Exciting news for me is that my parents are taking me to Paris at the beginning of December. I haven't been for five years and I can't wait. Last time I went I bought a green short sleeved jumper featuring an embroidered pair of sunglasses, and a V-neck sweater vest with knitted penguins all over it - vintage purchases I still wear and love - so hopefully this trip will be equally fruitful. I suppose we'll have to do something cultural as well, between the eating and the shopping. Things must've changed over there in the past five years though - if any loyal Faithful have any tips of Must Do tourist things, please leave a comment, bearing in mind that my parents will be present, so fetish nights and/or Full Moon party type events possibly not suitable.
Having kicked off with a rather lovely Friday night, my weekend was really quite ace. Saturday was spent mooching, hungover, with Emily, before I went to meet Joanna in Westbourne Park and talked non-stop about Friday night for about 25 minutes. Then we went to Dan and Clare's engagement party, celebrating a couple who were just destined to be together. I am extremely and genuinely delighted for them. Selfishly, I was also really glad that they had an excuse to throw a party, because it was the first time I'd seen a lot of that posse for months, and I was like a butterfly on coke, chatting to as many people as I possibly could, laughing far too loudly and struggling to check my emails on my iPhone using Fuller's wifi. Pah.
Then Vanessa and I took the tube home and, during a nine minute wait on the platform at Elephant and Castle, took photographs of ourselves reflected in the perspex covering of the tube map so that we looked like a) Cabbage Patch Kids and then b) Cyclops. Our silent, hiccupping hysteria was possibly incredibly annoying for the three other people waiting forlornly on the platform.Then on Sunday, Emily, Joanna, Kate, Ses and I went to the Robert Capa exhibition at the Barbican, which was fascinating - or at least, in the spirit of true self-obsession, I found my reaction to it fascinating, in that the exhibition of Capa's famous photographs was teamed with photographs from modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unexpectedly, I found the recent pictures infinitely more affecting. And I much preferred the photos taken by Capa's girlfriend, which seemed to have a more personal, studied focus - not like warfare then. I did understand why Capa went for the blurred action shots, and his images of the D-Day landings were amazing - what these journalists go through is incredible - but one of the modern collections featured a wall of photos with subjects ranging from Iraqi families wearing Santa hats to brutal attacks by American soldiers - now that I write it, the contrast is possibly a bit schmaltzy but in situ it was very striking.
Despite gallery flop, Em and I somehow found the energy to schlep over to Cheshire St for a quick trip to Beyond Retro where I found some amazing new items among the warehouse's heaving rails. Very smug. I went home, collapsed onto the sofa, watched Saturday's X Factor (gripping) and then realised that my flat was a tip and that it was being seen by someone who's never seen it before on Tuesday. Consequently, my shoe pile had to be confronted. I laid them all out for the first time and I'm ashamed to say that, in a display worthy of a modern day Imelda, the pairs covered the floor around three sides of my bed. It was extraordinary. I did a cull, and then counted what was left. And... I don't know if I can just come out and admit how many are left... but if you take the number 200 and then times it by six and then divide it by the square root of 25, and then minus the sum of 170 and 36, and then add the amount you get when you multiply 3 and 5, that's how many pairs of shoes and boots I now possess. In my defence, I suffer from an unnamed but special condition due to having size 10 feet - due to an almost total shortage of shoes in my size during my younger years, I now compulsively fall upon any footwear I find that fits me today, panicking that if I don't buy it immediately, I'll never find anything like it again. It's an addiction - don't criticise me: pity me.
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