we’re back! are you?
did you have a delicious summer, darlings?
we did.
bits of it were quite tough – but, we feel, character-building.
thank goodness for a languid luscious lunch with The Sophisticate at – gasp! – La Grenouille (the palest pink of the interiors and the low lamps and the pearls and the cashmere over-the-shoulder and the Conversations and the – oh – the Upper East Side blondes of-a-certain-tax-bracket – Divine!) and tea with Very Glamorous people at the St. Regis and late night suppers uptown after a walk-through-the-park with generous and beautiful souls with stories of summer’s in Paris with designer chaps and a suite at the Ritz and tapas on the terrace.
a few pictures?
but of course!
a few from the house (lots of reading, being quiet and general r e l a x i n g moments to start with)
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then, towards the end of July, william met us at the train station in deepest south-west england (the bit not far from where king arthur hung out with his knights and a round table). 
it was a delightful sojourn in the old country – even if we did need our galoshes and wellingtons (translation: water-proof clothing and rubber boots) – but we could not possibly take up William’s kind offer of a cagoule and, instead, purchased a Storm Hat in Sensible navy (and, with a sigh, left the sun parasol inside).
thank you dear william.
………back in NYC, the temperatures reached a quite ridiculous height (100 – whatever that it is in old money) and made working awfully exhausting.
thank goodness for this summer’s movies: and yes, we saw them ALL (even the bad ones which no, we shan’t mention – this is teamgloria – only glorious people, places and things here, please).
did you celebrate July 4th?
always amusing to have a British passport for that one.
thank goodness we have friends-who-have-friends-who-own-Penthouse-apartments (and know deliciously eccentric and Most Diverting artists who left Berlin before-the-wall-came-down and now live partly in Marakech (well, wouldn’t you?)
and then there was a biopsy – no – please don’t worry – all clear – just a continual reminder of you-know-what……..to be honest, the slow, slightly sly at times, thought, of what-might-happen if Tobias returns has lead to our big decision*
(read on, dear friends – do you need to pop the kettle on and make a delicious hot beverage? we’ll wait…….welcome back – oh, that’s a lovely cup and saucer – Fortnums? lemon, please – most kind.)
where were we?
oh yes. we also changed our doctor (see! – it *was* a Big summer over here – lots of decisions and outside help was required) to get off the synthroid and we’re So Much Happier (the black dog of depression and mood swings and the most unwelcome side effects got us Really Down).
new stuff?
thanks for asking.
are you squeamish?
if so – look away.
for those still with us – this is what we’re on now – yup – doesn’t really bear thinking about Too Closely for the implications – but we’re Lighter and not nearly as cRaZY.
moving swiftly on ;-)
we had a lovely tea and a reading of poetry and a discussion of the late great anita loos with Joseph at his pied a terre uptown – book heaven, non?
one could spend So Many happy hours at Joseph’s – look at all those delicious tomes.
shall we have a quick moment to take in all the movies/films/art-moments we saw?
here’s the list (yes, it was a hot summer in NYC and yes, movies are Very Distracting for RL stuff)
1. The Well-Digger’s Daughter: Daniel Auteuil and a bevy of beautiful daughters in a meditation on honor/honour/family pride in the period before WWII when girls still hung out petticoats to dry in the sunshine on the line and despite feeling cross and lacking in future prospects, got a good hat trimmed and headed out to an airshow with a smile and a pat for the horse.
2. Seeking a Friend for the End of The World: curiously affecting – but we were ever so shocked (spoiler alert) that Bruce Willis didn’t come in at the last minute.
3. Sacrifice (yes, the one from China): the body-count was so high in the first few minutes (and especially disturbing to see how much force one needs to pierce a many-layered traditional Chinese court garment with a knife) that we slipped into the movie next door (seeking a friend for the end of the world) which is maybe why we were a Bit Surprised that Bruce didn’t save the day because we missed the first 10 pages of script “story-set-up-unfolding”.
4. Bruce was in Moonrise Kingdom – you did see it, right? oh! glorious. Summer love, toasted white and pink squishy sweet products by the campfire, tents, trails and trials, maps and old-fashioned vinyl players, the soft eager first young yearning-ness of Youth.
5. To Catch A Thief – it was at MoMA in a reassuringly not-remastered-print (comfortingly bleached out and scratchy and just pleasurable in the extreme) – you can’t go wrong with 1950s sassy dialogue, a beautiful car, a more beautiful Grace Kelly and a in-his-absolute-prime beautiful Cary Grant – and a simple Mediterranean picnic lunch for two.
6. Hope Springs – we didn’t Love this (god knows it’s hard enough to sit through one’s own therapy sessions) but we did Admire it. Please don’t see it with someone you love, or might love, or might even be divorced from one day. And if you’ve just got divorced, definitely don’t see it. And if you might be getting divorced soon’ish, like within the year, and are considering couples therapy (is anyone in NYC or LA and in a couple without such a thing?) definitely double definitely don’t see it. The rest of you – go ahead – Meryl and Tommy (can we still call him Tommy?) are magnificent.
7. Ruby Sparks – if you’re in a relationship (particularly if it’s with a fictional character that you’re attempting to control who just appeared in RL sort of suddenly) then you might want to avoid this too – but you’d be missing out (maybe see it – but not actually With your Significant Other). The Kazan genes are still strong in Talent we see. Brava, Zoe.
