Bonsoir!

Well, I have been away, but I am back and, quite frankly, unimpressed with the return to normality. The clan and I packed our trunks and left on a jet plane (well, a budget airline papermache creation that probably cost less than the stale egg sandwich I was overcharged for whilst on board), setting up camp in the Latin Quarter of Paris. I have found my spiritual place of calm and satisfaction. I have found a place where I can visit Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf in the morning, buy pepper spray and snails in garlic sauce in the afternoon and be promised that all my drinks will be free if the men I am with partake of the skin sins in the Sexodrome or Pussy Palace. I have found Japanese eateries that serve steak so beautifully tender that it is merely shown the grill before it's served to you, bloody, soft and melty and French patiseries that offer cakes and sweet goodies that rot the canines whilst you browse.
I have also, in amoungst my tourist treats, become engaged to be married. I enjoy the term 'engaged to be married', it's links to the idea of a telephone being engaged offering a nod to the idea that I shall forever more emit a busy signal to all passing passes.

Oh, and I am weak...

I caved in and made my brother a birthday cake. It was in the shape of Stewie Griffin's head and had 'Victory is Mine' written on it it red icing.
I'm going to hell.

Roll it around and see how it feels.

This evening, against my better judgement and purely because I am of a macabre disposition, I am listening to a documentary about a plane that crashed when the 15 year old son of the pilot was having a go at sitting at the controls. It is on youtube, split into about 5 videos, and I am listening to it whilst on another page writing this. I should probably not be listening, since we fly off on holiday in a week, but I have an odd need to examine all sorts of 'what-ifs' for any change to my daily routine. I guess I figure that if I have thought about it happening to me, it probably won't, since it's always the thing you're least expecting that gets you.

I read a charming short story today, by Amos Oz, who makes my heart sing and brow furrow in equal measure. In it, I was introduced to a character with possibly the best name I have heard since Veruca Salt. Shimshon Sheinbaum. Shimshon Sheinbaum. Say it. Say it, out loud, three times. I will be amazed if you aren't smiling by the third time. I may write to Mr. Oz, and see if he's bothered to say it out loud. I bet he has. He probably spent hours, pacing back and forth in his study, saying all manner of name combinations over and over again until he found one that had this effect. Kudos, Mr. Oz, kudos.

A lesson for you all.

Sooo, I thought I had pulled off the deception of the decade by convincing my nearest and dearest that I had lovingly baked a beautiful birthday cake for my son a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, as I should have anticipated, this little white lie has come back with the firm intention of sinking its teeth into my posterior. My mother has requested that I produce an identical cake for my brothers birthday on Sunday. It would seem that I am now the cake lady. Never lie, you'll only end up having to bake.