Ennui!

I have been sitting at this desk too long and have done no work! I am supposed to be writing a chapter and although it is going well, I keep being lured into wasting time on the internet and frittering away hours doing things that I *tell* myself are practical - researching things about Paris, keeping up-to-date on other blogs and buying winter woollies on ebay, but you know as well as I do that as delightful as the archives of Petite Anglaise are, or as diverting as searching for cashmere on ebay.com is, it still doesn't *quite* count as PhD work, does it?

To add to the gloom of internet guilt, it is a lovely afternoon outside (thirty-two degrees) and I could be sitting on the roof and reading about Gide (or indeed, reading Gide himself) with a glass of wine, but instead I have wasted the day sitting not just indoors, but in a very dark and frankly, chilly room, as we are not blessed with wireless here and I am tied to this room if I wish to, well, waste the day online.

However, all is not lost. With a burst of superhuman determination, as soon as I hit the "Publish Post" button, I am unplugging my little ibook and taking it upstairs to our sun-bathed sitting room where I can lounge on our lavender couch and gaze idly at the contrast between the blue sky and the pink bougainvillea. At least then I will be wasting time sensibly.