article I wrote for the Girls' Guide to Paris. I know. Friends of mine will be laughing it up. Prior to H, I collected bad relationships like kids collected Pokémon cards. Or whatever it is they're collecting now - iPhone apps, perhaps? However, dating French men and dating British men is really, really different. So maybe I sort of know what I'm talking about this time.

To example this difference, here's how it goes in the UK:

'So I met him Friday and now it's Thursday and he sent me a text message saying 'hi, how've you been?' this afternoon. At, like, 4, so he couldn't have been drunk. But there weren't any kisses - what do you think that means? Maybe he just wants to be friends, otherwise maybe he would have sent kisses. But he can't have done, because we just got on so well. And he bought me a drink and everything. And I was wearing my new shoes. Plus, he laughed when I told him that story about the lobster and the curtains...Yeah, I know, it is funny! ...So when do you think I should text him back? Maybe Saturday? Or is that too keen? And will he think it's sad because I've got nothing better to do on a Saturday than text him? And should I put kisses? Maybe just one kiss, so it's more of a mates way if he's only thinking that we're friends. I don't want to freak him out or anything.'

While over in France:

If you've been on one date, which most likely occurred 48 hours after first meeting the person, you're probably now in a relationship. Congratulations.

people are strange

2011-10-12T18:58:00.000+02:00

'Are you really especially looking for a female person or most of all looking for a person you could talk with and practice your french with?'

Is it just me who is a little bit creeped out by this? Is it so wrong that I don't want to meet men from the internet to speak French with? Am I missing out on what is, clearly, a great guy? Erm...His profile says this:

'I'm bored of people who send messages saying "i m very interested in learning language, meeting people etc" and who dont send message/dont connect anymore then... if you are this kind of person it's not useful to contact me ...' (I don't forget apostrophes; all errors are his. Just so you know)

Really marks him out as a winner, huh? He also uses emoticons. Thanks, Conversation Exchange, I do believe you've done it again.

there is a lot that we survived

2011-10-12T18:12:00.000+02:00

After months of carrying around a messy iPod, I finally decided to sort it out. Because when you're trying to cram about 100GB of iTunes onto 14GB of iPod, something has to give. My music collection is such a tangled mishmash that I never really know where it has come from. Such as Lali Puna. I honestly have no idea where she's come from. She could've been there for years and I would never have known. Faking The Books is a 2004 song. What was I doing in 2004? Drifting somewhere being the first and second year of my undergraduate degree. I spent the summer in India, traipsing through temples with a red splodge on my forehead, wearing bindis and the same red dust covered hippie clothes for a month. I moved into my first student house, and did all those humdrum things you do as a student when you think you're being so unique and interesting and grown up.

Back in 2004, though, I listened exclusively to indie. I probably burnt a hole in Hot Fuss (Track 2, for obvious reasons). So where did this -tronic tag, the electro- prefix come from?

Electropop, or indietronic is too simplified for this sound though. It's more mellow than that. Lali Puna has this breathy quality to her voice that reminds me of Imogen Heap. But although, back in 2004, I would have scrunched up my nose at repetitive beats, the loop-di-loop behind Faking The Books just works. It soothes. My name is Kate. And I like electro.

Finally, because would you really expect anything less, here's Sophie.

yoshimi battles the pink robots

2011-10-10T12:27:00.000+02:00

*Hopefully, one day, if you're really lucky.

Today, I started to do serious battle with French bureaucracy. Namely: l'Assurance Maladie. Which, I'd like to categorically state, is a huge nightmare. If you're trying to visit a doctor in Paris, it might be easier to hop on a Eurostar back to the UK. But if you're determined to fight on, register your social security number, get your carte vitale, then throw on your knuckle dusters, prepare to kill a tree with the sheer volume of paperwork, and read on.

Disclaimer: Please don't take everything I say as gospel. Most of the time, when things get sorted, it is a mixture of extremely good luck, and having H to help me. For example: I already have a French social security number, even though I have no idea how this happened, it's missing two digits, and it's not registered properly. However, it's quite useful that it exists, even if only in part. But how did they even know I existed? I'm still not sure. CAF maybe?

un. The most important thing I can tell you is that unless you want to be tied up in a ream of red tape for the rest of your time in France, the best thing you can do is to bring someone French with you for your entire bureaucratic journey. Even if your French is flawless, even if you have supreme confidence in your ability to untangle the mysteries of l'Assurance Maladie, don't even try it. Drag along your French boyfriend, girlfriend, employer, or conversation exchange partner. Pick up a hobo on the street and bribe him in exchange for a bottle of wine. Just don't do it alone; it just gets depressing.

deux. l'Assurance Maladie offices are all over the place. You need to find your local one, which you should find in the list here. Of course, in typical French style, I traipsed over to mine only to find that it was shut for absolutely no reason. Luckily there was another one five minutes away, but I doubt this is always the case. Be aware of their opening hours, which vary, and aren't always listed online. Some shut Mondays, some shut Fridays, they're all shut at weekends and I suspect most are shut at lunchtimes. Because, you know, it's France. See previous blog entries on Les Magasins.

trois. When you get to the office, the basic questions you will be asked are: What is your nationality, how long have you been in France, are you employed, and have you got a social security number. Although I strongly suspect this will vary depending on your answer, if it's the same as mine (British, one year, yes, yes but it's missing two digits), you will be given a four page form. Since hanging out in their offices isn't really the best way to spend your day, and you've probably forgotten one of the 6,000 things you need to accompany the form, I'd recommend taking it away with you, and bringing it back complete with necessary bevy of paperwork later. They have a special postbox to drop it into when you're done.

quatre. To accompany your form, which has sections for both you and your employer to fill out, you will need (deep breath):

A copy of your work contract
Copies of your last three payslips (of course if you've only been employed in Paris for a month or two, this is impossible. But in France, the impossible has to be made possible, and in fact probably by the time your form is processed, you would have been employed for three months, so the problem will no longer exist)
A photocopy of your passport
A photocopy of your birth certificate
A translation of your birth certificate into French (the form is here)
The RIB from your bank account in France, which of course must be registered with an address in France

I learnt long ago, around the third or fourth time I sent a translated copy of my birth certificate to CAF that all this headache of paperwork is only the beginning. In theory, on completion of these tasks, your carte vitale should arrive in a month or so. But I have major doubts. I'll update you in a week or so when I've realised I've failed miserably. I can already tell it won't happen straight away, as they haven't asked for a passport photo. This can only mean secondary forms, possibly a vial of blood, and quite probably my doctors records from birth till the current day. Eep.

there's something new i found

2011-10-06T17:56:00.003+02:00

Attention vegetarians and vegans of Paris:

How did I go for so long in Paris without discovering the godsend that is Naturalia? I've been walking past one every day since I moved to the domesticity of Boulogne. I thought it was one of those yummy mummy shops for the upper middle class. Overpriced organic chick peas and 400 types of bird seed and those health food cereal bars that taste of bark my mother used to pass off as a 'treat'. I think I was misled by the stockpiles of multivitamins they have in the window.

Oh it probably is one of those yummy mummy shops for the upper middle class. But they have so. Much. Stuff. I thought I was going to pass out from excitement. Soy sausages, tofu pieces, lupin (oh, more on that next week), vegetable escalopes, vegetarian burgers and croquettes and soy chunks and those little fake slabs of ham you put into sandwiches. I wanted to weep in the aisle. It's lucky that I only had two hands, and not a basket, and my fridge is a few centimetres away from being just a ice box. Otherwise I probably would have bought out its entire stock, just in case there was a shortage, or something. A bonus: It's not expensive. I don't say this sentence about Paris a lot, so treasure that. Really, I was so surprised I went out and bought a mixing bowl for €19.90 to make up for it. I'm assuming at this price, it probably self-mixes, surely.

I am weirdly geeky about such shops. It's the same thing with Asian supermarkets and button/beed shops. If we go past one, blink and I'm already running into the door shouting 'leave me here for a few hours, I'm having so much fun, you just don't understand!' Last week I spent two hours in a button/beed shop with my friend Sally when we discovered they sold necklace and bracelet charms for 40c a pop. We only went in there to buy buttons for her boyfriend's thrift shop waistcoat. When we came out the light hurt our eyes, but I'd gained about 20 necklaces and was only minus €12. I crowned the day one of my 'best days ever'. This happens in Paris a lot.

There's an Asian supermarket in Boulogne. Luckily it's about 15 minutes walk away from my apartment, so I can't casually stroll past and pop in for an hour long browse. Rambutans? Chang beer? All those different stir fry mixes? The possibility of one day discovering Kaki Tiga? So tempting, I'm one keystroke away from putting on my shoes and going down there right now.

i won't rest until this battle's won

2011-10-06T13:36:00.003+02:00

Finally, some videos I can embed directly onto my blog. I was also considering some sort of macaroons for votes swap, since I'm plagued by living in Paris with only a completely useless made in the 90s pay as you go phone. However, I do have a plentiful supply of macaroons. Think about it.

round this town of steel

2011-10-04T15:37:00.001+02:00

I feel like Young The Giant are everywhere at the moment. Quite rightly so. Better than X Factor Janet who, I saw on Twitter, was labelled as sounding like 'a goat eating a shoe'. I think this is the best description of anyone's singing voice I have ever heard in my life. Meow. I'm sorry. I'm not usually so mean, but I'm obviously so Team Sophie that I feel inclined to hate on everyone else, even if they're obviously quite talented.

Also, not to showcase my choice of trashy television (the X Factor doesn't count if you know someone on it), but anyone else notice Rainbow Arabia gracing the Gossip Girl airwaves? Those producers have got themselves some style.

Oh look, and here are some more videos of Sophie singing. And just generally being awesome.

i wish i knew what i was doing

2011-09-26T23:49:00.000+02:00

There are a lot of things I wish people had told me before I moved to Paris. Like: Bars stay open later than the last Métro. Even cheap coffee is great coffee compared to the stuff you get in the U.K. And sometimes you're allowed to eat macaroons for breakfast. I thought I would cover these topics in bite sized portions. Today: Les Magasins.

The best thing to remember when tackling the shops is that the French like to hide lots of different things in lots of different places. However logical you think it would be to have this things kept together, the French think otherwise. Hence there is no French equivalent of Tesco or Boots because that would be oh so simple. You sort of begin to understand why the French take such long lunch breaks.

1. You can not buy stamps anywhere except the post office. If you want to send a postcard, you will need to go to at least three shops to purchase a pen, a postcard and a stamp in order to complete this task.

2. You can not buy phone credit or cigarettes in a supermarket. Only in a tabac. Bonus of a tabac: They also sell coffee and dirty pints.

3. Loofahs are available only at Monoprix - and even then, not always - and Sephora. This may strike you as a weird one, but I literally spent a month looking. It's like lip gloss - weirdly elusive.

4. Makeup is so, so expensive it makes you cry a bit every time you need a new mascara.

5. You can only buy paracetamol in pharmacies.

6. Supermarkets can be shut on one, or all of the days from Saturday to Monday.

7. Banks are often shut at lunchtime, so don't even bother between 12h30 and 14h30. And like supermarkets, the rule of being closed Saturday to Monday often applies. Sometimes you can't even enter a bank unless it's your bank. If you do anything at all to your account, you'll probably need to make an appointment, and you usually have to be buzzed in two separate doors in order to enter. Also, it is also near enough impossible to shut down a bank account in France. I don't think anyone I know has managed to successfully yet.

8. Almost everything in Paris shuts for the whole of August. And sometimes July too.

9. Finally, it's nice to say 'bonjour' to someone when you enter their shop. A friend of mine has a theory that if you don't, you will be categorically ignored for the rest of your shopping experience. She's kinda right.

once you get the feeling

2011-09-26T23:32:00.002+02:00

Something a lot of people don't know about me is that I used to play the piano. Of course, if we're anywhere near a piano when they find this out, they always ask me to play something, and I always refuse, because it makes me sad to realise I can't play properly any more. I could probably string together a pitiful Moonlight Sonata but honestly, having not played for so long, it's like trying to play drunk with mittens on. So you see; I wasn't always an indie music geek, much as I'd love to claim even at aged 5 I'd turn my ears away from anything else. And so what with piano exams and GCSE music and diplomas and all that jazz, I used to know heaps about everything else too. Which is probably why I think the beginning of Shuffle sounds a bit like The Entertainer, by Joplin.

Also, since I'm always plagued by having too many songs to select each week, here's a bonus one: Raah by Kirk Spencer.

don't feel like talking

2011-09-19T18:13:00.001+02:00

This song is beautiful enough from just the video alone. We've got too weighed down with impressive special effects, and sometimes when we go back to basics, everyone thinks it's just because we've blown the budget elsewhere. Think Arctic Monkeys' Cornerstone. Actually pretty nice, and not just because of Alex Turner's skinny jeans (see entries that begin: Alex Turner: Wanna come back and see my beach shelter?).

But we're not here to talk about Alex Turner. We're here to talk about Tim Neuhaus. He's a percussionist by trade, so if you want to hear him hit stuff, then look out for his work with Blue Man Group, Clueso and Hundreds. For the moment though, I'm happy right here with this simplistic folk sound he's got going on.

something you just can't ignore

2011-09-18T22:25:00.000+02:00

I don't normally watch X Factor. In fact, I'm pretty sure in previous blog entries, I've been a little scathing about X Factor. This of course all dissolves the moment someone you know appears on it. So, X Factor, I guess for this year at least, you're my new best friend, because my cousin, Sophie, is gracing their stages. I may be a little biased, but she's pretty damn awesome. H, by the way, is apparently allergic to watching such shows, so I'm learning to watch it when he's out, or with earphones, which doesn't have quite the same effect.

