I’ve been back at my desk three days complete and not yet written a word. The usual pattern after a trip, when the practicalities of life have mounted up and getting back to the book is always the next thing to do after picking up the dry-cleaning. Dry-cleaning is something here. Not so much a minor domestic detail as a life project. She opens 9.00 till 12.55, but not Mondays and only when there’s an R in the month. At 12.55 she closes for the sacrosanct three hour lunch. At 4.00 she might re-open. Or not.

Then there are the random misfortunes that can close down any one-woman business just like that. A little hand-written note Scotch-taped to the window, closed due to family reasons, and there go your best trousers till early June.
Meanwhile this one-woman business tries to keep going, creaking back into action with a half-written chapter that’s gone cold. My theory is something half-written is easier to return to than something neatly tied off, but like all theories it doesn’t always stand up to the test. Where did I intend going with this? What can I have been thinking of? My trousers, possibly, and how to spring them from a dark and shuttered dry-cleaner’s shop.

And to add to my guilty sense of sloth, I’m reading Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Charles Dickens. All those books, the journalism, the amateur dramatics, dinners and speaking engagements, ten mile hikes, house moves, furniture rearrangement and various other manifestations of control-freakery.

Now there was a man who just couldn’t stop. An inspiration to a woman who’s had difficulty getting started this week.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s Orthodox Pascha but we’re still in Dublin so we’re celebrating with the Irish Russians. I’m not a great creature of habit but I’ve really missed my usual Holy Week routine. The quiet anticipation of Bridegroom Matins, every evening, Sunday till Wednesday. The messiness of the kitchen on Holy Thursday with eggs to dye, kulich to bake and the annual cholesterol-blowout paskha to make - once the million dollar question, ‘Where did I put the cheesecloth for safe-keeping?’ has been answered.

Then Holy Friday, early to the market to buy flowers for the epitafion and then, for the next forty eight hours we step through time, even me with my size sixes normally planted so firmly in the world. I can’t imagine any atmosphere more intense than the darkened tomb of the waiting church late on Holy Saturday night.

We’ve had some bizarre but wonderful Paschas. There was the year Mr Fitzpatrick was on crutches so we had to do our own thing, including, as I recall, gagging on basilica-strength incense. Note to file: always select incense appropriate to your living space.

And the year our itinerant parish was offered an unused chapel for the night, one of those small Norman gems the Anglican church has going spare. No electricity, nor any other additions more recent than four hundred years, but we managed with candles, and a bucket behind a tree for calls of nature.
But my favourite image is of Father Raphael, a mountain of a man in his festal vestments and an Olympic-standard swinger of the censer, scattering flower-arrangements, icon stands and slow-moving deacons with his three and a half somersault and tuck (degree of difficulty, 4.2) and filling the chapel with the joy of the Resurrection. Christ is risen!

Or as they say in Ireland, Tá Críost éirithe!

Posted by Laurie Graham at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So we have a new government. ‘Of course,’ they’re saying, ‘Berlusconi looked such a clown.’ ‘Of course,’ says the other 50 percent, ‘Prodi has absolutely no charisma.’ This is what television does to politics. Yet another reason, as if we don’t already have reasons enough, for hurling all TV sets into the nearest landfill and reclaiming our minds.

To Dublin for a family wedding so I’m leaving my blog in the excellent blog-sitting hands of poet, lyricist, shopping maven and dear friend, Caryl Avery. We have excerpts from her Gourmand’s Lament graffito-ed on our homemade dining table, but it deserves a much wider audience so here it is in full.

The Gourmand’s Lament

So much food, so little time,
And I’m not getting younger.
So I chewed some food sublime
To satisfy my hunger.

Sweet potatoes carrots vichy
Crispy sweetbreads cervelles squishy
Eggs in aspic chocolate mousse
Foie gras stuffing pfeffernusse
Osso buso bagels blini
Turnips turkey tetrazzini
Goulash goobers escargots
Tzimmes hummus haricots
Moo goo gai pan jambalaya
Ratatouille spam papaya
Suckling pig with maple glaze
Duckling, cold with mayonnaise
Rocky road rum chunky monkey
Legs of toad some fast food junky
Salmon sardines snapper sole
Swordfish as a capper (whole)
Kugel kreplach kasha knishes
Sent by Sadie mit best vishes
Fricadelles two fricassees
Chanterelles three BLTs
Chicken livers – chopped – with matzo
Lotsa corn well-popped - or not so
Pumpkin pecan pizza pie
Ti martoonies extra dry
Mascarpone mozzarella
Baby oysters rockafella
Lean Cuisine’s boeuf stroganoff
Stouffer’s noodles romanoff
Shabu shabu sukiyaki
Served with good, not schlocky, sake
Quesadillas quiche lorraine
Naan tortillas beef lo mein
Scallopine milanese
Pasta pesto genovese
Chops chalupa brown bread borscht
Schnapps my Uncle Ed endorscht
Wienerschnitzel enchilada
Empanada...yada yada

So much food, so little time
The thought keeps on repeating.
Nights I’ve stewed on food sublime:
Life needs a second seating.

© 2002 Caryl Avery

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A dash to the mountains to open up the house for friends who are hoping for a little late ski-ing. Mr Fitzpatrick and I always have the same conversation as we labor up the final kilometer of track in first gear: what disaster awaits us? Burst pipes? Phone lines down? The house broken into by a bored youth gang and used as a venue for goat sacrifice? Or, unhappy thought, will the ghiri have taken possession?

Ghiri are small squirrel-type animals native to northern Italy. Their ancestors lived in trees but your 21st century ghiro prefers to bunk down in a nice snug attic where he survives the winter eating nuts and berries and chunks of load-bearing beam. At a push they’ll also snack on down-filled comforters, orthopedic mattresses and sheepskin boots. Come the spring they are reputed to give up these home comforts and go foraging, leaping from branch to branch as their forebears did of old. Ours though seem to have lost their folk memory. They stay put and have set up some kind of ghiro fitness center in our roof. Circuit training starts round about midnight.

We follow the example of the locals and kill the little bastards when we get our hands on them. The Friuliani say, ‘In Aosta they eat ghiri. With polenta.’ Than which there cannot be a more withering regional insult.

Our neighbors have acquired a fourth dog: yet another incontinent mis-shape who howls at his own shadow. Also two new geese and a pen full of adolescent turkeys. Did you ever really look at a turkey? Further evidence that God has a sense of humor.

A relief to get back to the city for some peace.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)