Today I could be writing about the fact that the XXXX frigging wheelchair depot is only open three mornings a week and today wasn't one of them. But I'm not going to. I could also lament the mean, icy nor'easter that's been howling around my mother's building for the past 24 hours and nudging everyone a little closer to insanity. But I'll resist.
I realise I'm in serious danger of becoming a Weekly Whiner. So this week I'm dispensing only joy. Bring on the raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. I can take it.

First, let me tell you, our pear tree, given up for dead, has blossomed. In fact our terrace is a riot of fruit blossom. Nectarine, lemon, and now that shamefaced old pear. A pity really, because we're about to go away.
Saturday morning, if we're spared, Mr F and I will be on a flight to England. We'll arrive in our old parish in time for the Blessing of the Palms and stay for Holy Week and Pascha. A week-long spiritual feast of perfect balance. And we always get such a warm welcome. I'm sure we're much easier to love now we're not in the parish week after week, throwing our weight around.

In my absence crack blog-sitter Carrie Galbraith will entertain you from California. And seeing that I'm technically unemployed at present, I intend working on my egg-dyeing skills. Onion skins I know about. My friend Theodora is the maestra of onion skin eggs so I'm going to leave that to her while I experiment with squished blueberries, turmeric and red cabbage. Will our Pascha basket contain eggs coloured lilac, yellow and blue, or will they all turn out an interesting shade of yuck? Watch this space.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So the gerontologist made a house call yesterday. She looked about sixteen and a half and chucked my mother under the chin - my mother, let me tell you, is not the kind of woman you chuck under the chin - but was otherwise very sweet and nice and all. We spent most of her visit uncovering the deficiencies of the Italian health system. Some of them are admirable. Hospital-borne infections are almost unknown here, for instance, unlike the UK where they are rife. Here though, we lack basic community care.
My mother needs her feet attending to. In England chiropodists visit the housebound. In Italy the traveling chiropodist doesn't exist. All we have are beauty salons and my mother's feet are well beyond that.
I said, 'What do your diabetic patients do?'
'Oh,' she said, 'they go to the diabetic clinic.'
I said, 'Well can't my Mum go there?'
Not if she isn't a diabetic, apparently. Not even if she pretends to be one.

The gerontologist instructed me to get an Invalidity Certificate, which will entitle us to a subsidised wheelchair and a few other little perks, like, maybe, a pair of tin-cutters for her gnarled old toe nails. And so. First you go to Social Services, Floor 1, Window B. They give you a form, you take it to your family doctor, he fills it in and signs it, you take it back to Window B, they give you a ticket, which you then take to the Health Authority Office, Window F, mornings only.
I achieved most of the above in under two hours. Elated I returned to Window B. I was on a roll. But not so fast.
In his haste to complete the form our doctor had omitted two crucial words confirming my mother's condition.
'You must go back,' they said. Even though anyone, ANYONE, with an ounce of gumption could have inserted those words. A chimpanzee with a ballpoint pen could have done it.
I said, 'I can't go back. He has twenty people in his waiting room.'
Which got me a look of dumb insolence and the famous Italian shrug. Did I bang the counter? No. Did I make threats against her sad-ass bureaucratic person? Nothing so satisfying. I regret to tell you I wept.
Didn't get me anywhere though. I guess she's seen it all before.

Anyway, today my blog is 1 year old. How time has flown. And what fun it's been. Happy Birthday, dear Blog.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So my first thought on waking was not (as it should have been) 'Rise and shine, Laurie Graham, shake a leg and get to your place of work.' Instead it was, 'We have banana bread for breakfast.'
A gift from a friend who came to dinner. And what banana bread. The best. Now I have to find out if her friendship stretches to giving me the recipe. In full. You know, sometimes people hold back a little something from the list of ingredients? Can't fool me though. We're going to need bananas.

And talking of ingredients, there was the fallout from last week's ill-advised substitution of farro for bulgour in a Turkish pilau. Personally I thought it worked but Mr F tossed and turned all night. He said he felt like he swallowed Stromboli. I was just about to drop the recipe from my Worth a Second Go list when a friend blew in from North Carolina with guess what in her luggage. I tell you, no greater love hath a friend than that she finds time, on the fraught eve of departure, to read my dumb blog and then to throw a pack of bulgour in her suitcase. Friendship, thy name is Lesley.

I have a lot of reasons to feel grateful this week. Not least the kind friends who are already helping me and the thoughtful ones who are offering to help as my mother's life slowly closes down, like lights being turned off, one by one. Thanks, dear buds. You know who you are.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have not been gainfully employed today, unless you count making dinner. Which I don't. I've been reading - well, at a stretch I suppose I could call it researching - and listening to my new Derek Bell harp CD and cooking.
I don't usually buy cookbooks illustrated with photographs. The vegetables always look raw or plastic. But I made an exception for two lusciously illustrated books by Diana Henry. Roast Figs, Sugar Snow has taken me through the winter, not least for the photograph of sleeping piglets on page 84, and now the sun is shining I've turned to Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. Both books are literate and beautiful to look at and the recipes work. And there's this photo of a Turkish pilau that looks so pretty what with the red of the roasted tomatoes and the dark green of the spinach, I couldn't get it out of my mind. In the end I thought I'd better just cook the darned thing.

First hiccup was, no bulgour to be had in this neighbourhood, so I'm making it with a kind of wheat called farro and I'm only glad Mr Fitzpatrick is at work because I'm sure if he were here he'd be wondering out loud whether he likes farro. Sometimes in this house you have to come in under the radar with new ingredients.

Second hiccup, I couldn't find my kitchen muslin for draining the yogurt. Tell you the truth, I haven't seen it since Pascha 2005, that's how much of a dairymaid I am. I guess it's gone to the same landfill as the cherry-stoner and the grapefruit knife. But I'm nothing if not a good improviser. Also the owner of several perfectly good orphaned popsocks. Sorted.
'Oh a popsock full of yogurt helps the farro slip down'... as Julie Andrews almost sang.

So God willing and the creek don't rise, tonight we're eating Turkish.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)