The Ten Commandments: wise counsel?

In the long grey winter months, it’s easy to be negative and hard to act cheery, but just as you are what you eat, so too you feel what you focus on. Choose to change your focus.

You can’t really argue with the Ten Commandments. I mean, as rules for happy and harmonious living go, they’re a pretty solid base: don’t kill; don’t cheat on your spouse; don’t steal; don’t lie. So far, I’m on board. Have a day of rest every week. Yep! Take care of your parents. Absolutely. Without wishing to labour the point, I don’t think many people would take exception to any of the above, whatever their religious leanings. Sadly, however, I have often felt that one commandment was missing.

Don’t get me wrong. Ten is a great figure – it’s even, pleasingly round, fits with our decimal currency, can be nicely spaced out into two five-item lists on a couple of handy stone tablets. I can totally see why Moses would get to the end of dictation, see a nice symmetrical pair of lists, and casually decide to leave commandment Number 11 at the top of the hill, but honestly, I really think he dropped the ball. Our lives would be infinitely more pleasant had he just added one last rule to the list:

Thou Shalt Not Whine

The addition of those four little words to that fateful list would have made such a difference, wouldn’t it? Whining is perhaps one of the least attractive traits in a person, and is certainly one of the most draining. I have an acquaintance – let’s call her Wendy – who, whenever I ask the innocent question, “How are you?” replies with some permutation of, “Oh, I’m so tired. Yep, really shattered – I worked until 10 o’ clock every evening last week. It’s just crazy.”

When I first knew Wendy I made the mistake of trying to help her with this apparent problem – suggesting she speak to her boss about her workload, asking whether she was eating properly, that sort of thing. Recently, however, I had an epiphany (I don’t know why I’m on such a religious theme today, I’m on a roll and I’m just going with it). I realised that Wendy isn’t actually asking for help, nor does she need to talk. The bottom line is: Wendy likes whining. And she particularly likes whining about being tired.

You Feel What You Focus On

I don’t actually know anyone who isn’t tired right now. In the bleak midwinter, it’s dark when you go to work, dark when you leave work. You’re trying to lose the Christmas bulge, keep that resolution to go to the gym, maybe even give up or cut down on something – cigarettes, chocolate, wine…

The post-Christmas winter months can feel grim at times, and yes, they’re tiring. But does saying you’re tired all the time help at all? If, every time someone asks me how I’m doing I answer, “Crikey, this rain is getting me down, I just can’t seem to get warm, and I have a splitting headache”, all I can think of by the end of the day is the rain and the cold and the headache and, lo and behold, it’s all actually worse than at the beginning of the day.

But if I reply, “I’m great, thanks! Looking forward to a quiet night in, that’s for sure”, miraculously, I can actually convince myself that I do indeed feel full of beans, and that quiet night has become a choice I’m making in order to take care of myself. I find that I feel what I talk about; which means that I don’t also choose to talk about what I feel.

We're ALL tired and a bit stressed now!

Accentuate The Positive

Now, I’m not suggesting we bottle up our feelings or lie, but unless mentioning aches, pains, gripes and groans will actually do some good, why go on about them? Now, whenever I see Wendy, I avoid asking how she is and instead pose very specific, fact-based questions: What did you do this weekend? Did you go jogging like you wanted?

It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that not only does Wendy’s whining about being knackered exacerbate her own tiredness, it also exhausts me! If only she could take her focus off the negatives she’s feeling and concentrate on something – anything – positive, that good feeling would be increased instead of the bad.

The mind is like a magnifying glass – whatever we choose put under the lens is what our eyes will see enlarged; whatever feeling we choose to talk and think about is what we’ll feel magnified. Luckily, we get to pick what we train our lens on. So, it’s precisely when I’m tired and a bit hungry and maybe a little paranoid that I try hardest to remember to apply the 11th commandment and silently order myself not to whine.

Elaine Dundy can write her sexy ass off...

Don’t worry – it’s not like I’m in love with Angelina Jolie or anything. No cheesy-cliché-typical straight girl/sickly-stickly-starlet lesbian love affair fantasies pour moi — I’m different. (Besides, as far as starstruck starlet-inspired lesbian love affair fantasies go, I’m more of a Rose McGowan girlcrush girl myself.) (It’s her aura of dirty-hot whisky sex that does it for me.)

En plus ? My woman that I’m in love with? With the uncle I also have the hots for? Uhm, she’s dead. Has been for a few years. So there’s that too.

The thing about Elaine Dundy is that while she most certainly was a woman, she was most certainly not a lady. Nor a chick or a gal or even a dame. Elaine Dundy? She was a Broad. In the biggest, boldest, broadest, Broad-iest sense. She was sex and the city four long decades before “Sex and the City” (but not, of course, before sex, or cities, or desperate housewives). She was sex and a single girl when they’d already invented both sex and girls, but of all the sexy single girls, she really knew how to pull it off. You know – in that lusty-boozy-busty-Broad(y) kind of way. Which is why I love her. Wouldn’t you?

Oh, and another other thing about Elaine Dundy? She could write her sexy ass off.

I met her here in Paris. (Well, O.K., so I didn’t really meet her-meet her, her being dead and all, but you know…) I met her through her novel, The Dud Avocado. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but once you read the book you’ll get the title.) There she is “…drifting down the Boulevard St. Michel, thoughts rising in [her] head like little puffs of smoke…”  Eleven o’clock in the morning, and she’s wearing an evening dress as brazenly as if it was still eleven o’clock in the evening. (Holly Golightly be damned, when Capote would eventually create her years later.) She was doing what ladies call the Walk Of Shame and what broads call the Stride Of Pride. Anyway, that’s what I’d like to believe. Wouldn’t you?

This was la Belle Époque. Well, not the real Belle Époque (it being the 1950s and all), but back when francs were such soft currency they smelled strongly of fromage, back when the euro didn’t even exist, let alone teeter on the cheese-plate of extinction, like Camembert left outside on a summer luncheon table. Back when American trust-fund babies and G.I. Bill babies and American students and American scholars and American beatniks and their even more horrifying British counterparts tore up the Left Bank (where all the wrong ones, or their ungodly grandchildren, still have their pied à terres) playing make-believe bohemians like the privileged brats that they were. And life was fabulous. Formidable. Fromage-y. Truly, really, la Vie en Rose, la Belle Époque, the Banquet Years. This was Elaine Dundy’s world, she was a part of all this, tearing up far more than her share. Makes me kinda jealous as hell. Et vous ?

Elaine Dundy (and/or Sally Jay Gorce, her fictitious/autobiographical protagoniste) was a part of all this…and yet somehow she wasn’t. While she hung out with her compatriots, she found them more than kind of annoying too: “A rowdy bunch on the whole, they were most of them so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable…The ones who Did Anything (and there were plenty not averse to Taking It Easy – or whatever the course was called at the Sorbonne), mostly painted. That any of them would actually be talented had never occurred to me…” Of course, mais oui, this didn’t stop her from letting them buy her drinks, or even sleeping with them, and sometimes even talking with them, of which I honestly, thirstily, wholeheartedly, hornily approve. Et vous ?

