Long time no see

So what did I do all this time?! Well I went job interviewing and got myself a brand new job which, for the first time in 6 years, will NOT involve wearing a uniform or a company's clothing. Instead, I will get to wear my vintage at work! Ha! Ain't that somethin'?! Could it be that my planets may be finally aligned in the right position?!

Among other things my absence also involved a short holiday spell in Paris, a rather very crazy thing to do giving the state of my finances. And one of the reasons why, in the end, I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I should have, which is pretty criminal when you're talking Paris. But with everything else on my plate, and things on other people's plates beyond my control, the reality is I didn't get to chill. It was the first time I've not cried my eyes out on return from Paris, where I have been a couple of times before and always felt very much at home.

This time though the city seemed cold and unforgiving, a living machine that functions oblivious to any human dramas. Not set to achieve a greater, incomprehensible purpose, but a pure mechanical existence, yet of absolute power in its crushing routine....So has Paris succumbed to its big city condition.

We were there at Halloween time, and our odd camera was definitely in the right mood - more than I can say about our party - and it achieved some pretty eerie effects. For some reason looking at these pics takes me straight into The Hunchback of Notre Dame atmosphere. This dark, Gothic novel, with its story of fate and destiny, and severe separation between social classes, seemed that night every bit as actual as when it was written nearly 200 years ago.