Boutique

I am always impressed when people who have known me only for a short time say something insightful about me. I warmed up to my once-boss, a super successful businessman from Russia, when he observed that I was more a boutique than a supermarket person. Not an obvious thing to say: I routinely buy all my basics in supermarkets, am known for my love for bargain, particularly two-for-the-price-of-one type, and find shops full of latest fashion and arrogant assistants unbearably boring. Something exclusive, specialised, trendy, expensive, and luxurious, particularly when used as an adjective - a boutique hotel or a boutique recruitment agency - is what the word boutique implies in English (and in the languages that have borrowed it from English, as in Russian butik.)

But in French, where the word comes from, it is a completely different story: boutique is just a small specialist shop. (On my first visit to France I was amused to find boutiques SNCF.) The word's etymology reveals its humble origins -- in Ancient Greek apotheke means storehouse, depository -- and its family connection. Spanish small shop bodega and Italian bottega, (one day, I hope to become a regular customer of one), are boutique's sisters, and Apotheke / apteka, drugstores in German and Russian, and certainly in other languages, are distant cousins.

In this meaning of a small useful shops, yes, I am a boutique girl. I prefer buying my supply of cheese from my favourite small shop. If it were in London, I am sure it would have been called Boutique Cheese Shop Le Fromage something, but as it is in Paris, this time, it is just a fromagerie.

Bronze horsemen

I am an avid reader of The Economist: I like that I can fit its reading into my schedule on a weekly basis, I like its topics, sections, and special reports, and most of all I like its mastery of English. (No, I do not work for the journal. Yes, I would not mind receiving an offer).

In particularly, its artistry of titles has long been an object of my admiration. Last week, I was reading an article about recent events in the neighbouring Estonia. It is called Bronze Meddling and the title works on several levels.

Phonetically, bronze meddling echoes bronze melting, which reflects the topic of the article, melting down or removing former Soviet monuments. Etymologically, English meddle derives ultimately from Latin miscere, to mix, thus juxtaposing mixing (of metals) and interfering (into internal affairs).

Historically, for all of us who come from the space where Russian has been lingua franca, bronze brings to mind the Bronze Horseman, a monument in St.Petersburg to Peter the Great and an eponymous poem by Alexander Pushkin about the tzar and his 'window into Europe'. It was Peter the Great who first added Baltic territories to the Russian empire. All the subsequent colonising powers left behind their statues and monuments, landmarks still too loaded emotionally for both sides of the conflict.