The back jacket blurb on my edition of The Dud Avocado bills her novel, her unexpected, unprecedented first novel like this: “…Dyeing her hair pink and vowing to go native in a way none of the natives can manage, she’s busy getting drunk, bedding men, losing money, losing jewellery, and losing God knows what…” (Oops – forgot to tell you before: She dyed her hair pink.) (In the Fifties.) (Pink!) (Long before there was Manic Panic.) (Paris!) (Pink!!) As far as book-pimping book-jacket blurbs go, this one bombs: Elaine Dundy may have lost her pearl necklace, her passport, and even her pinky-pink virginity, but in reality (fictitious or autobiographical or otherwise), she didn’t lose a pink thing. She gained. She gained so much more. (And what the hell’s wrong with losing your virginity anyway?) (And why do we call it “losing” in the first place?) (What the – pardon the pun – fuck?) (As opposed to your house keys, which are important —  when was the last time you went hunting between the cushions for your virginity?) (How much does it weigh, anyway? Can we total it up as weight-loss?)

“I want my freedom!” a not-quite-but-almost-nearly 13-year-old Sally Jay (Elaine Dundy’s autobiographical etc.) protests to her Uncle Roger. (Uncle Roger’s the guy who eventually ends up funding her séjour in Paris.) (Because Uncle Roger’s filthy-stinking rich.) (Dear Old Uncle Roger.) (Let it be said: Along with Elaine Dundy, I’m kind of in love with Uncle Roger, too.) “Your freedom? Ah yes, of course. What are you planning to do with it?” inquires Tonton Rog, all wisdom and wryness and wit. (He’s so hot.) “I want to stay out as late as I like and eat whatever I like any time I want to…I think if I had my freedom I wouldn’t allow myself to get introduced to all the mothers and fathers and brothers of the girls at school…I wouldn’t get introduced to anyone. I’ve never wanted to meet anyone I’ve been introduced to. I want to meet all of the other people…” (I’m so hotly-hot for him.)

An unexpected, unprecedented first novel

Freedom. Call up any woman in any city – like Pittsburgh or Poughkeepsie or Pemberton or Paris (Texas) – and tell them that you live in Paris (France). They sigh. Loudly. Plaintively. Parisian-ly, as best they can. And then they go silent. You can hear them rifling through their Rolodex for a divorce lawyer. Or for the number of their own Uncle Roger. Ahh, freedom. Always easier to attain with a chequebook-wielding Uncle Roger in the wings, bien entendu. But . . . freedom. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? (Ahem, Uncle Roger….??)

“All the outrageous things my heroine does like wearing an evening dress in the middle of the day are autobiographical,” she told the Elvis Information Network. (Yeah, I know – but it makes sense because later on she wrote a book on Elvis.) (And in the context of contemporary journalism, how can the EIN not be at least as credible a source as….well, fill in the acronym.) “All the sensible things she does are not.”

Elaine Dundy went on to be free and then not free and then free again, and sensible and unsensible and probably insensibly unsensibly sensible too. There was a failed marriage (he was a famous theatre critic, incredibly so, and sounds like he was a jerk, incredibly so too), and a daughter, and acting stints, and more books, and splashy cocktails with Orson Welles and Tennessee Williams and Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in between. But as for Paris? A girl gets the impression that it was here that she figured it all – or at least the most important stuff – out.

“It was around then, in Paris, that I became aware of something about myself only previously suspected,” Dundy wrote, writing about her writing The Dud Avocado. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I KNOW…but this is what happens when you let your jerky jealous critic husband title your genius first novel.) “I had an alter ego, a second self, a not so ghostly increasingly intrusive highly comic character whom I had to acknowledge. In fact whose presence I could no longer deny. I had to accept her, had to give her space, for she would pop up getting things wrong when I least expected her to…” You’ve probably met that bitch, haven’t you? Isn’t she your best, bestest friend? Elaine was so lucky — she met her when she was so young, and so very much in Paris.

The back jacket blurb on my edition of The Dud Avocado gets one thing right. It describes Elaine Dundy’s fictitious/autobiographicalprotagoniste as “…a woman hellbent on living.” She was, certainly, but I’d go further: Elaine Dundy/Sally Jay Gorce was too much. Much too much. And that’s why I love her/her. Ladies: Girls: My Bitches: Ever been told you’re too much? Of course you have. Know what? At the risk of sounding preachy? In that annoying self-helpy-sounding preachy sense? Be too much, too too much, much too too much, and then be that much more. Because even when we’re not being too much, they’re gonna tell us we’re too much anyway. So why not go all the way?

I’m quite sure that’s what Elaine Dundy would’ve wanted.

And Uncle Roger, too.

Resolutions Two and Three go hand in hand with each other and with Cosmopolitan drinking: wear lipstick and wear heels. It’s all too easy to slip into a uniform of black skinny jeans and a tee, it happens to the most fashion-obsessed of us at times, and I must try to regain some of my decorum. Especially as I am approaching spinster status according to many traditionalists.

Resolutions One to Three are very easy to uphold and I implore you to join me. Get your ladies together, find a lovely looking bar with an equally lovely looking barman/lady, make a date and arrive in heels and lipstick. Very satisfying. And seeing my girlfriends is a Resolution I can’t even make as it should be a given. I favour the hotel bar – usually rather glam feeling and a little bad for some reason, I think it’s the knowledge you could always hammer your credit card and stay even though it will bankrupt you and you’d feel HIDEOUS in the morning. Always leave, but always give a little coquettishness as the door man hails you a cab.

Charles Anastase shows you how not to drink glamorously, Marilyn applies lipstick, old school hotel bar chic in at the Sanderson

I have not managed to avoid all cliched New Years activities of course and I have found myself in the gym everyday so far – Resolution Four is to get my LA stomach back.  Unfortunately shooting three films last year meant that my erratic eating and lack of exercise had a rather negative effect of my body and soul so that does need to be readdressed.

So, gym wear. There’s a thing to behold. Rows and racks of Lycra. Having just wrapped on a movie called Fast Girls (which I co-designed with the marvellous Andy Blake) I have a new found love hate relationship with sportswear. We were lucky enough to film at Lee Valley, which is where our Team GB athletes are training
before moving into the Olympic Village. I met Janette Kwakye who is the current fastest woman in Britain nonetheless and her style was beyond inspiring; layers of leggings, cropped track pants, oversized sweats and sports bras teamed with head wraps and jewels created such a cool laid back look. 1000 sit ups A DAY. I became in awe of these athletes – my do they look hawt.

My research for the film took me of course via the doyenne of sports fashion, old school American sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner. Flo Jo used to have her race outfits custom-made  – one legged catsuits, lace all-in-ones, and nails that Gail Devers would be jealous of. She was a true individual, pioneer and expressionist – and no one works metallic stretch lame like Flo Jo.

Flo Jo acing yet another race in red, white and blue with a sports-conscious hood detail; Gail Devers' talon-tastic maxi nails

Jamel Shabazz was my obvious choice for continuous research – the eighties hip hop movement in New York is perfect for sportswear inspiration – and he didn’t let me down.  Skinny harem pants tucked into fluorescent socks, layers of chopped-up logo-ed tees, dripping in gold. There is no need to conform to the endless repetitive fitness uniforms of leggings and tight vests, express yourself and don’t take it too seriously. Jees the gym is hell, at least have some fun – the Olympic athletes sure as hell do.

