Well, seeing as my husband has given the game away...

I was planning to keep it a secret until the last moment, but John mentioned it on his blog yesterday, so I thought I had better come clean - we're leaving Marrakech. On the 1st of November we are taking a one-way flight from Marrakech to Paris, where we plan to stay until next May and I can't WAIT. After all, no matter how much one likes Marrakech, surely the prospect of Paris is irresistible? There are many reasons for the move - it's a little expensive to go home and see my parents from here and I would like to see them more often, we have completely failed to learn French here and John plans to do a full time course at the Alliance Francaise, we get a little bored here without a Marrakech-specific occupation and I do feel a little worn down sometimes by the difficulty of just leaving our own derb without receiving offensive comments from any teenage boys who happen to be loitering about.

We both love cities and drifting about between cafes, bars, shops and parks (and indeed, the drifting is just as much fun as the arriving) but drifting in Marrakech, although it has its own pleasures, is very different from drifting in a Western city (for one thing, the doormen of Brown Thomas in Dublin have yet to accost me on the street with "Bonjour, hello, hello, just to look, HELLO, HEY! HEY!!!!") and sometimes we dream of wrapping up warmly in velvets and tweeds and being *ignored*. Oh, the bliss of it.

Also, a lot of women love living in Morocco, even me, but even the most die-hard advocates of living here must admit that it can be heavenly to walk down the road in, say, London and be ignored by EVERY SINGLE MAN you pass. The only people checking you out are other girls and they're just interested in your shoes. It's great.

So, we're off. Although I know it would be more economical to search for an apartment in the local press when we arrive, I would prefer to have it sorted out before we get there, if possible, so I have been using agencies in my search for the perfect apartment, although when I say "using", that might be a little optimistic as I have been getting replies from about one in seven emails, which makes me wonder why estate agents bother having email addresses or enquiry boxes at all. I have been emailing rather than calling in order to save myself the mortification of having my appalling French met with complete incomprehension on the telephone.

Of course, moving to Paris brings other challenges. I plan to keep blogging (if we manage to get an internet connection in our apartment-to-be) but naturally I'm going to have to change the name of the blog. And probably the colour scheme too. I am completely open to suggestion on these matters, so do post comments if you have any ideas.

The other challenge is the fact that last time I came through Duty Free, I stocked up on champagne, Cointreau and wine and as we can't carry it with us, we have three weeks to get through it... O the harshness of a life that requires you to get through several bottles of Moet & Chandon in a limited time... (*maybe* we'll pack the Cointreau)

PS I google-imaged Paris to see if there was a picture that I could "borrow" for this blog entry, but the only thought I came away with is that Paris Hilton is very thin indeed.