Imagine it’s a cold winter’s night in Paris. You’re wrapped in a scarf and huddled against your loved one as you search the streets for somewhere warm to eat. You fall into a restaurant which, from the outside, looked not so much shabby-chic as just shabby, and are pleasantly surprised to find yourself in the warming, time-gone by atmosphere of an intimate candle-lit eaterie. This is what it feels like to dine in L’Étoile - except, it’s not Paris, it’s Belfast. Not only, however, is the decor, the menu and the music charmingly French, the waitresses are equally so, offering up the sort of genuinely ‘door’s always open’ greeting lacking in so many of our local establishments.

Situated on the Upper Ormeau Road, L’Etoile is deceptive in it’s appearance - don’t be put off by the drab exterior of aging net curtains and the faded menu tacked to the window- inside is homely, quirky and authentic. Armed with our bottle of French wine (the restaurant is bring your own) my dining partner and I settled into our table in the upstairs section of the restaurant. The small but perfectly balanced menu of traditional French cuisine includes old bistro favourites, such as Frog’s Legs and Pigeon for the more adventurous diners but also offers a selection of meat and fish such as Monkfish, Venison, Fillet of Beef and a vegetarian option . My partner decided on the French Onion soup followed by Chicken with Mushroom Sauce and I opted for the Paté followed by the Duck a l’orange.

Our wine arrived uncorked, along with a complimentary selection of delicious breads. Our starters followed soon after, allowing us just enough time to soak up the ambience of the restaurant, the air filled with the murmur of cheerful guests and soft French music. The pate was delicious - a generous serving with just enough sweet jam and juicy red onion slices. I also sampled my partners soup, which was equally divine and topped with a tasty homemade crouton. The starters left us hungry for our main courses and we were happy that they arrived soon after our plates were cleared. The duck breast was cooked to perfection, well seasoned and succulent, with a side of the best garlic potatos we had ever tasted. All courses come with garlic potatos and an option of chef’s vegetables for an additional £1.95. My partner agreed that his chicken dish was an excellent choice, the sauce well-balanced and not too creamy. We deliberated ordering more of the potatos but decided to leave room for a dessert of Crème brûlée.

The  Crème brûlée was exactly as it should be - the top crunchy and satisfying to break with a spoon and the inside creamy, smooth and deliciously sweet. The rest of the dessert menu, including Profiteroles and Ice-Cream, looked equally tempting upon arrival at our neighbouring diners table. The bill comes in at around £25 per person dining for three courses and is worth every penny. Our entire dining experience was complimented by the French waitresses who were attentive and charming, but not intrusive. L’étoile translated means The Star and the restaurant certainly gets a gold star for an all round wonderful dining experience.

L’Etoile, 407 Ormeau Road, Belfast
Tel: 028 9020 1300

Actress Demi Moore and My Big Fat Greek Wedding star Nia Vardalos became involved in a suicide drama which played out in full view of the Twitter community on Friday 19th March. The drama began when Twitter user Jeremy Lynch, who names his location as Cassellberry, Florida, tweeted Ms Moore saying “I’m about to go hang myself from a tree outside my house and end my life. I have no reason to live anymore”. He immediately sent a second ‘Tweet’ adding, “I am going to send a live feed of me hanging myself. No one cares if I die or not.” The Ghost actress, wife of actor Ashton Kutcher responded to the alarming message by asking “R U rlly asking 4 help?”

Fellow actress Nia Vardalos, who had also seen the messages on the social networking site, called a Suicide Prevention helpline and Tweeted Mr Lynch with a plea to also get in touch with them saying “@jeremyllynch please call 1 800 SUICIDE. I’m on the phone with them right now. They are waiting to talk to you.” Ms Vardalos went on to update her followers with the message “I gave his name+city. They went to home, helped him.”

In an incident report obtained by The Orlando Sentinel, Deputy Alan J. Layton responded to the call and arrived at the young man’s home to find him sobbing at his desk. “I asked [the man] if he posted this on Twitter and he said he did,” Layton reported “He seemed confused when I spoke to him and he continued to cry the entire time.” It’s understood that Mr Lynch has since been taken to a local hospital to receive medical attention.