I'm not allowed to embed the video, so here's the linky link. You can also join her Facebook group or follow her on Twitter.

who mixed up the blood with the red wine tonight

2011-09-17T17:51:00.001+02:00

Kids, writing a blog really does work. There I was thinking that I was writing this blog mostly for myself, and also perhaps for people who know me to laugh about all the stalkers I seem to pick up on the Métro. But a few months ago, AnyTrip contacted me and asked me to write a guest blog for them. So I did.

[ How To Party Parisian Style ]

i'm a sunspot solar flare

2011-09-12T11:37:00.000+02:00

I feel like I'm discovering new songs I love every day. When I lived in Indonesia, my friend Amy uploaded a bunch of Landon Pigg songs onto my PC (those dark days before I got a Mac). But not this song, which is much more rock and roll than the rest but, oddly, plays better slightly muted. For some reason, it looks like tons of girls on YouTube have made video montages of Landon Pigg. I can't imagine why (ahem). I feel like this was the one with the least number of special effects: All those diamond patterns sliding into another photo remind me of being at school and turning a two minute history project into a 10 minute long slideshow on Microsoft PowerPoint.

And since I can't bear to leave this one out, or wait until next week, here's Bahamas Already Yours.

we'll stay inside a shape

2011-09-07T11:59:00.000+02:00

While I'm probably one of the few people in Paris who is overjoyed about la rentrée, at least all fans of indie, rock and folk can cheer themselves up too. Eldorado Music Festival is running for the next four months over at Café de la Danse. For this, plus the September gig guide, published in VINGT Paris Magazine, click below.

[ Eldorado Music Festival & September Gig Guide ]

Also, here's some Laura Stevenson and the Cans, who played yesterday night.

we are overcome now

2011-09-01T22:32:00.000+02:00

I've spent the last few days researching Eldorado Music Festival, to be held over the next four months at Café de la Danse. I think it's a way of cheering up the Parisians from an otherwise destitute rentrée. One of the greatest things about music journalism is that I feel entitled to go off on work tangents and listen to new bands for hours on end, which is why it's okay to spend lots of time listening to Oscar & the Wolf and wishing I was lying in daisy speckled grass watching the clouds roll by overhead. This is just too dreamy summer lazy haze beautiful for words.

we ain't going to the town, we're going to the city

2011-09-01T15:03:00.000+02:00

Today, September 1, marks the start of la rentrée, as the Parisians migrate back to their city. The holidays are over, school is about to begin, slacking off at work is not quite as acceptable as it's been for the last two and a half months, and the cobbled streets with soon be a-slush with falling autumnal leaves. Although of course, this year, August has been a washout both halves of the Channel, it's been semi-autumn weather for weeks. The Parisians were right to head to the coast.

August in Paris is as close to a ghost town as a crisis-free capital city can get. Except for tourists, of course, who don't really count, as they're just there to cluster by the roads of St Michel eating their three course €10 dinners; stand in crisscross winding queues for the Notre Dame bell tower; or queue outside the Modern Art Museum because they don't realise you can just sneak in via the café. And Barbès never empties, of course, but then everyone always needs a year round supply of cheap suitcases, diamante shoes, phone unblocking and hash.

Despite the fact that shutting down most of the city is pretty annoying for those left in it, I truly believe it's a great thing that the French take their holidays so seriously. Their attitude to work is just much healthier than the Brits. We Brits accrue all our holidays, yet seem afraid to take them, as if we're saving them just in case there's an emergency. The French just take them, and complain if they haven't taken any for over three months. One of my first annual salaried jobs gave me 14 days of holiday a year. I've easily worked three months straight, no weekends, on 60 hour weeks before. The French would have had a heart attack. I got 'flu and a coffee addition.

Similarly, the concept of a desk lunch is something that fills the French with dread. These two words just don't go together. Lunch takes at least an hour, if not two, in a bistro, preferably with a vat of wine, and no paperwork ever accompanies it. They actually serve single glasses of wine (with sealed foil lid) in my favourite Parisian salad bar. Of course this would never work in the UK, as the Brits can't be trusted to wobble back to work, because drink to them is for getting drunk, not for the pleasure of the taste of the grape.

Unlike most Parisians, I'm looking forward to my Monday evening rentrée. Cheap though London's cocktails are (seriously: €11 for a mojito in a squalid Parisian bar is just not funny), ego boosting though their builders are (I'm not being funny, but I don't think even H would give me a 'woo!' if he saw me after an hour-long run) and great though it is that they have vegetarian options on their menus, the novelty is wearing thin, and now I just want to get back to my city. La rentrée, je t'aime.

run whirlwind run

2011-08-29T22:47:00.001+02:00

Bank holiday weekends are seen by most British people as a time when it is acceptable to be drunk from Friday night to Tuesday morning. In fact, it's practically compulsory to crack open the cider by 10am, and if you're not pilling up the tins by midday, then you're just not making the most of your extra 24 hours off and therefore failed as a Brit.

The French love their holidays possibly more than any other nation. Generally, even a basic entry level job will award you with about 45 days holiday, not including all the millions of bank holidays they slide in too. They even try and put their bank holidays on Thursdays whenever possible, so that they can have a bridged weekend. The entire month of August is pretty much a write off in Paris: Everyone has headed south, like birds migrating. Even from early July it's hard to get a French person to anything. This even translates over to the UK. My friend works for Action Against Hunger, who are a French company, so there a lot of French people in her office. 'They all expect to get all of July and August off!' she told me. I just shrugged and said, 'Well, yes, of course; it's a French thing.'

It's also practically impossible to fire a French person from their job, even if they repeatedly fail to show up from work or just spend their day watching YouTube clips.

It all comes down to this simple idea: The English live to work, the French work to live. I read this mantra in Talk To The Snail, a magnificent novel by Stephen Clarke, and so alarmingly accurate that had I read it prior to coming to Paris, I probably would have refused to get on the Eurostar, in fear that I would be simultaneously ignored and ridiculed for my entire duration there. After almost a year in Paris, I instead find the characteristics listed in this book sweetly endearing, and make me love France and French people even more. You don't speak English if I ask if you do, but you're miraculously fluent if I speak in French? Why, yes please.

My August bank holiday weekend was not spent in a practically empty Paris, however, but in England. A now yearly routine, I packed up my wellies and hippie headband and went to Reading Festival. Where despite the fact that I get ID'd buying solid lighter fuel and nail varnish remover, and so should by this logic be beer ponging at 10am and living off sausage rolls, I ran straight into White Campsite (aka the 'family campsite'); set up my blow up mattress, fold up stool and little cooker; and managed to have a good seven hours of sleep at night, plus a good couple of my daily fruit and veg. All those under 25: This will one day happen to you. Don't think just because you go out six nights a week that one day you won't prefer to stay in and watch the telly and drink tea with your boyfriend. My under 25 year old self would be appalled.

I slightly (read totally) music geeked out, and decided to dedicate the day before Reading to watch YouTube clips of everyone who was playing, just to see if I could uncover any more gems who'd I'd later have to fork out €20 to see. I think it was pretty successful. And so here are, in no particular order, my festival highlights:

un: The Vaccines
Whatever anyone says about the Jay Jay Pistolet to The Vaccines transition being a sell out of his original musical style clearly has no idea what they're talking about. Anything involving Justin Long just has to be good.

deux: The Naked And Famous
My newest musical obsession. Love.

trois: Noah and the Whale
Fun fact: My friend's boyfriend's band Left With Pictures nearly toured with Noah and the Whale. So you should probably go check them out.

quatre: Cloud Control
A recent This Week's Song. My dad says 'that's a good band name'. Well, they're a good band.

cinq: Smith Westerns
Fully recovered from the tragic stage collapse at Pukkelpop. And they're just wonderful.

six: Two Door Cinema Club
These boys are lovely. It was during their performance that I realised I'm blessed with extremely useless musical trivia like: Two Door Cinema Club's name comes from the mispronunciation of the name of their local cinema, called Tudor Cinema.

sept: The Strokes
Here's a funny thing about The Strokes: It's really hard to decide what your favourite song is. Each song they played, I kept saying 'this is my favourite song...oh wait, no this is...' like a woman on Jeremy Kyle trying to figure out the baby daddy.

huit: Muse
In a déjà vu of Oxegen 2004, they clashed Muse with Peter Doherty. In a déjà vu of Oxegen 2004, I went to see Muse. Sorry Pete.

neuf: Seann Walsh
My little joker in the pack (oh funny) in an otherwise totally musical lineup. We went early to see Tim Minchin, which was a made a major flop by the fact that we couldn't actually see anything after the emcee made us all stand up. But getting there early meant I got to see Seann Walsh and he made me laugh so hard I cried. That doesn't happen very often. He also made a joke about how girls always say 'ooh, déjà vu!' Apparently, we really do.

dix: Being told I look 17
Really? I mean, really?

somebody tell me it won't be long

2011-08-22T11:54:00.000+02:00

As well as producing music of their own, Miike Snow have got their remixing skills down - they've revamped the likes of Depeche Mode, I Blame Coco, Kings of Leon, Passion Pete, Peter Bjorn and John, and Vampire Weekend. They've also been remixed by Mark Ronson, Peter Bjorn and John - obviously returning the favour - and a load more that I don't have the time, or space, to list here.

I feel like I'm slowly stretching the elastic band on what my uptight musical snobbery usually allows, as I honestly don't believe I would have liked Miike Snow a couple of years ago. Now I'm all over him like a meme. I've even - gasp - been listening to symphonic rock. Yes, you read that correctly. Next thing you know, it'll be jazz fusion.

Miike Snow are also amongst the 60-odd others lining up Rock En Seine this coming weekend at the beyond huge Domaine National de Saint-Cloud. 460 hectares - phew. I wish I could go get lost in there, but I'll be wellied up to my eyeballs and trying out my new solid fuel cooker at Reading Festival.

tripping out is fun on the weekend

2011-08-21T11:58:00.000+02:00

Rock En Seine rolls up to Domaine National de Saint-Cloud next weekend. Here's a preview as featured in VINGT Paris Magazine.

[ Rock En Seine ]

you go

2011-08-19T01:16:00.000+02:00

When French people speak English, one thing I think is quite cute* is when they use the French noun's determiner to decide whether a word is masculine or feminine. Hence televisions are female. Recently, she randomly found and played a video on her hard drive, which was a gig performance of the Japanese band Toe. This is one of their songs.

*I feel I'm allowed to say 'cute' because of the number of times my French is called 'mignon'. This is apparently something to do with my accent which, trust me, has never been called 'cute' by an English speaker before.

watch out, the world's behind you

2011-08-17T23:46:00.000+02:00

In most cities, the weirdos come out at night. In Paris’ Métro, they’re out and about – or, more accurately, sprawled and shooting up – around the clock. This occurs in particular when it snows, because RATP don’t close the Métro at all. Nice in theory, but not so much when you’re trying to navigate the Métro stairs past a trolley load of someone’s bin-bagged life.

Hobos and their counterparts are something I did consider when booking a 7:13am Eurostar. But I was swayed by the fact that the ticket was about €40 cheaper, despite the fact that I don’t think I’ve voluntarily woken up before 5am since about Christmas 1992. I’m so distinctly not a morning person, and now I’m far past my teens and the excuse of hormones for unprecedented lie ins, I honestly believe I’ve missed the boat on the age when you voluntarily start getting up before 11 at weekends. I could never do a job that starts before 10am. Which is why I moved to Paris, where two-hour lunch breaks and five weeks of holiday per year, not including the zillions of bank holidays, are the norm.

It must be noted here that my track record for getting early trains and planes is poor: I once turned up 20 minutes early for a flight from Cairns to Sydney. By the time I navigated my way onto the plane, I was so overcome with fatigue that even putting away my tray table took serious effort.

But the trouble wasn’t with the getting up, or the lugging my suitcase down to catch the first Métro. It was at Strasbourg Saint Denis. I feel like the source of many problems starts at Strasbourg Saint Denis. I crawled blurry eyed off the Line 9 train and steeled myself for the five sets of stairs. Whoever decided to bypass the idea of an escalator at Strasbourg Saint Denis is definitely not getting a Christmas card from me this year. I have lugged suitcases up and down those stairs at least 10 times, and it’s not getting any more fun.

Usually, no one helps. This is Paris. Everyone is too busy getting on with their own lives; I get it. So there I am, thump, thump, thump, lugging my Orla Kiely suitcase up and down hundreds of stairs, when a man steps in to help me. To be honest, I sort of think he’s a potential tramp, because despite the fact that he’s fairly clean, I can’t help but notice he does smell a little, and is a little unsteady on his feet. But he isn’t carrying around a bottle of wine, or a Scrabble board, or a pineapple, or a puppy, as is common with most tramps in Paris, and he’s already latched onto my bag, so it’s a bit late to say no now. He helps me for about seven stairs, and then wobbles a little, so I soldier on, alone, as my walking pace is about four times his, even with a suitcase that appears to be full of bricks.

