I was up at 5.15, all slept-out, unlike yesterday morning when I was up at the same hour because I was worried about a big and complicated day ahead of me. Some of you probably think I'm just a scribbler. You may not know I'm also a highly successful freelance worrier. Worried you don't have enough time to devote to your worries? Send them to me. I'm open 24/7. No worry too small. But, I repeat, this morning I was up because I wanted to be.

At 5.15 this city is silent. I can't tell you what heaven it is. And at 5.45 Mr F joined me on the terrace and we had coffee and the little white peaches that are in season here for about five minutes. It was really a quite perfect breakfast until I noticed an item of clothing on the table. He said it was a work of art he just bought, title Two Socks on Table. A Bronx wise-ass even at 6am.

At 8am we went down to the square. Mr F was on his way to work but first he had to supervise my buying of the fish for tonight's dinner party. He says I never buy enough food. I know guests sometimes tumble down our stairs on their way out but I'll never be convinced it's because they're weak with hunger.

Then, fish bought, flowers bought, I scored a very great triumph by getting to the Rizzo bakery in time to buy a loaf of their highly-prized ciabatta salata. I don't know why they don't just bake more of the stuff. Usually I lose out to our friend Sid who is an even earlier riser than we are and snaps up the last loaf. But sadly Sid's not in town right now, and happy though I am to be able to serve the bread tonight, I have to say, if it's a choice between the ciabatta and Sid, I'll always choose Sid.

And here endeth my Saturday morning.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 03:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the UK Government's first Commissioner for Children. He's a retired physician and child health specialist, a father and a grandfather. This past week he published a report warning the Metropolitan police against their proposed stronger powers to stop and search teenagers who may be carrying weapons. It can only lead, says Sir Al, to greater alienation of the country's youth.

The publication of his report coincided with yet another teenage death by stabbing - London's 14th so far this year. Now I don't have Sir Al's date of birth to hand but I'll wager he's old enough to remember a time when teenagers were so in awe of policemen (also parents, teachers and clergymen) that they kept their adolescent rites of passage within decent law-abiding bounds. I'm sure he's a lovely grandad and I expect the kids he talks to when he goes walk-about with his Commissioner's hat on think he's a terrific old buffer. Unfortunately the rest of us grown-ups don't agree. We want teenagers stopped, shaken down and harrassed till they don't know which way is up. Their parents too. He's worried about alienation? He just doesn't get it. They are already alienated and it's a position they themselves have selected. They scorn those who live within the law. They stab first, discuss later. Time to get even, Sir Al. Time to get mad.

Meanwhile, in Birmingham, a little girl starved to death while in the care of her mother and her step-father. It's a bizarre story. Her brothers and sisters are all severely emaciated too. There'll be an enquiry. But what caught my eye was the self-righteous statement issued by her biological father and her maternal grandmother. A statement of the 'Heads Will Roll' variety. Dad and Gran want answers and they want them yesterday. Well, I have a question too. Where were you, Daddy, where were you Grandma, all those weeks that poor little sausage lay dying?

Oh yes, and I'd like to reassure the ethnically-sensitive that I use the term 'little sausage' in the affectionately colloquial and figurative sense and I by no means intend to link this dead Muslim child to any pork products whatsoever.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the view I've been looking at all day. The furthest I've traveled from my desk was down three floors to leave Mr F a change of clothing. Acqua alta this morning and no sirens. Well, why would there be? Hell, let people just go out there and get soaked. I'm the lucky one. I didn't need to leave home. But I've reached that stage of the working year when I hardly dare look up from my desk. Five weeks until the manuscript needs to be in good enough shape to deliver. Last evening I realised just how obsessed I've become when I found myself speaking in the voice of my narrator. Erk. Tomorrow I really must leave the building and get a life.

News of another cancer death. Another friend robbed of retirement and time with their grandchildren. Another very good reason to go join my husband for a glass of bubbles, quit griping and be grateful for another (wet) day in paradise.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a nostalgic frame of mind after telling someone about something that happened fifty years ago and realising they didn't have the faintest what I was talking about, I thought I'd knock out a list. Twenty items whose mention, for good or ill, transports me back to my childhood. With explanatory notes for non-Brits.

