(My shoes are so unused I’m reduced to making them part of my decor. Kirkwood on left, Bohinc on right)

I know Christmas is long gone now, but I kind of feel like I have been blobbing around like a, well a large pale blob in fashion-neutral numbers for months now. There has been barely a sniff of a dressing up occasion for months and, much as I love a good PR breakfast meeting, January is hardly the month to break out the new season’s looks at 9am.

It doesn’t help my sense of dressing up deprivation that I didn’t have any major Christmas parties this year — not really my thing, and Christmas Day round our way is more likely to be spent prone in a cashmere onesie lobbing Quality Street in the direction of our gobs, than swanning around in a party frock, prodding canapes.

At New Year I was in Marrakech, and lil’sis & I spent a frankly delightful evening in our nighties & cardies eating takeaway pizza & prawn cocktails in bed in our riad in the Medina, reading Georgette Heyer (me), and the QuidCo site (her) congratulating ourselves on not bowing to NYE must-spend-a-fortune-going-out pressure.

Montreal was too bloody cold for the whipping out of the hawt fashion looks and, whilst I made a cursory effort in Munich,  giving my Tibi leather-lapelled tux & most S&M-ish Nicholas Kirkwoods an outing for the Chairman’s Dinner, a digital conference, attended by a roughly 4:1 male:female ratio is hardly the place to break out SS12’s pastels.

So, and this really is a career-time first, I am actually looking forward to fashion week season in a delightfully perverse way. Normally I’m not thrilled at the prospect of having to pull together umpteen all-different looks,  truss myself up and prance around in stilt heels for days on end, (I am truly fashion-lazy), but this season I am positively looking forward to it. Thoroughly bored of wearing mid-heel ankle boots, swathes of cashmere, bobble hats, and subtle make up, I want fashion, fashion people (especially Alex Fury in Mary Katrantzou) and all round general fashion-ness. Yes, I did make that word up. And who’s asking?

The thing that weather forecasts don’t do is tell you how much snow there is on the ground. They may have told me that it could be –11C here in Quebec, but they didn’t tell me about the two feet of snow on the streets. Fortunately my spies on the ground told me in advance, and I came prepared. And thank goodness I did because, blimey, Montreal is bloody freezing.

It’s also impossible to walk anywhere without proper grippy snow foot wear. We were only in our restaurant for a few hours for supper but when we came outside afterwards the snow was already iced and I was hard put to stay upright. But the thing I am most impressed by is that the city functions completely normally with a level of snow and cold that would cripple England in a day.

I haven’t had a chance to look around much, as my arrival at 15pm meant a very slow drive into the city during the beginning of rush hour and it was already dark by the time I arrived at the W Montreal. I have back to back meetings for the next two days but I’m hoping to get a look at Vieux Montreal and practice my French some more.

Speaking of which, I’m still trying to process the disconnect: it looks like North America, people look like North Americans, yet when they open their mouths, they speak French. And to add to the confusion, as part of the Commonwealth, the Queen is on the banknotes.  Montreal is a city of some serious contradictions.

It’s 344am and I am still packing. Of course it doesn’t help that I really need to pack for Montreal, Paris AND Munich, but I just can’t face it. I figure that about 50% of it will go to all three places, but the rest is taxing me. I don’t think I have ever gone away anywhere, ever without staying up till the very early hours faffing about. It’s one of the drawbacks of both living alone and being single. There’s no one else of whom to be considerate. I can crash around to my heart’s content, with no one to tell me to stop being an idiot as I get sidetracked yet again — I just spent a good twenty minutes vacuum packing my spare duvets. Before that I was listlessly flicking through iTunes making up travelling playlists.

Although there is method in my madness — to a degree — some of my arctic weather kit was in a cupboard up on high with said duvets and I couldn’t face dangling off a stepladder, stuffing them back in again, in the manner of a pregnant camel through the eye of the proverbial needle. I can’t shake off the mother-imbued feeling that there’s something extremely slovenly about leaving a home in a complete state when you go off on a trip. In this case, there’s an added incentive because lovely Emily will be staying here whilst I am gone: she usually moves in when I hop off. It’s the perfect arrangement really. She gets space and calm and I get the warm glow of doing a friend a good turn, and with no fear of burglars.

