Comedy of Errors

The first week of the school holidays passed in a flash with the kids half at holiday camp and half at home engaged in creative pursuits like colouring or repeatedly hitting each other over the head. I made sure to include some good parental things like haircuts and taught my son to tie his shoelaces, then set myself up for failure by acquiescing to every request for ice cream (anything for a quiet life) and accept that the habit is now so ingrained I’ll have to divert my coffee budget over to it.

I had breakfast with national treasure

Dorie Greenspan

whose 15th(!) book Anytime Cakes (sneak peek here) is coming out in October and over scrambled eggs she reassured me that even when it feels hard eventually lots of little words make up a book. In an effort to jumpstart some creativity I trotted off afterwards to the Salle Ovale at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, pen and paper in hand. Did I write something extraordinary? No. But it blows my mind that you can just show up, walk in, sit down and study/read/write in this magnificent space with no prior planning. Plus it’s air-conditioned. Go when they open to ensure a spot.

It’s ages since I’ve made it to the Saturday morning market at Place Maubert so I was happy to pull out our new shopping trolley (the old one lost a wheel) and take my time, stocking up on cherries and apricots, green beans and salad, before rolling home to transfer the responsibility for lunch to my husband Ready, Steady Cook style. The afternoon was less relaxing as I attempted to solve a little health mystery with a CT scan which was a comedy of errors from start to finish and ended in tears after I was scolded for showing up as directed and told it wasn’t the scan I needed at all.

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I got my own back however by reciting my phone number incorrectly to the team, which is the surefire way to upset any Frenchie while acting naively innocent. How do you say a phone number incorrectly? I’m glad you asked. While us peasants in the anglophone world say it number by number the French prefer couplets: zero six, thirty eight, ninety seven, seventy five, sixteen (no that’s not my phone number, sorry if it’s yours) which seems easy enough until you know more about French numbers. Up to sixty everything is normal and then logic flies out the window. Seventy is “sixty-ten.” Eighty is “four twenty.” Ninety five is “four twenty fifteen.” My life would be infinitely easier if I just memorised mine and said it their way but it’s my last stand and I refuse, embracing the inevitable confrontation each time I sound it out, piece by piece.

On Sunday I returned to Place Maubert for a vide grenier and scored some great little bits, thankful to have friends with babies so I could buy tiny handmade nautical outfits, and returned home to proudly present my purchases to my husband like a cat with a mouse. For lunch we assessed the weather perfect enough to pull out the Very Nice Picnic Blanket that requires excessive love and attention to roll up when we’re finished with it and spent the afternoon lolling about in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Have a great week,

- Emily

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Cheese we’re eating this week:

• Chêvre Parthenay - a soft ash-covered goat's milk cheese matured on a chestnut leaf with a delicate, grassy aroma.

• Morbier - a cow’s milk cheese with a distinctive layer of ash separating it horizontally in the middle, which separates the layer made with morning milk and the layer made with evening milk.

• Pont-l'Évêque - apparently named after a pont (bridge) in a small town in Normandy, this rich and creamy cow’s milk is claimed to be the oldest Norman cheese still in production.

All three cheeses were from Manu at Marché Maubert.

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Real Life Paris Photo

Why did I cry at the cuteness of this little crane?