Demi Moore responded to all those who had offered support to Mr Lynch by saying “Thank you twitterverse for your help supporting someone in pain last night.” Mr Lynch’s followers have steadily grown in numbers since the drama unfolded, now sitting at over 700.

‘Would you like to fly your worries into the sky, away, away forever?’ The shaven headed lady in the white angel costume has just asked me. I am at a festival, on top of a mountain, somewhere in Australia.

‘Make an oragami dove and send out the love, get rid of what you don’t need’ she urges, pushing a feathered pen and white paper towards me.

Oh fuck. I am so uncomfortable with this type of person. Don’t get me wrong, I love people who are spiritual and thoughtful, I embrace religious beliefs and the power of alternative healing, give me a good Reiki session anyday (preferably a Monday), but there is a certain point at which it seems to become a parody of itself, and oragami healing is it.

I am a hoarder, a sentamentalist. Ask me to my face and I will deny it over and over again. But the evidence is there; I can’t ignore it. A fading cinema stub from the first romantic comedy I saw with my love, part of a heel from a gorgeous shoe, purchased and then broken on the cobbled streets of Barcelona, a soapy smelling paper bag from a perfume shop - the remnant of ‘the first time we went away together’, scrtibbled notes to remind me of interesting people I have met and things I have seen, the way a beautiful Italian girl hanging over a balcony made inhaling smoke look like an act of divinity - barely legible handwriting which I promise will make its way into ‘that’ book some day. The book I have intended to write for 25 years, the one I am referring to when my friends giggle at some unintentional one liner and I mutter my catchphrase ‘I must write that down.’

Perhaps it’s my mother’s fault? My dad complains that she refuses to throw away even the smallest piece of her favourite soap. Maybe it is the product of surviving the rationing of the war years, maybe she just truly can’t part with something she appreicates. Either way, so few understand it. Emotional attachment to invaluable, essentially useless objects. My poor boyfriend’s face fell on New Years day as my own face crumpled with the realisation that a drunken party attendee had destroyed the Christmas tree by falling into it, crushing and breaking the precious angels and trumpeters, ice skaters and Santa’s, snowflakes and baubles which have seen my face reflected in them since my very first Christmas. He couldn’t understand why the offer of replacing them with the best decorations money could buy just didn’t cut it. Well, actually, he did, but he knew there was nothing he could do to ‘make it all better.’

But it’s not just the trinkets and knick knacks I hold onto, it’s the invisible treasures I hoard. I cannot tell you what I was doing this time last week or which dish I cooked up on Monday evening, but I can tell you the exact colour of my cousins sunglasses and the flavour of the ice cream we ate on Brighton pier 22 years ago (orange red, Minnie Mouse logo, raspberry ruffle - not ripple). I remember the exact part of the garden in which I buried my first time capsule aged 5, the contents of it (a pink heart rubber, a crossword and one of those curl up in your hand fish fortune tellers) and I am, of course, the worst person to argue with, because I can remember word by photographic word every injustice you ever served me - but, lucky for you, I’m actually quite sweet, so I don’t bring those up often.

The thing about all this hoarding which separates me from those who end up in those Most Shocking… programmes on TV, which prevents every surface and container in my house from being eaten up and smothered by memories, is that I am highly selective in my choosing. I only retain the treasures important to me, and often, some of these lose their importance over time and are discarded. There are few activities more therapeutic than chucking black bin bags full of your accumulated junk into the trash having spent 2 hours on your hands and knees wondering why on earth you kept that beermat from Bratislava.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic, however, if we could choose the emotional junk we hold onto? If once a year we could just get under the bed and drag out all the crap from failed relationships and bad managers and periods of depression and just box it all up and put it out in the yard? I’m sure there is a form of hypnotherapy there just waiting to be discovered, or a new age healer ready to tell me to write it all on an oragami dove and soar it into the air of some far away mountain. For now, I will content myself with the cathartic clearing out of my embarrassingly childish jewellery collection and sea shell stash once a year and do what most healthy, reasonably well adjusted people do - just get on with it.

