Paris.

So, after a twelve hour delay in Abu Dhabi we finally made it to Paris.....at 4am in the morning.

I can't complain though, as Etihad Airways looked after us and gave a a hotel room for what would otherwise have been a day of pain. We hadn't been at the hotel for five minutes before we were down in the shop kitting ourselves out in cossies so that we could hit the pool:

Our first day, of our 4 day stay, in Paris was just a tad hairy. Needless to say, we were somewhat jet lagged and aimless in our plan. We route marched our troops from the apartment where we were staying, over near the Jardin des Plantes, to the Luxembourg Gardens, for a pilgrimage to the children's play ground and then, like the incompetent parents that we are, thought that lunch at Restaurant Chez Georges, over near the Place des Victoires, on the other side of the river, was a good idea. No sooner had we sat down at one of the long communal tables in this bustling and beautiful little restaurant than we realised that we had made a big mistake. We really do live in la la land and nurse idealised visions of our children participating in a civilised lunch, actually eating the meal put in front of them with gusto and contributing scintillating conversation. It is never like this and we should have known better. In reality it's more like being on the verge of having a massive heart attack....with palpitations, sweaty palms and an overwhelming feeling of dread.  We are seriously outnumbered by our children and they are adept at sensing our fear. 

Tempers were already frayed, as the children's complaints about the food were in full flight and the wine wasn't quite working for the adults....and then seconds after the baby escaped and tried to sit on the lap of the gentleman further down the banquette, my husband may have said, out loud.....that I was a 'crap mother'. Quelle horreur. Our eldest daughter accidentally upset her orange juice on his lap. He was livid.....and was then presented with a bill for six people's lunch of snails and fillet steak with béarnaise sauce.....which was probably punishment enough.

Luckily, the gods smiled on us and a babysitter materialised in the form of the 21 year old son of the couple who owned the apartment. Even better, can you believe that his rate was €7 an hour (less than AUD$10.....yes, really) although we may have paid him more as we wanted him to come back two nights in a row. Our children described him as spunky and indeed he had that archetypal Parisian male look going on, all shoulder length floppy dark hair, unbuttoned shirt and velvet blazer. He is studying economics at the Sorbonne and is convinced by the benefits of yoga, which he does every day, even though he plays rugby (union) and when we met him, he was reading Homer's 'The Ilyiad'......for fun. He played games and drew and coloured in with the children, did the dishes, cleaned up after their dinner and brought them a cake made by his mum. The day we left he helped haul all of our bags down 4 flights of stairs.  How lucky were we.

Because we were in one of the most romantic cities in the world, my husband retracted his 'crap mother' comment and I forgave him and we went and drank champagne at The Cafe Marly in the forecourt of the Louvre during l'heure bleue:

Followed by dinner at Le Grand Colbert..... a beautiful old style brasserie (it's listed as a historic monument) which also happens to be the restaurant in the movie 'Something's Gotta Give'. We'd been there a couple of years before for lunch.....with our children....and I'd ordered the roast chicken that Diane Keaton's character in the film raves about, yet truthfully, at the time I hadn't thought that it was that amazing.....the roast chicken at Sean's Panorama at Bondi Beach in Sydney, is better. Seeing it was just around the corner and the clock was ticking we thought we'd give Le Grand Colbert another go. The poster for the movie was still in the window next to the front door, which caused us to hesitate as there is nowhere worse than a Paris restaurant overrun with tourists. No need to fear, as mercifully it wasn't and the atmosphere was buzzy and the food and wine, enhanced by the knowledge that our children back in the apartment tucked up in bed, was delicious....I had the snails (again) and the fish with hollandaise sauce. 

Hedonistic adult decadence aside, we dedicated one full day of our very short visit to lugging the family all the way out to Parc Asterix.....on the other side of Charles de Gaulle Airport:

It really is very cleverly done and the inherent Frenchness makes it, I think, much better than Euro Disney......I'm tempted to actually read an Asterix book now, which my children assure me are fabulous.  I'll admit, here and now, that I  have a bit of a thing for scary rides.......yet 'Oziris' takes the cake. I screamed from the minute that it plunged down the first terrifying descent, giving myself a hoarse voice, which of course has helped no end with my otherwise shockingly bad French pronunciation.....nobody needs to know that it's not caused by a packet a day Gauloises habit. It also made me rethink pelvic floor exercises....up until now I've been quite proud of mine even though I've had four children, as jumping on the trampoline in the garden at home presents no problem, however being whipped around loop the loops and corkscrew turns on what is effectively a swing is another thing all together. Be warned.