My current gym look incorporates navy blue Nike track pants with skinny legs (we had these branded as team USA for my Flo Jo high five) tucked into white towelling socks with white trainers, a black sports bra, American Apparel 50/50 vest and a cropped tee. I love this outfit so much I have worn it out, although it was on set so I blended in. Waitrose Weybridge next. Hold me back!

An epic 1980's New ork City hip hop-style Jamel Shabazz picture, alongside Flo Jo sporting glitzy metallic stretch lamé...

Now, it has been noted that others have cottoned onto the stylish wonder of the witch of late; Marc Jacobs employed the true eccentric, fabulously Gothic, and all time style heroine of this column for his Fall 2011 campaign. My Lady Bonham-Carter. I loved to hate this campaign; the anti-fashion doyenne being lauded as fabulous by those who have claimed her in the past as dishevelled, crazy and mad. It never ceases to amaze me the hypocrisy of the fashion press, it happened with a silk jersey pantsuit many moons ago and I have never forgiven them – I was right; they caught up. Eventually.

Only in this case Jacobs’ love for a grungy Goth was to answer for so I have let him off. Moreover, he paraded Bonham-Carter as if she was in a mental asylum. Oh how I how an anti-fashion statement these days. With Polka Dots. So chic.

Juergen Teller's quirky photographs of the ever eccentric Helena Bonham-Carter for Marc Jacobs' Autumn Winter 2011 ad campaign

My love for witches was apparent at an early age – obsession with the two dimensional Meg and Mog rapidly grew into adoration for the scruffy Mildred Hubble in The Worst Witch. The Harry Potter sensation saw a more recent digress back into the be-caped school halls. I must confess the contemporary wardrobes incorporated into the series were of course necessary but it was Jany Temime’s interpretation of the real sorcerer’s clothing that was reminiscent of those childhood imaginings.

Dreams of boarding schools, untied shoelaces, kittens, capes, velvet and striped socks shape my style direction to this day. I won a Tiffany 12″ at a Halloween party (aka ‘Christmas for Goths’) at the age of five dressed as a bat – trust me, I’ve always loved a little devoré and ears on a headband. In the Festive spirit à la Jack Skellington, get a little witch involved for Christmas. Every December Mama Rowe gets a precise location for where to find this year’s perfect Christmas striped sock. This year its these lovelies from Happy Socks.

My favourite show for AW11 at London Fashion Week was presented by my fellow cat obsessives at PPQ . A monochromatic palette of soft silky blouses reminiscent of old YSL, high waisted pencil skirts and bad ass form-fitting LBDs covered in lace were right up my alley, however it was the feline styling that stole the show. A felt cat eared skullcap by the innovative and simply wonderful Flora McLean at House of Flora worn with a Mildred Hubble pigtail? Yes please.

Jack Skellington; PPQ's Autumn/Winter 2011 catwalk show with hats from House of Flora ; Midred Hubble from The Worst Witch

Black cats have long been the traditional go-to familiar for witches. Norse mythology has it that Freya, the goddess of love and fertility, rode in a chariot pulled by two cats which I quite fancy as a challenge to the scrutiny of the Congestion Charge. For now though, due to the restrictions of a fourth floor flat, I am wishing myself a Merry Kittymas in these; a luxurious and completely expensive choice without the responsibility of a pet is surely the divine velvet smoking slipper that goes by the name of the Kitty Flat by Charlotte Olympia? Add Ms Olympia’s stunning gold web earrings and beret for full glamour Witchery.

Top it all off, of course, with a chapeau. If Charlotte’s Web Beret and Flora’s felt Kitty are not quite your bag, there is always a creation to be found by Laetitia Crahay at the luxe Cat and Mouse Ear HQ – Maison Michel. Also as the head of accessories and jewels at Chanel, lets face it, she really does know best when it comes to all things accessoires, chic, Français et mignon.

Now I get to include The Olsens. No column is complete without at least one Olsen, but two, together, in chantilly lace animal ears? Too perfect. Mix it all together with a dash of Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle, a Breton stripe, some pearls and a cropped black trouser and there you have it – La Petite Sorciere Francaise.

Kitty-inspired accessories as seen at Charlotte Olympia, Chanel, on the stylish Olsen sisters, and at luxe brand Maison Michel

To-do lists make for an organised life...

If life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, it’s wise to keep a few gaps in your diary…

I am definitely one of life’s planners. I like making a list, checking it twice, then typing it up and keeping it on file. I enjoy feeling organised and like things are under control, or at least as if I’m doing everything I can to make life run smoothly. In general, I think this a quality that usually serves me well. It means I show up on time, rarely forget appointments, keep on top of paperwork, and don’t often run around like a headless chicken. Organisation and planning – within reason – are undeniably Good Things.

‘Tis the season to be organised!

In the run up to Christmas (and the beloved’s birthday, which occurs the week before), my list-making takes on gargantuan proportions. Lists of things to get, things to do before I leave for wherever I’m going, people to contact, Christmas cards to write, appointments to make for the new year… I like to have it all written down so that I’m not permanently worrying I’ve forgotten something. Writing a to-do list frees the brain for higher activities – like watching Gremlins for the tenth time and working out the exact right recipe for mulled wine.

The best laid plans of mice and men

Funnily enough though, in recent years, Christmas has also served as a reminder to me that sometimes the best things in life are the things we don’t plan. A couple of years back, I was going home to England for Christmas, travelling with an American friend who was staying with me over the holidays. (When told that she was featuring in my latest column, the aforementioned friend wanted to choose her own pseudonym. At her own request, she shall henceforth be referred to as Peggy Sue.) A few days before we were due to leave Paris, the Eurostar stopped working. It just stopped. Apparently the winter was so cold that the trains were experiencing a thermal shock as they entered the tunnel, and the engines were seizing up. At first I didn’t actually believe that we wouldn’t be able to get on a train. I kept telling an increasingly worried Peggy Sue that the Eurostar was sure to be fixed somehow and that all would go according to plan. I guess everyone can see what’s coming.

A long coach journey into night

The date of our programmed departure came and went, and we couldn’t get a seat on a train, so we ended up catching an overnight coach from Paris to London. What ensued was one of the most memorable journeys I’ve ever taken. We had a leaky roof on our coach; a woman point blank refused to swap seats to let us sit together (her prerogative, of course, but who actually refuses that sort of request?); the man next to Peggy chatted to himself the entire journey; another chap was almost left behind every time we had to get off the coach and go through customs; one passenger was actually detained… It made The Odyssey look like a trip to the seaside. All this from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. in freezing and icy conditions. Now, I’m not going to suggest that Peg and I preferred this to whizzing under the Channel on the cosy Eurostar, but neither would I say I regret the trip. We had fits of giggles, took turns sleeping on the ferry, made up silly stories about our coach-mates. We were already friends when we left, but when we arrived, that epic night had made our bond even tighter.

Seizing the surprise

Thinking back, some of the best things that have occurred in my life indeed happened while I was busy making other plans. Like the time I intended to go to the cinema, take a walk then have an early night. Luckily I abandoned my plan when a charming chap I met while waiting for the film to start asked me to go for coffee with him. He turned out to be the love of my life.

Always seize upon those surprises...

