I still have it......... I did take to my bed on Friday evening with a bottle of Chardonnay, and felt so relaxed I dropped off to sleep relatively early, after watching my favourite programme "Thalassa", which was about Sicily this week. Yesterday I felt not bad when I got up, so went straight out to Brentano's, where I bought:

- 4 Jennifer Chiaverini Elm Creek Quilters novels
- "Courgettes and Chocolate", a French cookbook, very good, and the lady who wrote it did it from her blog of the same name, I will have to check that out.
- 3 Japanese craft books, one is "Herbs in Cross-Stitch", then we have "Flora", which is embroidered flowers in many techniques, and lastly a knitting/crochet one where everything has cats on it. There are cute crochet cat brooches, I think Suzette may like to get one of those when I figure out the instructions. I don't read Japanese, but of course the diagrams are brilliant.

After that I took the bus to Le Bon Marche, where I bought two new pillowcases with Toile de Jouy in pink and a scented candle. So I spent most of the afternoon in bed, lying against my new pillowcases and reading..... I got up periodically to do washing etc and to make dinner, but apart from that slept until 8am this morning.

I don't know about this back ache, it seems to get better if I spend long periods in bed, which is strange, I thought it was better to be active with back ache. Certainly it gets worse if I carry things - so it is just as well I have ordered a new computer that is a lot lighter than this one (this one has been playing up for a while, and the big boss told me to order a new one, then this one will get fixed and go into the spare pool, I can't be without one at present, given the way we are working). Anyway I will see how I go this week with the back, and if it is still bad, I need to go to the doctor next week anyway, to renew prescriptions, so he can look at it then.

Of course I haven't stitched anything this weekend, given that I have spent most of it lying down, but I did do a bit of knitting yesterday and am about to turn the heel of my sock. I had this in the office on Friday, and the self-striping yarn evoked much curiosity amongst my colleagues, Nicky picked it up and I thought he and our project director would nearly take it to pieces to find out how it worked. And wretched Sylvain! He saw Nicky and me having coffee together and starts saying, in his terrible Clouseau English, "what happens when a Cyprus man meets a Cyprus woman".......... so we retaliated by laughing at his Lacoste baseball cap that he was wearing while sitting at his desk.

Today I am going to have something to eat somewhere near here (I am at a Mc Donalds at Richelieu-Drouot, and they snottily told me I couldn't have a burger before 11:30, so I bought a cup of coffee and I'll eat somewhere healthier), then go down to Carrousel du Louvre and buy newspapers and take a look in some of the shops there. I should go out to Porte Maillot and go to the supermarket, I have no food at home at all, except two oranges, some baked beans and some rice! But I'll see how tired I feel, I may need to take to my bed again.

I'm afraid this week will be another hard one workwise, Monday in the Far East, and the remaining four days doing reviews in our own office - but, get this! the chief product architect and one of his sidekicks are coming, and one of the things they are doing is going through my PA report. I must have done something really bad in my past life, to get this - I know, logically, that it is because this is a big client and the first project of this type we have done, but still, it puts a lot of pressure on me. David was saying, rather me than him, and he is more experienced than me, I think even Alec might feel some apprehension at such scrutiny.