My final days here and Switzerland is giving me a terrific send-off worthy of the Queen Elizabeth starting out on a new voyage minus the bunting.
It’s mushroom season and Saturday saw Mr. Jules and I up with the larks foraging in the woods above….well I’m not allowed to say as it’s a secret. Friday night we received A PHONE CALL with A TIP-OFF from Fausto, an Italian technician on one of Mr. Jules’ trusty teams. He has been feeling sorry for our pathetic attempts to find what the locals call “bolets” (porcini). In fact last year we threw in the basket and didn’t go at all. Being a short Italian he has two distinct advantages when it comes to mushrooming: a) Close to the ground and b) Being Italian he is by birth a forager. We came home with four kilos of porcini. My first sign.
As we were foraging Mr. J. jokingly remarked that we were becoming one of those older couples who replace sex with joint “activities”. I knew what he was getting at. August has been a rocky month with a lot of highs and lows namely a long low period during which Mr. J. had a ding dong with some contractors and was seriously worried about one of his projects. Like most men this meant a long time down under in his Man Cave whilst the rest of us kept out of his way and waited for him to emerge. It was a long ceaze and there were many angry phone calls and tense moments – only normal when you work from home – but this did not lead to anticipatory moments in the antechamber. In fact it was rather thorny.
A girlfriend once told me about an ex-husband who used to try and convince her to have sex with him by saying:
“Go on, you won’t feel a thing.”
The irony being just that.
Today on my run I decided, for no logical reason, to go up a track that in all of my 17 years of hiking/running/chasing kids in the woods above our house I always (wrongly) thought led to the dusty old gravel pit. And finally I found THE LAKE. The one people had been telling me about for years and that I didn’t believe existed. Now, today, two days before I leave. Surrounded by bullrushes and yellow flowers it sits languidly between the leafy Jura and the snow-tipped alps to the south. I stood spell-bound basking in the discovery. What a gift from nature. My second sign.
All will be well.
I can go now.
NEXT BLOG FROM LONDON!!!
As if I haven’t enough to do with the move over to London, Mr. Jules has gone all creative on me. He’s teamed up with two mates to put on a photography exhibition in aid of the charity Action-Sabrina. Mr. Jules and mate Pierre are hobby photographers but other mate Ralfonso has a distinctive head start being a world renowned kinetic artist see www.ralfonso.com.
It is a slight stretch, in fact it is a Boarding House reach out of Mr. J’s comfort zone. Used to crunching numbers and problem solving, his right hand creative brain lying dormant under layers of dust, has been punched bagged into action.
Each photographer has to take four photographs from each of the following three themes making a total of twelve. These will then be framed and sold for a few gold coins:
Cemetery
Station
Simplicity
Now the first two are left hand brainers where you just set the GPS and turn up and shoot but the last has been causing all sorts of problems to poor old Mr. J.’s under-used right side. In desperation he acknowledges that we females of the race really do have some good qualities and he has been sucking the three women in this house dry for ideas:
Here’s a typical conversation that has taken place all summer with Mr. J, the three women in closest proximity, visiting relatives and even Marlyse the dog walker:
“What shall I do? What does this mean this SIMplicity?”
“It’s your interpretation not ours, it has to come from YOU (duh).”
Again: “But what does it mean?”
“What you THINK it means is what it means.”
Mr. J. looks crestfallen and way-befuddled.
Females sighing: “It has to be evocative.”
Mr. Jules looks wobbly.
“It has to stir something in the viewer.”
This then sparks an animated conversation between the present females on the subject. Mr. Jules’ eyes glaze over and he quietly leaves the room.
Below is the invitation, please come along and view the photos and have a glass of wine with us.
I N V I T A T I O N
3 Guys – 3 Cameras – 3 Visions
Join us, bring a friend -
and share a glass of wine during our
upcoming Photographic Exhibition.
PLEASE SAVE THE DATE
Vernissage
6PM to 9PM
Friday 3rd of September
Quadrum Gallery
17, rue du Nord
1180 Rolle,Switzerland
Stefan, Ralfonso, Pierre
All Proceeds will go to the Charity “Action-Sabrina”, http://www.action-sabrina.ch/ .