I'm proud to say that while we were in Paris, I got myself out of bed before sunrise, on not one, but two mornings, to get myself over to the Bikram Yoga studio in the Marais in time to do the 7am class. When I explained that I was from Tasmania.....they were incredulous. I mentioned this to my husband and he suggested that maybe they mixed up 'Tasmania' with 'Tanzania' yet I'd made sure that I gave them the word perfect 'small island to the south of Australia' spiel in French as taught by our Adult Education French teacher....before she moved to Queensland. The Bikram Yoga dialogue sounds lovely in French, however it was somewhat off putting having a clock and pictures of Bikram himself decorating the hot room. Both of the instructors, who took the classes that I did, were also keen on barking out posture corrections, no one was immune to their scrutiny, which meant that I had to keep my wits about me so that I could put them into practice when they called out to me.....by name. This was especially difficult during the second class, as I'd also crinked my neck on Ozsiris somewhat rendering my practice almost impossible. Anyway, the only difference, Anna if you are reading this, is that they do Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose, Triangle Pose and Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee Pose sideways, standing on their mats. Otherwise, I could have been back on the mat.....in Hobart.

Rx

Nine.

Hello from the house of vomit......where three of my children, so far, have been riding the porcelain bus with a particularly messy bout of gastro.  Having spent a lot of time in the decidedly unpleasant clean up, I've been pondering why, when I've endured such high levels of exposure,  I've never managed to become immune to vomit or poo. So, as you do, I've been deliberating which is worse....with the jury  still out.

As if a sudden dose of gastro hasn't made life hectic enough, the clock is relentlessly ticking and we are now down to NINE days before we board that plane and bid 'au revoir' to Hobart and 'bonjour' to the South of France. I've also taken another trip to the dentist's chair and had my other two wisdom teeth unceremoniously pulled out.....knowing what to expect I tried every delaying tactic in the book and shamelessly used exhibition openings, children's birthdays and a trip to Brisbane to try and avoid having to go through it all......again. I was scared as had been pre warned that these teeth had curly roots. Oh, the agony. Afterwards, I sought comfort in flicking through a book about Prince Charles' garden and one of my boys dedicated his afternoon to sitting on my bed and patting my hair.....it worked and I managed to hold off on the painkillers.

Anyway, yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary. My husband came through with flowers just when I was despairing, as only an afternoon of cleaning up poo will do, that maybe I'd made a big mistake setting myself up for domesticity on such a grand scale:

I love Irish Bells.....there's something so unexpected about a lime green flower, don't you think? This is what the five year old dressed me in to wear out to dinner down the road at our favourite haunt, Le Provencal:

The J Brand sparkly coated metallic jeans were on sale at Revolve and I've had the By Malene Birger sequinned top hanging in the cupboard for years. He initially wanted me to wear the jeans and the top without a jacket, however seeing it was 10 degrees outside and the top's a bit big, I managed to talk him into letting me workshop the look with the jacket.....yet only on the promise that I took it off once inside the restaurant where it would be warm.

It may have been warm and looked like the South Of France:

yet I flagrantly disregarded his instructions and kept the jacket on. While compiling the insurmountable list of things still to do over dinner, the thought crossed my mind that it's much easier to pretend to be in France in a French restaurant that we can see from our house......than it is to actually go to France. Too late now.

Over the last week, between loads of vomity washing, I've been hanging out in the hot room like a woman possessed, because the sad fact is that I'm going to have to let my Bikram Yoga addiction slide once I get to France. There's just no way that I'm going to be able to keep up five classes a week. Geography is not on my side.  Like the total tragic that I am, I've been using Google Maps to work out exactly how far it is from where we will be living in Uzes to the Bikram Yoga studio's in Montpellier (1.5 hours)  and Marseilles (2 hours). Here in Hobart, I drive literally from one side of town to the other to feed my addiction and it takes me.....all of 12 minutes. Rationally, I'm thinking that 1.5 - 2 hours in the car on a regular basis might not be feasible, although it makes me upset to admit it out loud. Hopefully, I'll be able to make the commute on a couple of occasions and if I can find a window of opportunity to do a class or two in Paris, then I won't have to go cold turkey.....which is some consolation.