1. Sweet cigarettes. Little white sticks of candy, with a red tip, packaged to look like the real thing. Imagine.
2. Min furniture cream. It was what our house smelled of.
3. Liberty bodices. An oddly named extra undergarment notable chiefly for its rubber buttons. Did you wear it under your vest or over it? Darned if I can remember.
4. Welfare Orange Juice. Government issue vitamin C concentrate for we poor post-War babies who might not be getting any fresh fruit.
5. The Man from the Pru. An employee of the Prudential Insurance Company who called one night a week to collect premiums (usually a pile of small value coins.) Life was on hold till he'd been. You couldn't go out and risk missing him. What if you dropped dead next week?
6. Chilblains. Those painful itchy consequences of toasting frozen feet by a roaring fire. Everybody had them. My mother prescribed pills called GON. Didn't make a lick of difference. Central heating was the cure but that was way down the road.
7. Blancmange. A vile melange of milk, sugar and cornstarch fed to any child fool enough to ask, 'What's for afters?'
8. The Mangle. That's a clothes wringer to you, dudes. With rubber rollers if you were fancy. Talk about hard work. No wonder a towel had to last you a week.
9. The Ovaltinies. A children's club, with a secret password and everything. I fear my membership has lapsed, but I have the piano score to the song and often sing it. When I'm alone.
10. Chamber pots. What you had under your bed when the only toilet was outside. It was always a dilemma: to use it and then have the job of emptying it next morning, or to plait your legs.
11. Impetigo. A disfiguring skin infection kids don't seem to get any more. In the 50s the treatment, a shaming application of a bright purple lotion, ensured everyone knew to steer clear of you.
12. Bill & Ben. A pair of puppets made from flower pots, with a strangely sinister language called 'oddle-poddle.'
13. The Cane. The threat of which kept us in line but which we all felt at some point. Even a goody-two-shoes like me.
14. Avoirdupoids Tables. School exercise books used to have these printed on the back. You never needed them, but it was nice to know they were there.
15. Woollen swimsuits.
16. Tizer. A sweet, red, lightly frizzante drink that was the Mouton Rothschild of my childhood. I know they still make it. It just doesn't taste the same.
17. Educating Archie. A radio show starring a ventriloquist and his dummy. A radical concept even in 1955.
18. Polio scares. Swimming pools closed. Parents anxious. Thank God for Salk.
19. Corvette shaving soap. What my Dad smelled of. Applied with a badger hair brush in front of a mirror over the kitchen sink.
20. Girl! comic. Out every Wednesday. There was a boarding school serial on the middle page with an evil pupil called Lois. Memories....

Posted by Laurie Graham at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm sure I won't be the only genealogy addict who's relieved to read that a recent study shows the Neanderthals weren't so much our ancestors as a failed branch. I've been at this ancestor-tracing thing nearly three years now. Well actually, I took a year off because it was getting out of control and I decided I had to go cold turkey. You always think you're one click away from solving a mystery. Next thing you know, it's 2am. I guess that's why detectives have such lousy home lives.

Plenty of unanswered riddles in my family tree, not least because there seems to have been a tradition of giving the new baby the surname of the latest lodger. And then ten years on, when the next census was taken, changing it to the name of some new 'uncle'. Nothing much by way of lucky breaks, apart from a couple of unusual surnames, and the fact that one of my ancestry twigs springs from Rutland, England's smallest county and therefore a slightly smaller haystack through which to to search.

All kinds of false alarms too. At one point I removed Elijah Phantom from the family tree because I though I'd taken a wrong turn, but no, it turns out he's one of ours after all. And so is my latest find, Skeffington Liquorish, which I think you'll agree is a name almost worthy of Mrs Astor's list. Unfortunately he was just another squat low-browed tiller of the earth. But not a Neanderthal. Which is something.

Bad attack of separation anxiety yesterday. My handbag. We were on a flight home from Dublin and Mr F didn't like our seats because they were non-reclinable. The flight attendant said we could move if we did it VERY FAST INDEED. I guess we'd have lost our take-off slot if we'd fannied around and then I'd have become the very kind of passenger I despise. So we moved and I was in row 28 and my bag was in the bin over row 9 and we had a bit of turbulence so the seat belt signs were kept on for hours which meant they were behind with meal service and the trolleys were blocking the aisle and I couldn't get my bag. And I wanted it. Not for any particular reason. I just wanted it. Waaaaaaahhhh!

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