2024
Late to the New Year’s party, I'm serving up a dose of what's happening now. The truth is far more intriguing than fiction and a whole lot more engaging because it’s a version of reality. I find my life changes on a dime, to literally coin a phrase. Pardon the pun.
ART. Life is a recipe.
Not so quietly, I'm working on a set of pieces for a project. I'm getting intimate with an ink dip fountain pen. This is quite a pointy affair. These pens and their habit of dropping ink everywhere, except artfully where you want, is an art form in itself. ‘Learn new things,’ they said! I love it anyway.
Slowly my style is coming together as I capture, at least I hope I do, the naive aspect of line drawing, which is so French to me. I have always done line drawings and it, in part is a reason for my love affair with the French.
The pictures I do are themselves also pieces of very French things, from ornate urns to pyramids of tree-picked fruits and elaborate frames. The symbols of stars and moons all have meaning, and not only do they decorate, they embody stories that are centuries in the telling. These charming little enlightenments of celestial algebra and intrinsic French aesthetic as decorations bring me a sense of history and a sense of being in a place that I like to call home, Provence
.
MORE VAGUE THAN VOGUE
This year, I'm having a go at, which translates to 'having a lame attempt at' going grey/white, my natural colour. After two years of being addicted to box colours, it's a shift. This is hardly worth mentioning; this is not a VOGUE article. I'm sure no one cares.
Even as I write this and look at the silver mouse regrowth, I'm thinking about my possible next colour transformation. I think it's the reinvention and change that I like, not the process. A new colour is like a new outfit. It’s a fresh take.
ALL FRENCH IN THE SALON
It started when I took Google Translate to the hairdresser in the village. Many villagers don’t speak English, and I don’t expect them to. With limited French, I was terrified of what colour I would walk out with. I even said to Derek as I went next door to the salon, ‘If I come back with a black bob’, don’t be surprised. So, I learned the rather uncharted craft of home colouring.
HAIR COACH
After many chats and shared pictures with my Hair Guru, Jo my HAIR COACH, I started dyeing my hair. Over two years, I have it down to a fine art. With two colours, one darker blonde at the roots an 8. And a lighter blonde at the ends. This has a very natural, strangely enough, tone that resembled my younger hair. It fades out more quickly as I develop more white hair. I want to stop colouring it, or do I? Anyway, we will see.
I see many French women who inspire me with their natural colour and somehow perfect makeup minimal glowy skin. It’s their style, how they put it together so effortlessly that is so glamorous and intelligent.
Ah! Maybe that is why it doesn’t work for me, I’m not French! It’s all in their genes I think, this elegant casualness I covert.
I read in ‘ HOW TO BE PARIASEINNE ANYWHERE’ that if you were to dye your hair it should be the colour your mother gave you. So I have stuck to that, but as this bronde is now more a figment of my 30s, it’s a different story. As my HAIR COACH says, give your choices a go, ‘and if you don’t like it change it.’ For me, it’s if it doesn’t suit me, and makes me feel terrible it’s going to go.
CHANGES
As ageing means change, I'm changing on the outside as my hair goes white, the skin starts to crimple, and the body shape, well, that takes moulding to keep any form. The food I eat is all chosen to provide me with nutritional building blocks to keep well, and not crash. With poor strength, I'm keeping and feeding some muscle with little weights and yoga. Even with this, the body changes.
TOO MUCH
After the somewhat flippant prose on my hair, which is supposed to keep this post from becoming too dramatic, and possibly it is even amusing. And you possibly are too young to notice that senior ladies tend to talk about their hair a lot! Really, ist not just me!
I have started several attempts at this newsletter only to discard the ones that are too sarcastic and tainted with a tone that seems a bit harsh. It is too easy to be too hard. And it's my defence mechanism to do so. As it is with many people, they are hard and a bit brittle because they are defensive. This is something I'm very aware of, and I'm taking down all these defensive mechanisms. They protect me, but they also inhibit joy in my life; they keep good people away, feed negative outcomes that reinforce more protection and close off avenues to a full life. Do you see where this cycle can go?
If you subscribe, I go on from here to Fragility, The Real News, 40 Years, In My Head, and Onward.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to COOK WITH ME IN PROVENCE to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.