Today is the start of the Great Italian Exodus, which is like the Pamplona bull run but with cars. The two businesses nearest our building clanged down their shutters last night. If you wanted to buy an amber necklace or get your couch reupholstered you're out of luck till September 1st. And if it's coffee and a Tonolo donut you want, you'll have to wait till September 3rd. This is no deprivation to us because Mr F and I are trying to shed a few pounds.

Our methods differ. He uses the Nothing But Salad Till You Feel Like Shooting Yourself Diet. I'm on the No Booze No Cookies Regime. He weighs himself, I don't. My clothes tell me as much as I need to know. This morning he weighed himself and even though I was still surfacing from sleep I could tell he didn't like what the scales were telling him.
He demanded a recount. Tried a new battery in the machine. Kicked it. The scale still says he gained weight. This is why I never weigh myself. Lying bastard gadgets. They're always waiting to stab you in the back.

So here we are, nibbling on lettuce leaves and resigned to a donut-free August. The last people left in Dorsoduro. Ain't nobody here but us pigeons. And about two million tourists.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My mother-in-law has been in a benignly demented state for about seven years now. She probably doesn't have Alzheimer's but the label doesn't really matter any more. Her mind, lodged inside an amazingly nifty 94 year old body, is away with the fairies. Sometimes literally. Last time we were with her she said she had little people dancing on her hand. She's cared for in a nursing home that's as pleasant as such a place can be, and Mr F's two sisters pick up the slack.

So last weekend one of my sisters-in-law was on Mom Duty. She took along her iPod, to listen to while Mom slept and when Mom woke up she gave her the earphones and played her a little Elvis. And goshdarnit if Mom didn't start singing along, Can't Help Falling In Love With You . Word perfect. Now I don't know whether to welcome this news or worry about it. I mean, if she can recall Elvis lyrics, what else may be in there trying to find a way out?

And en passant, have you noticed that in novel blurbs there's always a character who gets more than they bargained for? Also that the only time people bid farewell to a place is in travel brochures?
Just an observation.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 06:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A bad start to the day when I discovered that Andrea, who sells flowers in the square on Saturday mornings, has had the nerve to go off on holiday, leaving me with a flowerless house. And I couldn't bear to go to either of the local flower shops because they're like entering a mausoleum. You really get the impression you're disturbing the dead when you ask them what anything costs and anyway, they're actually not interested in selling you a couple of bunches of freesias. Their forte is arranging flowers into bouquets and wreaths of breathtaking cellophane-wrapped hideosity. I had no choice but to walk to Rialto Market. And as long as I was there I thought I might as well buy vegetables.

So I'm waiting on line and listening to the old lady ahead of me who's buying one of everything, and then I'm aware she's started on her fruit list, one banana, one apple, one peach. And not any old peach. To my cloth ears it sounded like she asked for una pesca sorda. Which would be a deaf peach. All the way back from Rialto I was trying to figure it out. Would a deaf peach be a soft one, with slightly mushy flesh that made you think of muffled sound? Or a hard fruit, tough to get through to? It wasn't until I got home, noted a glut of eggs in the fridge and thought of hard-boiling a few that the daylight dawned. Hard boiled eggs - uova soda. She'd actually asked for una pesca soda - one hard enough to last the weekend. The minefield of a foreign language. Deaf Peaches would be a great name for a band, however.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)