8. 2 Days in New York – Julie Delpy is a (beautiful, neurotic, highly-observant) genius.
9. Chicken With Plums – we would buy a ticket to see matthieu in anything (even something as sad and as melancholic as this – but oh, it was beautiful and clever and surprising and then ever-so-heartbreaking all over again) but we’d prefer to see him with Deneuve (do you remember when we went to the Event where they honored/honoured Catherine? did you miss that? it’s here) – especially a Christmas Tale (we wrote about that movie here).
10. Luckily this summer season DID have a Catherine Deneuve film in it – Beloved – and we saw it – and stayed for the Q & A with the director, Christophe Honoré – (the joys of living in NYC and going to the IFC to watch late-night movies) – and we even asked a question in French (so glam – we didn’t mean to but his translator was often skipping over the deeper nuance of the questions from the American audience and we wanted to make sure he understood the subtext of our deep inquiry – we lie – we were showing off, bien sur, cheri – forgive).
oh! wait! the revelation of Beloved was Paul Schneider – seriously – we had to rub our tired jet-lagged eyes (we had just returned from a Business Trip – alas no time for pictures – 24 hours in Seattle) several times to recall where we’d seen this splendid actor before – it took riffling through the DVD collection (yes, we still have DVDs – we like the pictures on the disks and the extras) to realize it was in Elizabethtown. Remarkable. It’s amazing how slipping into a (Nicole Fahri for men?) elegant cashmere-mix chunky expensive sweater and singing (gently and winningly) in French can move the soul.
11. last movie note – (why yes, we also saw Spiderman and The Dark Knight Rises – do you really need our opinion of them, darlings? there are Other Blogs that do a lot better ;-) Did you see Robot and Frank? Oh! so moving, so thought-provoking, so careful and yearning and heart-breaking in its approach to humans and humanoids and losing memory and erasing memory and – oh – that bit at the end where (spoiler alert) Frank has to – you know – and the Robot falls forward (we were In Pieces in the balcony among the plush lilac velvet-ness of the Paris Theatre) and………go and see it……please……we haven’t met anyone else who has (not everyone loves a machine, tis clear, but Susan Sarandon is in it and Very Good, as always).
so that’s the movie round-up.
and then we went to Los Angeles.
yes, you read that right.
in fact we just got back in the early hours of this morning (which is why we’re still Up and writing with a large pot of decaf gurgling in the very-small-anteroom of the kitchen behind us).
ah.
L.A.
yeah. it was Great.
the place where “hey” comes with five slow drawled out sexy syllables. #sigh
pictures?
of course, darlings.
so the hour is getting late – and we promised to return for september which it will be in 48 minutes, darlings – and we’ve almost told you about the bits of our summer that chose to divulge (you know how it is) – so we can publish the blue button (for tis blue on wordpress, it might well be different on your blog platform, we know).
our big news?
*big decision alert:
we’ve decided it’s time to leave NYC & corporate America.
ah no – tis not dramatic or even flip and whimsical – tis a long thought out decision – partly why we took a break from blogging, really, so we could think it out and Talk to Learned Friends and so on.
so, watch this space, we guess.
we don’t yet know our “exit date” as there are still Details to be worked out so we can finish up everything that needs to be done and make a Big Binder of everything that has been done to date for whomever moves into our office/role.
and this blog is about the future – not about who we are in RL, as you know (although sharing the travel pictures with you has been delicious).
Where are we going?
you probably guessed it already – we’re going back to Los Angeles.
what will we be doing?
ah.
that’s for another day.
we promise to tell you whenever the time is right.
until then, there are glorious people, places and things to continue to share……….like “I’m Your Man” the biography of Leonard Cohen, which we were given in review copy (in fact we’re listening to “Dance Me To The End Of Love” right now – a wonderful heart-opening and moist eye musical moment-of-sheer-poetry if ever there was one……don’t you agree?)
btw, before we slip off and run a hot bubble bath (yes, of course, Crabtree and Evelyn, but we might need to use it up and switch to something a bit more West Coast soon – tuberose and jasmine, hmmm? any ideas of bubble bath brands with those scents?) we digress – where were we? oh yes – do you like the new fonts and color/colour/shade scheme? we got a Bit Excited doing an upgrade to “Custom Design” (only 30 bucks, bargain).
answers on a postcard (we jest – you know the drill – pop them all in the box below and we promise to visit You on the web soon).
it’s been too long.
we missed you.
cue: shy wave from SoHo. *blush*
while this is William (reading the Guardian and being very intellectual and Thoughtful – mainly because there are few funny bits in the Guardian).
here it is – Herne Bay itself!
with a Cerulean blue sea. 
her work is Most Charming – and – due to the magic of the interweb – much of it has now been “digitized” and is available to read on a new-fangled device – thus allowing Miss Evelyn Whitaker – who remained anonymous much of her life, asking her publisher to keep her identity secret – to reach forward through time and sit with us while we enjoy her Tales of the past.
for more about the Mersey Sound and the poets Mr. McGough, Henri and Patten – there’s 
and a turn down the high street.
Look: Proof!
you see?