Before I actually went on one, I thought the term Yoga Holiday was an oxymoron. I have just come back from a week of bliss on the Greek Island of Santorini. I went with a little trepidation remembering my last attempt at a yoga holiday in a Sivananda ashram in the Bahamas where no booze or coffee were allowed, the food strictly vegetarian and the day started
at sunrise.
Last week’s yoga retreat in Greece was led by the very talented and gentle Andrea Freely of www.yogafreely.ch and not once did I feel the urge to sneak off down the beach for a margarita and a tuna melt.
The girlies came along with us. That’s them having a great time riding my back and although they only came to the afternoon sessions they loved the yoga . That’s Mr. Jules unleashing his inner 12 year old. I highly recommend it as a family experience deepening relationships and sharing beautiful moments together.
This is what Alexia wrote about her holiday on my birthday card:
Yoga
Poses, poses, poses. Loads of poses
but
Yoga is not about that its about finding your inner peace
And not doing the poses to try and
do them perfectly its
To try your BEST!
That’s it in a nutshell.
I am monosyllabic, speechless, lost for words. So out of character. My word synapses are sizzled with over-firing. I’ve spent the past week with Madre. The weather was beautiful so we stayed put and sat in the garden. We had people over for lunch in fact we took all our meals in the garden watching the bees flitting around the lavender inbetween breaths.
One of the very good things that happened to my father – along with the years he spent in the navy – was meeting my mother. Such a taciturn character (a gene that none of the women in the family inherited) and a sweet, kind man (ditto for me at least) they balanced each other perfectly. I know sometimes his taciturnity drove my mother mad and probably her loquacity drove him mad, but until he was cruelly taken from her, their’s was a very happy marriage as neither looked for perfection in the other or made the other responsible for their own happiness. That’s why I will be with Mr. J. until one of us kicks the bucket or he kicks me out.
*****
The boy is back from Luffbra via Newquay sporting a yellow head.
”It was a prank for charity. Five of us did it. We went to the pound shop. Funny. It turned out a different colour on each of us.” The same five will shortly be visiting us here in Switzerland so if you see five sporty looking lads with orange/yellow/white heads having a larf, you know it’s Ollie’s crew.
“It’s better than a tattoo,” said Madre wisely.
*****
And yesterday Alexia’s top secret farewell party organised by the very forward thinking Ellen and her mum Sarah which took place in our garden. The whole school year was invited to celebrate the end of their junior school years and to wish Alexia luck in London. Twenty-one kids swam, ate and boomed away the late afternoon. Sarah had made a photo album for Alexia and asked each child to write a message which will be perfect in London as a reminder of her friends back home. It is Rabbit Boy’s turn to write. He with the Rooney ears, rough edges and parents who breed rabbits for the table and eye us expats suspiciously. His name is Mikael and as Sarah hands him the book to annotate, the whole year huddle around him.
“Bravo Mikael. Well done Mikael, look how well you did that A. Bien fait, tu t’es très bien concentré.” Squeezing the letters out of this sweet country boy is a team effort and no-one gets left behind.
At the end of the summer Mikael will go down to Nyon to a special learning school.
“Did you like Mikael mummy?” asked Alexia as she drifted off to sleep.
“Very much so. I think we should invite him again. I don’t think he gets to swim in a pool very often.”
At the end of their junior school years here most will go up to the big secondary school in the next village over. Some will go onto smaller private schools and some will go to schools for those with learning disabilities. Alexia going off to her school in London is more privileged than Mikael there is no doubt, but only on a material level. They have lived 25 metres apart, breathed the same air, played on the same football pitch and attended the same village school. In Switzerland everyone gets the same start and no one can say whose life will be better. Let us hope they will both have beautiful lives but most importantly let us hope that Mikael and Alexia will always be friends.
Read my latest publication in The Geneva Times on The Montreux Jazz Festival. (Pages 16&17)
http://www.genevatimes.ch/images/stories/freeOnlineMagazine/index.html