It’s when I get to the Line 4 platform I realise he’s still behind me, but that’s okay, he’s probably off to Barbès to get drunk and lie on a bench smoking hash, like most people in Barbès do all day. I shuffle down the platform, away from him. But then he shuffles, so I shuffle, so he shuffles, so I shuffle and he shuffles. In between, he shambles up to talk to me, muttering something that definitely isn’t French or English. I’m wondering if I can outfox him by jumping onto another carriage, but I’m hampered by my inability to pack less than 15 floral dresses, the entire stock of Sephora and a bookstores worth of books. Everyone on the train is doing that awkward ‘don’t look at him, don’t look at me’ thing, and my hopes of being saved by a nice French businessman in a suit are dashed, because not many nice French businessmen in suits take Line 4.

When he follows me off at Gare du Nord and through from the Métro to the main train station, I’ve had enough. I don’t care about creepy attempts at eye contact, or ‘trop belle’ comments, but this is too much, particularly on a morning when even my mother would be hard pushed to use the adjective ‘belle’. Plus he’s wearing double denim; an offence in itself. So I march up to the information point, and play my winning card: Normally, I’d speak French, but he doesn’t speak English, so he won’t know what I’m telling the woman there. Plus, I can’t remember the word in French for ‘to follow’.

The woman is lovely, and even buzzes me into the safe glass haven of the information point. Outside, the double denim man is angry, shouting in an incomprehensible language, and banging on the glass. The woman calls security. Five minutes later, there’s no security, and the man is still there, gesturing and shouting. She calls again – nothing. It’s after she calls a third time that they turn up, fifteen minutes late (note: Don’t rely on security at Gare du Nord at 6:30am). By then, he’s finally scarpered, stopping only to open up his denim jacket and pull out – you’ve guessed it – a bottle of red.

Security are promptly followed by two policemen. I guess when the French actually do something; they really do it properly. The policemen go off to chase the double denim man, I have a nice chat with the security man about the Notting Hill carnival, and he escorts me up to the Eurostar check in for me to catch my train to London.

All this excitement and it’s not even 7am. Maybe I should start getting up earlier.

talk to me in your own language please

2011-08-11T21:14:00.000+02:00

I'm falling in love a bit with Conversation Exchange. When I first started meeting up with all these people, my French was rubbish and I was so mortified by it that I didn't want to subject anyone to it a second time. Now it's is slightly less rubbish and I...(deep breath)...actually quite like speaking French. I'm heading back to England for a visit next Wednesday and I'm almost a little sad that I won't get to speak any French for three weeks. I think it's because there's no victorious feeling afterwards when someone understands you, and doesn't just spit in your face and call you an idiot.

So since I'm feeling motivated and so pro-speaking French, I realised that I needed to get back onto the Conversation Exchange train because recently, I've been pretty lazy with it, blaming things like Lauren leaving and moving apartments and being in mourning for Lauren leaving and needing to play loud music to annoy the upstairs neighbours.

Also I wanted to go and meet people because I wanted to disprove the stereotype that it's difficult to make friends with French girls because they all think you're going to steal their boyfriend; a stereotype that snuggles in nicely with the stereotype that all French men cheat.

So I started to reply to all those emails that clog up my inbox every day again. And what follows shortly is my favourite email that I have ever received from Conversation Exchange. Note that it's from a boy, despite my profile specifically requesting a female exchange partner. You may think this is over paranoid, but a girl I met recently told me she met up with a guy, and they went for dinner, and on a semi-romantic walk by the Seine, and then he tried to kiss her. She, like me, believes that Conversation Exchange should not be used as a dating service, at least not during the first meeting.

Heyy Kate, how's life?
I've just read your few words and i would be very pleased to increase your french level, threw a drink of wine or two. J'aime bien errer dans les bars parisiens, et je connais pas mal d'endroits sympas pour refaire le monde. I'm a little bit shy actually, but I heal myself ;-)
Drop me some lines!
See U

This is his profile:

I'm a 100% pure parisian, and I would like to meet some good fellas, and talk english. Maybe not like in woody allen movies, but I want to learn more about WASP culture and common expressions with french (and parisian) culture. Come over!

I sort of want to meet up with him, just because I think his English is so characteristically incredible. Except of course, he used an emoticon, which is in my eyes punishable by death.

you're jumping someone else's train

2011-08-11T15:56:00.003+02:00

When I used to live in Indonesia, there were three things that regularly appeared in our house. These were, in no particular order: Prostitutes, rats and cockroaches. The prostitute appearances were often quite sad, because they were really sweet, and afterwards, they'd sit with us girls on the sofas while they waited for their taxi. The rats were horrible, but you'd just learn that when watching television to keep your feet off the floor and that tupperware was your best friend. They bothered me, obviously, as I don't think there are many people who'd be cool having a cat sized rat run around their house, but it's just something I had to live with, as I wasn't about to go face to face with one of those beasts. Worse still was when the school caretaker lined our house with sticky pads to catch them, but it only caught mice, or baby rats, and you'd hear this terrible squealing when they got caught.

But the cockroaches? I'm so irrationally frightened of them, I can hear this rational voice in my head going 'Kate, shut up. They're not that big, they can't hurt you, so shut up and stop screaming' and this goes on and on in my head, but meanwhile I'm still screaming. I still give thanks to the person who invented the cyanide chalk that kills them, although I don't really believe it is legal to purchase this anywhere outside Indonesia. Christmas stocking filler anyone?

Since I moved to Paris, I've discovered I'm quite frightened of the RER. It's mostly because I'm worried I'll get on the train, fall asleep, and wake up in some random suburb somewhere which, as all good Parisians know, is where the riots happen. And also because the most unsavoury characters use the RER, like an amped up Line 4, or as if they've just rounded up all the people off the streets of Boulevard Barbès and shoved them into my carriage.

So here's a story about why I'm justified in being frightened of the RER, specifically the RER C, easily the most complicated of all the RER lines:

So there I am, at Invalides, thinking: 'Okay, it's you and me, RER, let's do this thing. You aren't that scary. It's only 21h; it's not even dark outside yet.' I check the train timetable, search for the platform, and head in that direction. Simples. And then H calls. So, eager to play the relaxed Parisian, I'm talking on the phone, throw only a cursory glance at the platform information, and bound onto the train sitting there.

There is a moment in my mind that goes: 'Why are all the lights off?' But I think it's only because Invalides is kind of like the end of the line anyway, as there are no thru-trains, and they're just being environmentally friendly, and saving the lights until the train is good to go.

This, in fact, should've been my first warning sign, as the French, and specifically Parisians, don't care about anyone else enough to care much about the environment. They don't even clear up after their dogs, so why should they turn a light off?

But there I am, on the phone, in a hurry to meet friends for a drink in Bercy Village, on a boat no less, really proud of myself for figuring out this RER shortcut. And because I'm talking, and because I can never understand messages over tannoys in English, let alone in French, I am just not paying attention. And suddenly, just as I'm hanging up, and walking cautiously towards the train doors, wondering if perhaps I shouldn't be on the train after all, the train judders a bit, then pulls clean out of the station, in total pitch blackness. I am completely alone.

Oh f***.

For a bit, I wonder if it's just going to stop at the next station. It doesn't. So I wonder if maybe if might stop at the next station. It doesn't. Oops.

I have two choices. Three if you count freaking out. One is to sit it out to the train depot, but then I remember my fear of ending up miles away from Paris, and reconsider (plus I'll be late for drinks on the boat). The other is to pull the emergency alarm. I'd always had this weird theory that pulling the emergency alarm would enact an emergency break, which obviously is completely ridiculous, but at the point, I'm stuck on a speeding train in the pitch black with no phone credit, so rationality is not my strong point. Who would I call anyway? What would they be able to do? 'Hi RATP people, my girlfriend is on an RER C train somewhere...' No, don't think that works.

I don't want to get fined, but this is an emergency, right? So I pace up and down a bit to steel myself for this momentous occasion - also because, secretly, I kind of have always wanted to pull the emergency alarm; it's like a tick - and pull the cord.

'Hello?' says the driver, in French obviously.

'Hello,' I said, in French, obviously, 'Erm...I'm on the train.' Obviously. I mean, who else would be pulling the emergency alarm? Monkeys? Also, I'm thinking: Please don't be angry. And please don't make me wait until the train depot. I'm scared of the suburbs.

'Okay,' he says, calmly, as if hundreds of people are stupid enough to get on an empty, pitch black train every day, ''I'll drop you off at the next station.'

He says some other stuff, but of course I don't really understand stuff said over tannoys, so it's probably just something like: 'Didn't you listen to the announcement?' Or: 'Why has it taken you seven stations to tell me this?'

He drops me off at Porte de Clichy. Yes, not Place de Clichy. Porte. I'm nail bitingly close to being in the suburbs. I step off my personal train, and wonder about going to find a sandwich, after all this adventuring.

Turns out, no one goes to Place de Clichy. Especially not English girls by themselves. Or girls, in general. Or hungry vegetarians. Would you believe they had nothing I could eat? I'm sure there were lots of men who would have been happy to take me out for a meal instead, but I was late for drinks, and also only incapable of using the RER, not insane, so I eventually found some cheese and bread and legged it back to the station. Of course I chickened out and took the Métro, even though I could have taken the RER straight back in the opposite direction and saved myself about an hour. Lesson learned: No lights should probably raise some suspicion.

i bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy

2011-08-10T20:52:00.000+02:00

There's one word I didn't really expect to learn, and retain, in French, and that's the word for 'riot'. I know it's a fairly useful word in France, the French do tend to riot a lot - I got caught in a mini riot when I hitched to Paris for RAG aged 19, and thankfully managed to escape just as they were moving in with the SWAT equipment and pulling out the tear gas. But usually such words get filed into the 'not so important for now' part of my brain, and are, for the moment at least, shelved.

H says that in France, for the most part, they keep the riots away from the centre of the city. They happen in the suburbs, so they smash up their own local shop, torch their own cars. How accurate this is is unclear, but after days of rioting, I think he's finally admitted that they are more serious in England than in France.

Either way, and wherever and however they do happen; for me, it's more than a little shocking, and fairly upsetting, to see the neighbourhood where I grew up, and where my parents still live, set upon by hooligans and thugs. To see windows smashed in a mere minute away from the pub that I used to work in. To see cars set alight fifteen minutes from my parents front door. I go back there in a week for a visit. Am I looking forward to returning to that suburb each evening after I've been out catching up with friends? No, not particularly.

A lot has already been said, and written about the riots, so I don't intend to parrot that too extensively here. But I will say that I am furious. Furious that these teenagers, these youths, who know nothing about Britain and how it is run, have the audacity to use the excuse that the government is to blame for their actions. They don't like the government; they don't like their situation, ergo they are entitled to an iPhone and some designer sneakers. I may not particularly like the government either, but you don't see me looting the streets for a new television. And I'm sorry, but if you're that poor and impoverished, I don't think a nice phone is the answer to all your problems.

I don't condem protests when they are for a cause that people comprehend, far from it. The anti war marches - excellent. Cause, thought and action. But this, from people who say it's because of 'the Conservatives or something'. The fact that they aren't even aware of the political party who is running the country, let alone any awareness of a coalition government, speaks mountains. This is crime and greed, and there is no excuse for it.

The one heartening thing we can take from this is the public reaction regarding #riotcleanup or, my personal favourite Twitter hashtag of all time, #OperationCupOfTea. I love these moments of British solidarity. And of course of that great British 'let's just get on with it' attitude, as we did after the 7/7 attacks: Just hours after the bombs went off, people were trying to get back on the Tube and get to work. And reading my friends' Facebook statuses that they are going off to help clear up the mess which these disgusting hooligans have left in their wake gives me back that glimmer of the good, of being so proud to be British; the feeling that we had on the day of the Royal Wedding.

Note: I am aware that this more serious tone is fairly uncharacteristic of the rest of my blog, and I promise to return to more lighthearted stories tomorrow. Coming up: Why I'm now justified in being frightened of the RER.

the drinking never stops because the drinks absolve our sins

2011-08-07T18:36:00.000+02:00

In case you were worried all I've been doing is hanging around in Boulogne missing Lauren and listening to boys play guitar, here's a piece I wrote for Girls' Guide to Paris.

[ Three Ways to Go Drinking in Paris ]

we're a waste

2011-08-07T18:25:00.000+02:00

Lilly Wood & The Prick are one of those bands I've been meaning to mention for absolutely ages. It feels a little like I'm one step behind them in Paris, because at some point a few months ago, every poster I saw, every gig guide I wrote, they seemed to be there, and yet I still haven't seen them live. And I love this song, partly because I really maintain there aren't enough girls in the music scene. Or at least in the music scene that I like listening to. They just head straight into pop, and that car crash of head shaving, plastic surgery, fake virginity pleas and getting naked in their music videos, eventually being forced to put all their faith in Auto-Tune due to the slow wrecking of their voice from pill swapping parties and chain smoking induced stress from their fourth annulled marriage. We need more Karen O, Laura Marling, Charlotte Hatherley, Adele types.

then i'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours

2011-08-04T20:28:00.000+02:00

Nothing much happens in Boulogne. It’s all nicey-nicey: Cute neighbourhood families and Jaguars and sushi and seafood restaurants. They even have a Zara. And a Starbucks. These things would not last five seconds in Barbès before someone would try to pull them apart and sell their parts on the black market whilst rolling a joint with one hand and eating some corn on the cob with the other. Or, as I saw last week, putting a half eaten sandwich down on a bench, then picking it up and continuing to eat it. If that’s not asking for food poisoning, or possibly an STD, I don’t know what is.

