The sap must be rising. After a frugal winter we have this week splurged on:
1. Lunch out
2. A lemon tree, a nectarine tree and two lavender bushes
3. A non-essential new toilet seat.

This last was for what Mr F has recently taken to calling 'my bathroom'. It's the little shower room next door to my office. He's sort of colonised it. I wouldn't really mind except he assumes he still has visiting towel and toothpaste rights to Bathroom A, in particular when I'm enthroned there. I know I should just lock the door but I suffer from an affliction wincingly similar to my mother's ever-open bedroom door. You know how it is. When your children are small the very moment you lock the bathroom door a child will start howling with separation anxiety. So you just stop bothering. You make yourself available 24/7. Eventually you forget that normal grownups shower and defecate in solitude. I really have to give myself a talking to about this. And Mr F too. Call me territorial but I think it's time he decided where he's going store his hair products. Pee in the pot or get off the fancy new toilet seat, I say.

The lunch was a letdown. Thirty five Euro for four tiny grilled squid, hardly old enough to leave their mother, and a wodge of yuckyuck polenta. I could have had pizza for less money. I should have had pizza. Actually, we should have come home for one of Mr F's jaw-stretching sandwiches. A BLT minus the B, it being Lent and all. How wise I am after the event.

But my new lavender bushes are looking full of fragrant promise and worth every penny. I love lavender. I once tried to grow some on our bit of Friulian mountainside but it drowned. These potted beauties for the terrace should be safe with me though, preferring dry conditions as they do. I am the world's most neglectful plant waterer.
I have a vague notion of baking lavender shortbread some time in the summer. And vague notions, once committed to blog, acquire more weight. Somebody out there might actually read this. Come August they might chime in. Whatever happened to the lavender shortbread, Laurie? Hunh?

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two minutes of grateful silence, please, in acknowledgment of the richness of our mother tongue. One so easily takes these things for granted. For instance, if you're Italian and you want to suggest someone is only 97 cents to the Euro what are your options? Idiota, fesso, tonto, gonzo, scemo, zuccone. That's about it. One of the men recently arrested on suspicion of being a member of the Red Brigades and of planning terrorist outrages had aroused the suspicions of his girlfriend just a few days before the police kicked in his front door. It was probably the way he was tiptoeing out of the house at midnight with a machine gun-shaped package under his arm that did it. He tried to reassure her and throw her off the scent.
'Vai, stupida,' he told her. Whereas, had he been an English speaker, he could have called her a silly billy, or a schmuck. Or a ditz or a dope, a dumbell or a numbskull, a fathead, a knucklehead, twerp, twit, chump, duffer, ass, jerk, or just plain fool. See what a treasure trove we can dip into? As a matter of fact I think there's only one area of vocabulary where the Italians have the edge. Coffee.
You want a coffee? Well, do you want it liscio, or ristretto, or lungo or corretto? Would that be a latte, a macchiato or a deca macchiatone poco schiuma? Speak up, speak up. You think the barista's a mindreader? Please God hazelnut-flavor coffee-type beverage never catches on here.

A sociable afternoon. Nine gals and a guy all the way from Boston and from Maine climbed to our fourth floor apartment, without benefit of oxygen cylinders, to talk to me about my books. Thanks for coming Robin, Elaine, Linda, Susan, Joan, Ruth, Misty, Louise, Maurine and Paul. And thanks for buying books and passing on the pleasure of reading to another generation.

Nobody touched the cookies. I guess they must have had a very good lunch. Unfortunately this means there's a whole plate of cookies now lying provocatively close to my flight path. Might just have to lock down the whole area until they've become inedible. Hmm.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Five days of train schedules, strange beds, other people's malevolent shower controls. This old dog is so happy to be back in her own basket. I stayed first with my youngest daughter who pampered me with hotwater bottles and a stack of mind-popcorn magazines. She knew I needed building up. We have a wedding to organise and only 14 months in which to do it.
We went to a Wedding Fayre. As soon as you see any word ending in -yre you know you're approaching La La Land. A world of personalised matchbooks and bridal garters. It wasn't exactly a hot ticket either. Just a trickle of punters in damp raincoats and most of them were clustered around the free samples of cake. But it wasn't entirely bad. The venue for this event was one of my favorite buildings in the world, Brighton Pavilion, creation of the arguably least popular Prince of Wales ever. An Anglo-Indian extravaganza of domed rooms, luscious wallpapers and surreal chandeliers. I think I'd have liked old Prinny.

Then from Sussex, with all that talk of wedding gowns, to Cambridge, where people are too rational to get married but, just suppose they had a brainstorm and did, they would do it wearing a very old cardigan and sensible shoes.
In Cambridge I ate too much and shopped. Piano music and curry spices and a special latex modeling compound for Mr F who is creating a life-size statue of Savonarola. Don't ask. We all need a project in life and this one is guaranteed to feature in upcoming postings. I don't think I'm giving too much away if I tell you our annual chicken wire budget is already shot.

Professor Lewis Wolpert was lecturing on Science and Religious Belief last night. Standing room only except you're not allowed to have people cluttering the aisles these days. It's an EU Health & Safety Directive. I guess there were latecomers who were turned away. It was for their own well-being. That'll larn 'em.
Being neurotically punctual I got a seat, safety harness, hard hat, everything. And I kind of wanted to ask Professor Wolpert a question but I didn't manage to formulate it till hours later when I was lying in bed in my PJs.
It was this: since science is, by definition, about what can be observed and measured, and God is, by definition, unobservable and unmeasurable, why don't scientists stop jumping up and down and crying 'No proof! No evidence!' and, well, basically, mind their own business? Just wondered.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll tell you one thing about this benighted, come-back-next-month-with-your-greatgrandmother's-last-five-tax-returns-a-DNA-sample-and-your-second-cousin's-inside-leg-measurement, bureaucratic nightmare of a country. It's a good place to be an old lady.
We had to be at the police station at 8.30 this morning, to edge a little closer to my mother becoming a legal resident of Italy. You think being a citizen of the European Community puts an end to all that red tape? Think again, my friends.
Knowing what a sad and desperate throng gathers outside the gates of the Questura at 8.29, I made sure we were there at 8am and my mother did her bit by looking particularly frail. Italian policeman are passionate about three things in life: what kind of figure they cut in their uniform; lunch; their elderly female relatives or anyone who reminds them thereof.
We were spotted huddled against the railings. Out came an agent and ushered us inside to a place of warmth and safety. They cleared away the prisoners' blankets that had just been dropped off from the laundry so they could offer us seats. I began to think we might be offered the Full Italian Breakfast. Those suckers outside who hadn't thought to accessorise with a granny were furious.
Anyway, I would like cyber-publicly to thank Agents Beppe, Luciano and Ruggiero for their kindness. It made all the difference.
Of course we still have to report back in June.
I didn't sleep well last night. This morning's appointment with the law hung over me. Also I needed to get up and pee but I was afraid of waking my mother. She sleeps with her door open. She's slept with her door open for fifty nine and a half years, in case her baby cries. So now her 59 and a half year old baby can't take a leak in the middle of the night. Something not right with this picture.
I'd like an early night tonight but we have people coming. But the good news is Mr F is cooking his mighty fine rabbit in honey mustard. Yum squared.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)