Dull and Dreary December Part 1

The title is, of course, sarcastic as December '09 has quite possibly been the most amusing of my 271 months of life thus far!! There has barely been a quiet moment and I know that when I'm an old fart (40 or so) I will look back on these times and reminisce about how it was the best time in my life etc... So I'm trying my best to appreciate it all now so as to minimise the later regrets.

The various parties and champagne fuelled nights out this month which would ordinarily provide the backbone to my blog entry almost pale into insignificance against some of my other adventures this month. But let's start with the all important champagne nights!

A new Paris tradition has emerged resulting in a weekly 9 hour clubbing marathon. On Thursday nights Charlotte and I have taken to frequenting "Neo" a gorgeous, stylish club just off the Champs Elysées, to make the most of the unlimited champagne between 7 and 9pm. Continuing with the perceived VIP treatment we waltz in past the enormous queue merely because we had reserved our places online! Slightly odd, but who am I to question these procedures?! Bizarrely most people at the club seem content with one or two flutes of champagne leaving us anglophones to fully take advantage of the set up! In a bid to educate the French DJ in up to date music, I have started taking my Ipod along to the club, and he plugs it in to play out all the new music to the club: usually songs which haven't yet been released in France. I like to think of it as my contribution to French society: the introduction of new British and American music! When, by 10pm, all free drink opportunities appear to have been seiged, Charlotte and I slowly make our way back to my flat to carry on the champagne partying in the basement! Club 130 is proving to be an excellent asset to my social life and it literally could not be easier to get home - a 30 second ride in the lift and I'm outside my door! That is what I like to call convinience clubbing. Of course it helps that Quentin and Mathieu who run the place have welcomed us with open arms and made us feel like a part of the 130 "gang"! (Woo hardcore Natz becomes part of Parisian Gang.)

There were also a couple of flat parties chez des amis in December. Firstly Margaux and Charlotte held another of their classic parties, this time VIP themed. As the wonderful friend that I am, I offered to help Charlotte prepare the whole thing as Margaux was busy revising for exams. Meeting at midday for a cheeky chinese lunch we then wasted about an hour, totally lost, in one of life's most frustrating experiences: an utterly futile 1 hour loop of the area surrounding the gare du nord to end up 50m from where we started and all in the pursuit of fake nails! Disgruntled and sheepish we then moved on to more pressing matters: that of the decoration necessary for a VIP soirée. Off to the party shop and then because I'm a bit of a mug and a pro at being in humiliating situations, I was the one who landed the honour and responsibility of transporting 12 fully inflated helium balloons through the Paris metro system. If this sounds like a fairly undaunting task then allow me to correct you now. There is a lot of wind in the metro and also a lot of people. 12 balloons take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise when they pop!! Obviously Charlotte's reaction to my plight was to laugh hysterically and take lots of photographs, but after a complicated journey home the party went ahead and was another great success. (And yes I did fall asleep with the chihuahua once again...)

Zuzanna perfectly planned a surpirse party for Berengere's birthday which as usual meant that a whole host of different nationalities came together for an evening of multilingual chit chat!!



One of my first night-time outings in Paris introduced me to singer and songwriter Josh Weller. Having been out for drinks and dinner with him, Simon (the backing man) and the manager, Helena and I stayed in touch with Josh and were therefore pleased when he told us he was coming back in December, this time as the support act for his girlfriend: a certain Miss Paloma Faith. The concert was truly one of the best I can remember seeing for a long time. The French audience were horrendously lacklustre and still/rigid but this didn't detract from the quality of both performances (Josh and Paloma) and the combination of the two of them performing their brilliantly cynical "It's Christmas and I Hate You" song was such good entertainment! Helena and I had an unabashed dance and sing-a-long in the audience but as soon as the lights went up the bouncer was super keen to shoo everybody out of the venue before you could say encore! Luckily for us, Josh came to our rescue announcing to the bouncer that as his cousins we should be allowed to stay behind to have a drink with the artists! After inquiring after the health of fictional Uncle Johnny the bouncer seemed satisfied and thundered off elsewhere to vent some agression, leaving us to have a drink with Josh, Simon, Paloma and her band. We then migrated en masse to the beautifully traditional Parisian bar next door where we spent the rest of the night mingling (Or networking as I like to call it!). Everybody was genuinely really lovely and I had a great conversation with the pianist, Dom Pipkin. After weeks on the road, Paloma and co. had to get back on their enormous tourbus to travel through the night to their final venue of the tour in Birmingham. Before leaving, Paloma asked if I would do her a 'massive favour' and take care of her good friend Ann who had come to Paris to see her but whose accommodation had fallen through at the last minute thus leaving her homeless for the night! After having had such a good night how could I possibly say no?! And it worked out perfectly in the end as Ann was such a nice person and the whole story resulted in a new friend! We spent the entirety of the next day having a fabulously stereotypical girly day in Paris, drinking coffee, shopping on the Champs Elysées and gossipping. However, when swapping anecdotes about our respectives best friends Ann sounded decidedly cooler than me talking about Paloma as opposed to me recounting stories of Alice sodding Bennet for example!!! The Josh/Paloma night was absoultely brilliant and I remained on my best behaviour the whole time, only being truly humiliated once, by getting my head stuck in the automatic tour bus door. But we'll forget that part!

With Tom's arrival in Paris I've discovered a lot more of the Irish/Australian establishments in the vicinity and now that he's working in Café Oz around the corner from my house, it means another drinking hole with very lenient "paying-for-drinks rules"!! By the end of the year I'm wondering if we'll find anywhere to actually pay for drinks. Clearly I am not complaining about this fact!!!

Enough for part 1 of my December blog. Half of this was written at 41,000 feet above Denmark and the other half at 2am on Boxing day with a belly full of cheese and mince pies. After a decent rest and some quiet time, I will attempt to tackle the reporting of the second and more eventful half of the month, including my slightly random/insane solo trip to Norway and my brief stint as ITV reporter for the top story on the national news...!