Apart from putting Bikram Yoga classes in the bank, it has also been a great way to tame my monkey mind (for an hour and a half at least) and help with my overwhelming worries about the immediate future.....will our geriatric beagles survive the separation.....when are we going to find a tenant.....is my father in law's health going to rally.....will our property development be finished before we go.....etc etc etc ad infinitum. Most nights I wake up at about 3am and start to think and worry....and think....and then I try to engage my husband in conversation about these particular thoughts....much to his horror as he is holding out until 5.30am when he can get on his bike and go for a ride. You wouldn't want to be getting on a plane next Sunday. I might need to try and schedule two Bikram Yoga classes tomorrow.......

Rx

Foiled.

So this morning I had to miss out on my daily fix of Bikram Yoga because one week after being vaccinated against chicken pox, my baby has it. Apparently, contracting the actual disease is sometimes a side effect of a live vaccine. Thank God it wasn't polio....or meningococcal. So, there was no time in the hot room for me today......I wonder if my children will notice when they get home from school. They encourage my yoga addiction as it makes my tolerance threshold to everything that they can throw at me much higher. Honestly, Bikram Yoga is miraculous.

On the way home from the yoga studio, I'm ashamed to admit that I went grocery shopping even though I was wearing my yoga kit and hadn't brushed my hair. I was a tad paranoid as I had had a comment left on my blog last night by someone who had recognised me in the supermarket, last week. Of course you wouldn't read about it, but I actually bumped into this VERY SAME person in a carpark lift in town, later on today. Mercifully, I had gotten changed and brushed my hair by then:

I was hanging out the first load of washing at 8.45am this morning when I received this sms.....'Nice photo in the paper'. Here's the proof:

Funny how a photo in the 'Out and About' section of the paper still makes me jittery......years and years after a group of friends and I went to a party underage. Naughtily, and I know this now that I have my own daughters, we flagrantly lied to our parents about where we were going....only to have ourselves exposed by a photo in the social pages of the paper the next morning. Damning evidence. I'm sure that nobody else misspent their youth?

Rx

Cake.

So, this morning, the lady in the grocery shop looked me in the eye and commented on how organised I must be with four children. After I picked myself up off the floor, I wondered how my reputation had preceded me. How on earth did she know that this morning's before school rush hour had been particularly bad.....that my nine year old was wearing nothing other than undies until ten past eight (due at school at half past) as his uniform had to be rescued from the line and finished off in the dryer. I confess, no matter how hard I try, I am hopeless at organisation.

I had awoken in the early hours of this morning......when it was still dark and my husband was out riding his bike.....to the realisation that I hadn't made morning tea for my children's school lunches. Panic. So I got up early and made 'Granny Boyd's Biscuits' from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess:

Who am I kidding? Anyway, in my still sleep befuddled condition I accidentally started creaming the butter and flour so then I thought 'what the hey' and threw everything in together and hoped for the best. Et voila, it worked. So, all you do is combine 150g self raising flour, 125g soft butter and 60g raw sugar and enough Dutch Press cocoa to make it nice and chocolatey and mix it up until it all comes together. Then I bake however many biscuits I need for lunches (150 degrees for 15 minutes) and wrap the rest of the dough in cling wrap and keep it in the fridge. This way the biscuits don't all get scoffed at afternoon tea and you have enough to bake during the hurly burly that will be breakfast time.....tomorrow:

It was a big weekend for baking and cake in our house. In celebration of Mimi's 11th birthday I made not one but two rainbow cakes:

One for home and one for school:

This took most of Sunday and over half a kilo of flour, the same of sugar and of butter and 10 eggs. Held together and iced with even more butter and sugar. As much as I can, I use local products. Although I'm not deluding myself that these really good ingredients made all this cake....healthy. Chemical free wheat grown at Kempton and milled in the historic Callington Mill at Oatlands:

Ashgrove Butter, batch churned on the farm at Elizabeth Town:

And I only ever use free range eggs....I have been to a battery farm and what they do is CRUEL. When we kept our own chooks.....back before we had four children, two beagles and a thousand worms in a worm farm, we used to rescue point of lay birds from a battery farm down the Channel and give them a new life in our garden. They were so grateful.

