It's been a wet, cold and miserable day in Paris today - normally I'd just say wet, but since I spent most of the day trudging around, buying of all things cardboard boxes, I'd just like to emphaisize the cold and miserable part. IT WAS COLD AND MISERABLE. It was that icy cold type rain, not the Gene Kelly type of rain, and I've still got a headache as you can tell from this whiney post.

I can't believe it's so hard to buy cardboard boxes. When I was a lad, you'd get them at the supermarket - they'd even cordon off a big area where they piled them up for people to take. Either that was just the UK, or it doesn't exist anymore. Of course the office supplies shops didn't stock them (duh! This is sooo typical of france. I'm not super keen on commercialism, but when I go to an office supply shop I want a choice of shredders, not just the one poxy overpriced model that they thought they ought to stock just to look like an office supplies shop. Cardboard boxes, packaging - pretty basic stuff, but nowhere to be seen). In the end I found them at BHV, which is a truly miraculous shop and always makes me feel better (still wasn't going to sing in the rain though). Their basement has *everything* for DIY, including the totally useless things you don't even know what they're for until one day you really need it (and happens more than you'd think).

Sadly I'm quite into all that 'do it yourself, I'm not paying all that to buy one ready made' type stuff. My living room lights, coffee table, and other bits & pieces are all homemade, most of the paintings on the wall are mine, and if you surf on the web hard enough you'll find that I've made my own telescopes which involved lots of power tools and fiddly bit of stuff tied together with wire (ah, here's a word of warning - be careful what you put on the web! You think you're in control, but you're not. Once you've forgotten the passwords to those free webhost sites, and then those pages are up there FOREVER! Also, bizarrely, once those pages no longer had my input, they became way more popular! Something not right there).

Oh, and the other sad thing is that in order to cheer myself up while at BHV, I impulse bought a new filofax to replace my usual one. A filofax! Good grief, I am working *way* too much. Next I'll be pleased that I can find a suit that matches both my stapler *and* my hole-punch! Then shoot me. Please.