Du Pain, Du Vin ...

Jugendstil villa in Bonn - Bad Godesberg. November 2011.

In spite of alarming daily news reports about the euro crisis and the fact we still don't have a government after 500+ days of negotiating, the majority of us seem to lead our daily lives with little noticeable change.

For me personally, these are hectic but stimulating times. The past fortnight I've spent 4 days in England (London and the Cotswolds), 4 in France (Lille, mainly) and 2 in Germany (Bonn - Bad Godesberg). Most of the travelling was done for work, but I've managed to squeeze in a couple of days for myself.

Spare wine racks, anyone?

In my scarce free time I've been studying for next week's exam (I'm taking 'Communicative French' evening classes twice a week) and of course I had to attend two of the annual wine festivals that are common in France and Belgium in late autumn.

Some big, others small, these wine fairs are the perfect occasion to discover wines from independent winemakers and many of the smaller vineyards all over France.

As a result, we're now in dire need of extra wine racks, but I understand that's a luxury problem.

And now for some trivia:


My top 5 observations of the past 2 weeks.

1. Lille is truly a beautiful city, with striking architecture, a vibrant atmosphere and wonderful restaurants.
   
2. The French Alsace region, famous for its white wines, makes surprisingly good pinot noirs that offer great value for money.
   
3. Anybody who thinks English people are cold and reserved, hasn't met my friends. I had the chance to meet up with several of them when I was in the Cotswolds and even though we don't see each other often, the time we spent together was once again heartwarming.
4. Once you've learnt a language, even if you don't use it for ages, it's ingrained in your brain. I had French in school between the ages of 8 and 17, then didn't use it for almost 20 years. Now that I'm taking classes again, I'm surprised how quickly it all comes back.
5. Bad Godesberg's residential villa quarter is stunning. When Bonn was still the capital of West Germany and later the official seat of united Germany's government (until 1999), many of the foreign embassies were located in stately Jugendstil villas.

Residential villas in Bonn - Bad Godesberg. November 2011.

So, my dear friends, what have you been up to?

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Simplify.

I've been a bad blogger this month, but I have an excuse:  I have been (trying to be) good somethingelses, mainly at work and at home.

A few weeks ago, I started my new job. It's stimulating and demanding and I love it.

It's causing big changes in my life, though. So far none I hadn't anticipated - an advantage of taking the whole summer to weigh pros and cons - but it's still interesting to observe and experience the effects.

Changing your surroundings, circumstances or lifestyle has a way of confronting you with where you're at in life. As you develop new routines and grow into them, it's easier to see how far you've come and what you need to focus on for the future.

The most mundane but possibly most significant change for me is that I have a lot less 'free' time. That doesn't sound like a good thing, yet I feel more relaxed, in control and mentally free than I have in years. It was clearly time to stop fretting, hoping and assuming, go out on the fields and bring in the harvest.

What has changed?

I always thought I was unable to simplify my life. I'm the kind of person who's potentially interested in anything and everything. That is still the case - and I'm happy because it's a good skill for a writer - but I seem to have learnt to prioritise along the way. Who'd have thought?

Most importantly: giving up a number of things (or making them less prominent) doesn't make me feel like I'm missing out. To the contrary. I am less worried and more productive. I know that what's important will still stand out, possibly more so than before.

As a result, I have set myself a deadline for my novel. I have a (small) list with the final changes I want to make, and then I'm going to unleash my baby.

Whatever happens next, I'll live and learn - and change again.

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Image: 'Harvest time' by Steve Schnabel. Available under a creative commons license. © 2009, Steve Schnabel.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Wine.

"Wine is the refined jewel that only a grown woman will prefer to the sparkling trinkets adored by little girls."
- Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"Only a fool tries to reconstruct a bunch of grapes from a bottle of wine."
- Jeanette Winterson (Art & Lies)

"Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves, and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, everyone...a humble miracle"
- Joanne Harris

“There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”
- Colette

"What I do, and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes."
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems)

"...and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water."
- Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)

"All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat."
- Margaret Atwood

"I am a connoisseur of fine irony. 'Tis a bit like fine wine, but it has a better bite."
- Lynn Kurland (Princess of the Sword (Nine Kingdoms, #3))

"Language is wine upon the lips."
- Virginia Woolf

My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations."
- C. JoyBell C

"Your divine should not have used water. It just doesn't hold the attention properly. Wine. Or blood, in a pinch. Some liquid that matters."
- Lois McMaster Bujold

"You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?"
- Moira J. Moore (Heroes at Odds)

"I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."
- Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)

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Image: 'A Glass in The Hand...' by clappstar. Available under a creative commons license. © 2010, clappstar.

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Le Nouvel Automne Est Arrivé.

Autumn is here. Or is it? We've had clear blue skies and temperatures around 25°C for over a week, which is more summer than we've enjoyed all through August.

