Winding down a bit...

My posts are getting far between; it is starting to feel as if we are winding down a bit now - darn it, just as I was starting to get the hang of living here! I'm certainly going to miss it. I had a flash yesterday of sadness, although I am also excited to be coming home. Richard's course is super busy at the moment as their showcase is in a couple of weeks. So he's rehearsing before and after school.

Lily and I had a yoga lesson last week with the sister of a Gaulier boy who has been staying here, but has now gone WWOOFing near Biarritz (this is not to be confused with dogging, but rather is Working On an Organic Farm... hmm so what's the other W will look it up... Richard and I are booked to do the same this July in the Loire valley!) The lesson was great; she had spent three years on an ashram in India and really knew yoga, and was incredibly positive about my meagre abilities and the fact that I can barely touch one body part with another at all. I've ached for five days since, and feel really keen to carry on when we get home. Also I've now decided I really don't like swimming after all, so I'm on an activity hunt again...

Tom came to visit last weekend, and we did some sightseeing, and eating...

On the way to supper - Tom and Richard on rue Rollin

Me and Tom discussing important stuff outside the Sorbonne

Last Sunday being the first one of the month was free museum day, so we attempted a church, which turned out to be shut, and then the Gustave Moreau Museum, not far from Opera. I'd not heard of him, but he turns out to have been a prolific painter of biblical and mythological scenes, who felt that the best way to protect his legacy was to turn his house into a gallery and museum of... him. And it's worked a treat!

Gustave's bedroom: "And this is where I slept..."

"Here's my boudoir"

"Check out my beautiful stairs."

I remember when at Kingston an illustrator came to give a talk and show us a sample of his sketchbooks, of which he said he'd made hundreds and hundreds. He spoke a bit about what those would all mean when he was dead - how his children would likely not want an attic full of them, he wasn't famous so they'd wouldn't be worth much, but to him they were a life's work. The Gustave Moreau museum reminded me again of that talk. I also remember hearing Michael Winner on Radio 4 saying he had similar plans for his house in Kensington - alors! Begin the pilgrimage!

**Mystery Corner**
Last night Richard was late rehearsing, so I read "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe, which Sal gave me. It was really chilling, and I was getting quite freaked out; it describes a very gruesome double murder of two ladies living together, one of whom is then stuffed up a chimney head-down. The tension was building horribly, until the murderer was revealed to be...

(READ NO FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT ENDING SPOILED)

an ourang outang (sic). I got the impression that there weren't many of these chaps around Paris in the 1850s, and Poe was ascribing a savageness to them which I think isn't quite fair, as far as I've seen from their super cute photos and the ones on documentaries. So I felt a bit anticlimactic, and like I know more about orangutans than Edgar Allan Poe. (If you find my savaged remains covered in orange hair down in the Jardin de Plantes menagerie, you will know I was wrong.)