My mother-in-law has been in a benignly demented state for about seven years now. She probably doesn't have Alzheimer's but the label doesn't really matter any more. Her mind, lodged inside an amazingly nifty 94 year old body, is away with the fairies. Sometimes literally. Last time we were with her she said she had little people dancing on her hand. She's cared for in a nursing home that's as pleasant as such a place can be, and Mr F's two sisters pick up the slack.

So last weekend one of my sisters-in-law was on Mom Duty. She took along her iPod, to listen to while Mom slept and when Mom woke up she gave her the earphones and played her a little Elvis. And goshdarnit if Mom didn't start singing along, Can't Help Falling In Love With You . Word perfect. Now I don't know whether to welcome this news or worry about it. I mean, if she can recall Elvis lyrics, what else may be in there trying to find a way out?

And en passant, have you noticed that in novel blurbs there's always a character who gets more than they bargained for? Also that the only time people bid farewell to a place is in travel brochures?
Just an observation.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 06:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A bad start to the day when I discovered that Andrea, who sells flowers in the square on Saturday mornings, has had the nerve to go off on holiday, leaving me with a flowerless house. And I couldn't bear to go to either of the local flower shops because they're like entering a mausoleum. You really get the impression you're disturbing the dead when you ask them what anything costs and anyway, they're actually not interested in selling you a couple of bunches of freesias. Their forte is arranging flowers into bouquets and wreaths of breathtaking cellophane-wrapped hideosity. I had no choice but to walk to Rialto Market. And as long as I was there I thought I might as well buy vegetables.

So I'm waiting on line and listening to the old lady ahead of me who's buying one of everything, and then I'm aware she's started on her fruit list, one banana, one apple, one peach. And not any old peach. To my cloth ears it sounded like she asked for una pesca sorda. Which would be a deaf peach. All the way back from Rialto I was trying to figure it out. Would a deaf peach be a soft one, with slightly mushy flesh that made you think of muffled sound? Or a hard fruit, tough to get through to? It wasn't until I got home, noted a glut of eggs in the fridge and thought of hard-boiling a few that the daylight dawned. Hard boiled eggs - uova soda. She'd actually asked for una pesca soda - one hard enough to last the weekend. The minefield of a foreign language. Deaf Peaches would be a great name for a band, however.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nothing. You hear me? Sweet FA.
I had a little previous experience but this past week I've graduated to a new level of doing nothing. Give you an example. For a period of four days I couldn't even locate a pen. The two I always carry in my bag disappeared and I didn't stir myself to buy a replacement. Seeing I hadn't packed a notebook there didn't seem much point.

We were staying in an area of great historical interest, not to mention world-famous gastronomy and scenic beauty. Or so it says in the books. I decided to take their word for it. The guide said 'go see the amphitheatre'. My body said, 'Naaah.'

So here was my day.
Get up, possibly as late as 9am. Unheard of, this. I actually shook my watch the first morning it happened.
After breakfast I might take a walk into town through the vineyards. Or not. My motivation was to buy the best figs I ever tasted in my life. But I wouldn't describe it as an irresistible urge.
But walk or not, always a swim before lunch. Then, when I saw my mate Louise twirling a teatowel of damp salad greens around her head, I knew it was time to get out, drip-dry and amble up to the trough.
After lunch, a siesta. Incredibly, after a 9 hour night I still managed a deeply blissful afternoon zizz. Followed by reading beneath a pine tree, more swimming and making myself available for a glass of chilled wine around 6.30.

I read four novels, talked to my friends and did a lot of thinking. I bought nothing, wrote nothing, regret nothing. Except perhaps the hundredweight of full fat cheese I consumed.

And now it's Monday morning. Time to throw the suitcase into the back of the closet, put on my writer's uniform and sharpen my pencils. Am I up for it? I better be. You should see my desk.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 01:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Carrie, in Laurie's absence.

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence.

It’s summer on the Left Coast and we are burning up with triple digit temperatures (Fahrenheit, of course) and over 300 active fires around the state, making for unusual sunsets and serious air quality problems. We learn new phrases such as Haines Index, Containment Line, Plume Development, Fuel Break and Dozer Lines. We bookmark the Cal Fire notice page and keep in touch with friends who live in the path of a fire.

This is no Venetian summer. It’s dry heat that keeps us burning out here on the Pacific Rim. Keeps us on our toes.

We joke about our dormant volcanoes and yet we camp on their peaks. We know to never turn our back on the ocean but lose several people every year to sleeper waves and rip tides. We go hiking knowing we could encounter rattle snakes and mountain lions. We build houses on hillsides that slide down in the winter rains. We tell family stories in earthquake years.

And yes, we give our fires names.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have friends who've taken to email but who never surf the Internet. They seem to feel it's like smoking crack: once you've started you can't stop. Now admittedly, it can turn into a great waste of time, but these are all people who watch TV. So what's the diff? And this morning, in just one hour of surfing, I've completed a deeply satisfying piece of research.

It all started over dinner last evening when I discovered that Mr F once visited Normandy. When you marry in your 50s it can take a long time to get the full case history. Anyway, long before he knew me he went to Normandy and he liked it so much he'd like to go back some day. In particular he told me, he'd like to see the Normandy beaches. Which led us to talk about my father who took part in the D-Day landings.
'Where?' asked Mr F.
'Dunno,' replied this slipshod custodian of family history.
But this morning, armed with my Dad's demobilisation papers and the fragments of what little he ever told me about his war, I filled in a lot of gaps. This is why I love the Internet. I don't care that you sometimes end up neck deep in crap. There's lots of wonderful useful stuff out there, at the click of a mouse.

Between breakfast and lunch I've uncovered much of my Dad's naval career. I now know where he trained for Combined Ops and what it was all leading to - the delivery of Canadian infantry to Juno Beach, where many died, but many more forged on to the liberation of France. My father always planned to go back but didn't live long enough to do it. Of course, now I'd like to visit Normandy too.

Not this week though. This week we go to Provence and my dear blog-locum Carrie Galbraith will keep the airwaves open.

Messages this week from readers who were surprised or relieved to discover that even a published writer gets attacks of the screaming abdabs after finishing a book and submitting to an editor's scrutiny. Oh yes. And any writer who tells you different is a fibber.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)