Or the time I received a letter meant for a different Joanne Archibald offering a part in a play at university. I had made the decision not to audition for anything that term, but I phoned the director to tell her she’d got the wrong woman and ended up auditioning for and getting the lead (the other Joanne had already declined). Thanks to that role, I made friends I still cherish to this day, was given a part in another play after that one, and ended up directing something myself. Or the time I got lost in Paris, stumbled upon a volunteer bureau and ended up doing some great charity work.

Relishing the random

Planning is, for me, one of the keys to a calm, organised life; but the unexpected is always the source of the best fun. I won’t stop making lists (I suspect it’s actually an addiction, but I think it’s a pretty harmless one), but every Christmas I am now reminded to revel in whatever gets thrown at me. It’s the bumps and twists in the road that make the journey interesting. It’s the random encounters and chance events that make your life full of life rather than simply a slavish playing out of your day planner. Sometimes, as I discovered on a cold and leaky coach in Calais, it’s actually life’s hassles that prove to be the most entertaining, enriching and memorable experiences we share.

Bit of a thing for bearded old Zeus?

Dear God, kill me now.

Take me, God, I mean it.

You don’t really know me, God. At least I guess You don’t. Or maybe You do. Being Almighty and all, maybe You know everybody. You know – like how some almighty people in some almighty quartiers know almightily all about everyone’s almighty business? But I’ve never taken the time to poke my nose into Your business. Nothing against You Personally – like a lot of other gals, I could dig a dude with a long beard and white hair. (Come to think of it, I had a thing for Zeus once…dug the hair and the beard and the whole making you immortal so you could sleep with him schtick. These days, you can’t even get guys to give you the moon!) (Come to think of it, I’ve dated a few guys with white hair and long beards.) (Come to think of it, none of them even ever gave me flowers, let alone the moon.) (Come to think of it, several of them had God-complexes.)

It’s just that back in the day, back on those Sundays, back when all my friends were going to Sunday School, I was sleeping. The whole having-to-get-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn thing? On the weekend? To go to Sunday School? On Sunday? Pour moi, a deal-breaker. Much like being forced at gunpoint to go to poetry readings.

(And do You – you know, what with You being God and all – do You think you could pull some strings and change the Sunday School schedules for the benefit of future generations to come? Like, maybe push the whole thing back until the afternoon? And not on the weekend, please? Just a thought.) (See how thoughtful I am?)

I know, I know, I know  . . . Apparently, you’re not supposed to pray to You unless you pray to You every day, often. Five times a day, depending. But God? Dude? Franchement ?  I can’t have, of all things, a guy making those kinds of demands. I’m a busy girl. En plus ? I know people who pray every day, all the time. And franchement ? I don’t see them getting their prayers answered anytime soon. So what about a little one-off? A rush job? A little cinq à sept ?  For just this one time’s sake? If you’re over the whole me-being-into-Zeus thing? I hear You’re a super-forgiving guy…

Because if You don’t kill me, this particular Parisian poetry reading will. En plus, it’s on the Left Bank. With Anglophones.

Who brings a date to a poetry reading? What was I thinking? Especially a date that one’s only just started dating, but that one day, down the road, in the future, over the course of time, perhaps maybe might express that they — the date — are, in fact, willing and ready and ever-so-anxiously desirous of making one immortal, in the manner of Zeus? (Or at least willing to pony up for flowers?) (Or maybe just the moon?) Who, willingly, casually, coolly, off-the-cuff-ly, puts that kind of potential moon-y opportunity in jeopardy?

She’s wailing about the beanstalk again. The spindly little poetess up on stage, the one with the fuzzy hair. Her. Only it’s not really wailing. More like moaning. Lonnnnggg-winded moaning accented by an oddly-accented monotonous monotone, kind of like those old Greek tragedies only Zeus isn’t around to liven things up. Actually, it’s quite the nuanced delivery that fuzzy little woman is pulling off, what with all her wailing and moaning and monotoning. A subtly nuanced delivery, at least. But the hair? Can’t get over it. It looks like she pointedly – purposely – affixed a dead dog to her head.

God – Someone! – make it stop!

Perhaps the spindly little poetry-woman with the fuzzy hair doesn’t actually intend to appear as if she’s purposely-pointedly strapped a dead dog to her head. (Paris is often quite humid, after all.) Perhaps when she’s not declaiming poetry, she devotes the rest of her life to the purchase of hair products, and yanking at and brushing out and combing through and pulling away and straightening that remarkable ragged mop of fuzz on her head in an effort to minimize the Dead Dog Effect, and then today she woke up with a toss of her tresses and boldly declared:  ‘Fuck it. I’ve got better things to do. I’m going to put a stop to all of this nonsense and focus on what I was meant for! And that’s writing poetry about beanstalks! Disgruntled beanstalks!’ So, when you think about it, kudos to the spindly little fuzzy poetry-woman up on stage! At least she’s doing what she was Meant To Do!!  As is her hair!

The thing about this beanstalk business is that there’s no mention of Jack. She’s refusing to acknowledge his existence. Though we all know he did exist because we all know about him and the beanstalk. Even if we’ve never spent much time around beanstalks, even if we’ve never spent much time in the country, even if we’ve spent our whole lives avoiding the country like the plague…even if the thought of spending more than a few hours in the wet, ruddy, muddy, cruddy countryside is our own definition of Hell, a Hell from which no Get Out Of Hell For Free Card would ever save us – even if we did pray to You, God, Zeus, Whomever, every day, all the time – because the beanstalk-laden country is so bloody out-of-the-way that there’s no hope of getting out and going anywhere, be it Heaven or Hell or Purgatory or the River Styx…or even just the River Seine…even if we’ve never seen a real beanstalk, up close and personal, we know that they exist, and nearby is this guy named Jack. But, for some odd reason, this little woman up on stage, the spindly one with the fizzy-fuzzy hair, just won’t have it. She’s purposely leaving Jack out of the story. She declines to even breathe his name. What’s she got against Jack? What did Jack ever do to her?

There goes my date again, off to les toilettes. His chunky cowboy boot-heels are making quite the racket as they chunk and clunk across the wood floor. They’re actually quite funky, his clunky chunky boots. You don’t see many like them in Paris. At least not the real, authentic, honest-to-goodness, made in the Wild West kind. They created quite the stir when we got to the pub late. (The reading had already started, and everyone was deathly silent, except for the poet that was on stage, of course – he was droning and groaning about planting carrots, next to some beanstalk no doubt, on a dry, dusty, arid, gritty endless summer’s day, which reminded me of high school which reminded me of The Grapes of Wrath because they made us read The Grapes of Wrath in high school…and much like this guy’s dusty carrot poem, I couldn’t wait for the book to end because it was just too damn dusty. But I can’t tell my date that because he just loooves The Grapes of Wrath, thinks it’s one of the greeeaaatest of the Great American Novels, and I wouldn’t want him to think that I don’t know and don’t like and don’t appreciate and don’t admire Great American Literature…) So we chunked and clunked and clipped and clopped (that was me) our way to the bar, and then the guy in the corner, the one who’s had his eyes closed for the last ten minutes – swaying to the gentle swish-swish of the beanstalk I suppose – actually tsked-tsked and shh-shh’ed at us when we whispered our order for these two lousy glasses of Côtes du Rhône. And then when he went to pay the tab, my date entirely accidentally dropped a bunch of change on the floor and the coins went skipping and pinging and clinging and clattering across the floor, and the guy in the corner tsk-tsked-tsked and shh-shh-shh’d again before leaning back and re-closing his eyes. What’s he doing? Is he napping? Like those businessmen on the Métro? The ones who, the minute they sit down, close their eyes and fall asleep but never seem to miss their stop? I’ve even seen some who can sleep standing up when they can’t find a seat, swaying and swishing like beanstalks. (Then again, even the Métro isn’t as boring as this particular Anglophone poetry reading.) But they never tsk and shh the way this guy just did. Again. Because I just set my glass down on the bar. Empty.

