Life coincidences are strange. Today in the mountains one of Sophie-G’s school pals spending the holidays with us asked for a Mars Bar for breakfast. He’s charming, smart and kind but he’s not my son and so I let him eat it with only a wry comment from me. Later, feeling guilty, I manage to get him to eat an apple. But still life throws me back a question mark by leading me to Jamie Oliver’s speech a few hours later and I realise how remiss I was by not refusing and cooking up some eggs instead. Mine was a small task and I failed. Jamie Oliver’s task is humongous. He is attempting to convert all Mars Bar eaters in the USA to eat apples forever. He’s brilliant.
The French call jogging “le footing” and that is more of an exact terminology. One foot in front of the other in a bouncing motion. Anyway I don’t even get to start my “footing” until I arrive at the flat bit at the top of the hill in the woods. For the moment I am power walking down the hill towards the river when I pass the couple-without-children-with-the-four-cars going off to work. I say “bonjour” politely although without the heart chakra engaged because I harbour a fury towards their his and her minis, the four wheel drive and the porsche. A few years back they were burgled and ALL her expensive underwear was stolen. In fact the claim for expensive underwear outbid the other items taken during the robbery. I know all this because we have the same architect and Georges is our friend. Along with the fury at the conspicuous consumption is the curiosity as to how couples-without-children live. A life where sensible, flesh coloured underwear for easy washing is banished, I presume. I know they spend most evenings in their jacuzzi because I can see the steam. (This is the second jacuzzi, the first had to be torn down because they failed to ask the Commune for planning permission as it was more than the size of a garden shed – of course it was this is a couple with four cars!). After downing a jamboree of champagne – I swear I can hear the cork popping all the way up the hill to my house – they have wild, rampant, loud sex in every room in the house, every night.
I am now at the river. I soldier on up the snowy path listening to JB Glazinger. This guy makes me laugh out loud. He is a self-development guru and has to be the biggest bragger in the world. He is a martial arts expert, has an MBA and PHD and is taking his pilot’s license which he somehow manages to remind us about in every podcast. I giggle inbetween pants making my way up the wiggly footpath crunching in the snow as he tells me that I am a magnificient spiritual being living in a material world. That’s me! I finally reach the flat bit on the running trail and start my footing but my mind, which is inclined to always take the easy way out, says “Stop! You’ll fall and break something!” This morning it sounds uncannily like Madre. “It’s icy and then you’ll not be able to go to London this weekend.” I take small steps gingerly avoiding the shiny patches then remember what I learned in Martin Brofman’s seminar about perception and reflection knowing full well that if I tell myself I am going to fall then I will. I pick up the pace and sure enough the ground is firm and compact.
Friday I leave for London. It is my nephew Myles’ sixteenth birthday celebration weekend so we have tickets for X Factor Live! I know it’s lame but that’s the kind of family we are. Aunty Sally, Godmother to Lexi, is even printing off Masks from the X factor website. Madre has opted out as she is more of a Strictly woman and Mr. Jules is skiing with his Norwegian buddy. First, before the fun starts, Lexi has an interview and exam to get through. We have been doing mock interviews over dinner and trying hard not to snigger when she articulates carefully and puts her posh accent on. Mr. Jules told her to write “examining nine year olds is ridiculous” next to any questions she cannot answer.
I am squeezing in an afternoon of flat hunting with Casper, Edward and Jeremy who have some bijoux broom cupboards in fabulous locations to show me. Heehee. I am still amazed that people speak this way, I thought the Labour government had eradicated Hurray Henrys and any self-respecting ambitious London men spoke like Sir Alan Sugar. Perhaps it is just property-speak. My favourite is Stephen Lovelady, who speaks normally and whom I have been unwittingly calling Ladyfinger. I think I have some sort of disease where I garble words or mishear them at times. The girl on reception told me that they have a poll for the best alternative surname for Stephen and mine was topping the bill so far. I am a little ashamed to show my face at the uber-trendy Foxton’s on the King’s Road Friday at 4pm.
…Am I the only one who thinks that Avatar must have been made by an excited 12 year old? To me it was Toy Story in the Rain Forest. It will win all the oscars of course.
…Always be mindful of statistics:
Person A: Which is the country with the lowest birth rate?
Person B: Er Italy?
Person A: Correct. Very good. So if you were a statistician you could probably find some correlation between eating pasta and infertility.
Boom Boom. Enough said.
…I’m listening to Angus and Julia Stone on repeat.
…I’m reading This is Where I Leave You by Johnathan Tropper and the Polysyllabic Spree (still) and Journey to the River Sea at Alexia’s request because she wants to discuss(!) it with me.
