Let me tell you about my desk. It was made by Mr Fitzpatrick to my very particular specification. A generous knee hole - hey, I could have company under there - handy shelves, for storing... well, anything I don't have another place for, and a lavish work area shaped approximately like a grand piano. The whole thing painted a rich shade of petrol blue. I'm only sharing this information with you because today I actually sighted my desk for the first time in months. Yesterday I put my book to bed. Today I cleared away the papers, CDs, dead pens, newspaper cuttings, dust, canary feathers, cake crumbs and other fragments of personal archaeological crud and there it was. MY DESK.

This happens every year. I start a new book at a rather casual saunter. I set-up a filing system for my research, poke the fluff from my keyboard, spend a whole morning selecting a new font. Six months down the line I'm working like a demented old bat, surrounded by canyons of books, coffee cups and ragged pieces of paper that I once thought might be useful. If only I could lie on a chaise longue and work like Barbara Cartland. 'Pass me a chocolate truffle, Gladys. Chapter Ten...'

Never mind. I'm finished. I'm going on holiday and nobody can stop me. Next week's blog will be in the hands of my son, Alastair Graham, a professional fund-raiser who leads are far more interesting life than I do. It is for moments like this that one raises children.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I'll finish writing my new book. Like a 42 week pregnancy this book has become the subject of whispered enquiries. 'They can't let her go on,' I'm sure friends have been saying. 'They should have her admitted. Put her out of her misery.'
Tomorrow I'll be able to do all the things that for the past few months I have left undone. I might go for a swim. I might make some fresh fettuccine, and I'll almost certainly watch a Bette Davis movie. One thing I can guarantee, I'll be going for a long, anxious walk while Mr Fitzpatrick reads the manuscript. My husband is always the first person to read my stuff. He's a thorough and intelligent editor and he loves my books but I cannot stay within earshot when he's doing that first read-through. Was that a sigh I heard? Tem minutes and he hasn't laughed? Didn't he just turn that page in a rather exasperated way? Laurie Graham will definitely be leaving the building.

This week's culinary notes. Figs, sliced in half, left briefly cut face down in 50:50 olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then frizzled on a hot plate for five minutes are exceedingly good indeed. We had them last night with cold prosciutto.

And in this house crabs are now designated 'restaurant food'. I bought some at the market and was weighed down every step of the way home with the thought that I had to commit crabicide . I stopped off to buy bread and when I glanced down there was a claw waving out of the top of the shopping bag. Uh-oh. No more.
In future if a person wants crab cakes a person had better just go to Baltimore.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was a dark and stormy night. The power went off at 3am. How did we know? Well, the fan ceased fanning us and you could have roasted an ox inside our bedroom. First problem was we couldn't find a flashlight, of which we own at least two. I managed to find a candle but couldn't locate a lighter, of which we own many. Meanwhile it was becoming clear that the problem lay not with our in-house trip switch but with the master trip. Four floors down.
Whose job would that be to go down and reset it? A man's, obviously. A woman's job is to remind him to put on a pair of pants before he goes out the door.
So a gas lighter was found and a candle lit, and by candle light two torches were unearthed. The next challenge was to find our cell phones so that we'd be able to communicate when Mr Fitzpatrick, decently attired, went downstairs. Two wild-haired butt-naked oldsters roving the apartment, candle in one hand, flashlight in the other, listening for the muted call of the Common Garden Mobile. And one of us an Eagle Scout.

Now a short cookery lesson on aubergines, eggplant, melanzana, call it what you will, a vegetable I've tried so very hard to like but without success. Our friend Ferruccio treated us to an amazingly more-ish spicy dish which took him a week to make. Five days for the aubergines to sit on his kitchen window sill and turn wrinkly, an hour or so to cook them in oil and spice them, and the remaining forty seven hours for them to sit in their juices and develop undreamed of heights of yummitude. And no secret ingredient, he swears. We shall see.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 02:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm having a bad summer with insects. Mosquitoes were my big problem when we moved to Italy. They zeroed in on me like flies around yesterday's fish and left my husband to sleep, unblemished and in peace. I've had mosquito bites that ended up the size of Vesuvius. But then something changed. Maybe I grew cannier, maybe I just stopped tasting as good. The mozzers mainly quit bothering me, and if occasionally they did, the bite was a mere nothing.
I even stopped burning citronella candles, for which certain members of the household gave thanks.

Now suddenly the mosquitoes have rediscovered me. They want me so much they have fought their way through screens, nets and skin cream to get at me. And not only that. They passed along word of my desirability to other insects. I got a wasp sting, and that hurt like a real SOB.

Well, tomorrow we head to the mountains to see whether the roof of our house is still visible above the uncut grass. No mosquitoes up there. Only wild boar, who really don't bother you unless you try to stop them stealing your onions. And a pathetic local insect called a mud-dauber which looks like two hornets stuck together. They don't sting. Actually, it takes them all their time to get air-borne. But they do lay their eggs in spooky looking mud nests that could give a person nightmares. You could imagine a man in a white coat saying, 'It seems to contain some kind of life form. But not life as we know it.'

Oh yes, and there are snakes. Mr Fitzpatrick says there are no snakes.
But men always say that.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On August 15th this notionally Catholic country celebrates the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It does this by way of a blood-letting ritual, also known as Driving at High Speed along an Autostrada in the direction of a Holiday Resort. It takes the first half of August to prepare for this Road Kill Fest and the second half to recover from it. Effectively Italy is closed for the month.

Laurie Graham Inc. is not closed. Laurie Graham Inc. is very much open for business and would have loved to complete certain negotiations begun back in May but...shrugs shoulders, sighs, rolls eyes heavenwards... it was not to be.

We're putting on a traditional British pantomime here next January, a theatrical extravaganza for which we require a performance space, for which we require a sponsor. We need the sponsor to talk to the theater administrator who in turn must speak to the technicians so that they can talk to the director. That's me. The short, middle-aged woman with steam coming out of her ears. I need the knee bone connected the thigh bone to kick some ass, but the ass has all gone on holiday. It is barreling down the autostrada with its radiator grill up some other driver's rear fender.

I wanted closure. I got it. The whole goddamned country is 'closured'. But not the Emergency Rooms, I pray.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)