We all hear of superfoods - Goji berries, chia seeds… the list goes on and changes like the seasons. Fortunately, emotions don’t follow these trends, but as we head into the season of gratitude, let me highlight why it is your Superpower and why it’s the ingredient you’ll want in your morning mental smoothie. November is the month of gratitude. Being American, I used to celebrate Thanksgiving, and as an American in France, if there’s one of us within 100kms, we tend to gather

"Labeling makes the invisible visible, but it’s limiting. Categories are the enemy of connecting."

The French have a verb for a very specific pastime. The dictionary has it as - Flâner… (v) to wander about with no particular purpose. Pronounced - flan - as in pan and ay - as in hay.  She  (or indeed he  - Le Flâneur ) was an individual who elegantly ambled the streets and squares with no desire to get anywhere specific, but simply to be there.  To observe. To absorb. To walk with no agenda other than the call of curiosity. In 19th-century Paris, flâneurs strolled the bou

Every nation tends to make a contribution to the great theatre of style. England gave us understatement, Italy provided road rage and France — with predictable irony — gave us austerity disguised as art. The word silhouette began not as a term of beauty, but of mockery. Étienne de Silhouette, was the well intentioned but disastrously unpopular 1759 French finance minister. He tried very hard tried to balance the Nations chequebook after yet another costly skirmish with the E

Self-talk is not something to be taken lightly. Saying things like “I can’t carry a tune, I’m tone deaf.” whilst it can be an expression of mock humility maybe it is true... for now. How do you know? What if saying this is why you haven't become better? Sing because you love to. If all people thought they had to be perfect in order to love something or try something, we'd all be sunk. What I wanted to say has nothing to do with singing, or maybe it has everything to do with

Larders. Everyone either has one or wants one. Even the word is a delight to say. Lah-dah....lah-dee-dah, I'm in the lah-dah.. The word of course, has Latin roots, and derives from Lardum - meaning pork fat or what we now call bacon. It was (and still should be) a kitchens inner sanctum. A holy place, robust and well-filled with strong white ceramics and jarred beans and jams. It's an interior designers dream.. where kitchen necessities go to be instagrammed. But larders are