My goodness, what a trip, everything so rushed. Got to the office about 3:30pm yesterday, terribly tired, so went home about 6:30pm, or tried to, and had to wait over half an hour for a taxi, as there was a conference on at the CNIT, and guess what time they came out?

Opened all my mail, tax demand for 4100€, as predicted, which had to be paid by February 15th, so there's another 410€ I am donating to the Republique Francaise. I went to see the tax lawyer this morning, she was very nice, and she is going to do my whole return, even though it is not a particularly complicated case. She can even sign it, as I signed a power of attorney for her to do that. She also told me that I can donate up to 20% of my taxable income to the Louvre if I wish - so I will increase my donation dramatically this year, as I would rather it went to the Louvre than to buy gold plated whatever for the President and employ yet more civil servants. At least the Louvre is something I get to use.

Also have been to Post Office, Bank, pharmacy, Sephora, all the regular stops. Got to work to find there is a new pre-sales woman from the US sitting beside me now, just arrived in Paris yesterday for two years. She wants a two-bedroom flat in the same sort of area I live in, hope she gets paid a lot more than I do. I guess the realities of life in Paris will soon kick in. Apparently she is going to view apartments of 97 square meters and so on, I think about 2500€ a month.

Did quite a lot of the AMAP Quaker on the plane yesterday, had a whole row to myself, it was very peaceful. Left it here last night in my backpack, but I wouldn't have done any anyway, I was totally tired out and all I did was collapse with some wine. Will probably do something not dissimilar tonight, but may try to tidy apartment slightly, it looks like a bombsite.

And of course I have something nice to read - "Le Brodeur Bleu" by Pascal Jaouen, who runs the Embroidery School in Quimper, where I went to study Breton embroidery two summers ago. Pascal is really a genius, and I loved my week there, especially as I was the only pupil on some days, so I got to sit in the workroom rather than the schoolroom and watch Karine and Yannick work on couture embroidery while they were teaching me the basics of glazig. I'm so glad Pascal has written a book, I'm sure it will be as useful to me as Veronique de Luna's book about tapisserie has been since I studied with her. That is something I will be doing again when I get to work in Paris.