Weekend Review

What to do in 24 hours in boiling hot Paris? Firstly, forget all your clothes. Except the ones you're wearing, I mean. Just leave everything, mystifyingly, in a neat pile by the front door to be rediscovered when you get home. Spend the weekend wondering, worrying, if you somehow managed to lose two dresses in the station. Next, sit on some chewing gum in the metro so the only thing you have to wear is covered in sticky crap. Ideally, you could add to the general aura of awesomeness you are now giving off by having a nice lady stop you on the street to point out to you that your outsized, over-stuffed handbag is causing your dress to ride up at one side so all of the 7ème arrondissement can see your knickers. Humiliatingly reassess why men have been staring at you on the metro. Wonder how long you have been displaying your pants. Try not to think about it any more. Feel the fizz of excitement at being able to kick up your heels a little and do some cackling. Ah, cackling. There can never be enough.

Say hello to your gorgeous friend and hostess who throws the best parties. Have a little preliminary gossip and run through the guest list. Warm up with a little light cackling and champagne.

Say hello to Karl, constant presence and observer. Thank goodness he can't talk. Sssssh, Karl.

Say hello to the Eiffel Tower:


Scrub up as best you can with your sweaty, chewing gum stained dress. Your gorgeous friend will keep the lighting low. All you need to remember is not to spend the evening saying "I forgot all my clothes! I'm covered in chewing gum!". This may prove difficult.

Next, admire this sign and do exactly what it says.

(Warning: Tonight we're having a dinner party and we'll be making a NOISE. We might walk around. And LAUGH. We did. We might have also drunk champagne and thrown mini-meringues and experimented with Alain de Botton's notorious dinner party questions).

Get a little sleep. A very very little sleep. But waking up to 25° and brilliant sunshine at 9 in the morning makes the tiny amount of sleep almost bearable. Nurofen Plus and coffee help too.

Do not pass Le Bon Marché. Well, ok, pass it, walk through to enjoy the air conditioning, stroke the Tom Ford lipsticks (stroking this one particularly insistently) and Carine Gilson loveliness, do not give in to the Erotokritos dresses that could have been created by making all the dresses in your wardrobe breed with each other:

Do NOT give in, even as the sales boy looks at you with puppyish eyes filled with the hope of commission. Note that you have chronically overdone the fake tan on legs which are shade #4 Not Nearly Natural whilst your arms remain shade #1 Cadaverous Trogolodyte. Understand better the disdainful look of the evenly, beautifully bronzed man guarding the Tom Ford lipsticks.

Do not collect 200 black dresses in the Maje Outlet store. In fact, do not even go into the Maje store, because the flesh is weak in the face of cheap Maje. Do not attempt to transport a St Honoré aux Framboises back on a boiling train, instead eat it alone, furtively, greedily, in the sunshine, in your chewing gum coated dress. Wander around St Germain and down to St Sulpice and be surprised how far you can still navigate your way around on memory. When it hits 29° stagger back for a little sleep.

Head, finally, back to the station with jars of jam and proper pains aux raisins and pharmacy esoterica and a small picnic. Sit in the station for an hour reading this while the SNCF tries to clear people off the tracks and finally, regretfully, get on your stylish (ahem), delayed grey and maroon train. all the way to the grey and greasy Gare du Midi, where you instantly feel invisible (perhaps not having your dress riding up over your arse assists with this, but from inside your demented sleep deprived head, you conclude that you are simply Not Attractive in Brussels).

Really, the sensible thing to do would be to sleep now, but instead, you change into something without chewing gum and go out to an obscure corner of Brussels for steak and chips. It gets to 2am and you are still out in the extraordinary warmth, drinking bad white wine and talking about ferrets.

Reach Sunday. Collapse in a heap.