We had my mother's funeral five days ago, a sun-drenched music-filled celebration of her life, with one last ride up the Grand Canal, and one final, obligatory brush with bureaucracy at the very threshold of the crematorium. She would have loved every minute of it.
So many people rolled up their sleeves to make it happen: Paul, who came to Venice for a holiday and ended up playing the organ; Dale who sang a sublime Ave Maria; Michelle who flew in the night before with a suitcase full of curry ingredients and gave us all lunch; and all those friends who turned up in their summer finery and sang their socks off. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now Mr F and I are taking off for a couple of weeks, to Cornwall, in search of crashing surf and crab sandwiches. I'm going to read some Daphne du Maurier and do some thinking. Also, if the weather forecast is anything to go by, I'm going to get rained on. No matter. I just packed my chubby little telescopic umbrella.
'I'm Thinking in the Rain, Just Thinking in the Rain...'
I leave my blog in the trustworthy hands of the Heir Apparent, Alastair Graham. Right now he's busy rinsing Glastonbury mud out of his orifices but he tells me he should be fit to post by next week.
Hasta luega, amigos.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5.30 am, it's 75 degrees with 100% humidity and my body clock is completely out of whack. We've both been up since 3.20, too hot to sleep and too plagued by lists of things that have to be done. Mr F's particular sleep robber is the Order of Service for my mother's funeral tomorrow. Every time he thinks he's all set the last two words of a hymn drop off the page. So while he tweaked I ironed. A good thing, this, because the crumpled laundry was piled high on the bed my son will have to sleep in tonight. Now we have nice crisp shirts and table napkins and everything. Also, the guest bed has re-emerged. I haven't seen it in weeks.

The birds started up at about 4.15, the birds that live au naturel, that is. Our little canary kept his head tucked firmly under his wing until I made coffee and toast at 5.00. Who sang that song, My Canary's Got Circles Under His Eyes? I think it was Fats Waller. Anyhoo, our canary do. Well, he can nap later.
And so can we. Maybe I should give Mr F a break and drop a verse from Lift High the Cross.

Today's question: can I nurse along the bathtub full of glorious pale pink peonies until tomorrow morning? It's a cliff-hanger. No wonder I can't sleep.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is Hilda, my Mum, aged 18 and giving Adolf Hitler one of her warning looks. Hilda died three days ago, conceding victory to a very aggressive brain tumour. Many of you have sent their prayers and good wishes as I've charted her decline. I'd like you to know she died very well, in her own bed, the sun just set and the last of the swallows hoovering up insects in the sky outside her terrace doors. I don't know where she went in those first moments of freedom - she loved to travel - but she didn't hang around. Her absence was immediately palpable.

In the aftermath there have been some interludes of high comedy: the doctor who was supposed to come and evaluate her for the loan of a bed hoist finally found time to call; there was little stand-off between Raisa, the Russian, who helped me nurse my mother and the mortuary assistant who had performed Last Offices on Hilda's body. Raisa had put a scarf in the bag of burial clothes, to be tied babushska-style around her head. The mortuary attendant, rightly judging my mother to have been an elegant English woman, had draped the scarf around her throat.
And then there was the man doing the funeral flowers who will go to his own grave telling the story of the strange foreigners who didn't want a ten foot high MAMA.

For those of you who didn't know her, here is a digest of my eulogy notes.
A frost-blossom baby. When she was born her father was already a grandfather. She was orphaned at 16, married at 20, widowed at 49.
Two words that recur in every tribute I've received: 'courage' and 'energy'.
A grandmother and a great-grandmother without equal. Her grandchildren were her favourite and frequent travel companions. She was always their friend and sometimes their refuge.
Her love affair with India, where her father had been a soldier. Her solo journeys there that astonished and scandalised her friends. Her neatly packed travel bag whose contents covered every eventuality. Sink, Kitchen would be filed between Rennie Antacid Tablets and Tea Bags.
Stalwart, indomitable, with a powerful sense of duty. In her eighties still shopping for sick neighbours, still delivering Christian Aid envelopes. Still making beds with the sheet corners mitred tight enough to break your legs.
A shy, shade-seeking plant, the perfect foil for my funny, extrovert father.
The eyes of a hawk, the memory of an elephant, the heart of a lioness. That was my Mum.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...that is the question. We're invited to an opera gala Saturday night. The invitation says Black Tie or Dark Suit.
Mr F's wardrobe decision on this should be a foregone conclusion. He regularly sits around in his undershorts bemoaning the universal drop in dress standards. He's a bow-tie kind of guy, a one-man barricade against the neap tide of baseball caps and baggy cut-offs. So you may imagine my surprise when I found him cowering beneath the mosquito net when he was supposed to be checking whether his tux needed dry-cleaning.

