Island Life by David Slack

It gradually dawned on me as the butcher carefully sliced, pared and minced, that she had meant: I'll be a while. My pride was the butcher's gain. I improvised something else to buy. Merci, au revoir.

I think I'd be inclined to regard watching a good French butcher preparing meat as part of the entertainment anyway. Mmmm. Fancy meat stuff ...

We are in Montmartre in an apartment three floors up old wooden stairs with a wrought-iron balustrade.

If the entire post had only consisted of that sentence, I would have been just as gleefully envious as I was after reading the whole thing.

It sounds brilliant. More la Vie d'Île tales, please.

Gleefully envious.

Yes, me too.

Ditto, its like schadenfreude, only with good fortune...

Not then, unfeta-ed?

droooooooooool ... the height of my criminal career was smuggling french sausages, cheeses and heart-breakingly cheap bottles of red back to london on the eurostar ...

i second robyn - more stories please.

What a shame you couldn't get to Valencia earlier in the year. You might have been able to pour cold water on our belief that the Amerca's Cup was the second most important sporting tournament IN THE WORLD!! (ranking just below the Olympics). It never ceases to amaze me what bollocks our Sports Bodies (via their PR lackeys, and The Sports Minister) foist upon the ignorant masses - most of whom haven't actually travelled beyond Sydney and have no idea that the world does not give two (cents) about NewZild. Or they just love sport so much they don't freakin' care and think the government (ie Taxpayer) should pay.

BTW David: there's a charming little cafe in Paris, down by the river, called Chez Touriste I'd like you to check out for me. Ask for Francoise, the tall and impossible good-looking french waiter, and punch him in the nose for me. He charged me $14 for a lemonade.

Ah, Paris. I love it. When I lived in Swissland, I used to spend a bit of time in that lovely city.

Je m'excuse. Plus d'histoire, s'il vous plait!

Punch all the impossible, good-looking French waiters in the nose from me. if they haven't done anything to deserve it, they shortly will.

Where can a person go when all the world cup shouting grows too loud? You might consider Paris. We have been here since Saturday and have encountered it only un peu. If they learn that we are New Zealanders, people seize it as a conversation point, but the nation is, as you probably would imagine, not gripped.

Spain and indeed Valencia was very much the same about the Amercia's Cup, yet the experience at the America's Cup complex was superb and bettered that of Auckland significantly.