The job of executor isn't something I'd ever volunteer for and I've counted myself lucky that my mother always kept her financial affairs in immaculate order. I figured for once in my life I should follow her example. So I did. I followed all the procedures TO THE LETTER, I filed everything, I did my due diligence. Just before Christmas we closed on the sale of her apartment and I walked away with a bunch of cheques, looking forward to the pleasurable part of my duties: distributing the funds to her heirs. Well, not so fast Mrs Hot Shot Executrix. In my excitement about entering the home stretch of Italian bureaucracy I was forgetting a final hurdle. The English banking system.

Four to six weeks for foreign cheques to clear. I tried to imagine why that should be. I pictured a small donkey, plodding up and down snow-clogged Alpine passes with my cheques in a leather roll on his back. Turns out I wasn't so very wrong. In 2008, where everything else happens at the click of a mouse, bank cheques still shuttle, actually, physically, from country to country. Or at least they do if you bank with Dewey, Milkit and Howe.

So I gave them their six weeks. Today, with my proof of receipt clutched in my sweaty little hand, I called them for a progress report. I was expecting them to say, 'Yes, yes, it just crossed the border into Belgium. Should be here by mid-February.' Instead they said (I paraphrase) 'Who? How much? Never heard of you.'
To which I replied, 'Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggh.'
I swear my heart nearly stopped. If there are any readers in the Isle of Man they may have felt an earth tremor around lunch time today, about 2.7 on the Richter Scale. That was my phone call to my account manager. Boy did he move. I guess the speed of a banker's reaction is proportionate to the number of zeros in the amount that's gone missing.

And then guess what? Fifteen minutes later my Mum's money appeared. Unseen by any bank official it entered the building, nay, entered my account, and sat there whistling, drumming its fingers, pretending it had never gone walk about. Now is that spooky, or what?

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I really admire people who blog daily. Personally, I get bored with the sound of my own voice, especially now life's so quiet. Get up, go to work, eat dinner, fall asleep. What is there to blog about? My biggest decision yesterday was where to buy the frittelle. Frittelle are doughnuts, traditional for the Carnival season, crisp, feather-light and filled with yummy, Marsala-spiked zabaglione. Frankly there should be a law against them, especially when a girl is trying to broker a deal between her body and the gown she has to wear March 22nd.

And then to add insult to calorific insult on Tuesday we're going to Vienna, a city where everything comes with whipped cream. Even the whipped cream comes with added whipped cream. I think after Vienna a little Lenten asceticism is called for. I wonder if this mild obsession with food has anything to do with being a post-war baby? My mother was so sick of food rationing she stuffed us like Strasbourg geese. I was never allowed to experience hunger. As soon as the needle indicated I was down to a quarter-full stomach she'd top me up with bread and cheese and half a pint of full whack milk. Lordy Lordy. Still, it's probably why I have sturdy bones while my skinny friends are falling to splinters. Guess you can't have it all ways.

Up early tomorrow. We'll be in Vienna by 10. Sitting here in the bosom of Europe I take for granted how easily we can travel to great destinations. When American friends come here they have to squeeze so much into so little time. And this season a lot of them are cutting their trip even shorter, stung by how little a dollar buys you over here. As my sister-in-law says, 'Why fly all the way to Italy when you can go to Vegas, see Paris and Venice and Egypt and everywhere, and get a great steak.'

Posted by Laurie Graham at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

See this? See any elephants? Even very distant, ant-sized elephants that a person might convince herself wouldn't be any trouble supposing they should ever start stampeding toward her?

That's right. There aren't any. That rogue bull elephant called Pantomime has thundered over me and I am now gazing at an elephant-free landscape. It's over. And here is the bottom line. We raised about 4000 dollars and I aged about 10 years. Along the way we had one final tangle with Italian bureaucracy (no A-board posters allowed outside the theatre), and a sicklist that made us look more like an episode of ER than a production of Dick Whittington (1 case of chickenpox and 1 of laryngitis, 2 high fevers, 1 sprained knee and a terrifying mid-term bleed from a low-lying placenta). The headaches, the heartaches, the back-aches, the flops, we had 'em all. Also, laughter, tears and strong language. But most importantly, Junior survived and, thanks to a real trouper called Rosie Forbes Butler, the show went on.

Mr F and I just spent two hours stowing all the stuff in the attic so for the first time in weeks I'm sitting in a pantomime-free zone. Tomorrow I'll get back to my day job, then we'll take the late flight to Dublin to meet young Conor. Three weeks old and still not walking. What is it with kids today?

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seeing how Mr F has blogged about You Know What and everyone in town seems to be talking about it, it behooves me to stay off the subject. This is not difficult. I have nothing to say except I'm ready for the week ahead and feel very calm about it. Almost...too calm.

My mind is already moving ahead to new challenges, such as staying off the booze until my Mother of the Bride dress feels a little more comodious. And finding a way to get through five hours of The Meistersingers without my stomach rumbling. I'm thinking of a stash of hard-boiled eggs in my evening purse.

A bad morning at church where, it being a feast day, the bishop was in attendance and so, therefore, were the Greeks. We never see them any other time. Since they got outnumbered by the Slavs they've been sulking and staying away, but they'd obviously decided to greek the place up this morning. They arrive late and they expect to occupy certain prime positions, on the basis that Greekness trumps all other affiliations. That's bad enough in itself. I hate it when Nationalism shows his face in church.

Anyway, I was apparently an invisible woman. In spite of my Russian hat and my scarlet scarf two Greeks so didn't see me that they squeezed into my stall, stood in front of me and forced me out. I mean physically forced me out. It was funny. Kind of. School yard behaviour. But episodes like this are bad for me because they bring out my most Pharisaic tendencies. As in, 'I thank Thee God that I am not an uncouth gum-chewer like these here Greeks.'

I may not go to church next Sunday. I may just wait till my fur has stopped bristling. Let me not judge my brother and all that. Or at least, let me only judge him very slightly.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)