Up from the Christmas lunch table at 4pm. Just in time to catch the golden tips of the afternoon sweeping across the Alpilles. It is cold enough to shake us from our sluggishness and yet sunny enough to keep the peace. Strolling in pairs, then alone. Talking, then quiet. Completely content.
Oh hooray! I was thinking of you and Herve today and wondering how the best way to get ahold of you would be to wish you both Happy New Year. Because I want you to have one! I am not sure what to wish you though as you both to seem to have it all, so more of the same?
I looove that standby time in a hotel the night before a flight. It is just so removed apart from everything. A moment in a parentheses. Remi and I once spent three whole days like that at the Panafric in Nairobi and it was so fantastic. I think that we went to the Hilton to gawk a bit. 🙂 And hmmm, if Medecins Sans Frontiers is like MASH, does that make Hervé HotLips? Heehee.
Travel safely tomorrow, enjoy opening your packages when you get home and being attacked with bisous by your puppers!
Thanks for all of the…everything…that you have brought this year!
Hey Miss Heather….in regard to Herve's "references"?…
I'm pals with Geraldine Brooks(Australian-born, former war-correspodent, and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist). All done and said…she's a fiercely intelligent and deeply funny (at least I think so) woman.
I was surprised, a number of years ago, when I first described Herve to her, and she wrote back that, "seeing through a glass darkly", she seemed to recall meeting him, years ago, in the bar of the Nairobi Hilton one night when they were among the folks airlifted out of Eritrea or Ethiopia (I can't recall which one).
I mentioned his affiliation with Medicins Sans Frontiers, and she immediately responded by telling me that, among the attractive (and Geradline is quite pretty) female war-correspondents, the members of Doctors-Without-Borders were collectively (and eye-rollingly) referred to as "Doctors Without Trousers".
It all sounds, to my inexperienced ears, very "M.A.S.H."
To answer your expressed hopes?… Christmas in Tours was predictably wonderful…followed by five very good days in Toulouse (we stayed in a very fine and formerly respectable hotel right on the Place Capitole)….and we're now sitting in a room at the Roissy Hilton. After each trip (and this seems to be about four times per year now), we park our tails here the night before the flight back to America.
As usual? I made my usual carry-an-extra-suitcase trip to the Monoprix in Toulouse….and the long windowsill here is packed with sea salt, mustards, chocolates, walnut oil, goose fat, lentilse du puy, and any number of other pantry-basics that we haul back home from each trip. We intend to sit here, gradually get drunk, start optimistically bubble-wrapping,and otherwise prepare ourselves for the flight back home tomorrow morning.
Oddly enough, the term "home" increasingly seems a bit inaccurate.
that said?…..I look forward to getting back to the house I legally own and seeing all those dang dogs of mine.
A happy new year to you, Ben, and Mister Britches,
David Terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
Beautiful images, can catch the atmosphere and feel the fresh air….
xxxkarin
My goodness, David Terry, you and Herve have formidable will! I would have ripped open that package right away. But all the better…you will see why…although I do have to agree with you about the cowboy attitude, Herve's references are none to be messed with! I sincerely hope, with all of my heart, that you are in a "real" hotel this go around. A-hem.
Virginia! Thank you! You surprised me with your kind compliment!
Astonishingly beautiful photos Heather. The sun glinting on everything…just magic. Virginia x
Hey Heather,
Well, lucky me…..after spending Christmas in Tours with the family, I'm sitting here (Herve is snoring away on the other side of the room) in a Toulouse hotel room…..looking at a very large package from some "Remi Benali" in Arles. We haven't opened it, oddly enough. Herve didn't want to disturb the secure wrapping or the address labels. All he's done is to print-out & stick-on another large-print sheet which basically says that this is the property of Dr. Herve Mommeja-Marin and should not be tampered-with or opened without prior communication with him via his contact information (which is cited)at the WHO, the CDC, and/or Medicins Sans Frontiers. I told him that those notoriously bossy TS-whatever inspection-folks back in New York were more likely to gleefully regard the note as a dare rather than as a warning…adding that they couldn't care less if he was Madelyn Albright and Albert Schweitzer rolled into one supposedly impressive ball. This is one of those occasions when, once again, I've resigned myself to realizing that Herve simply doesn't "get" American good-old-boy/cowboy attitude (which oddly enough, I encounter, nowadays, much more often in metropolitan airports than I ever do back home in rural Tennessee).
That said, I'm looking forwaqrd to seeing Remi's pictures when/if we all get back home.
Level Best as Ever, David Terry http://www.davidterryart.com
Thank you for your well wishes for 2012–those are all things that sound very good to me!
I am very excited about February and will send you an email at Interieurs to talk it about it more…
Also sending hoping for you a fantastic year ahead.
I love Provence in the winter and long to visit. I am planning to be in Avignon for the deballage in februaryI am so happy that you like the Jose Esteves basket lamp. I found the perfect home!
Bonne Annee 2012, may it be filled with love, beauty, adventures and laughter
Francine
Thanks so much you amazing group of ladies.
Helen, I am sending those wishes right back at you. Goodness is a great word. And Stacey, for the life of me, I can't imagine you doing nothing!
Sounds like the perfect day!A full tummy and then a walk……..love the shadow of you snapping the photo!And I just figured out Robin is your sister!Super sleuth Iam!Should have known with that red hair!
Looks like a beautiful day!! Hope you, Remi and Ben had a wonderful Christmas. I'm in a food coma and have enjoyed doing absolutely nothing today – what a treat!!
Sounds almost like our Christmas Day if you throw in reading. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!
Hi Heather
Your walk radiated with peace and happiness. May all your days in 2012 be full of goodness
Helen xx
Beautiful!!!!
xx
Greet
Thank you Sister! It would have been better if you were here!
Beautiful. Peaceful. Lucky! : )