A moment of calm

Bordeaux is well into its rainy season, and it's also been rather cold, with afternoon temperatures in the high teens, and low teens overnight. This sends us to the drawers where we keep our winter woolies. Well, not woolies, perhaps, but our sweatshirts and such.

Incidentally, it's very puzzling to me to see guys roaming the streets in hoodies and shorts. Don't legs get cold?

Anyway, we continue to enjoy our new life in our forever flat. Recently we took a long hard look at our lampshades. When we moved we just brought with us what we had and put it more or less where we had them before. However there were some problems.

The big white paper balls we had in the hallway don't work. Well, one's OK, but the other gets knocked down every time the apartment door opens.

The big fluffy cloud thing in the spare room gets fouled every time we open the window wide. This we've decided to live with for the moment, since the winter is coming and we're not likely to open the window wide that much.

The shade we had in the kitchen area had yellowed and was aging badly. Meanwhile the Death Star lamp shade on the living-room side seemed to not allow enough light to pass through. We also need some kind of wall-light over the sink.

A couple of weeks' reflection have sent us in the direction of woven grass shades for the living room. They provide a nice contrast with the overwhelming whiteness of the walls, ceiling, bookshelves, kitchen. They pick out the orange-brown tones of the worktop and the floor, and there's a similar wall-light fitting we can get soon and put up over the sink.

The Death Star has moved into position in our bedroom, where its diffuse light and the patterns it makes on the walls and ceiling are welcome.

A small metal lampshade that had been in the toilet has found a new calling in the hallway, and the door just clears it beautifully. We found another surplus shade for the toilet. Basically, everywhere has something, and it's all fine.

The next puzzle is what to put on the walls behind the worktops. 

The most common idea is tiles. But we either choose white tiles and add to the mortuary vibe, or we commit to some permanent colour that is not just in the kitchen but also in the living room.

We could find a wood-effect board that matches the worktops, and that would be fine.

But we currently think that we'll find a water-resistant paint in a pale apricot tone that we can put on all the walls of the kitchen part of the room. This will give a pale apricot corner to the room, break up the dominant white and also can be changed if we get heartily sick of it. It should also tone in with the worktops, floors, table and everything else that is that kind of woody shade.