The greatest of the Great American Novels...

And where the hell is my date? The fuzzy dead dog-headed woman is only the second poet to read tonight —  and he’s already on his latest extended pee break. His longest yet. To be fair, this could also be the longest beanstalk yet. Longer than Jack’s, longer than any in the history of literature, dusty or great or American or otherwise, longer than any beanstalk in all of the legends and fairytales and fiction and campfire tales and bedtime stories and accounts and anecdotes and vignettes and sonnets and soliloquies and yarns that man and woman have told and re-told and then re-told again since the dawn of, well, man. And woman. Long as my date’s latest pee break. God You’d think they’d give these people a time limit. You’d think, after running this poetry night for decades and centuries and years, that they’d know when to tell these people to shut the hell up. Tsk-tsk! Shhhhh!! Like that.

Did he down two litres of water before meeting me? Is that why he has to keep chunking and clunking his way to the can? Besides – ahem – he’s on a date! A first date! With moi ! Cute, clever, funny, brilliant, sophisticated moi !  A poetry date, dammit! He wouldn’t jeopardize this kind of opportunity by downing two litres of water beforehand, rendering him a slave to his bladder for the entire night.  He just wouldn’t DO that!

Unless . . . Unless. . .

Unless, of course, maybe he had something salty for lunch. Like salted fish or salted pork or salted seaweed or salted salt…or sea-salty oysters or one of those Asian dishes with lots and lots of salty sauce. But that would have been hours and hours and hours ago, so even if he did down two litres of water earlier today, like say around lunchtime when he consumed all of this salty stuff, it would have gone through his system by now. Several times. And he hasn’t even tasted his wine! He’s spent too much time in the damn can to do so.

I guess I shouldn’t let his wine go to waste.

I knew this was a mistake the second we got here. Put a lid on it, Shshing-boy! I barely scraped the bar with the glass!  Even before, on the way, as we were walking across Pont Neuf, I had this foreboding feeling that this was going to be a grande erreur. I could just tell. (You, God, could’ve have probably told before I could tell.) (And then You could’ve told me.) (It would have been the nice thing to do.) (The Godly thing to do.) I could have invited him to a million other things, like an art show or a movie show or a concert show or a play/show or even a peep show. A peep show would have probably been the best bet. One of the classier ones, not one of the ones along the boulevard in Pigalle that the drunken Texans and drunken Brits and drunken légionnaires go to. But a classy peep show? It’s all the rage! Très sophistiqué. And no one recites poems about beanstalks. (Although I was once at this one peep show-ish fetish night where they were reciting Sade, but as far as I know Sade never wrote about beanstalks. Thankfully.) But then a peep show probably wouldn’t have been an ideal spot, either, because if he had, for lunch say, eaten salty fish or salty pork or salty seaweed or salty salt or salty sauce, and then drunk two litres of water to wash it all down, and then had to take multiple extended pee breaks as a result . . . Well everybody knows that the restrooms at peep shows aren’t exactly spic-and-span. Even the sophisticated ones. Everybody knows that. But poetry readings on the Left Bank, as organized by Anglophones, always have perfectly pristine restrooms. Maybe he’s just taking advantage of a rare opportunity.

And then there’s the Other Girl Factor: Suppose I had invited him to a peep show, and we went and we saw and we peeped…and then he decided that he liked the girl in the peep show better than me, and then clunked and chunked off to the restroom, pretending he had ingested all of this salt-laden food and had therefore washed it down with two litres of water afterward, and then took a detour to peek into the dressing room so that he could introduce himself to the peep show’s leading lady, and then decided that the leading lady was cuter than me and funnier than me and clever-er than me and brilliant-er than me and more sophisticated(er) than me and, therefore, was more deserving of the moon than me. What then?

I would be stuck at this damn Anglophone poetry reading without a date. On the Left Bank. And he, he would be off gallivanting with one of those Peep Show Girls. Jerk.

You know what I bet he’s doing? Clunking around the restroom in his chunky-clunky boots? I bet he’s on the phone. Jesus Christ, what the hell does it take to get a goddamn drink around here? I bet he’s on the phone, text messaging away about the fact that he’s on A Date From Hell. I bet he’s scrolling through his phone book right now, texting someone, anyone, everyone – especially everyone of the female persuasion – with some sob story about how he agreed, out of pity, to go out on this date with this pathetic-pitiful poetry-reading broad who thinks she is just so cute and funny and clever and brilliant and sophisticated, but that he hadn’t bargained for the beanstalk, and that he just can’t take it anymore, so would someone, anyone – everyone of the female persuasion – whose number is saved in his phone book please call back right now with some phony emergency to save him? Right? Now? Please? He probably even knows the Peep Show Girls personally! Is probably texting them this very second!! Has probably been going steady with the leading lady of the leading peep show at the leading peep show place I was thinking of taking him to! For months!!

Bastard.

You know what, God? You could have prevented this. You could have sent me a sign. You could have sent me a sign that this clunky-chunky cowboy was just a bastard in Western wear, and that bringing him to a poetry reading about beanstalks would be a huge, giant, enormous, gargantuan mistake. It would have, as I said, been the Godly thing to do. Any sign. Like a lightning bolt, preferably one that illuminated him like an extra-salty rotisserie chicken, or the last zot of a burned-out light bulb or an unexpected Parisian transit strike, which, when You think of it, would have been extremely easy for You to pull off, wouldn’t have been any skin off of Your nose, seeing as transit strikes in Paris are de rigueur. But nooooo… You just can’t stand that I think Zeus is hot. Your fragile, feeble, omnipresent All-Male ego just can’t stand it. You know what You’re like? You’re just like a man. For Someone who thinks He has it all figured out, for Someone who is supposed to have His shit together, for Someone who is supposed to be all-seeing and therefore all-knowing and therefore all-understanding and therefore All-Mighty, You have issues. Have You considered therapy? There’s bound to be a lot of therapists in Heaven. Or did you send them all to Hell?

What does it take to get a glass of wine?!

Yes, in fact, I do need another drink, for Chrissakes! 

Well, well, well. If it isn’t Cowboy Bob. Chunking and clunking his way back from the restroom. Nice boots, pardner. How’s the ol’ bladder? You’d think he’d have the courtesy to at least wipe that secretive little smile off his face. Isn’t it enough that he’s spent several significant hunks of the last hour in the can, texting and talking to and chatting with and leaving messages for every little hussy and floozy and trollop and Peep Show Girl in town? Isn’t it enough that he agreed to go out on this date with me when he’s been going steady with the leading lady in the most famous, most sophisticated, most renowned, most acclaimed peep show on the circuit? Isn’t it enough that he, just a week ago, told me that he thought I was funny and cute and clever and brilliant? Isn’t it enough that, just last week, when we first met, when we first started talking, when we first clicked, that he sort of silently, subversively, subtly insinuated that maybe, perhaps, over the course of time, he might be ever-so-willing and ever-so-ready and ever-so-anxious to offer up the moon? Isn’t it enough that he led me on? Or is his chunky-clunky ego so blown up and puffed out from his Peep Show Girl-dating prestige that he just can’t help himself? You know what he is, God? An arrogant ass. A conceited, self-important, self-congratulating, blown-up, puffed-out, arrogant ass. A man.