I know it’s a little inaccurate to judge the neighbourhood and it’s inhabitants now, since it’s August, and most of Paris has emptied out and headed south, sunwards. Except for Barbès, of course. They’re still hanging around, being Barbèsian. But although Boulogne is pretty much empty - there’re even parking spaces for your Jag - I can tell this is definitely a step upwards. My favourite local shop is no longer: KATA - cheap shoes with stuck on diamante for €5 (only size 4s remain. Seriously, have you seen the woman in Barbès? I don't think anyone there over the age of 10 would fit into a size 4). Or Obama Phone - the Black Phone (their marketing, not mine). Or Leaderprice - cheapest champagne, €1.09 (I've tried it. It's okay).

Lauren and I both moved out of the ghetto on Monday – me here, and her to England. This was partly a failure on my part to carry through with my plan to hide passport and/or all her shoes, leaving the choice of going barefoot, not wise in Barbès, or squeezing into an emergency bought KATA size 4. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to cope in Paris without my half sister from Kazakhstan (this according to a man we met out on Fête de la Musique). But I do know already that a Paris without a Lauren is a pretty poor Paris.

Things I have learnt in Boulogne so far:

Boys like to play guitar in their pants. I sort of knew this already, but it’s not like I could check out this theory by regularly walking in on guys playing guitars in their pants. I’m not some sort of boys playing guitar in their pants pervert. But it makes me wonder how bands cope when they suddenly have to go from pant wearing sessions rocking on their guitars in someone’s basement to wearing things like jeans and t-shirts in a pub basement, and eventually, potentially, a vast concert hall, which is inevitably much hotter under all the bright lights.

Being 5’3 may have it’s advantages, like: You can wriggle through and get to the bar quickly; people automatically assume weakness goes hand in hand with shortness, so you’re rarely allowed to carry heavy things; you can shop in the petite section, which means you can still usually find your size during the sales. But shortness is not an advantage in my new kitchen. Whoever designed this kitchen must have been at least 6’7 tall, because the cupboards are at such a height that even a 6’2 person has trouble reaching into the top ones. I just have to stand on my tiptoes, stretch my hand up into the cupboard blindly, and hope I pull out something useful, like pasta or a plate, not something nasty, like mouldy jam or a spider.

I hate the upstairs neighbours. I’m actively encouraging hours of guitar playing with the amp an inch from the ceiling, and adding fuel to the fire by blasting music out all day with the windows open in the knowledge that they’re pretty much the only people left in the entire building – remember everyone else has headed south, like geese escaping a life otherwise destined to end as foie gras. The neighbours seem to be responding by a. moving all their furniture around, day and night, b. refusing to put their two year old child to bed until past 11, so that she can run around the apartment until then, and c. littering the roof outside our window with their cigarette buds and yoghurt cartons.

Finally, I thought I’d share with you a recipe which B (male, French, early twenties) considers to be a fully acceptable meal. Spaghetti. Add tomato ketchup, mayonnaise, one egg and stir. Mmm. Delicious. This is why French women learn how to cook.

and so the time had come and i knew i'd have to choose

2011-08-01T00:56:00.000+02:00

Is it possible that I've gone this long without including a song sung by Peter Doherty? Confession time: I feel slightly that my love for his music peaked last year and, perhaps because of a bout of over-playing, I'm not as likely to insist on a certain amount of Libertines et al airtime per week. This change is best summarised by a comparison of the following events:

A. Pre the infamous Libertines gig of 25 August 2010, I probably would have given an arm, a leg and my left eye for tickets, and was furious at the thought of tickets bought by touts going on eBay for hundreds of pounds ('It's for the real fans, the REAL fans, goddammit!'). I got them on the rerelease, thanks to the fact that I was mid-MA and permanently logged onto a computer, even when I was asleep. But literally, until the moment that my confirmation email landed in my inbox, I was like a woman possessed. If I hadn't got them, I would have begged or stolen them; snuck, bribed or parachuted my way into the HMV Forum; or, eventually, cursed the day that all touts were born and bought them anyway. Of course it was of no consolation that I would see them play at Reading a few days later.

B. In February 2011, aware that my time in Paris was due to finish at the end of April, I bought tickets to see Doherty perform solo on May 10 to cheer me up upon my return to London, as I know I suffer from chronic reverse culture shock. Turns out I didn't leave, and I didn't want to spend my journalist-earned centimes on Eurostar tickets getting back to London, so I just threw them on eBay. After going to a undisclosed number of Doherty gigs in 2010, it seems that finally there is something I do love more than Peter Doherty: Paris.

our republic on the beach

2011-07-29T02:48:00.001+02:00

My family, it seems, have a bit of a thing about the French. Specifically; marrying French women. Perhaps it's the cooking. I have two French aunts, one of whom throws together these fabulous dinners without even the slightest bit of stress. The other cooks salmon, only salmon, unfailing salmon, ever since I can remember, but luckily does this very well. So perhaps next time there's a family gathering, perhaps it's a good thing that my vegetarianism is freefalling into pescatarian (damn you, moules mariniere). I still sort of hate hollandaise sauce though.

I also have a first cousin once removed who I've never met, who is married to a Frenchwoman and living in Nantes. Which is, quite by coincidence, where I found myself last weekend, to meet H's mother*. So if I have ever questioned what could be more terrifying than the prospect of a French dejeuner, then I've now found the answer: A four day trip of potentially all French. Made more terrifying by the fact that his English stepfather wouldn't be there. Maybe I just want to put myself into tricky situations purely for the fact that I get to blog about it afterwards. But never one to pass up on a challenge, and the potential of some beach time, I threw my bikini and my umbrella into a suitcase, filled my iPod with tunes to screen out shrieking American tourists (I swear, they find me on trains and deliberately sit next to me), went to practice my French on the lady in the flower shop, lugged my suitcase through Gare Montparnasse for about 30 minutes and hopped on the train.

There's no clear way of writing about my adventures in Nantes and beyond without making a list of them. I say adventures; all I really did was eat, chase the ponies off the deck and drive on the right hand side of the road. But let's just pretend I did lots of other interesting things.

un: Summer's kinda been and gone in the north of France, at least for July, so the prospect of swimming in the Atlantic was a little enthusiastic. The first thing we did was head to the beach, even though it was threatening to rain. The boys ran into the water in that 'I'm so bloke-y' way, and then splashed around for long enough for us to think that they were oh-so bloke-y. The last time I was properly on a beach, it was my 25th birthday. I was in Indonesia, and we drove the five hours or so down to Pangandaran where we all got gin drunk by 2pm. It was about 20 degrees colder this time, so I just dipped my toes in, because I didn't want to get pneumonia. Plus I'm British, and have the skin of a redhead person, despite being a fake redhead.

deux: As well as the moules, I also ate oysters. I'm the worst vegetarian in the world. I'm like a French vegetarian, who, if they actually exist, all eat fish and seafood anyway. They were just staring at me on the plate telling me to forget the fact that I promised never to eat oysters after watching Alice In Wonderland (it's that scene with the walrus with the cigar and the moustache). H is on a one man mission to turn me into a pescatarian anyway: Every time we go to a dejeuner, he tells the person cooking the meal that I eat fish, which isn't technically true. I only eat fish if there's absolutely nothing else on the menu. I have eaten so many salads with goat's cheese I should probably win an award. So after all that salad with goat's cheese, if I accidentally steer my fellow diners into a sushi restaurant, then what else can I do if there's no avocado sushi or salad with goat's cheese on the menu?

trois: H's mother and stepfather decided to trust me with their car. I'm not entirely sure why, as I've never driven on the right hand side of the road before. Also, I'm always a bit worried I'm going to start commentating my own driving, which can be a tad embarrassing. H had the map, with strict instructions to avoid all roundabouts. So we only encountered one, and apparently it was 'easy, because there's signs everywhere'. Actually, it was easy because my unblinking eyes were in full on panic oh-my-god-I'm-going-backwards-around-a-roundabout mode. The thing is, H can't drive, so if I had completely freaked out and started driving on the left, he wouldn't have been able to wrestle the wheel from me and drive us back. All he did was laugh a lot when I accidentally discovered the horn was located on the indicator. Who does this? Seriously. Stupid French cars.

quatre: The news about Amy Winehouse came to me from H's mother's Welsh neighbours, who she invited around for Sunday night drinks and cake. I really should have found this out myself, but I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with no internet. This made me feel distressingly out of the loop, having not even checked Facebook or Twitter for - gasp - over 48 hours. Twitter is actually how I found out about Elizabeth Taylor, so I have a lot of respect for it, even if it does often pretend that lots of other people have died that haven't actually. It's alarming how reliable I am on technology. So of course this time I had no idea, and sat on the sofa going 'oh my god' for about 30 minutes. Amy Winehouse still remains, by the way, the strangest looking person I've seen in real life. Still one of the most spectacular singers I've ever heard though.

cinq: I nearly drowned by falling into a lake from a boat. Okay, that's a huge lie - I'm just drawing you in to make our boating adventure sound more interesting. All that actually happened was that I had to rescue one of the oars by jumping back into the boat after we'd successfully sailed all around the lake and H decided to just leave it floating around in the water. The only casualty was his shoes and socks after he completely misjudged where the shore ended and the lake began. Wow, told you my adventures weren't really that interesting. I'll stop now.

*I'm giving up on trying not to write about my boyfriend much, because it just makes certain stories really tricky, even though I don't really like when bloggers write about their boyfriends all the time in a really menial way, like: 'Today, me and my boyfriend went into town. I didn't buy anything, just some face wipes.' Yawn. No one cares. So I hereby promise, because I know that I've ranted to people (Lauren) a lot in the past about it, not to write about him unless it's necessary to the story. You wouldn't have wanted me floating about in a boat or driving on the right hand side of the road all by myself, would you? Plus otherwise, you will end up missing out on a whole load of upcoming 'oh god, I have to live with a boy' posts, and wouldn't that be a sad thing?

you probably think this song is about you

2011-07-29T02:28:00.000+02:00

I have never considered myself a particularly vain person. I don't often carry much, if any makeup with me; I once dallied with orange eyeliner (ahem) but now pretty much follow the same basic makeup routine every day; and I often hear the words 'primer' and 'face highlighter', think 'ooh maybe, I could do with giving my cheeks a healthy glow', but never actually act upon it. The only really good thing I do is take off all my makeup before I go to sleep. And I've started using a moisturiser with SPF in it, but only because I was given it about five Christmases ago and I might as well use it up. I never even got the whole MAC obsession until I got some Sephora vouchers and then went all: 'Oh my god, you must buy their foundation - it will change your life forever!' No joke. I feel as reliant on my MAC foundation as people do about their iPhones: My dad has openly admitted he would save his iPhone before me if there was a fire in our house. His reasoning: You can run, the iPhone can't.

The thing is, I'm moving, and it's only now I'm moving I've realised what a hell of a lot of beauty products I have. I know that each time I take something off or put something back on my shelf, something else falls down. And I know that I use anti wrinkle cream around my eyes despite the fact that I apparently look 17 (I got ID'd at Christmas in Safeway buying a bottle of wine, and then again in Paris the other week), but it's the sort of thing my mum puts in my stocking and says encouraging things like 'it's never too early to start' as I run to the mirror and check I haven't morphed into a 80 year old lady overnight. But then I really got to thinking about what I put on my hair and my face every day, and then I began to rethink the whole not vain thing.

I don't think this is so bad if it's a secret. I mean, I don't hide what's on my shelves, but if someone sits there and watches what you put on - and by that I mean someone whose idea of a morning regime is to whack on some deodorant and only keeps a razor and some aftershave in their bathroom cupboard - you suddenly feel exceptionally stupid when you are faffing about with constructive hair repair and heat protection spray and thickening mousse and serum and hairspray and all you're planning to do that day is stay in and watch reruns of Gossip Girl and eat wasabi peas. Or at least I do. And unfortunately men can say that they prefer women natural and without makeup as much as they want, but it doesn't change the fact that the last time I didn't put makeup on, I was so comatose ill I was having dreams about starting up a zoo of bees and even when I woke up I still thought it was quite a good idea.

So I guess this is kind of an apology to H's bathroom, which I've already begun to take over with the 4,000 products that are coming with me. And I guess to H, who will never be able to get anything out of his bathroom cupboard without something falling out. I'd post a before and after picture, but I've already started moving all my 10,000 products, and now every time I open the cupboard, something falls out.

Also, I must be pretty vain if I've just written an entire blog about beauty products. Next time: I review fake eyelashes, and vlog my top 50 lipsticks!

Just kidding.

with his pretty wife and the garden gnomes

2011-07-26T00:44:00.000+02:00

I'm one of those people who writes post it notes and then leaves them everywhere. My desk is littered with them. Sometimes they're to do lists, sometimes they're things I want to include in my Nanowrimo novel, sometimes they're bands, and sometimes I have absolutely no idea what I've written actually means. Once I found a note I'd written half asleep in my Blackberry which said 'crab raccoon'. To this day, I have no idea what I could have been thinking.

I'm moving in a week, and I've realised that probably all these post it notes have to go (a small step into the world of packing - the rest I'll just sweep haphazardly into a suitcase and hope H will carry everything for me), and this means wading through what I've written, just in case there's anything important there.