Just got this sent to me from an email address which looks suspiciously like the Brazilian government. Spooky spy talk? She was expecting andrew any moment and twice that day sent a manservant to the vozdzhenka to ascertain whether he had come.
At the same time, in the letters he wrote to the court of portugal he stated distinctly that the mother country alone possessed his loyalty, as was only just, and that he would make no move whatever that would prejudice the interests of portugal.

This is the hardest part to write. I am disgusted by it. Unlike other illnesses such as anorexia and Bipolar Disorder, which are however wrongly glamourised and associated with models and fabulously creative people, Bulimia is by all intents and purposes disgusting. It’s name is not pretty, the act is not graceful. Where did it start?

I am 11 years old. It is the afternoon before my brother’s wedding. I am lying on my tummy in a hotel in London. Mums and sisters and cousins and aunts of all involved rush around comparing presents and clothes, make-up and hats. I am watching a film in which a young gymnast is becoming ill from throwing up. Her coach is happy though; she is losing weight. My mummy comes into the room and sees what is on the TV.

‘That girl has Bulimia, you know,’ she says.

I am 13 years old. I am terrified and terrorised within school. I have come to learn that if I lock myself in one of the cold metal toilet cubicles and pull my feet up onto the seat, I can hide until assembly. I do not have to face the locker room and the torment that so often accompanies it. I make huge sacrifices for this. I carry all of my books around in one bulging bag, weighing down on my tiny 5ft frame because I am too scared to come and go to my locker, leaving and retrieving books as required. My ballet teacher comments that one of my shoulders is starting to sag. I cut an odd sight scurrying across the playground.

‘Ahh, there you are.’

I look up and see 2 girls from my year peering over top of the cubicle beside me. My plan has been foiled. My heart is pulsating in my chest and my ears are ringing. I know that for the next 5 years I will have to face the locker rooms.

‘What are you doing in here you weirdo?’

I say the only thing I can think of:

‘I feel sick.’

As if to prove my point, I throw up on cue into the silver bowl.

The girls are disgusted and leave me in peace. I sit there in silence as the bell rings for assembly and the corridors quieten. I sense an odd feeling of peace and serenity and calmness inside me. I have unwittingly released a hideous goblin which will follow me in some capacity for the rest of my life. It is my saviour; when I feel sick with anxiety and terror, I am sick. I am blessed with a strong stomach and the ability to throw up at will. I am proud that I do not even have to use my fingers. I come to look forward to after school when I can stuff my face with confectionary and cakes from the local bakery, chips and crisps, anything I want. I am a growing girl! Look at her, eating like a horse! It’s brilliant.

By 19 I am 6 stone 4lbs and swinging from eating nothing but carrots and pumpkin seeds to binging on 3 takeaways a day and then excercising and purging. My sister has to order a special bridesmaid dress for me from England; the size 6 in the shop is too big. Grotesquely, I like to sit in the empty bath and puke, rinsing it down the plug hole and then letting the water shower over my head. Cleansing me and calming me.

The manic and depressive phases of my Bipolar disorder have begun by late teens, but no one is expert enough to recognise these. I overdose on an anti-depressant. Arguably a drug which made my mood-swings cycle more rapidly. During my ECG in the hospital a beautiful sized 16-18 nurse asks me, ‘Why did you do it?’ I tell her simply, ‘I was tired.’ When she frowns at me I tell her I am exhausted with feeling fat, with binging and purging, hiding food and living in the bathroom. She tells me, ironically, she would kill for a figure like mine.

After the ‘overdose’ (for I still cannot say the ‘S’ word) I see a doctor whom I have not seen since childhood. He knew me as a bright, loquacious child - ‘the girl who could dance’ as he reminisced. He sent me for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and, although this in itself was not enough to manage my depression and hypomania, it has reduced my Bulimic tendencies. It is still there, however, looming in the background. One throwaway comment from a girl in work could be enough to have me running back to the toilets and hiding from the locker room of life. Thankfully, however, I always seem to find my way back out.