Luckily my KitchenAid was up to the task:

I still remember how desperately I coveted it for Christmas almost seven years ago. It was at the tail end of our arduous renovation and we had made a pact of no big gifts. But, I couldn't help myself, I wanted a pink KitchenAid to accessorise with my new kitchen.....with every fibre of my being. I hinted. I suggested outright. I cried when the pink one in the shop was sold......when I thanked my husband for buying it, he said that he hadn't. Meanwhile, I kept reminding myself that material possessions don't buy you happiness....even if they do match the glass in the top of your kitchen windows. I had resigned myself to never owning a pink KitchenAid, only to open an envelope on Christmas morning....a sales receipt showing that it had been ordered and would arrive sometime in January. It has earned it's keep.

Recounting this anecdote, I started worrying about my sometimes obsessive behaviour. When I was growing up, my Dad bought himself a new white Victa lawn mower. For some time afterwards he mowed the lawn everyday, cleaned his mower afterwards.....and then wheeled it into the house and next to his side of the bed. Maybe this level of obsession runs in the family.

Cake is such a fundamental ingredient in our family's birthday celebrations. When I had my last birthday I gave serious thought to serving a lunch composed only of cake and pink champagne. My husband talked me into two savoury courses......followed by a cake smorgasbord. This was my cake oriented invite:

'Let us eat cake'.....and we did:

And will again on Sunday when I take Mimi and her friends into town for High Tea. Mercifully, I won't have to bake it all myself. And don't worry, I'm working on racking up 5 - 6 Bikram Yoga classes this week to compensate for the high level of cake consumption.

R

PS My husband has been teasing me that I can't significantly swell the numbers of followers of my blog.....at first I was adamant that I could, yet with only a week to go I am starting to question my ability. Please follow.....there is a prize....you could win the beautiful book Living in History which is an open door to many of Hobart and Tasmania's gorgeous, old homes AND a jar of cumquat compote made by me with fruit from my trees:

Go on, click the box up on the top right....please!

Kitchen.

This is my kitchen this morning, complete with my sidekick:

This is my kitchen now having just cooked chocolate brownie for afternoon tea:

I cheated and used a packet - if you know me pick yourself up off the floor as you know that I have NEVER done this before as I usually cook EVERYTHING from scratch. For $8 I bought this:

After five minutes of everyone having a stir, followed by half an hour in the oven (the box said 40 minutes yet mine was possibly a tad overdone even after 30 minutes) we ended up with this:

And considering the almost zero effort that was involved, it was not bad. Although I shudder to think of what might have been in it. I couldn't help myself and tried to salvage it with organic butter and free range eggs.

I spend a significant part of my life in this room:

I always coveted a chandelier in the kitchen and this house came with one in every room. My mum said it was a ridiculous thing to have in a kitchen as chandeliers are notorious dust collectors. She was right, but I still think it's beautiful.

This is the view of the backyard from the window:

You can see my veggie patch reproaching me for it's neglect. As are my cumquats which are desperate to be turned into Moira's cumquat compote:

This is my narcissistic collection of 'R's':

I bought the elephant as a souvenir of our trip to India last year:

On our way out of Udaipur I had the car stopped so that I could run into the shop to negotiate it's purchase thinking I would never see it's like again. I shouldn't have bothered as they were for sale at Mumbai airport......for less. It was worth it though as it conjures up memories of this.......sigh:

Because I am a creature of habit, I went to Bikram Yoga this morning.....my sixth class in as many days:

It may have been five degrees in downtown Hobart yet it is always 40 degrees in the hot room. So if you feel like a tropical interlude that also works out your mind and body, why not give it a try? I go for preventative healthcare and because it is cheaper than therapy. I take my medicine here. If you live somewhere other than Hobart, find your closest Bikram Yoga studio here. Later tonight, once I've fed the masses, I think I might go back for a second dose. Well, I'm wagging tomorrow as I'm going out for lunch.

R

Addicted.