But euf: the packing. For Quebec, I bought up most of Uniqlo on Sunday afternoon. There isn’t a piece of Heat Tech or a down-filled jacket-y layering thing that I didn’t buy. So I guess that’s Montreal sorted. I’m presuming people layer up like cheery Michelin men, and then de-layer upon arrival at office/restaurant/bingo hall etc. (I’m quite tempted to vacuum pack all the down stuff too.) Then there’s a little pile of chic black for a funeral at Pere Lachaise on Saturday, and a much larger pile of hello I’m a fashion-editor-turned-blogger-turned-social-media-entrepreneur dresses and heels for the conference in Munich.

But, of course, the biggest pile, (I’m actually perched on top of it all on my Aeron chair which is doing double duty as a packing stool), is composed of all my tech toys, cameras and gadgets. Try as I might, they take up more room than anything else combined. Once upon a time it would have been books. Oh how my world has changed.

right I must go back to the Sisyphean packing task if I am to have my allotted three hours sleep before my alarm shrills into life.

Oof what a week. It’s been as though I’ve never really caught up with myself from the moment I woke up on Monday morning. Dominique has started, (Katie’s replacement), which has been a huge help, but I get the feeling that a whole bunch of people took last week off as part of their Christmas holidays because each time I thought I had a hold on everything, another surprise arrived via email.

There have been conference calls and pitches and meetings and lunches and some personal distress and a film screening and some project deadlines and just oof. I feel like a clockwork mouse that has been wound up with a key and is bombing about in all directions – mentally and physically. Morocco doesn’t feel like last week, it feels like another lifetime.

Today I am on location at a studio in Hackney, East London – I was going to say I am shooting, but again I am part of the story, not the stylist. I’m still getting used to the being in front of the camera thing. It’s quite odd. P Bad is coming along too: she spent the afternoon at Sniffles Dog Groomers with my sister, so she is quite possibly more camera ready than I am.

Next week is probably going to be more testing. On Monday I’m going to be packing three suitcases with three very different sets of clothes: for the winter cold of Canada, for a funeral in France, and for speaking at a conference in Germany.

I’m flying to Montreal on Tuesday for some meetings, and then taking the red eye home on Thursday night. I’ll arrive in London very early on Friday morning, head home to swap cases, then take a Eurostar to Paris. On Saturday afternoon I’ll be back on the Eurostar to London.

After a whistlestop at home to swap cases again I’m off to Heathrow to catch the last flight out to Munich, where I will be, thank goodness, staying put until Wednesday. Thank goodness I live in NW1, two stops from the Eurostar terminal and en route to the airport, otherwise I’d be lugging the same case across four countries.

I feel knackered just reading that schedule.

Photo: A corner of my office

That dog of ours is so ludicrously spoilt. She gets sent things to  try out, and I swear she’ll be bugging my agent for representation soon. Adding to her collection of designer unguents, is this rather fabulous dog shampoo, which I would love for the name alone. (Mrs White’s Dog Gone.) The fact that it is all natural, and turns P Bad’s fur all soft and fluffy makes it an all round winner.

Most of the Mrs White’s range are based on the horded tips, recipes and remedies, notions and potions of the owners’ great-grandmother, and all of their completely natural cleaning products contain absolutely no harsh or harmful chemicals. The dog shampoo (£10.95) has lavender and cedarwood to fight dirt and mites.

And, whilst we are nourishing her outer body, we are also nourishing her insides too, with Lily’s Kitchen Power Flowers, proper dog treats, containing no nasties, or preservatives, colours or artificial ingredients, but lots of vitamins, essential Fatty Acids, antioxidants and minerals to keep her in optimum health — she’s cracking on for nine years old now. I was a bit dubious, but P Bad really can’t get enough of them: she sits and keens at the sight of the box.

www.lilyskitchen.co.uk

www.roullierwhite.com