I am dancing with a dozen women to Gerri Halliwell’s It’s Raining Men. A disco ball throws green specks of light over us. A bunch of middle aged women at a disco, only these are not any women. Most of these women are in pain; some are in the late stages of cancer. As they dance about the room, throwing their arms in the air and girating trance-like to the music, my genetically engineered brand of irony and disdain is quiet. All I see is the beauty and the dignity.
Françoise has been up there for at least an hour. She is glowing with perspiration and joy. Hard to believe this is the same Françoise who arrived angry and withdrawn, a shadow of this dancing diva.
This is a seminar on the body mirroring system run by Martin Brofman. Brofman believes that our physical symptoms are purely a reflexion of what is going on in our conscious mind. He created this process of healing from his own experience thirty years ago when he developed a spinal tumour. Given two months to live, he set out to experience as much of life as he could. Along the way he discovered meditation and a zen master who told him that his cancer started in the mind and that is where he should go looking for a cure.
We meditate. We heal each other. We discover and understand the power of our own energy. We laugh. At night after dinner the music goes on and the unravelling begins.
Hugging is a big part of the healing process. Hugging strangers took a while for this Brit to get used to. I am a pioneer at the forefront of hugging strangers repression. I’m just not genetically wired to melt into a stranger’s body and go for gold and so I soon realize that this is my sickness. I may be one of the lucky healthy ones drawn to this experience out of curiosity and a willingness to learn more, but I’m lousy at opening up to strangers and I am here to breakdown the barriers that I create.
Along with the hugging fest, what I learn from this experience is that we are all born good. (Which is why the death penalty is not a solution and we are all somehow responsible for the crime). That the power of the human spirit and the capacity to love is infinite; that we all create our own realities and that the answers to all our problems are to be found in our conscious mind.
Over in London this past week for two days with Mr. Jules. We are looking for a place to live. THE BIG NEWS IS that as from next September we are transferring over to the UK for a couple of years. I KNOW! I’m excited.
As you faithful readers of this blog already know, Ollie, my eldest, is in the UK, studying binge drinking and rugby at Loffbro Uni and his departure changed the whole family dynamic and my “raison d’être.” I wasn’t the only one. Early in 2009 Sophie-G. started her offensive with the winning sentence:
“I can’t stand the idea of studying Maths and a science until I’m eighteen and I know I will have to give up my dancing in the final year of my Bac if I am to get anywhere near a pass.”
She was preaching to the choir having hopeless failed my maths O level with a U grade. The A level system was starting to look a better option for her and when we found a school with a dance and theatre programme just outside London it all started to make sense. It was time to move on.
I realised that I too had to think about growing up along with the kids and so I’m looking at an MA programme in Creative Writing at London Uni which is my old stomping ground and so the circle is complete. Plus Mr. J. rather likes the idea of going out with a student.
The trip over last week was great – Mr. J. proudly drew his Oyster card from his wallet as we got off the plane whilst I had inexplicably lost mine – saw lots of friends, drank too much and viewed many, many apartments which you can imagine is not easy with a Swiss property developer in tow. What the public school boy/estate agents call “charming” i.e., windows that no longer fit in their frames, dodgy pipes and drafts that could knock an infant flat, Mr. J. calls dégueulasse, dangereux and gonflé. But what was really nice and genuinely “charming” were the manners of these chappies who showed us around like glorified butlers managing large estates. We went to see an abandoned project in Basil Street on the market for a king’s ransom and it was an oscar winning sales performance given by Harry as he avoided the bags of cement, bricks and old pipes strewn around the floor. Mr. J. needed a sit down and a double decaf to recover from that one.
Delightful Edward got very excited about a property he wanted to show us. “It’s very quiet, all you can see are views of the park.” I had a hard time convincing him that I essentially live in a park in Switzerland and what I want is to hear the rumble of traffic with the wiff of a London bus in my nostrils as I skip along to the wine bar and M&S Simply Food on the corner.
You will still get updates from the riveting life of a Swiss village because we will be here in the school holidays so if it this that you are thirsting after (and not the neurotic musings of a writer/mother/wife trying to make sense of the world) it will be here alongside London life in the shoes of a more-Swiss-than-she-thinks returnee. Sort of Heidi goes to London review. For once Mr. J will be the foreigner with the dodgy accent. In a sense I will also be a bit of a foreigner in my own country having last resided there in 1982 and never as a tax paying adult.
I hope you will continue to enjoy reading the new blog, with a London slant, as I monitor my progress in one of the world’s most exciting capitals.