I knew better yet I just couldn't resist. While packing school lunches this morning I ate the merest sliver of baked chocolate cheesecake even though I knew I was going to a 9.30am Bikram Yoga Class. Big mistake. By Standing Head to Knee Pose I felt the full consequences - faint, nauseous and tingly in my extremities all at one. It is a bad, bad feeling.

So now I have declared a moratorium on doing our tax until after the school holidays which start this afternoon. I'm not going to kid myself - four children and time to do tax...it's never going to happen. Sometimes I think about back in the day when I used to manage the Trust Account for our business, how did I ever do that? I've never been gifted at maths  - l'll fess up that I did veggie maths at school. Then I  console myself that I did manage to get a First Class Honours Degree........the problem being that it is in Art Theory.

Anyway I digress. I have been musing about addiction and what I might admit to being addicted to. This is what gives me heart palpitations and sweaty palms if I go cold turkey. You are welcome to either laugh or cry.

1. Green Tea:

To be honest, most days I knock back five or even six cups. I know this is too much because if I don't drink it, I get a headache. Don't be put off by my teacup, it is a 'breakfast cup' and has the dimensions of a bucket. Actually, I used to like coffee (a good old Australian flat white). Actually, that would be an understatement. We took an espresso machine to hospital when I had Mimi. And then three years ago an old school friend and I went and had a week at The Golden Door in the Hunter Valley. There was a time when we would have roared with laughter if someone from the future had told us that we would move heaven and earth to have our families looked after so that we could detox, diet and exercise our heads off. We used to be a tad hedonistic when we got together (she has lived in Melbourne, London and Launceston to my Sydney, South of France and Hobart). So, for a whole week, we gave up caffeine, alcohol and red meat and got up every morning in time to do tai chi while the sun rose. For about six months I drank no caffeine and then it started sneaking in in the guise of green tea. Alcohol, unfortunately was another story, I'm ashamed to admit that we broke out the bubbly on the flight home from the Golden Door, much to our fellow inmates glee!

2. Bikram Yoga:

I try and go to Bikram Yoga classes at Studio Newtown at least five times a week. Otherwise, I get the above listed withdrawal symptoms. I have been a convert since my first class in Hobart three years ago. As it is an international phenomenon, I have been to Bikram Yoga classes in Hobart, Sydney, Bali and I tried to go in Paris yet was turned away as it was only five weeks since my fourth caesarian. I tried. I have also been to garden variety yoga classes in Bali, in the gorgeous gardens at the Ayana and overlooking the ocean at the Karma Kandara and in India, on the roof of the Lake Palace and on a hilltop at the Devi Garh. Not last year, but the year before, when I was pregnant and living in the South of France, I used to lug myself into the cobbled streets of Beziers at least twice a week to go to classes at the Yoga Centre. It was a world away from extreme, sweaty, scantily clad Bikram Yoga (which was three hours away in Marseilles). Genevieve must have been in her sixties yet looked twenty years younger. In class, her hair was always 'coiffed' and she wore full 'macquillage' and colour matched her toenail polish with her yoga outfit - her fingernails were always an immaculate French polish. Are there any other Bikram Yoga practitioners out there reading this reading this to appreciate the humour?! I learnt the French words for every body part along with stock standard yoga poses - Chien qui Tombe, anyone?


Earlier this year I did a week long seminar with Bikram Choudhury himself. You can read all about it in graphic detail here, here, here, here and here. Say what you will about him but he really is a walking advert for the yoga that he sells - can you believe that he's over seventy (that's him in the middle of the picture in the speedos with his hair in a bun)? I think I'd rather have yoga than botox any day.

Bikram Yoga is a ninety minute open eye meditation where you also get to work your body inside and out. As extreme as it sometimes seems, in class, I have NEVER seen anybody come to any physical  harm. At my last Body Pump class at a gym in town, they had to get an ambulance for someone who was having a heart attack.