Yet the mornings have a chilly bite to them and our trees have transformed into multi-coloured marvels with crispy leaves that rustle and crackle on their way to the ground. Clusters of mushrooms have sprung up to confuse the cats on their daily trot to the food trays - yes, autumn is here all right.

While nature is shedding its fruits and preparing to go underground for the winter, I spent some time in my hammock today, basking in the afternoon sun and thinking about my own harvest: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

It struck me how much my life has changed these past few years. If I had to label the difference, I think 'ownership' would be a good word. I feel like I've finally taken the reins of my life, not in a strained and no-room-for-improvisation kind of way, but definitely more focused than I've ever been.

The interesting thing is that I still don't know where I'm going. My focus doesn't seem to be a goal or a point in the future. Instead it's coming from within, born from a better insight in what I can do, what I like to do and what I want to contribute to the world.

Writing has been an important factor and a catalyst in this process. By looking for the right words, I'm discovering what it is I want to say. By looking for ways to get my message across, I'm finding out why it's so important to me.

This is going to be an interesting season; I wonder what else it's got in store ....

What are you harvesting this year?

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Ideas for the Holidays.

Amazing how time flies... we're nearly halfway into November! Less than a month from now, many of us will be preparing for the holidays and thinking about presents to put under the Christmas / Yule / Hanukkah tree.
In order to get myself in the right mindset, in the next couple of weeks I'm going to try and post a bunch of party, decoration, food & drink and gift ideas.

(c) christmasstockimages.com

First of all: the tree. I have to admit: I love the smell of a real tree. Still, I hate the thought of slaying it just to decorate the house for a while.
Therefore, many years ago, I decided to buy a tree with roots and plant it out in the garden afterwards for reuse the next year. Unfortunately that didn't work out. By the time I got around to putting it outside, it was too far gone.

After three years of miserable failure, I finally succeeded to save one. I planted it in my herb garden (where it really didn't fit in), didn't dig it out for the following holiday seasons and eventually moved it to another part of the garden where it died anyway. In my defense, I did cut it up and compost it.

In the meantime I've found a compromise: I wait until a couple of days before Christmas, when all normal people have long got their tree and the only ones left are the poor little ugly trees nobody wanted. That's when I come in, a superhero with wool mittens, offering that little, despairing, cut-down tree an opportunity to fulfil its final purpose: to bring beauty and joy to a living room. And every year I'm surprised what a bit of careful pruning, lots of sparkly lights and lavish gold-coloured decoration can achieve.

But as perceivers go (another not-so-covert MBTI reference), I'm always open to consider alternatives for the classic tree, and a few of these certainly hold potential:

Last year, on a champagne tasting trip to France, I saw this at the Mercier house:

Wouldn't that make a brilliant, bubbling Christmas tree? I swear, if anyone wants to get me one of those, I'll take good care of it! I might even share.

Just in case you're not a millionaire, here are a few other, more budget friendly suggestions:

A tree made with your favourite chocolates:

Or your best-loved books:

And I just love these:

• My absolute favourite from All the luck in the world.
• Actually, this sushi tree might be even better, if you don't mind having to make a new one each day. Great idea for a seasonal party though!
• Clever Karen's vintage card tree.
• The wooden possibiliTree®: a frame you can decorate any which way you like.
• Get creative with the content of your bookshelves and see how observant your visitors are.
• Got a hammer and nails? Find a couple of pieces of wood to recycle and make one of these, or get one at Wood & Wool Stool.

And now for something completely different, but not entirely: if you'd consider getting someone a pet for a present, see how to wrap it below. Buffoonery, I say!

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Rêver de roulottes...

The summer holidays are gone again, which tends to make me a bit melancholic. I usually deal with that by becoming slightly more domestic, expressed by a sudden interest in making chutneys, pumpkin soup and fruit liqueurs in all the beautiful colours of autumn.

It also makes me fantasize about the summers-to-come, and the places I would love to go next.

I'm not a list-making type of person, but I have a number of places in mind where I still want to go, for different reasons. Sometimes to discover a country, area or culture I'm really interested in; to visit a site of great historical (or personal) value, or just because I've found a rare, pure holiday gem that calls to me, regardless of the location.
This can be a precious B&B, a quirky boutique hotel or any kind of place where I feel that the owners have put a tremendous amount of love, time and care into creating something that's truly unique.

A few months ago I found one of those, or at least one that - on its website - seems to have that magical potential. It's located in the high Beaujolais region in France, and it consists of beautifully decorated historic ... gypsy caravans!

Wouldn't you like to spend some time in one of these... living out your creative, romantic or vagabond dreams?

More pictures on their website: http://www.lesroulottes.com/ 

In case you're considering to get one of your own: check out http://www.les-verdines.com/.

Or if you'd rather just stick to dreaming, I love Jeanne Bayol's books and the pictures on her website: http://www.jeanne-bayol.com/.

Have a great autumn!

Thanks to Pascaline and Jeanne for so kindly letting me use their pictures!

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