Olive’s parents were in town this weekend. Hello, fancy dinners! Hello, delicate dim sum lunch of joy! “They took us to Yauatcha,” I said to CC on the phone today, “at our bidding.”

They came in with the rain Friday midday, with a rolly-bag of treats. Champagne! Cheese! Wine! More champagne! A pot of caramel du beurre salé! The biggest box of macarons in the world! Rose, pistacho, vanilla; caramel and fleur de sel, white truffle and hazelnut, chocolate and passionfruit; they all smiled beatifically at us. I tell you – I think I have no need to tell you – Saturday morning we had macarons for breakfast.

One day I will shake Pierre Hermé’s hand – he may be in his patissier whites still – and I will say, “You are kind to me.” Pierre Hermé, do you have a fine mustache? Do you have a sausage dog named Barnabé?



Saturday was a Smurf macaron, crisp and blue. We walked the mother through the shops while the stepfather ran away to the art museums. Sunday morning saw me cupping a mug of black coffee in both hands. “Okay,” I said to Olive, and I blinked, once, slowly. “Let’s go speak French.”

Oh, stop. The parents are nice and all, truly, and we like visitors because they get us out and about. Claire had come with a sheaf of pages torn out of fashion magazines – all the better to track down the discount Paul Smith store full of stripey shirts, and the thing shop of enamel milkpans, of vintage Golden Books, of perfumed paper fine like butterflies’ wings.

Seven-thirty Monday morning I was back at work. Work is still at the kitchen table, but work is work nonetheless. I am proofreading a tiresome crime novel, where the men alternatively growl or snap, where the police commander, tall and manly, booms. “I can think of six other things I would rather be doing,” I wrote India, “including going to a dinosaur theme park.”

The dinosaur theme park will have to wait, though, for in a couple of days I will be in Rome. Number one, Marc tells me of a place that serves chocolate pizza. Number two, we are out of macarons.