He said he wasn't even sure where his tuxedo was. Well it took all of thirty seconds for me to clear up that little matter.
He said, 'But maybe my summer-weight charcoal would be a better idea.'
At which point I smelled a rat. Why this sudden dragging of feet? Why this outrageous suggestion that he dress down? He knows I love to dress up. I'm a sequins and rhinestones girl. Denim jeans I have never worn in my life. I think they're the ugliest garment in creation. Put me in a T shirt or a sweater and I look like a boiled potato. I think it's because of my vampire pallor. But let darkness fall, allow me to throw on a rope or two of pearls and I'm at my best. Ideally I should just stay in my bathrobe until the cocktail hour.

So I knew what I'd be wearing Saturday night. Then I thought I'd worked out what was bugging Mr F. Fear of Waistband Shrinkage. You know how it can happen. You leave your pants hanging in the closet while you relax in a pair of old slacks and eat a few gallons of icecream. Next think you know your pants upped and shrank.

I said, 'Just try on the damned suit and quit snivelling.'
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

This morning he appeared before me. Tux, no shirt, no shoes. A hint of smug frivolity playing around his lips. The suit looked... roomy.
He said, 'I had a feeling I'd lost weight. So which bow tie shall I wear?'
I said, 'You're sure? I don't want you wishing you'd worn the charcoal single vent instead. It could ruin a girl's evening.'
But he was adamant. What a turn around.
Then he said, 'Anyway, Frank's wearing formal.'
And there we have it. His best friend will be wearing his tux so all's well in the world. It wasn't Fear of Waistband Shrinkage at all, but plain old Fear of Being the Lone Tux Wearer.
You guys.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recipe for chaos: take one Greek. Add a dinner invitation, a pinch of fatalism and a dish that won't spoil. Leave to marinade.

It started like a normal day. Except we had just heard that our priest was being created a bishop and was leaving to care for a new flock. We called to congratulate him.
He said, 'But I'd hoped to see you before I go.'
I suggested coffee. He said he'd prefer to come to dinner. A late dinner, because that's what Greeks do. They're still picking at the cheese board when Mr F and I are dreaming about breakfast. But well, he did have something very special to celebrate and who were we to argue with a bishop.

We agreed 8.30, which, taught by long experience, I translated as 9pm. If we were lucky. Just before 9 he called to give us a progress report and a wildly optimistic estimate of his time of arrival. At 9.20 the doorbell rang. Less than an hour late. We were impressed.

Guests to our top-floor apartment have to cross the echoing marble floor of the communal entrance hall and then climb four flights of stairs. We can track them on their way up, particularly if they're chatting. This was the sound that made my heart lurch. Our guest was not alone. And then, in a horrible flashback which surfaced from some Bad Moment Storage Facility deep in my brain, I remembered the time this same guest arrived with two unheralded extras. And I looked upon my pathetic little dish of Kalamata olives. And I did not feel good.

Well, last evening he brought only one extra mouth for me to feed, and he was most welcome I'm sure, but you never saw such fast footwork once I was safely hidden behind the kitchen door. Didn't your mother always tell you to keep a store cupboard? How come mothers are so smart. Is there any more comforting sight to a hostess under siege than a jar of grilled peppers and a can of mixed bean salad?

Then the miracle. By the time I got round to serving my 3-portion seafood pasticcio it was so late and we were all so hot and tired and full of bean salad, there were leftovers. Leftovers! If he'd arrived with the entire Treorchy Male Voice Choir I could still have fed them. There's a lesson in all this for my uptight little Anglo-Saxon soul.
But anyway, farewell to Bishop Policarpo who is off to do the Lord's work in yet another foreign land. What a lonely life. God grant him many years. And a new wristwatch.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 03:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)