THAT'S MORE LIKE IT...

I'm eating a Tim Tam, it's pretty good.
I've been back about 4 days now, slowly getting back into the rhythm of the tropical lifestyle and changed time zone. Mostly recovered but still getting up insanely early. But that's also partly because around the equator the sun has pretty much only 2 states - set and up. The intermediate dawn business lasts about 10 minutes.

HOUSEWARMINGS

Current view of our internal courtyard - it's coming along gradually, and has finally evolved slightly beyond the the three primary colours of moss, putty and cement by some orange marigolds and an ornamental kumquat given to us as a housewarming present. Crossing fingers that it doesn't turn up its leaves and die within the first month (considering my criminal track record with nursery plants that are any older than 6 months and retail for anything over 20 euros  - just ask my recently departed ficus). It's only because they load them up with chemicals and grow them in perfect hermetically sealed greenhouses (i.e. their 'ideal growing environment' or some such rubbish), so that the minute you put them into the real growing world (where they might get too over or under enthusiastically watered, the pollution diluted stuff filtering through the dirty window doesn't actually count as light, and there's dust clogging up their stomatas), they just go and die ungratefully on you.

SHOPPING MAD

I don't know why I do this to myself but when it comes to clothes shopping it's rarely, if ever, a good idea to tackle a clothing quest when you specifically want something. So why oh why did I find myself braving a hot and sticky day, without sunglasses and wearing the wrong shoes (which I need to unlace, take off, put back on, relace) and the wrong pants (unzip, peel off, sob at pasty white wobbly legs in mirror, put on, rezip) as I desperately lurch from one stretch cotton mecca to another, half dying of heatstoke and ignoring a rapidly increasing thirst in search of A Pair of Jeans that Fits and Does Not look Like it's from the 80's. And try not to get distrac - ooo, that's a pretty top - by the fashion pitfalls along the way. Mission:Impossible is finding a pair of jeans, and if I get dehydrated and faint from lack of food and too much walking along the way, well, that just might make the difference between the zipper closing and not.

A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS

The rain let up for one or two hours yesterday - long enough to grab my bike and explore some of Lille's adjoining suburbs and marvel once again at the extreme abundance of cycle paths (many of which leave the road system entirely and take you through green groves with wild flowering forget-me-nots). Golden sunlight filtering through the freshly rainwashed green leaves in the eternally gorgeous citadelle park/forest prompted me to think for the 680th time that I really should picnic there.

Earlier that morning I braved the tropical style downpour to visit the Vieux Lille markets (classed as one of the 100 prettiest markets in France). New seasons treats included fresh peas (which remind me of being a kid, my grandma always made me shell them), gariguette strawberries (a French variety I think, longer, sweeter and silkier than your standard strawberry - the best come from Plougastel in Brittany*). An unplanned 'treat' was the sweet talking cheese seller who skilfully bombarded me with a tasting a range of sheep milk cheese from the Alps, unpasteurized gruyere from Savoie and before I knew it had wrapped up a modest block in some waxed paper before I had asked the price. I shouldn't have asked the price. In these situations it's just best to hand over 20 euros and be happy if you get some change out of it.

*As an aside, the French apparently consume 2.5kg per person per year of strawberries. Considering I buy about 1/2 kilo a week for the entire season, I must be taking up the slack for a lot of people.