So I found a note that said: 'cloud control'. Not entirely sure what this meant, but happy to play along, I Googled. Turns out, I think I probably meant a band. I know I've been pretty thin on the ground with This Week's Song entries, but this marks what I hope will be a return to regular entries. I adore this song. So it seems sometimes all these post it notes amount to something.

i read the news today, oh boy

2011-07-18T22:19:00.001+02:00

News from my local neighbourhood:

1. We're on about our fifth mouse. Beeb got mashed on a sticky piece of plastic, which was really sad, and it turned out that M. Tomato Nose had a twin, or a girlfriend, or live in lover, or something. Either way, there were two of them at the same time, which has never happened before. I haven't seen either Monsieur or Madame Tomato Nose in a while, but Lauren has seen a really small mouse we've named Little Amaretto, who we believe is probably their offspring. I should probably say that Lauren didn't see Little Amaretto: She actually caught him under a glass as he was hanging out, just chilling, by where we keep the oil, onion and garlic - ha, we're so French! - but then he escaped as she was trying to transfer him into a tupperware container to get him outside. It's okay; we don't use that glass any more.

2. The wedding shop down my road burnt down a couple of weeks ago, and they haven't even managed to clear up the charred bits of furniture and beams which are now littering the street ouside: All they've managed to do is erect some metal barriers around the shop, which just means everyone gets all bunched up walking down the road. Which, by the way, people in Barbès just can't do. I don't understand how you can get beyond the age of seven and not know how to walk down the road, but in Barbès; it's apparently an issue for most people. My theory on the wedding shop fire is that two wedding dresses rubbed up against each other, and the sparks from the cheap-y fibre polyester material meant the whole thing went up in flames. There are now 200 less wedding dresses in the world, but don't worry - there are still about a million similarly ugly ones left in Barbès.

3. Last Thursday was Bastille Day. Lauren and I celebrated by going to the top of the Sacré Coeur to watch five sets of fireworks light up the city, plus we also got to watch a really interesting looking fight break out. If we'd been more motivated, and if I hadn't drunk a vat of red wine over the last couple of days, we would've gone a bit closer to see the fireworks, as this is the closest France gets to Bonfire Night, which of course is one of the best holidays ever (concept: Burn a effigy of a man who tried to blow up Parliament - genius), but apparently the Métro spirals out of control like the bucket and mop in Fantasia and we didn't want to get crushed and suffocated, in an amped up Line 4 kinda way.

And finally: The New York Times picked up a piece I wrote for HipParis under their Diner's Journal What We're Reading. I'm not usually one to go all 'wow-look-at-what-I-wrote-I-am-just-amazing' as I find it fairly embarrassing. But I just really liked this fact, especially as I've written for the New York Times already. Okay, maybe I am a bit 'wow-look-at-what-I-wrote-I-am-just-amazing'. Next thing you know I'll be leaving open newspapers on articles I've written in bistros, or folding down the pages of magazines in places where my name appears, which I strongly suspect a lot of journalists do.

Please note that in as of two weeks, your local Parisian news will be arriving from Boulogne rather than Barbès. I feel like this is a deceptively classy move up in the world, but it's only a temporary move and I'll probably be back in the ghetto by November. I just can't miss out on being called 'trop belle' every time I leave the house by a drunk man who doesn't have any teeth and smells like he last washed in 1963. I'm sure my stories about my new digs won't be half as...interesting (am I allowed to say that?), but I have already located the neighbourhoods two residential drunks and been followed off the Métro by a creepy looking guy in a raincoat so maybe there's hope for Boulogne yet.

that's not my name

2011-07-14T19:42:00.000+02:00

Police searches for lasers. Throat grabbing. Wine in baby bottles. People singing Britney classics. Red wine all over white dresses. An indescribable amount of food. Meeting Nelson Trees and Roger Scott*. Stolen taxis.

Usually when people come to visit me in Paris, we play the tourists. We go to the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and the Mona Lisa. We are cultured, grown up and interested in art. We buy paintings and postcards and would probably not even consider buying beers in the mid-afternoon just because they come in pretty bottles.

Not so when Helen comes to visit. Helen has actually lived in Paris, and so knows as well as me that it can be a little mind numbing it is to visit the same art gallery three times, or stand in the queue to see a view of Paris you already have about 100 photos of. So she's my favourite kind of visitor, because she told me before she arrived that all she wanted to do was eat macaroons and look for hot French men; two of my favourite things to do in Paris. And thus her visit became the most gossip laden - great for stories, and only involved glancing at the Notre Dame (Helen, two seconds after this architectural wonder comes into view: 'Okay, seen it'). It also, probably quite predictably, involved quite a shocking amount of red wine, which means that even though it's Bastille Day and I should celebrate, I'd quite like to lie down in the dark with my eyes shut.

*I think it's the combination of Nelson and Roger that make this so wonderful. They had another friend with them - I forget his name - but Helen and I have decided that he just has to be called Jack Sparrow, in-keeping with the pirate name theme. I don't even need to make stuff up for my book - it just happens all by itself.

can't knock 'em out, can't walk away

2011-07-13T05:17:00.000+02:00

I've long since defended Barbès and Pigalle. But those days are over. My tolerance has decreased rapidly since I've known I'm moving to Boulogne which has all sorts of nice fish restaurants and Monoprix and families with small children frolicking on the lawn and cute neighbourhood-y stuff. I now have no tolerance for people trying to sell me fake designer bags and now I just snarl at them in this uncharacteristic aggressive 'f*** the f*** off; I've lived here for nine months and I'm STILL not going to buy your used Métro ticket' kind of way.

It's now gone into complete freefall since a random man grabbed me by my my neck and then by my hair last night. I've realised I'm really bad in such situations. Rather than defend myself in true Northern Brit standards (I was the 'token Northern bird' at university, despite being from London), I just want to cry. When I got attacked by a bunch of scallies when I was 19 I just hid my face, annoyed that I was about to lose yet another nose piercing, did nothing except get a bloody nose and a Primark ring indentation in my forehead, cry a lot in the ambulance and to the police, and claim £50 compensation afterwards. All I managed this time was to wriggle free and yell 'laisse moi' which he did; otherwise I honestly don't know what I would have done. I could've managed a slap, but that's not much against a guy who is squeezing my trachea. Although all he would have managed to steal was my 100 year old Crackberry and about €10. And my vintage (read charity shop find) handbag which I love, so perhaps that would have mattered a bit more.

I suppose the one good thing I can get from this is that I could explain this situation to some policemen in French, even under stress. And in the past, in that kind of situation; it usually takes me about an hour to calm down and stop being a babbling idiot. But this time, it was all of three minutes and I was all 'heyyy there French, this is the story of a guy who squeezed my neck!' And they did their usual 'oh wow, your French is amazing' song and dance, even though I forgot lots of important words, which was nice and unnecessarily sweet, and even asked if I wanted to give a statement or identify the guy that did it, which was even nicer, and even more unnecessary. Then I wanted to call H and cry, except I really hate girls who do that, and he had work the next day, so I just pretended I was tough and Northern, sent him a text message, and went home to ice my neck and down some sambuca.

life's just a cocktail party on the street

2011-07-11T17:13:00.001+02:00

A little piece I wrote for HipParis Blog. They've paired it with some really gorgeous pictures that make me wish I was drinking a mojito right now. Paris is hot, all the windows in the apartment are open, even if this annoys the old lady across the hallway, and I'm wondering how I'm going to carry 15 pairs of shoes and about 50 floral dresses across Paris at the end of the month.

[ A Paris Classic : Harry's New York Bar ]

so the neighbours can dance in the police disco lights

2011-07-11T13:41:00.000+02:00

If there's one thing I've learnt from living in Paris, it's to expect that unless you move to the suburbs, you will be in an apartment. And of course, this means you will be in fairly close proximity to your neighbours. Unfortunately, this isn't generally a Ramsay Street kind of situation. When you can hear them cough, it can be a little too close for comfort.

In my apartment block alone, there are: A couple of families with really cute children, which makes me really concerned when the second door isn't closed properly and random people conduct what appears to be drug deals on the stairwell; the Asian babes (or, more accurately, babe, as there's now only one left); the people directly below us, who hate us now as Marius vacated his stomach onto their balcony one messy night; the suspected prostitute, who has a constant string of ever-changing men visiting her apartment; a bunch of Erasmus students, who either find the neighbourhood fine, or terrifying and the old lady who takes about 20 minutes to climb the stairs - you can literally enter the building at the same time as her, climb the 100 or so stairs, get in, have a shower, get dressed, make a cup of tea, and only then will you hear her rattling the keys to her own apartment.

But we live together fairly amicably, especially as no one has thrown up on downstairs' balcony for a while.

In H's apartment, there's a full on war going on. His upstairs neighbours spend the entire time pacing up and down the apartment, seemingly moving all their furniture around for no apparent reason, having screaming arguments and letting their small daughter run and jump around the apartment all day. I don't particularly have a problem with the latter, as she's only two, and therefore needs to run and jump, but I'm also of the mind that as it's Boulogne, not Barbès, there are plenty of nice places outdoors she should be exploring.

H's response: His guitar amp is now on the ceiling, the bass is turned up to the max and he's practicing scales for hours on end.

It's something of a double edged sword that you can't ring the police to complain about noise pollution between 7am and 10pm. And so the neighbour wars wage on.

she gets all the highlights wrapped in pearls

2011-07-11T13:04:00.000+02:00

The first weekend of July was Eurockéennes, one of France's biggest festivals, held in Belfort on the Swiss border. And although I wrote about Alex Turner in my beach shelter, or something along those lines, I completely sidelined anything to do with the music, meaning to write about it in another post. Then things got busy, and the sun was shining, and suddenly it was the next week and all I'd done is written half a paragraph about the ugliest boots in the world I'd bought especially for the festival. Oops.

My press pass came my way thanks to VINGT Paris Magazine and for a bit I umm-ed and ahh-ed about going all the way to Belfort because trains were pricey and the only people willing to let Lauren and I Covoiturage were 40 year old men or inexperienced drivers. And I didn't want to rent a car because I can't drive on that side of the road, at least not safely, and even if I could I'd probably break my left hand thumping it against the car door as I went to change gear. But then I thought: Free. Music. Festival. Camping. Queue jumping. Press passes and VIP areas. Sun predicted. Alex Turner in my beach shelter. And with that, I was sold. So I threw some almonds in my hastily purchased €13.50 ugliest boots in the world (no joke. They're like hockey boots without the studs and covered in bin bags) and jumped aboard the SNCF. And so here, without further ado, are a few of my musical highlights:

Arcade Fire were my most hotly anticipated, even though I haven't spent nearly as much time as I should listening to The Suburbs. Whenever they come on shuffle on my iPod, I realise that I need to listen to this album more. Then I listen to them for three days straight. And they were, of course, as spectacular as always. A similar set - near identical in fact - to when I last saw them (Reading 2010), but there's been no new material since, and they've amped up the theatrics. Lauren said a touch of The Decemberists. I adored it, and goosepimpled all over. Régine Chassagne was jumping all over the place, playing every instrument possible - I envy her multi-talents. And all the circus showcase came together for Power Out, with flashing lights that would've given the Pokémon kids another seizure.

Queens Of The Stone Age were my surprising contender for top spot festival highlight award, if I was ever going to bother awarding awards. Eurockéennes had them down as 'stoner rock', which I don't think is quite right, but as I'm exploring indie folk and stuff with synths (sorry), I usually skip over that kind of American heavy guitar rock scene. But no more. They hooked me in from go, and I had honestly thought it was going to be one of those bands where I might be able to sit down for a bit because I'm old and my back hurts, but instead I just stood there with my mouth a little bit open and let all these guitars wash over me.

The Ting Tings. Am I allowed to admit to liking The Ting Tings? They're oh so pop-y and enthusiastic it's almost like it's just trying to scream Look At Me I'm So Much Fun, but in the end, who can help it because they're just so jumpable with all those upbeat jangly beats. Plus Katie White is the only person in the world who can successfully pull off that awful 90s two tone hair look, and I can never hear That's Not My Name without thinking of some Indonesian teenagers singing it and substituting the most random names in as they'd misheard the lyrics.

Lauren made me go and watch Crystal Castles, although I try to maintain that I don't get that kind of music. Blah-blah it's repetitive drug music blah-blah. But, sound issues aside, I totally swallow my words here. It almost makes me want to go to places that play this sort of music all the time in Paris. Almost.

Arctic Monkeys, wound up the festival, gave Lauren and I the opportunity to be the overly enthusiastic, jumping, annoying Brits who bellow all the lyrics in that slurry half warm festival beer kind of way. This is wonderful, because the French are so polite and just stand there and nod their heads a bit. Or even SIT DOWN, even though it's 2am and really dark, so it means you risk getting trodden on or tripping someone up. So Lauren and I danced our little socks off and screamed the lyrics. That's what Arctic Monkeys are for though. It was one of those moments that made me realise however much I adore Paris, there's something very charming about the British and that entire Brit indie look. It's something that's just untappable by any other nation, rather like the Brit sense of humour.

