Dialogue with a Park Keeper:

Park Keeper: What are you doing?
{The three of us: big innocent smiles as our piles of artistically smouldering garments guff up odd green flames, standard orange flames and some strange smelling smoke mingles with starchy scorched linen...
Me: Burning clothes! Safely!
Park Keeper takes out his walkytalky
Me: It's for a theatrical art installation and we didn't want to burn down my building!
Park Keeper: Do you have a permit from the Mairie?
Me: Oh no, sorry. {imagines piles of special forms to apply for permission for garment burning in Paris parks}
Park Keeper: Do you realise you are beside a police station? {Points at adjacent building with windows filled by staring cops}
I pick up completely pyromanised laboratory coat.
Me: Isn't it lovely! Do you like art?
Park Keeper: Not that sort, no. Collect your things and leave.
I and two helpers gather up the gorgeously arsonated clothing and all the matches and exeunt from Parc Georges Brassens.....

if Shakespeare had been Parisian....


Hamlet: "Get thee to a boulangerie!"
Polonius: "Neither a borrower nor a lender of vitamin supplements be. Always carry them in your man-bag"
Ophelia: "We know not what we are, and whether we exist at all"

Player Queen: "the lady doth protest at many manifestations beside the Bastille"

Richard III "Now is the winter of our discontent, and the autumn, and the summer, then in spring we shall become insouciant."

Malvolio: "Be not afraid of greatness; some are born French, some can only strive to achieve a correctly tied pashmina." 

Duke Orsino: "If Gainsbourg be the food of love, feed me the Poinconneur de Lilas. And some vitamin supplements."

Prospero: "We eat such tartes tatins as dreams are made on"

Ariel: "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here, working in the post office. And the salons de coiffure."

Romeo: "But soft, what light from yonder window breaks? it is the east and Pompom de la Tour Awfful weareth a luminescent lobster hat..."


Julius Caesar: "Flaneurs! Lutetians! Surly gendarmes! Lend me your vitamin supplements!" 

Macbeth: "Is this yet another pharmacy I see before me?" 

2nd Witch: "Eye of snail, and leg of frog, wool of pashmina, and vitamin supplements aux fraises"

Aphrodite de la Tour Awfful’s Extraordinary App for all your Erotic Dilemmas

Select erotic dilemma from menu:

     My lover is a beautiful but selfish cad who snores like a rusty engine and constantly demands foot massages in our waking hours. To what extent should I oblige?

     My lover is not beautiful but is a selfish cad all the same, and cannot cook or sing. Wherein to find the food of our love?

     My lover and I speak different tongues. How can I be sure that our romantic utterances mean what I think they do? 

     Could a new lover mend my broken heart?

     The ghost of a lost love is haunting my lover and I. What type of exorcism should I employ?

     Can one really have too many lovers? What maximum number does Aphrodite recommend?

     My lover/s exhausted me and gave me crabs. Should I move to the seaside?

     My true love and I are star-cross’d, fated never to bed. Should I seize the reins of destiny into my own hands, or simply order my beating heart to be still?

     My new lover is frighteningly perfect. Yes, this is a dilemma.

     I suspect that my British lover voted to leave Europe. Should I leave him or her?

     My friends all hate my lover and exclude him or her from invitations. Should I be worried, or rejoice in the freedom of an unencumbered social life?

     Is marriage ever a good idea? 

     Is divorce the supreme panacea?  

     My lover and I have violently differing tastes in music, films, art and literature. Can proper discernment be imposed on unwilling subjects? Or are we doomed?

     My jealous lover swears to love me forever, but then refuses to believe me when I reciprocate, frothing at the mouth and demanding that I wear exceedingly hideous clothing out in public. How hard should I try to gain his or her trust?

     Whenever my lover and I fight, I find myself looking elsewhere for love, even dallying with a stranger I met in the supermarket. Does this mean the relationship is doomed?

     Would my lover and I be as passionate if we learned to avoid arguments?

     My lover cannot satisfy me in our boudoir. Am I being greedy to want heaven every time?

     “Love your enemy,” my parents would say. But it's gone beyond a competitive attitude in board games and now he / she wants to race me up Mount Everest without breathing equipment, though I found him / her googling "invisible oxygen masks". Have I taken this clichéd biblical adage too far?

     I seem to have developed a physical allergy to my lover, could it be psychosomatically linked to my darkest thoughts or should I seek a remedy from my physician?

     Should I be able to tell whether our flailing, lusty passion is real love, or am I a fool to believe in the concept of legendary and ever-lasting romance with just one true lover?

 **

When you have selected your erotic dilemma, apply to Aphrodite de Tour Awfful for her sincere counsel.  

Disclaimer Note: Aphrodite has not been approved by any deities, sorcerers, earthly institutions, nor by any old tale-telling wives. Her counsel is therefore offered in a spirit of helpful idiosyncrasy.

Aphrodite de la Tour Awfful’s presence may not be required at any court of law, since such places deny parking of her phaeton and six, nor may she be held accountable for any vile crimes of passion committed by the lovelorn. Etc.