Get this: Nooowwwww he wants to talk. Now he wants to have a heart-to-heart, a face-à-face, a tête-à-tête. Well, I’ve got news for him. Just wait’ll he hears what I have to say. What’s that you said? You want to get out of here? As if I’m too dim to have figured that out. As if I couldn’t deduce, after him having spent the last hour in the can, that he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge, out of the Dodge City Poetry And Fancy Needlework Society Weekly Sunday Social: no talking or boot-clunking permitted. You said you can’t take this beanstalk business anymore? Well, neither can I. Fee-fi-fo-fum. I can’t stand this beanstalk business either. But it’s not like I knew that’s what we were in for. It’s not like I could have pre-screened every single line of every single poem to ensure that they would be suitable for your discerning ears. It’s not like I had the time to do that. I’m a busy girl. I have other things to do. You know – things. But who am I talking to? It’s not like you give a horse’s ass. Speaking of which, why don’t you take that horse you rode in on and…and…You want to get out of here with me? Is that what you just said? You just said that you wanted to get out of here with me? Go someplace where we can sit and talk and get to know each other better? Like the bridge? Pont Neuf? Like Pont Neuf where there’s a great view of the moon? Well…Well. Well, uh, yeah, sure, that would be nice. I mean, I wouldn’t want to take up all of your time if, you know, you had important things to do, but… Well, sure! I’m all for the moon.

Find the reasons to be cheerful now...

Get happy: give thanks now to shore up your soul for days when reasons to be cheerful seem few and far between.

My beloved, who’s a lofty and well-built 6ft1, often ribs me about my somewhat more dinky stature – I’m a whole foot shorter than him (if you’re reading this on the continent, 1m84 vs. 1m59). It’s usually stuff about me jumping to reach the higher shelves at the supermarket, or making sure I avoid puddles in the rain in case I drown. If we see a large group of children, he’ll grab my hand and tell me to keep close in case their teacher mistakes me for one of them and I get swept off to primary school. I’d always found these little jokes between us sweet and funny – until this week, when my beloved’s fears came close to reality. Cue scary music.

The day began like any other…

I was wending my way to work one morning when I spied a group of be-wellingtoned kids kicking up the fallen leaves and having what looked like a lot of fun. Now, we live in a part of Paris that has a huge quantity of trees – we’re right near a large park, and the roads around it have been decked out with foliage for aesthetic consistency – so you can imagine how big that pile of leaves was and how crisp, dry, golden and, well, inviting.

Reader, I had to. Without thinking, I was in there myself, kicking up the leaves and having a fine old time. The funny thing was, people didn’t really seem to notice – leading my beloved to comment that I simply blended in so well with the other children that nobody noticed that I was a fully grown adult. Ha ha, most amusing.

Back to school

Anyway, the point behind these ramblings is that this week, I played in the fallen leaves and loved it. In that moment, I was so happy to live where I do and was utterly filled with gratitude for the trees in our quartier, the extra five minutes I had left myself so I didn’t have to rush that morning, the stroke of luck we’d had in finding our apartment right there (another tale, another time). Maybe it was because I was behaving like a schoolgirl, but I was suddenly transported back to my secondary school assemblies, where the autumn hymn of choice was always “Autumn days”. Anyone who grew up in the UK will have come across this harvest festival classic:

Autumn days when the grass is jewelled,

And the silk inside the chestnut shell,

Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled -

All the things I love so well!

So I mustn’t forget, no I mustn’t forget -

To say a great big thank you, I mustn’t forget.

I’m a big fan of all things autumnal, and that morning ditty was always my favourite. Even as a kid, I could relate to the idea that we all have such a lot in our lives (especially in Europe and North America), that it’s essential not only to be aware that we have a lot but also to feel and express that joy and gratitude.

The Glad Game

In Britain, we have the harvest festival to celebrate Mother Nature’s bounty, in Canada they do it in October, and in the US this month, the hustle and bustle of life will stop for one day so that loved ones can come together and perhaps think about all the good in their lives, offering a up a silent or a spoken “thank you”. For me, the Canadian and American Thanksgiving holidays are a cue to remember how happy I am to have some dear Canadian and American friends in my life – and to write and tell them.

Take pleasure in Mother Nature's bounty

So, whether it’s because of the blatant indoctrination practiced by my school in making me sing that hymn every autumn or because of friends scattered across the globe, this time of year I’m reminded more than ever of all I have to be glad about (I truly think Pollyanna had the right idea). There are so many little things that can easily be forgotten, but that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Admittedly, it’s hard to feel glad on cold, rainy days when the bus is late and you drop your new phone in a puddle, yet that’s precisely when you most need to remember your abundant blessings. That’s why it’s crucial to make that list – mentally or on paper – on days when life is a cruise ship rather than a destroyer. I’m starting right now, with both the big things and the small – in no particular order.

● I’m thankful for the EU – without it my life in Paris would be harder, or perhaps would never have been possible.

● I’m grateful I don’t have any allergies.

● Gizmo, from the film Gremlins.

● I thank God every day for my beloved – there are no words.

● I’m thankful that I have loving and supportive parents, to whom I owe everything.

● Alain de Botton, Jasper Fforde, Jane Austen and Richard Carlson.

● I’m really glad I managed to stop biting my nails.

● French cheeses – say no more.

● I’m so grateful for my cherished friends – every one of them nourishes and teaches me.

● I’m deeply thankful that someone, at some point, invented musical theatre, and that my mum introduced me to it at an early age.

● I’m grateful for the opportunity to write this column and for the readers who enjoy it.

● Love Actually and It’s a Wonderful Life.

● I’m thankful for the autumn days, when the grass is jewelled, and their wordless reminder to say a great big thank you.

It really is a Wonderful Life…

The reaction to time spent in Spain...

Life can be the strangest thing, can’t it? Six months ago, I was fanning myself with a handful of foolscap as the Spanish sun gained more and more velocity with each spring to summer day. There I was, wearing shorts and getting brown, making plans and enjoying using a new language – I even managed to make people laugh, which I’m told is a sign one’s on their way to fluency.

But then everything changed. Quite out of the blue, circumstances about-turned drastically and life wasn’t all sunbeds and sangria (which it wasn’t really in the first place, but you know what I mean) but instead, a tall uphill struggle to get by each day. Nobody died or anything, but basically speaking, someone shuffled my set of cards while I wasn’t looking.

At the beginning of September, my boyfriend and I returned to the UK after our 18-month-long Spanish trip. It wasn’t quite the return we’d planned to make, but relief underpinned our repatriation: I for one was missing gravy and drizzle like I didn’t think it was possible to do so. And so, here we are, back in Blighty, idly forgetting all the Spanish we learned and rapidly losing any trace of the bedded-in-for-the-long-haul tans we worked so hard to develop.

