Yesterday was my biennial Pap test, a free screening service conducted here with uncharacteristic efficiency. I never mind going to the clinic at San Giustinian. I can walk there in under ten minutes and it's the most unhospital like hospital I ever was in. Instead of the usual smell of disinfectant and disease it smells of coffee. I don't know why because I've never seen a sign for a coffee shop, but there it is. Maybe they have a Get Well and Smell the Java spray.

There were eight of us waiting to get tested, including the inevitable sadsack who wants to tell you her full clinical history. Everyone suddenly found the mammogram brochures deeply absorbing, so she talked to herself instead.
I could have humoured her. Why didn't I humour her? It would have been good for my Italian and might have made a lonely woman happy. Dang. I often get these good and noble ideas as soon as I'm out of danger.

I didn't get my results yet but I feel like a well and grateful woman, especially when so many around me are sick. Mr F himself is on his way home right now with a gum full of sutures. So time to pull on my Nurse Matilda shoes. I think he's allowed ice cream and an easy-on-the-brain movie.

I also came across a severe case (possibly terminal) of literary flatulence earlier today. This is a condition in which a writer spends twice as much time talking about their work in progress as they do actually writing it. Often people walk around suffering from it and don't even realise. It's not usually contagious but still, I'm asking all my nearest and dearest to watch out for any symptoms.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the past week I've had two lovely occasions spoiled for me by intrusive photographers. First there was an ordination at church, an occasion I quite understand the new priest's proud relatives wanted on record, but couldn't they have waited for a group shot when it was all over? The two photographers were everywhere, ducking and diving and discussing their next angle. Mr F remonstrated with them and they said, basically, 'This is a ceremony. It's got robes and candles and stuff and the pictures are going to look great. So go boil your head, you curmudgeonly old fart.'
They even went into the sanctuary during the Consecration. The most prayerful moment of the service and there are two goons in there with cameras. Well that's one for the album.

And then we went to a little concert where our friend Liesl was singing and our friend Marja was playing the harpsichord. The theme of the evening was the brief professional collaboration between Vivaldi and Goldoni, two of Venice's most famous sons. A quite delightful conceit and beautiful music ruined by a photographer with the loudest shutter action and a flash like a Klieg light. Every picture he took made me jump. And I am not a nervy girlie.

I mean, does the photo now trump the experience itself? I believe it does. Ninety five percent of people who visit Venice look at it solely through their viewfinder. But when they get home I guess they can say, 'I know I was there. I got the picture.'

And now my daughter tells me that on her wedding day the photographer will be arriving at 10am for a 2pm ceremony. So he can snap some nice, informal, Getting Ready pics. Yes, I can see it now. A candid shot of the mother of the bride as she applies a corn plaster to her bunion and invokes a curse upon her hairdresser.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 06:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My daughter and her fiancé are choosing readings for their wedding next month. A civil ceremony, neither of them being members of a church. They asked me for some suggestions and they liked the piece by Kahlil Gibran on the subject of marriage but the official who'll be performing the ceremony wouldn't allow it because it contained the word 'God'. That's the rule.

We all slept on this for a night or two and this morning I suddenly thought, 'I know! What if we remove the word 'God'?' So I did a little bit of light editing, which I felt Gibran might forgive and God certainly would.
The edited line read, you shall be together, even in the silent memory of eternity.
My son-in-law ran it by the registrar immediately. And that was when we learned the rule in full. The spirit of the rule, you might say (except the registrar probably wouldn't like that) rather than its letter. Okay, here goes.

The problem with Gibran is not the word 'God' per se , rather the fact that Gibran is known as a religious writer. If my daughter chose Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How do I love thee? Let me count the ways and asked me to edit the word 'God' out of line 13, that would be permitted. Because EBB is categorised as a poet. See?
No, neither do I. But I'm going to try lying down in a dark room. Maybe it'll become clear.

I guess this means they definitely wouldn't be allowed Thomas a Kempis's laundry list.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have reason to believe Mr F will be blogging at length about our weekend in Naples - it was the way he kept whipping out his pen and saying 'now THAT'S blog-worthy.'
So I'm confining myself to the streamline reportage of haiku. Besides, I have to get back to work.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
See Naples and die.
Whoever wrote that must have
Tried to cross the street.

HOTEL BREAKFAST
La sfogliatella,
Breakfast roll of Napoli,
Filled with sugared snot.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
Man in stalls seat 9
Why did you omit to wear
Your Odor-Eaters?

POMPEII
Vesuvius was
Very quiet yesterday.
Almost too quiet.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)