Some snippets:

Moriarty: Not even nearly worth getting there early for, when I could've spent another hour lounging in the sun. I just wanted to eat my ears in disappointment. So goes Eurockéennes and their misleading descriptions of bands. I just got all undone by the folk-rock description. Should've learnt my lesson after the Queens Of The Stone Age thing. House of Pain: Lauren says all their songs are about death. She's right. Cheer up. Also: Don't bring a beach shelter instead of a tent to a festival. The better food is in the VIP part, as are the hugely superior toilets. It's really pretty by the press bar, where you can look out over the lake at night. And so, with these final thoughts, it's only fair to say that I never want to go to a festival as anything less than press again.

a longer sentence brings no more than one that i had said before

2011-07-09T20:39:00.000+02:00

I like to talk. This is of no surprise to anyone that actually knows me beyond the girl that writes this blog. 'My god, what-a-chatterbox!' my mother rants about my childhood. In fact, she probably says this about me now. This is partly why I have a blog. Apparently, I have quite a lot to say. It's therefore unusual for people to classify me as shy, as usually they have problems getting me to shut up. Sometimes when we play Ring of Fire (rarely, as I now have the alcohol tolerance of a six-year-old), and the Make Up A Rule rule comes into play, the rule dictates that I must be quiet. Sometimes this rule comes from people who have only met me a few times. I'm usually too busy talking to notice.

I've written briefly before about going to dinner parties where everything is conducted in French, but I never really fully addressed the sheer terror of this situation. Am I shy in these kinds of situations? Oh hell yes. Do I talk? No, not really. At the last dinner party, there were 12 other people I could hide behind. At dejeuner today, at H's dad's apartment, there was only H, his dad, his sister and her husband. This meant that there was pretty much no one I could hide behind, and so the whole table had to here my 'mignon' French accent. I suppose this is marginally better than having 12 other people lean in to listen, but theoretically, since there were less people, the amount of talking each person had to do increased.

I actually really like listening in French. Listening I can do because I can usually understand, which makes me feel much more relaxed and all 'yeah I can do this! Go me and my French!' Although my concentration level, and therefore my understanding, started to flag a bit at the tail end of the main course and I was starting to wonder whether I was just making up a conversation in my head or if it was actually happening. Okay, I probably shouldn't have gone out to Bus Palladium the night before and crawled into bed at 4am, but what was by then nearly four hours of French is quite a lot for someone to focus on when it is not their native language. By the fromage, my brain was fried. It picked up very slightly at dessert - perhaps it was the sugar rush.

Talking, however: Scary. Most of the dejeuner, I sat there thinking: 'Please don't ask me a question, please don't ask me a question.' This never happens. Usually I have tons to say; this blog is shining evidence of that. I must have had some sort of bubble expressing this thought above my head, because there was no scary barrage of questions. Although they are probably wondering how the hell I, being seemingly so quiet and shy, managed to navigate my way around Asia for months on end. Three countries that I have been to came up in conversation which prompted H to keep saying 'Kate's been there' and me to think 'argh! Now they're going to ask me about my trip and all I did was drink mango lassis and wear really awful clothes and buy dozens of bits of material. That doesn't even sound good in English.'

Still, I suppose I would much rather a language barrier than something like a crazy Italian mother who is convinced that her son is absolutely precious and nothing but perfection can take him away from her. Or ending up in one of those awful stories that people sell to those £1 chat magazines if they can't get on Jeremy Kyle.

In a way, it is probably a good thing my French is so crap, as H's sister is pregnant and as I'm now a baby obsessive, if I could, I probably would've started going: 'oh-my-god a BABY! There's going to be a little tiny baby and that's-so-cute-and-ickle-and-just-aww-I'm-sohaaappyy for you!'

'You're like a little bird,' they told me, towards the end of the meal, because apparently I don't eat very much, which isn't true, as by then I'd eaten more than I usually eat in an entire day and if they saw me left to my own devices with a block or brie, they'd think again. Better a little bird than a lot of other things, I suppose.

I should probably wrap up with some final thoughts now, as I've clearly had a lot to say on this subject, and otherwise I'll just ramble on about how H's brother-in-law tried to get me drunk again, which I'm guessing now may be a feature of these dejeuners and surely this isn't going to bode well with the four day trip to H's mum's house which is coming up at the end of the month. So, to conclude: I suppose these dejeuners can only get easier. And my mother would probably be proud that for once in my life I've learnt to be quiet and listen.

she's a melted avocado on the shelf

2011-07-09T19:27:00.000+02:00

'Get me an avocado!'

Actually, it was 'get me a lawyer!', but this is one moment of French translation that I just find too funny too pass up. Avocat: Why is such a serious word also the same word for a fruit? I'm sure this has the potential to be very confusing. I'm envisioning a man with an avocado addiction locked in a jail cell, or a fruit seller in some serious trouble.

tell me a story, i know you're not boring

2011-07-08T14:02:00.000+02:00

Three thoughts for today:

1. There are two words which should never be put together, and those words are 'sexy' and 'baby'. Actually, I'm a firm believer that the word 'sexy' shouldn't really be used much at all - it's far too sleazy man in shiny jeans, perma-tan and hair oiled into individual spikes - but you'll never get the full impact of this phrase until you've heard one of the bracelet sellers near the Sacré Coeur address you as 'sexy baby', after which you pretty much want to claw your own ears off and eat them. Marius never understood this until Lauren and I thundered at him: 'Sexy baby is not okay. Babies can't be sexy - eurgh Marius!'

2. I saw a little old man and woman with their arms around each other crossing the road this morning, which I thought was just lovely. I'm apparently getting very soppy in my old age. Although in retrospect, it's probably good to hold onto your loved ones in my neighbourhood, just in case. She was one of those women that I usually classify as 'scary and French looking'. It's a look also embodied by the old woman living across the hallway and who gets annoyed if we do things like carry our shopping up the stairs too loudly or jangle our keys when we are opening the door, and then comes over to tell us to close our windows during the day, despite the fact that it's 30 degrees outside and we are slowly cooking away in what must be the hottest apartment in the world. Sometimes the wind makes the windows bang occasionally but really, how does she know they are open at all? Creepy. Perhaps I'm just scared of her because I can only understand 80% of what she is telling me to do, and I'm worried that the other 20% might be crucial; in which case she'll get even madder. Little old ladies such as these usually complete their look with a small and wrinkly little complexion and white hair parted severely in the middle, curled in at the ends. And often, they look like they would have a yappy dog just to be annoying and a stick just so they could prod people with it.

3. CAF have asked for my birth certificate in French for the third time. I'm now convinced their office must have some sort of paper monster that eats all documentation I send over to them. I know I live in a dodgy area, where scamming others is as common as buying a baguette, and weed is the local currency but, really, why is it so difficult to extract €115 a month from them, which, by the way, isn't even very much by CAF standards. Each month I have to prove that I am a person, that I exist, that I live there, and that I will continue to live there. Luckily the latter no longer applies, as I'm moving out at the end of the month, and know for future reference to send them multiple copies of everything the first time, and any other times that will predictably follow until they eventually shut up. This is yet another example of France deliberately making things difficult. Trying to shut down a bank account, cancel a direct debit or buy a loofah also fall into the category of being completely unnecessarily complex.

alex turner: wanna come back and see my beach shelter?

2011-07-04T20:36:00.004+02:00

You know that tent that you always walk past at a festival and point at and laugh and say, 'oh bwahahaha, tent fail!' The one on fire, or filled with frisbees, or set up in a tree? Well, yeah, at Eurockéennes, that was my tent. I should probably point out here that I've spent more than a few months living in tents, or at festivals, plus a combined amount of about 24 months travel or living in Asia, so generally, I wouldn't like to think that I am particularly stupid when it comes to what to bring for a three day weekend. Generally.

So we borrowed this tent. Collected it Thursday evening. And I thought: I should probably open it up and check it's all there but tomorrow I have to get up at 6 so I'm sure it's fine. It's pretty small, but, you know; we're only two girls. It'll be fiiiine.

So. Got to the campsite. Opened the tent. Said: 'I think part of this tent is missing...I think it might work anyway but if it rains we're fu...' And then this piece of paper fell out. And do you know what this piece of paper said? It said beach shelter. Beach. Shelter. Not tent. Beach shelter. That's essentially half a tent, which gives each person a quarter of a tent. If that's not a FML moment, I don't know what is.

In fairness, I've slept in some pretty bad places in my life: In rooms with rats, cockroaches and varying health hazards smeared haphazardly across walls, curtains and bedsheets; on a board of wood; bolt upright on a bus in Vietnam made in 1984; third class in a Russian train; on the side of a path just by Everest Base Camp; next to my ex (haha, I joke). But in answer to the ultimate question: Can two girls sleep in a banana shaped beach shelter for two days, the answer is split. I say yes, just about. Lauren says no, god damn you beach shelter; I had a better night's sleep on the station floor (me too, maybe, until a woman started buffing the floor by my feet). But just to give you a visual of this delight, here's a photo. Try not to laugh.

Thank god my cheese and red wine addiction has not spiralled out of control so much that me plus Lauren plus luggage can't fit in there. I would've taken an inside zipped up photo, but once actually inside and zipped up, it wasn't possible to move any of my limbs.

Some other festival highlights, in no particular order, are as follows:

Concluding that I can never again go to a festival as a normal civilian or 'the riffraff' as I have now named them. Because if you're press, you skip the queues, you can chill in the VIP area, you can go behind all the bamboo walls you've always wondered about, the bouncers are nice to you, the riffraff are jealous of you, and for some reason, only the press know how to use a festival toilet without turning it into the set of a rather gruesome Peter Jackson movie.

Learning that the French eat baguettes and crêpes at festivals. They even bring supplies of baguettes with them (I'm talking nine baguettes, not just one or two). Is it wrong that I find this so funny? It's like learning that they wear stripy t-shirts. Of course, if it's Motorhead, they all switch to kebabs. I'm not sure why this is. They also remain the politest audience I've ever seen or, as Arcade Fire put it, the worst crowdsurfers. They even shout 'apéro' throughout the campsite, which I feel is a somewhat polite, un-festival-like way of telling everyone else to get drunk. And they love the White Stripes. Lauren says if the White Stripes actually played for the French, they'd probably all have a heart attack with the excitement and anticipation of 'dooo-do-do-do-do-dooo-dooo'.

Discovering that after three day festival hair and two nights in a beach shelter, I am still worth chatting up, if you are a 40 year old man. I'm not sure what is more embarrassing: That the entire train had to hear my conversation in French with him, or that the entire train had to hear me turn him down. Him: 'Can I have your number?' Me: 'Erm...why?' Still, this means maybe I can speak French after all. I feel like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love when she has that conversation in Italian with the woman on the train who tells her off for saying she can't speak Italian. I like telling people I can't speak French because then if I just say something like: 'I want a sandwich' or 'ça boom, mecs!' they all go: 'Oh no, Kate, your French is great!' You're all liars, but merci beaucs.

Penultimately: Why does everyone always make me commit to important events after festivals? Last year it was a wedding, which I think I pulled off pretty well, thanks to a bunch of lychee martinis. This year, I have to go for dinner with H and two of his friends. In, ooh, about 10 minutes. Picking an outfit and putting on makeup whilst dropping 60 percent of the stuff I tried to pick up was difficult enough. I would order a pre-dinner coffee would this not be total sacrilege in France, and I am a little worried I may face plant between my knife and fork. However, it sways in my favour that I don't have to speak any French and there will be wine.

And finally, a note: I don't like it when people boo crowds because the sound has messed up, as per Crystal Castles. Don't blame the artists: Blame the sound tech guys. In fact; turn round and boo them just so they can be sure it's them. Big love to you Alice Glass.

you can't climb across a mountain so high

2011-06-29T12:17:00.000+02:00

Next weekend Lauren and I are off to Belfort for Les Eurockéennes, thanks to some press passes courtesy of VINGT Paris Magazine. Am I cool enough not to fan-girlz all over the Arctic Monkeys and Arcade Fire? Only time will tell. I'm also hoping that we aren't waist deep in mud, as this year's Glastonbury-goers have, but we're by the Swiss border, and when I went to Switzerland with my family back in my early teens, it rained so much that I thought no country could suffer from a worse summer until I went to Russia and it started hailing in August. I seem to have misplaced a picture of me wearing all my clothes and peeling potatoes in the hail an outdoor kitchen by Lake Baikal, but I'm pretty sure I looked quite miserable.

Unfortunately, as I didn't know I would be festival-ing in France, all my festival gear is in London, so I am minus my friend Lizzie's palatial tent and my blow up mattress (I'm no longer 16; I need to go glamping now), and I can't even pack my wellies with cashews and gin, as I have only brogues in Paris. This could be interesting.

The preview I wrote for the festival is:

[ here ]

summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage

2011-06-28T17:46:00.000+02:00

Summer has hit Paris, and the days are awash in that smokescreen hazy of the mid 30s. It's hard to believe that I lived for 14 months straight in the tropics, where anything below 30 was cold. Now I wander from room to room (read my room to the kitchen and back) with all the windows in the apartment open, hoping to catch some sort of breeze.

Of course, over in Barbès, the sunshine doesn't mean that anyone is off enjoying it. They're still stood on the corner of the dodgy money exchange, selling their fake Louis Vuitton bags and cigarettes and plastic shit.

But of course, because Lauren and I are British and sunshine makes us go: 'Oh my god, the sun is out! Look at it! Ooh hello sun! Wow, I think I'm going to sit directly in it away from all possible shade wearing as few clothes as possible - is naked too much? - and skip sunscreen, hell, how about some oil, but that's okay, because burn turns into tan eventually, so who cares; we only get about three days of sunshine a year anyway!'