After recovering from the long-haul road trip home and the inevitable roll of catch-up phone calls and coffees with faces I hadn’t seen for two years, it was time to get back into the land I call home with a half social, half networking trip to meet up with contacts I’d put on ice while I was away. This was all very jolly; people seemed genuinely pleased to see me. As one would expect, there were piles of stuff to catch up on, notes to compare and anecdotes to recount. But one thing struck me, and I don’t think I was wrong in thinking it mighty odd.

By contact four, I realised that I wasn’t being asked many questions about life abroad. Certainly not as many as I would have assaulted a homecoming friend with. “Where the hell have you been?” was the regular opener; “And what were you there for?” was the follow up, a raised eyebrow I took for impress. I gave my answers; “Spain, for 18 months!” and, “Same sort of thing as before… Experiencing the place as best I could. Oh, and I was involved in opening a bar!” And then, silence.  Accompanying the silence was a look; it’s difficult to describe in words, so I thought I’d draw it…

The eyebrows; arched and suspicious. The mouth; pursed. The jaw; clenched. The eyes; wide, piercing, horrified. Sure, I was in the Alicante region, I’d explain, but I was miles away from Benidorm. This didn’t appear to appease anyone though. And then, after a few more beats of silence, they’d change the subject entirely: “Shall we get some lunch?” or “So, what are your plans for the weekend then?” and so on.

Stumped, and a little disappointed I wasn’t being regaled home with excited questions like, “How do I say ‘f**k you’ in Spanish?”, the best acknowledgement I’d get was a solid hand on my shoulder, a wink and a, “It’s good to have you back with us.” Like I’d been in a coma or something, or diversifying as a bounty hunter or a drug mule. It was really weird.

I aired my observations to contact number eight after he asked me pertinent and enquiring questions about my Iberian experience. Ironically, I found myself mildly horrified at his interest in my time away. “I’m starting to get paranoid,” I told him. “Has something very grave happened between Spain and the UK in my absence that I’ve completely managed to miss?” He laughed at me and wiped the mirth from his eyes.

“You know it’s code, don’t you?” He said. I told him I didn’t know what he meant.

“Spain. It’s code.”

I was struggling to understand. “You. Been overseas in Spain for 18 months.” I still wasn’t grasping the point. “It’s a totally feasible sentence length. You were also involved in setting up a bar. That’s what ex cons say when they don’t want to tell anyone they’ve been doing ‘Her Majesty’s Service’.”

Time served at Her Majesty's Pleasure

So, I’d gone from demure globetrotter (sort of) to enigmatic convict. My perception of my status quo spun on its head: I was aghast, but I was also wildly excited by the strange badge of rebellious deviant I now found myself posed with, should I wish to run with it. If I wanted to, I could be a Bad Girl, just like on the telly.

And run with it I did with contact nine, you know, just to spice things up a bit. Asking polite questions, half morbidly fascinated, half terrified of me, it was clear she wanted to run for the hills. I mumbled something about Morocco, a boat, flashing lights, midnight… I then stared into the middle distance pensively like Joey Tribbiani, blew needlessly on my coffee and made a mental note to maybe join an am-dram group to get back into the swing of British community.

After a fun ten minutes or so hamming up the fake story of my last year-and-a-half, I explained I’d been pulling her leg. The silly thing was, she hadn’t given me any weird looks when I told her I’d been in Spain helping out with a bar. So when I did eventually backtrack and tell her that I’d been pulling her leg, I don’t think she believed me. It’s apparent to me now that I can be my own worst enemy.

Anyway, just to be super clear here, I have genuinely been in Spain, nothing spurious, and it was sheer coincidence that a friend of mine opened a venue into which I threw my tuppence worth. That largely consisted of dancing and helping musicians carry their equipment back to their vans after a gig, but you know… Who knew that this Spain yarn is a line deployed by jailbirds? I’ve always thought of myself as someone who knew stuff like that so, after the joy being able to communicate verbally without second-guessing everything and drowning myself in proper gravy has worn off a little, I now feel two things on returning home: 1) Not nearly as streetwise as I’d considered myself to be, and 2) bizarrely guilty for an imaginary crime I had no dealings with.

I was considering France for my next stint away. If there are any codes or false alibis associated with France, I’d be very grateful to know about them. Thank you.

Time to let go of what you no longer need?

As the trees let go of what they no longer need this autumn, carpeting the ground in their golden foliage, take a look at what you’d be better off without…

I love the autumn. I always have. It’s a time when I’ve always felt hopeful, optimistic and energetic. I have always enjoyed that “back to school” feeling – the promise of new friends, new activities, new subjects to learn. Even now as an adult, for me it’s a time for clearing out the house (actually, for me, any time is a good time for a clear-out), sharpening pencils, cleaning shoes, making a list of things I want to do before the Christmas period. It’s a time to sign up for new classes, kick-start an exercise programme, embark on a new adventure, begin a new project or hobby.

A time for everything… a time to keep and a time to throw away

Funnily enough, the symbolism and natural cycle represented by the autumn is exactly the opposite of all these things. As summer fades and the conkers begin to fall, nature withdraws into herself and slows down, preparing to hibernate. The trees are doing their own little clear-out, taking a last look at their foliage and then throwing off their leaves and hunkering down to wait out the winter months.

This year, I’m planning to (excuse the pun) take a leaf out of the old oak’s book. I don’t intend to abandon my natural instinct to sort out my wardrobe, enrol in a class and set some pre-Yule goals. That would just be going against my character, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that way madness lies! No, I am going to add a new, slightly different, goal to my habitual autumnal industriousness. Just as the trees cast off the leaves they no longer need, I’m trying to rid my life of anything that I no longer need.

Now, on one level, this means physically sorting through my stuff and ridding my home of things that are unused, unwanted and unnecessary to me. This alone always does me the power of good. On a deeper level, however, it also means getting rid of things in my life –habits, behaviours, people – that no longer suit me or serve me. It means taking a good look at the way I am, what I do, and how I live, examining each aspect and asking, “Does this truly nourish me?”

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

The most literal example of this is in my diet. I don’t really have any of the major vices but I do have a potent addiction to strong black tea with milk. Not very rock and roll, I know. I know that after the first two teas of the day, any cup beyond that isn’t really enjoyable. I know that too much of the stuff makes me agitated (you can only imagine my nerves when I have coffee), and I am aware that it’s not great for my teeth or kidneys. It simply doesn’t nourish me or do me any good. So, this autumn, I’m limiting myself to a maximum of two cups a day – one when possible. I’m not crazy enough to give it up altogether as I value my friends and family too much to unleash a pre-tea me on them too often, but I am making a concerted effort to stick to green after my first morning cup of “real” tea.

When autumn leaves start to fall

Once started, this non-physical clear-out can go in any direction. What about looking at unhelpful thought processes? Or knee-jerk emotional reactions that could be checked and kept under control with a little practice? A habit of contradicting other people or interrupting? How about choosing to listen a little harder to your inner voice for a few weeks and making sure that it’s singing only positive songs about you and your abilities? What about letting go of a negative emotion or belief?

