We Need to (S)talk About Kévin

Après nous, le déluge, amirite? Having spent far too long in bed this week, I have taken my time trawling through various pictures of flood porn. Everyone loves a man in wellies, after all. Stricken though my soul has been by the various images of floating firemen and bobbing bobbies, I've had my own flood to worry about.

Phwoaarrr.

In a situation that can only be described as biblical, my sitting room ceiling has started to cave in. What started out as a slow bloom of water, akin to the pleasant swirl of milk in freshly brewed tea, has now become something far more sinister. There is hubbling, bubbling and we are verging dangerously close to toil and troubling.

Me just doing some underwater ballet in my pristine flat.

In order to avert a small catastrophe and the destruction of Jean-Paul the Plant, I took matters in to my own hands and went to -and I apologise to any Brits reading this – talk to the neighbours. I took the lift as angrily is as possible to do so, and rapped firmly on the door whilst simultaneously checking up on vocab for “crevice.” (Which is, as all Blackadder fans know, a positively disgusting word.)

Baaaah.

Therefore imagine my surprise when, instead of the balding, mildly overweight gentlemen I was expecting, a startlingly handsome youth answered the door. He introduced himself as Kevin (well, you can't have everything), the son of the owner of the whole building aka pretty much a property tycoon. I instantly forgot my meticulously prepared tirade and just flapped around a bit and said the word “moist” about 4 times and generally made an arse of myself.

Fortunately he seemed to pity this mad eengleesh, and gave me a slightly wary smile and some scary looking insurance information which I then proceeded to drop on the way back to the lift. And people that that the bumbling Hugh Grant English thing is all an urban myth... So the long and short of it is that I have some confusing looking legal documents to translate, an ever growing pile of wet plaster on the floor, and a lingering sense of embarrassment.

My generally cretinous behaviour aside, I've had a brilliant couple of weeks. I swanned, as is my wont, off to Paris for a weekend avec ma soeur, and we had a cracking time painting the town rouge. We made the almost instantly regrettable decision of walking up the Eiffel Tower, drank a lot of wine, consumed a few dozen baguettes and generally behaved like young Parisians who are, in the infamous words of a Mr. A. Ant, so French.

Metallic jeggings - ahead of his time.

It is always tricky coming back to anywhere after a weekend in Paris, but Lyon did a very good job of making me happy to be home. Adore Paris as I do, it always takes a weekend there to make me realise that I would rather chew off my own earlobe than actually have to live there. The metro alone is an ordeal worthy of Dante's undivided attention.

Room for a small one?

So work is still work, France is still France. It is gloriously sunny, I'm sitting on my balcony drinking wine and smiling away to myself because today it just feels like everything is right with the world. I hope all of you, wonderful readers, are equally as happy but maybe not as tipsy. You've all got work to be getting on with.

Une Lyonnaise sur son balcon,

xxx