We're not actually that stupid. But what I did notice as we settled ourselves in our favourite park - the one where the oiled up pervy man likes to hang out with his 20 million water bottles and then hit on girls half his age - that all the Frenchies were sitting in the shade and suitably dressed. It was like a complete reverse of an English park, where all the shade spots are free and all the bits with sun are crammed with people in ill fitting summer attire. Even the people with pale skin at least attempt the dabbled shade, otherwise it just isn't in-keeping with the British mentality of: The sun is here, so let's appreciate!

We're just so French now we sat in the shade and ate baguettes. Hello summer!

she's got too much on her mind

2011-06-27T13:12:00.000+02:00

This week, I received an email from one of my favourite bands saying that they were calling it a day. I first discovered The Answering Machine when I was at the hairdressers, of all places, heard them play a couple of gigs in London, reviewed them as part of my MA, and then saw them again at Bus Palladium in Paris. So I'm actually really sad to hear that there will be no more music from them. This is the first song I heard from them.

and i'm on my way somewhere

2011-06-21T19:33:00.002+02:00

Contrary to popular belief, Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows is not This Week's Song. Instead, it's Julian Casablancas. This song isn't new, and I didn't find it whilst writing a gig guide so there is no hipster twinkling sparkling synth stuff for you this week (well, not as much as usual). However, it's made some nice background music to write to, and to ride Line 9 to. I've recently calculated that I spend at least 15 hours of my life per week on Line 9. Now this doesn't sound like much by London standards, but by Paris standards, this is a LOT (ooh, check out my capital letters), as most journeys take a maximum of 30 minutes. I'm sure the tramps at Strasbourg-Saint-Denis are starting to recognise me.

I do really like this song a lot, and not just in a background kinda way. It's lacking a little in that danceability that I really like about The Strokes, but it's unfair to always compare a lead singer with their band, so here's to celebrating all band singers gone solo artists on their own merit.

PS. I'm not entirely sure about this montage of photos, although it does appear the person who put this video together lost interest early on. I shouldn't be mean really: Their video editing kicks mine into the ground. Here's me: 'Erm...so where do I plug the cable in?' Then later: 'So...how about I just stick at InDesign? No one watches videos anyway.'

wrote your name in graffiti on the wall

2011-06-21T17:21:00.000+02:00

Here's something I wrote for Girls' Guide to Paris. The I Love You Wall is on my official 'Welcome to Paris, Now Let's Eat Macaroons!' tour which I take all my visiting friends on as it's only 10 minutes from my house, and is free, unlike the Eiffel Tower, which I'd like to never visit again, just watch twinkling from afar.

[ The I Love You Wall ]

hate to say i told you so

2011-06-21T16:09:00.000+02:00

An update on the Katie and Tom romance. It's pretty lucky I didn't get really carried away and buy a dress to wear to their wedding and shoes and a fascinator and everything. Because Tom finally got the real Katie's number and guess what? She didn't text him back.

I'm oddly disappointed, although it does go to show that even by British standards, six days is just too long to wait around. Katie's probably moved to France where she's now happily married and has her own crêpe restaurant. Sorry Tom.

his accent sounded fine to me, to me

2011-06-21T13:07:00.000+02:00

Having spent eight years at what can probably safely be referred to as a 'posh' school, and subsequently 10 years trying to erase any memory, indication or accent that has resulted from this, I've now taught a four-year-old French girl to say 'yellow' in a heavy Cockney accent. Oops.

pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows

2011-06-19T16:28:00.000+02:00

After the success of finding A Fashion Loaf, arguably the best fashion blog around, I realised that perhaps I'm better at finding good blogs rather than good YouTube videos. So I found Songs To Wear Pants To, where Andrew makes a song out of anything suggested by his readers. My favourite is the following, although I fully accept in writing this that my musical credibility is now in freefall.

take in mystica

2011-06-19T11:50:00.001+02:00

Solidays preview for VINGT Paris Magazine. This festival is actually organised by Solidarity AIDS so well worth the cause. The Klaxons, Asian Dub Foundation, The Joy Formidable, Mark Ronson & The Business Intl, plus others.

[ click ]

i want to be a paperback writer

2011-06-18T14:38:00.000+02:00

During the month of November I plan to write a novel. A short novel. 50,000 words. That's nearly 1,700 words a day. Not impossible - I've written at such paces during predictably last minute panic moments of my undergraduate degree. Not for such extended periods of time, obviously, but the principle behind National Novel Writing Month hangs in the fact that you omit the need to go back and edit and fuss about as there's simply no time: You purely write, at a very fast rate, in order to get the novel finished by the end of the month. And if it's a load of crap? Well, you've still written a novel.

I write this on my blog partly as a promotion of nanowrimo, but also because that makes it more 'real' somehow, although in actuality I would never really back out on this, as I've always wanted to write one, and the pressure may help. Also I've promised my friend Matt that we'd both do this and the fact that I'm not allowed to play Monopoly any more may be a slight indication that I'm quite competitive.

When I was little, my childhood ambition was actually to be an author. Of course this doesn't mean that I can write fiction - it just means that when I was young I used to kill a lot of trees because we didn't have computers (imagine that. I'm surprised we even had things like fire and the wheel and chocolate buttons). But, more recently, people have been telling me I should try and write something. And by 'people' I mean my dad, who I believe thinks it would complete my live-as-a-starving-artist-in-Paris persona, and a tutor from my MA who tweets sometimes to say I should turn the stories of my Parisian apartment into a sitcom - hello privacy invasion.

Since this year is just disappearing beneath me, I should probably make tracks and start clearing out my November now. It works out well whenever I'm living, as if I'm in Paris, I'll be too poor to leave the house, and if I'm in London, I'll be too depressed to leave the house. This could be an interesting novel.

and no you can't have my number because i've lost my phone

2011-06-18T01:16:00.000+02:00

The other night, I received the following text message:

'Hi Katie it's Tom, how are you? Sara gave me your number after her party last weekend, hope that's ok. Just wanted to say it was really nice to meet you the other night and I wondered if you would like to go out for a drink or something soon?'

How sweet, I thought. This Tom sounds really nice. He can spell. He uses capital letters. Doesn't use emoticons. No kisses, but he could work on that. However, my receiving this message was odd for several reasons:

Firstly, I don't use my English number regularly any more. Secondly, I don't know any Saras in Paris. I hadn't, to my conscious knowledge, met any Toms that weekend, much less flirt with them. And finally, no one calls me Katie except for my parents and a handful of friends I've known since the start of high school. Oh, and anyone else immediately after I tell them that no one calls me Katie.

The thing is, I could have completely ignored this text message, but then Tom and the real Katie would never have met up again, dated, got married and had lots of children. And I really liked that he'd missed the window of opportunity to get her number of her, but had then taken the time to track it down. And really, how often do people actually bother chasing up someone they met once at a party? Not often. It also appears that I, like every other girl in the world, really like matchmaking. So I topped up my balance (seriously. I don't ever use that phone. Stop texting me on it), explained the situation in a way that didn't indicate a flirt divert (surprisingly tricky), and saved future generations of little baby Katie-and-Tom's.

I was curious though - what if it was actually a completely random chance that Tom had text me and I just happened shared the same name as the girl he was looking for - that I didn't even know this Sara? My friend S once ended up a guy for nearly four years who she met after he text her by mistake (a suicide note, in actual fact - I kid you not). Only two Sara's have my English number. One is my sister, who's actually a Sarah, and I seriously doubt would be trying to set me up with someone, especially as she seems to quite like the sound of the one I'm already going out with. Sleuthing over, and my Saras rounded down to one possible, I text her. 'Oh my god - so so sorry!' she text back. It was bit disappointing, but I suppose less disheartening than if Tom had found out that unknown-to-me Sara had created a totally random number because Katie had expressively banned her from giving out the right one (yes, we do this).

Lauren and I, however, have clearly been in Paris for so long that we have forgotten what it is like to date British men. ' He waited six days before he text her? SIX DAYS?!' we shouted, 'Don't you know there's a three day window? If you were in Paris, you'd have been on two dates and would now be in a serious relationship.' We thought about telling Tom this, but the poor guy was so embarrassed at having asked out a random stranger that we refrained, and simply reflected on how nice it was not to date people who think holding hands in public after six months is a 'serious commitment'.

A moment of musing: If Tom and Katie do ever get married, I would quite like an invitation to their wedding.

we took the backseat, everyone was happy

2011-06-14T19:07:00.000+02:00

Another fortnight, another gig guide. VINGT Paris Magazine.

[ click ]

i should learn its language and speak it to you

2011-06-13T12:21:00.001+02:00

Hold Your Horses! played l'International last weekend, and being extremely busy I never actually had any time to write about it. International is one of my favourite places in Paris, partly because it's full of hipsters, partly because the wine is not too expensive, but mostly because it holds free gigs in their basement. I was tipped off on this one by Mark, who runs Gigs In Paris. Rhum For Pauline supported - also amazing, but it's 70 Million that's been stuck in my head all week. Plus isn't this video just amazing? I have a sudden new found love for art, despite the fact that I feel I could practically run my own tour at the Louvre.

this escapee was never gonna stay

2011-06-07T01:16:00.000+02:00

It's my birthday. And this is my 200th post. Surely this is significant somehow? Actually, technically, it's no longer my birthday, as it's now past 1am in Paris, but it's still my 200th post. And if I was one of those clubs that gives you really crap fizzy wine and pretends it's champagne for free if it's your birthday, then I would still be shouting 'It's my birthday! Please can you give this really crap fizzy wine to someone else and give me some gin?'

I stumbled across this song during Sunday brunch. I say brunch, but actually it was about 3pm, by which time it's considered perfectly acceptable to drown yourself in mimosas. I had to buy two bottles of €1.10 champagne in preparation at 11am. And a bag of apples, just to soften the blow. What a look. Sunglasses on and everything. But I do live in the ghetto, where everyone's drunk by 10am, and I once found a tramp passed out in the middle of the pavement with his legs bent in the exact position as if he'd once been sitting on a chair and it was only lunchtime on a weekday. Not even a Monday (aka Paris' extended weekend).

What can I tell you about my birthday? I went to a hammam spa in La Mosquée, sat in the steam, got scrubbed to pieces, and then covered in a vat of olive oil. I played badminton. Erm. Is this a sign of maturity? Myself five years ago would be distraught.

Otherwise this week, I've discovered if you ever want to win over an American, make mashed potato and they will actually love you forever. However, if you're hoping to follow it up, probably best not to whack in the four raw cloves of garlic I cack-handedly threw in.

an entire generation of entertainers to blame

2011-06-04T23:18:00.002+02:00

Or: A GUIDE TO THE SACRE COEUR

THE BRACELET SELLERS
Their technique is to grab your wrist as you walk past and wind a piece of thread around it, ensuring you are trapped and they are free to weave a little bracelet that looks an awful lot like the millions of friendship bracelets girls used to exchange and wear in the early years of high school. Tip: Don't wave your arms around very much, or you might find yourself insnared. For some strange reason, they seem to particularly like 20 to 30-something year old women.

THE BRAZILIAN DANCERS
They make a lot of noise and wave flags around, so you think they're doing a lot, but actually they're just making a lot of noise and waving flags around. They collect money in a tambourine. Don't try and hit the tambourine while they're doing this. They get mad.

THE BEER SELLERS
They're generally on the run from the police who, if they catch them, will open up all the drinks and tip them down the drain. Bang goes their livelihood, and then they have to call all their friends and warn them that the police are out and about. I always wonder why they don't just bring a blanket with them so they can fling it out if the police emerge and pretend they're having a huge, boozy picnic all by themselves.

THE STATUES
They're everywhere, and of varying effort and talent. Some of them move if you look at them, which I always think is cheating. Covent Garden installed high standards in me of this type of street performance.

THE SINGING WOMAN
This woman dresses in crazy clothes that in no way go together (not in a purposeful clashing prints way, just in a bad way) and parades around singing very loudly. She likes to sing traditional French songs, but, unfortunately, does not take requests. She gets extremely angry if you take a photo of her, or if she thinks you've taken a photo of her.

THE OILED UP PERVY MAN
He likes to hang out in the little park on the Barbès side and lies there in his speedos (eww) surrounded by about 100 water bottles. Then e jumps around a lot and tries to hit on women by themselves who are just trying to have a read a book or just catch some rays and would probably appreciate not being hit on by someone who clearly has a problem with steroids. His favourite technique is to sit in their laps, or do push ups to get their attention. Lauren and I think he must be pushing 40.

THE FAKE DEAF AND DUMB PEOPLE
They aren't really deaf and dumb - they just pretend to in order to weasel money out of stupid tourists. They also like to hang out by the Eiffel Tower. They are extremely annoying, but you can catch them out by pointing out that they all have an identical half filed in sign up sheet. Also they all talk to each other as soon as they realise you're not about to hand over your euros.

THE BREAK DANCERS
They make a killing, as they do all sorts of impressive tricks like walk up the steps on their hands. Probably the only street entertainers worth paying attention to.

THE CAT LADY
This woman brings cans of cat food and bowls to feed the stray cats. Enough said.

THE CRACK ADDICTS
They hang out around the side steps and like to wave their dirty spoons about. To be avoided at all costs.