3. Gowans Auctions:

Thursday is viewing day. Yesterday, I had to fight every fibre of my being to stop myself heading out to Main Road, Moonah to check out what was on offer - maybe this week that unknown 'thing' that I didn't realise that I couldn't live without just might be there. My reaction caused me to investigate the whole addiction question. Let me tell you, in my life, on Thursdays all roads lead to Moonah, either by car or, I have even been known to rollerblade from the Cenotaph along the Cycleway, which conveniently runs just behind the auction sheds.....with a double pram. Last Thursday, I mistakenly took the children and bought a Wendy House. It maxed out the credit card. It has to be the ultimate way to go shopping, the stock changes every week and then there is the rush involved in trying to choose the price. Unfortunately you can't always call it cheap thrills as it can be ruinously expensive....and everything in between. Last week you could have bought the entire six volume set of Gibbon's 'The History of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' or a brand new, stainless steel, freestanding Smeg cooker, if you were so inclined. I bought the Wendy House:

Note to self, remember NOT to take the children out to Gowans. However, I might just have a quick look at the catalogue for what's up in next week's auction.....online.

R

Industrious.

So don't be lured into falsely assuming that it has all been fun and frivolity around here. Far from it.

Over the last two days I have done four Bikram Yoga classes. Yes, call me insane, however, I must say that my abs feel amazing today.

I have also been slavishly labouring away at putting together all of the info for our very belated tax returns. I get an instant headache just thinking about it. Thankfully, I'm making progress and the first installment will go into the accountant today on my way out to lunch. Relief.

I have also been unable to put this down:

Have you read it? It spans a cast of thousands - the first Duke who set the whole Blenheim Palace extravaganza in motion; Winston's mother, Jennie, who after her first husband died found not one but two husbands who were twenty years younger that her only to die after having her leg amputated; the 9th Duke who married the reluctant American heiress, Consuelo Vanderbilt, for nothing more than her pots and pots of money and then had a second wife, Gladys, who had over fifty Blenheim spaniels which, after she became loonily eccentric, had free run inside the palace and turned it to utter squalor. Apparently the stench after she was evicted out was unforgettable. Yet, let's not beat about the bush, this book was mostly about the most famous Churchill of all - Winston. Years ago we went to Blenheim and saw the room in which he was born yet to be honest, I really haven't given him a second thought since then. Now I'm keen to know more - how could you not? Fascinating.

And then today, Toby's class had an end of term morning tea so last night I made these biscuit schoolboys. I used one of Nigella's very easy recipes (How to Be A Domestic Goddess p212) and then serendipitously found a chocolate pen in the deepest darkest reaches of the pantry. What luck. The children thought I should attempt the school crest on the tee shirt. I know my limits.

And I'm on my second sample pot of magenta paint for our front door after feng sui dictated that it should be magenta (or silver or gold or white or yellow):

Who knows what they think in at the Dulux Trade Centre where I've been twice now to discuss the perfect shade of magenta. It's not as simple as it might seem - I've have had to wade into the world of paint bases and other secret paint business as not all colours can be used externally. It's true - you learn something new everyday.

R

Adelaide.

So in the very early hours of Saturday morning I got up to fly to Adelaide to go to an old friend from school's 40th birthday party. It was a surprise organised by her husband. He managed to pull it off as look how surprised and happy she was:

If it had been me I don't know how I would have coped with the surprise aspect - I'd be worried that I hadn't brushed my hair, or worse. Apparently there was talk about taking the birthday girl to the pool before her party, luckily for her they didn't so she was all set to party. We all brushed our hair too:

Isn't it fun hanging out with friends that back in the day you went to school with and that you don't see so often now? It makes you wonder why. Maybe because most of them live in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Sandy Bay.

Sometimes it's no so fun for your husband though. Mine has previously held the title of Best On Ground yet he was Best Behaved on Saturday and refrained from fertilising the flowers. That's not to say that the silly drink wasn't had. Things did get a tad messy:

Sorry girls, I couldn't resist! I'm not ashamed to admit that I discoed in the aisle of the bus back into town when it pulled up at the traffic lights. At that stage I felt like I was revisiting my twenties. On Sunday though I felt like I was in my hundreds.

So what did we do in Adelaide on Sunday while we waited for our return flight? We went and queued for a table to have yum cha with trolley service at Citi Zen Chinese Restaurant:

Not surprisingly, we said no to the chicken's feet.

Oh, and we had to make the most of being unencumbered by children to go shopping for suits and shirts for my husband. It was a long day as our flight didn't leave until 7pm. We didn't make bed again until midnight - two nights in a row.

However, I still got up on Monday morning to complete day 30 of the challenge:

And I've got the certificate to prove it:

Namaste. Now what?

R