Lunch with Leger. Or why Nice is nice.

I’m getting used to this grand tour style of travel – gallivanting from one part of the world to the next in search of enlightenment, that in our case comes dressed as more pink wine, more art, more food, more architectural and geographical appreciation and more pink wine.

Today was our last day in Nice. Already. It’s been a beautiful, relaxing, ideal couple of days, an ideal post-script to a brilliant, curious week spent exploring Provence.

Let's Go to Arles, Darls

Today was incredibly moving. Just on the outskirts of St-Remy, a 20-minute amble from the centre of town, lies the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum where, for 12 months in 1899, a deeply troubled Vincent Van Gogh was a voluntary patient. During his stay here, Van Gogh painted over 150 works, many of them now iconic and decorating the walls of the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and countless student flats around the world.

Vincent Van Gogh, Irises, 1899

Food porn et Paul Cezanne

Another cracking couple of days chilling in Provence with LB and Le Parents. We spent the best part of this morning having indecent thoughts about cheese and prosciutto and fresh strawberries and macaroons and more cheese and more olives and warm baguettes at St-Remy’s weekly farmers market. (I just started typing an analogy about food porn and this market taking things to the next level but it started to get a bit unseemly so I deleted it. So I’ll just say this: Oh. My. God. Best farmers market. Ever.)

Provence (and my 200th post)

The surest way to my heart is through a flea market.  So St-Remy and I are sure to become very good friends.

What a seriously beautiful town. Not a lick of lavender to be had anywhere in bloody Provence (seems the shitty spring weather wasn’t just restricted to London…) but there are poppies and wildflowers everywhere and in St-Remy, even without the constant sunshine (see previous point about shitty springs) there’s a lot to love, not least the fact that I see Van Gogh paintings in every field. But I'll get to that…

From Paris to Provence

We arrived in Provence this afternoon, in the lively, lovely town of St-Remy. Max and Lovely Boy survived their Ryanair flight to meet us in Marseilles and the collective mood, given the indecisive sunshine, is still largely positive. So bring on a week in Provence, oui?

If only we'd bought an umbrella. And not shoes...

Mum and I have had a lovely couple of days in Paris. Froze our fucking arses off completely, got rained on, got battered by the wind and ended up sacrificing a pair of sodden shoes to the Parisian rain gods but still, a lovely time.

We both had a sartorial agenda for our 48 hours in this lovely city – mine involved sorbet coloured ballet shoes, Mum’s a visit to a small boutique she’d read about on the Left Bank near the Musee d’Orsay. We'd both agreed on a visit to Printemps. The rest of our time was spent drinking wine and shivering.

It feels like Christmas Eve

I’m not quite on holidays but I may as well be: the parents arrive tomorrow. Work’s been typically chaotic but with only two days left now until two weeks off I figure the stress is a small, preliminary price to pay.

I’ve been stalking them all day. It absolutely blows my mind that this blinking dot moving across my screen is in fact a Qantas A380 jet carrying 450-odd people, two of which are my Mum and step-dad, wedged up the back in rows 86 and just-call-this-hell.

They’re due to arrive at some ridiculous hour so Lovely Boy and I are going to meet them for breakfast and then tomorrow evening I’m bringing them to work, for dinner at the café and then a performance by the Irish artist Orla Barry. I’m a little worried how this will go down to be honest. Contemporary live art is one thing (LB is going to LOATHE it…) but contemporary live art after two glasses of wine and 24 hours of jetlag? Well, it’s going to be interesting.