THE PUPPET MAN
He tells the story of Noah and the Ark. Apparently he's not much liked by the other street performers, who don't seem to think he's deserving of all the space he takes up, and the prime position he usually sets up in. I suspect this is also because the accompanying music and voice commentating is very loud. I would personally like his show a lot more if he stopped trying to tell me about Adam and Eve and Noah and just had more of the stuffed animals being waved around.

remember i know every trick in the book

2011-05-31T18:24:00.001+02:00

Thanks to the lovely people over at VINGT Paris Magazine, and at Villette Sonique Festival, I spent last Friday night seeing Beth Ditto at Grande Halle de la Villette.

As a semi-seasoned festivaler (or at least someone who's used to British weather), festivals to me often revolve around being knee deep in mud and dodging 16-year-olds hellbent on setting fire to each others' tents whilst becoming increasingly deaf. So the prospect of changing it up to go wellington boot-less without so much as a can of dry shampoo in sight was pretty tempting. Of course, Villette Sonique wasn't going to be that easy. My stint started at 23h30 and ran till 6h00. But it was dry and warm - in a huge, high ceilinged hall devoid of vomiting teenagers and kebab vans.

I last saw Beth Ditto perform with Gossip at Reading Festival 2010 (wonder why I keep making references to drunk 16-year-olds?) and she's probably one of the most engaging performers I've seen live. When she's wooing you over with her spectacular set of lungs and in-between song chat about the babies she's going to have with some guy in the crowd, she's pretty hard to ignore. And solo, she's very much the same, throwing out that amazing voice, surrounded by four guys who are far too good looking to be straight. And she's still incredibly sexually charged, although she's sporting a more demure dress than she's often famed for.

Somehow though - I didn't find it quite as all-consuming as her performances with Gossip. Her voice is strong and...sweet, actually, carrying well even when it's unaccompanied - quite a skill that over processed pop princesses will no doubt struggle with - but somehow it's lacking that operatic kick that comes with her band.

Still - I Wrote The Book is this week's song, because if you can get me dancing at 2h30, exhausted and fuelled only by red bull, that's pretty damn impressive.

hold on to your kite

2011-05-31T15:56:00.000+02:00

June gig guide. VINGT Paris Magazine. Yadda yadda yadda.

[ click ]

so call in the submarine

2011-05-25T12:55:00.001+02:00

Last weekend I made a 36-hour trip to England for my cousin's wedding where, along with pretty dresses, free mojitos, awkward comments to me like: 'Sooooo, I guess it's your turn next...' and awkward questions to my dad like: 'Which daughter is your favourite?' there was a band, which gave my dad the opportunity to show off his knowledge of indie music.

'That's that guy from Gorillaz,' he said, pointing to the lead singer.

I looked. Actually, I really think it was 'that guy from Gorillaz'.

(I still don't think it made up for the time that he asked if I ever listened to 'Mumford and Brothers'. For more mistakes of the parents and indie music variety, I long ago found this (now defunct) twitter account @MyMumonIndie)

Post-wedding listening to Gorillaz reminded me of how long it's been since I delved into my own music collection, having abandoned it temporarily to split my time between surfing YouTube videos for bands so that I can say 'yeah, I heard them ages ago, way before they were famous', and Deezer - the best alternative I'd found thus far to Spotify, who seem to think that 20 hours of music will last someone an entire month. I'm telling you now; it doesn't even come close. My Spotify quota lasted me less than three days. When you work mostly from home, you spend a lot of time creating mood setting background music.

Deezer, however, allows unlimited streaming without having to hand over any money and I'd even wager that their ads are marginally less annoying than Spotify's. Plus they're usually quite good at throwing up non-mainstream stuff to keep all les bobos content.

I don't actually think Deezer is available in its fully functioning form outside of France, unfortunately, because I tried to access it in London and the albums were very limited, or they didn't have artists at all. But if you are lucky enough to be surrounded by the frogs, access away.

that boy's a hoxton hero

2011-05-25T00:51:00.000+02:00

'They couldn't mug me because my pants were too tight,'

By pants, Douglas actually meant trousers and, in this case, jeans, but that's Americans for you.

So here's a little tip for those in Paris hoping not to get mugged: Wear really tight jeans, because the muggers won't be able to get into the pockets and steal all your money.

boom boom boom

2011-05-20T13:33:00.000+02:00

Villette Sonique Festival preview for VINGT Paris Magazine...

[ here ]

we ain't born typical

2011-05-19T15:49:00.001+02:00

Us Brits are often made resoundingly aware of our stereotyped characteristics: We are drunks, who compulsively follow up a heavy night out with a greasy fry up. The girls wear very small amounts of clothing, even in Arctic conditions and, naturally, are extremely easy. We all have bad teeth, go to Spain and stay in cheap resorts where the set up is basically 'Britain with sun' and €1 drinks, start fights and get naked, enjoy standing in queues, refuse to complain in bad restaurants but instead complain bitterly to our friends, shun unfamiliar food for chips, curry and dirty kebabs, talk never-endingly about the weather, love the Royal Family and regularly kiss up to Americans.

The one stereotype the Frenchies have of Brits is actually, according to H, none of these, but that we all eat roast beef, generally served overcooked. Weirdly, this is the one stereotype I don't actually think is true.

Tables turned, I asked H what stereotypes he thought us Brits had of the French. His answer: The French are rude.

In general, I haven't found this of Parisians, despite them being branded as the worst of the lot, but then I'm from London, where it's generally accepted as good etiquette to push someone over if they're not walking fast enough, or to sneer at someone who can't understand the Tube. So I unveiled to him the additional stereotypes we have of Frenchmen: They are all good looking, ride bicycles, have moustaches, wear stripy t-shirts, smoke cigarettes, wear onion and garlic necklaces, carry baguettes under their arms, wear berets, smell terrible* and eat frogs legs and snails.

H found this pretty funny. It seems unlike our embarrassed awareness of all that people say about us, the French aren't aware of much that we stereotype about them. As Lauren so accurately put it, a Frenchman would be very confused if he ever came to a fancy dress party and someone was dressed as one of their fellow countrymen. Obviously, not many of them have watched this Family Guy episode:

These stereotypes may make huge generalisations, but in reality, it is not uncommon to see a Frenchman embodying at least three of these characteristics. And whenever a friend comes to visit me in Paris, they think it is hysterical that the French really do walk around with baguettes under their arms. And even on the grotty streets of Barbès (a policeman was stabbed approximately three minutes from my doorstep last week - I've subsequently stopped defending my neighbourhood), in between the men peddling crack, the tramp missing 60% of his teeth and the prostitutes, you will still see a good looking moustachioed Frenchman on a bicycle wearing a stripy t-shirt and beret with a baguette under his arm.

*They sell '48 hour' deodorant in Carrefour. Enough said.

ichi ni san shi go

2011-05-17T17:15:00.000+02:00

I love this video. Why was learning languages never this fun in high school? Except for German, when I all I did was perfect sleeping on my desk, learn the theme tune for Hallo aus Berlin and laugh at a guy on the video who had ginger curly hair.

As well as learning Japanese - how perfect, as I live in Paris - I've also learnt that it's Norwegian Day today. Marius bought a new suit for the occasion, because apparently 'we always buy nice clothes and walk around on Norwegian Day'. Lauren and I aren't allowed to come to the embassy tonight. I don't know what he thinks we'll do - chuck salmon and potatoes around, arrive on skis, start shouting 'brannbil! Bordell!' as these are some of the very few Norwegian words we know. Or make wide sweeping stereotypes about Norwegians.

get back to the place that you know

2011-05-16T15:27:00.000+02:00

May gig guide. VINGT Paris magazine. You know the score. Click...

[ here ]

i'll take a push bike

2011-05-16T00:06:00.000+02:00

I've been listening to this song almost non-stop. Apologies to my long suffering housemates. But since of them has been singing his little heart out in the shower, it's fair game. I know it's another Vaccines song - I'm a little Vaccines obsessed at the moment. They're probably my most anticipated band to see at Reading Festival this year. Where of course I'm happy to retire to the White Campsite and go to bed at 2 a.m. and leave the 16-year-olds to their throw-up-over-a-tent-and-set-things-on-fire adventures. Signs of getting older #6573? Annoyingly, Reading collides with Rock en Seine, which I'm now wondering if I would have been able to wangle a press pass for. Such is life. Hopefully I'll be hitting up Villette Sonique in a few weeks though.

you talk a good game, wish i could talk the same

2011-05-15T20:14:00.000+02:00

I recently heard a great quote: At social events in France, pretend you’re a chair. It’s from Almost French by Sarah Turnbull. I haven’t read the book in question, but the quote came to me from an Australian, as is Turnbull herself.

This quote doesn’t imply that you should make people feel comfortable, nor should you let people sit on you, but simply that as a non-French speaker in a French social situation you should attempt to make yourself as invisible as possible. I sympathise. Although try a French-Romanian dinner party when they’re hell bent on getting you drunk. For six hours. Scariest. Day. Ever.

The Australian who told me this quote is a guy I’ll call M (ah, my half glazed attempts at anonymity continue). It was that time in the evening when I was just wondering whether I should swig the last couple of inches of my drink in a very British brawler way and shamble off, rather than subject someone else to my pitiful French, when he showed up, eyes wide with the anticipated fear of a French soiree – a look I am only too familiar with. Because no one wants to be the person stuck with the English speaker and you never want to be the person to subject them to be the person stuck with the English speaker. It’s like being stuck with the social outcast; the little brother; the accountant; the person who has just broken up with their nasty partner; the kleptomaniac who’s just slid the entire cutlery collection into their handbag. Just because you happen to speak English doesn’t mean you should be lumbered with the person whose French is nothing short of painful.

I’m perfectly happy for conservations in French to bubble on around me, because I can practice my comprehension. But the minute the conversation focuses on me, I wish a trapdoor would open, cartoon style, below me. My understanding is now pretty good but I would still rather have my teeth pulled than speak French when more than one person is listening.

So, in an attempt to avoid putting anyone else in this social situation, or making them have a conversation that revolves around my family, holidays last year and whatever other useless crap they deem to think is important for GCSE French, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and signed up for conversation exchange classes.

The search for both conversation partners is a little like internet dating: You know there must be some normal people out there, but the weirdos crawl out of the woodwork far more quickly. Mostly, these are men who would like to teach me French and ‘peut-être plus ;-)’. It’s like Appartager (sleazyfrenchmen.com) all over again. And this is despite the fact that I specifically specified that I wanted conversational exchange with a girl. I wrote this in French and in English – and if it’s just because they’re illiterate that isn’t much reassurance. But, thank god, the normal ones are occasionally popping their heads out, and I'm spending semi-awkward afternoons speaking French, then English, then back again. Terrifying, but after that dinner party, not as scary as I had anticipated. Hopefully one day I can stop pretending I'm a chair.

we're all gonna die

2011-05-15T20:07:00.000+02:00

My review for Scout Niblett at Café de la Danse for Gigs in Paris is...

[ here ]

sound

2011-05-09T12:25:00.000+02:00

I spent a few days in London last week, where I was reunited with friends, my cat Fatty, French martinis, the summer half of my wardrobe, Prague Bar, Primark and my speakers. I'd forgotten what Gold Panda actually sounded like properly, when they weren't being played over a laptop so close to collapse that if you ask it to do more than one thing at once, it just freezes and makes this k-k-k-krrrrggrrrk-k-uummm noise. But all is forgiven - my shiny new MacBook Air is its replacement; it's speakers being far superior to my tinny little Netbook, which is being kicked out of the nest to H's before it gets an inferiority complex.

i'm still here

2011-05-02T22:17:00.001+02:00

Here's my a summary of my life at the moment: Live in Paris. Write a lot. Get paid badly. Or not get paid at all. Effectively it comes down to a decision: Do you do something you don't like, and earn a lot of money, whilst becoming slowly more and more miserable. Or do you do something you love in a city you love, and earn nothing, with the occasional free gig thrown in to tide you over? I'd always settle for the latter, particularly when my day involves listening to Rainbow Arabia in order to write a more proficient gig guide.

pour the champagne

2011-05-02T15:12:00.000+02:00

Gig guide for the first half of May in VINGT Paris magazine...

[ here ]

I actually embraced my little emo self and saw Panic! At The Disco when I was living in Jakarta, and subsequently got swamped by the paps outside, purely for the fact that I'm a bule. This is one of the reasons why I like living in Paris: Total anonymity.

i'm on my way now

2011-04-29T23:14:00.000+02:00

My review for HushPuppies at Alhambra for Gigs in Paris is...

[here]

your life is your life, you gotta live like it's your life

2011-04-28T00:33:00.000+02:00

Paris gig guide for the last week of April which I wrote for VINGT Paris Magazine...

[ here ]

And some Noah and the Whale. Just because...

i really miss drinking chocolat chaud

2011-04-25T20:44:00.001+02:00

Somewhere between writing the gig guide for VINGT Paris magazine - an exercise that's had me repeatedly thanking Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim for the invention of YouTube, and learning I'm to be sent to review HushPuppies for Gigs in Paris on Wednesday, I've discovered three very important things:

1. I can, hopefully, blag free gig tickets for the rest of my time in Paris. (Which means forever, because I love this city and never want to leave). I knew those skills picked up at La Cigale would come in useful somehow.

2. However warm and cosy music makes you feel, this doesn't pay the rent.

3. Jay Jay Pistolet.

it's twenty seconds till the last call

2011-04-20T18:59:00.003+02:00

Paris gig guide for the second half of April which I wrote for VINGT Paris Magazine...

[ here ]