After enjoying the rather more fast-paced and frantic delights of London life this time last week and meeting some charming and interesting new companions in the process, this week I am taking it at an altogether more relaxed pace, although I was compelled (in the nicest way possible) to work up something of a sweat in the company of a…

Needless to say, my earlier prediction was entirely correct and the summer evening I had planned to relax in the lovely Jardin du Luxembourg with Rigoletto was washed out completely, to the extent that even the barely-two-minute walk to Pigalle metro was enough to drench me to the skin. The evening was salvaged only by an industrial-sized slice of good…

I hate to gloat (it is so very unbecoming, after all), but having spent a blissful morning food shopping, and the afternoon enjoying the spectacular Kandinsky exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou (prior to a dinner I feel embarrassed to describe in detail and am still recovering from, and which has lain waste to my plans of a trip out…