I’m taking my cue from nature this autumn. As each leaf is shed from the trees outside my window, I’m going to try to let go of something that’s holding me back or making me less than I could be. Every time I see a tree ablaze with orange, gold and yellow or I spot a shiny chestnut on the ground, I’ll remind myself of own bag of emotional dead leaves and rotten conkers and toss a few on the bonfire.

But where's Momo...? Check Vogue Paris!

They have not found him in a boat,
They have not found him with a goat,
They have not found him in a house,
They have not found him with a mouse,
Muammar is neither Here nor There,
Muammar isn’t Anywhere.
That Momo – he’s such a rogue,
They should really check the September issue of Vogue.

Vogue Paris. I read it for the articles. And I heard from a reliable source that all the clues to finding Muammar – dites Momo – are in there. Right there in there, in the September issue. Numéro 920, Les Publications Condé Nast S.A. Four-euros-ninety in France métropolitaine, 6,95€ in les colonies. Or – excusez-moi – in les départements d’outre-mer. If it takes the slow boat via Algeria. Fifteen euros if it arrives by avion.

Vogue Paris. The September issue. It’s all there.

Whaaat? Wait. I dated a spy, remember. (See here.) (Our relationship was a two-parter.) So en dehors of my exclusive access to an excessive number of excessively reliable sources, I’m exclusively-superbly super-smart – excessively – about spying. The CIA and FBI and MI5 and UN and NATO?  And every other acronymed association who is seeking anyone (acronymed or otherwise) who is AWOL or MIA? They’ve got it all wrong. Moi–I’d take a different tack. Based on the excessive data I’ve received, exclusively, from my exclusive informants, I’d turn to Vogue. Vogue Paris – the September issue. Especially if I was finding a fashionista! Especially if it was fall. Especially if the fashionista to be found was a fallen Momo. Especially that.

They should hire me as a consultant.

The first clue? Well, there’s all that green. Momo Green. Pages and pages of it – all over Vogue. And that Gucci ad? Near the front of the book? (Hellooo? It’s Vogue – a page number I cannot provide.) The one with the platinum blonde lounging around in that greeny/yellowy/fluorescent-y you could only pull it off if you were Photo-shopped/airbrushed/digitized dress? (As in you would need to be Photo-shopped and airbrushed and digitized…not the dress?) And then there’s those other Photo-shopped/airbrushed/digitised blondes lounging around in equally questionable colours? I think Momo’s behind the couch. Just a hunch.

Then there’s that cover shoot starring Charlotte Casiraghi – daughter of Caroline, Princess of Monaco. (Don’t ask me what page – you know the drill.) (Is it just moi or is Vogue getting a weeny-teeny leetle beet desperate if they have to photograph princess’s daughters rather than the real-live princesses themselves?) (Especially if said princess’s daughters are so obviously completely uncomfortable in couture ?) Anyway, plenty of foliage and flowers and fauna are featured – mostly all green. Momo could be hiding out there.

(And speaking of being a weeny-teeny little bit desperate, who decided that it was a good idea to do a piece on “Hippie Living?” French accent obligatoire ?) (Uh…Vogue ? Really? Vraiment ? We’re not over hippies yet?) (What’s next – Birkenstocks?) (Patchouli?) (Burlap sacks?)

The Céline ad (front-of-the-book) also arouses suspicion. At first I thought they were trying to make the anorexic model look pregnant – you know, to target that lucrative anorexic mothers-in-waiting demographic – but then I realized: They actually meant for that red leather-y (or something skin-like-y) coat thing to resemble a tent! It’s deliberately part of the deliberate design! A convertible coat/tent trench! Ingenious! Deliberate! And we know how Momo is about his tents…drags the bloody things around everywhere…And a maternity tent that doubles as a coat could come in real handy for an ex-dictator/presumably-still-presently polygamist on the lam…

Could Momo be hiding under the tent trench?

…so he could be hiding out under there.

(Oh, and: Turn to page…oh hell, you’ll find it.  Notice how Oscar de la Renta is totally copying Christian Lacroix’s flamingo puke motif from a few years back?)

Speaking of polygamy, it’s possible that Momo is using les petites as miniature Amazonian bodyguards in the ad for Les Petites. You know – those miniature Amazonian bodyguards/models who are tripling as schoolgirls? And then there’s the blonde and the brunette running away from something in the ad for Chloé…that could be Momo chasing them, trying to pick up. Because like Dean Martin and Claude François, Momo loves to surround himself with chicks. Think I’m onto something there.

(Speaking of chicks: What’s up with BCBGMAXAZRIA? Or, more specifically: What have they got against women? Or, more specifically: What have they got against women’s hips? Or did I misunderstand and those parachute pants are supposed to convert into tents, too?) (Saddlebags, perhaps?) (And Philip Plein? The ad with the nude model with the death’s-head brooch clipped to her you-know-what. Uh, Phil? You know what? Think you’re being a bit too subtle. Maybe next time the brooch could be fitted with teeth.)

You know who is subtle? Momo. My superbly-super-savvy spying skills signal that – while on the surface it might make sense – there is no way he’d get himself mixed up in that tribal mess of a photo spread, “Quand l’esprit néo-jungle pulse au grand air…” For one, he’s a man of the desert – not the jungle – after all. En plus, while I did catch a glimpse of Big Bird – or at least a Bottega Veneta coat disguised as him – I didn’t spot any tents. No tents, no Momo. Same goes for the series, “D’après nature.” While less superbly-skilled spies may take all that camouflage as a dead give-away, my savvy spy-smarts can smell a decoy from sand dunes away. The camouflage? Fuhgeddaboudit.(Although there is an argument that the shot with the Bardot look-alike might reveal Momo hiding behind the tree…)

Sigh. As in: I-sigh. As in: I-sigh and I-spy and I’m spent. The CIA and FBI and MI5 and UN and NATO are so obviously stumped. So you’d think they’d make better use of my skills. Because besides being a super-superbly smart spy? About business, I know a thing or two. And if they’d just let me get to work on finding Momo, we could all get to work at being filthy rich. Not the bounty-hunting way, or the head-hunting way, or the wanted dead-or-alive way…not even by kissing and making up and then selling him arms. No, non – I’m thinking “strategic alliance.” One in which we’d all get our cut. Picture it: “Gaddafi by Galliano.” Or, “Galliano by Gaddafi”. Or more simply: “G&G.” We could force them into it – it’s not like they’re in a position to complain. And we could convince the Americans to turn Guantanamo into a fashion atelier ! You know – to boost their foreign fashion relations. It is an election year, after all. (And with the current state of their balance sheet, you just know they’d jump at the chance to charge rent.) (Sans caution… )

I know what you’re thinking – already thought of it myself: Good partners must have something in common. But if you step back, you’ll agree that as a partnership, G&G as a pair is parfait. First, they’re both fashionistas. And they both hate Jews. And while it may not be the most creative angle, like God and sex and homophobia, anti-Semitism still sells! (You think as a bafflingly-bright business consultant/super-savvy spy I’d advise people to buy into a venture that wasn’t a sure thing?) (In this economy?) En plus, anti-Semitics need more style. They really haven’t seen any fashion breakthroughs since the SS. Because as anyone who respects hair salons knows, skinheads don’t count.

There’s just one more detail that has me stuck: If G&G gets off the ground, who would be their spokesmodel?