Francesca Bossert's Blog, page 26

WOWEE SEXY!

Artwork by Olivia Bossert (www.oliviabossert.com)

The happy wowees hit relatively easily

If you let yourself colour-riff first thing

(Or even second thing!).

Lose the black, the beige, the blahs.

Turn up your inner playlist and trundle into your funky,

Maybe even badass your boho badaboom, baby!

Let the rolls roll beneath ample swathes of glorious fabric,

And keep your footwear lowlowlowlow..

Add a spritz of Fucking Fabulous (ask for a sample, it’s Fucking Expensive!)

Happy body happy life!

 

THE REAL WOW FACTOR

Neither particularly attractive nor interesting looking, she possessed, nevertheless, an invisible wow factor that turned heads, positively affecting everyone she encountered as she went about her daily activities.

 Her secret?

 Random good deeds.

This week, for instance, she secretly paid for someone’s extra cinnamon muffin in a coffee shop,

Left a gorgeous bunch of autumn flowers from her garden on a stranger’s doorstep,

And finished knitting a cashmere lap rug in soft shades of pink for her elderly and crochety old neighbour, delivering it on the wettest day with a book of uplifting poetry and a bright smile.

As a result, random good deeds multiplied. People felt themselves perk up, stand a little taller, smile a little more brightly as their hearts swelled, and they in turn began to go about their days randomly sprinkling joy into the hearts of others.

 Slowly, beautifully, joy and kindness spread throughout the world.

 Go on, make a difference today!

 

INCY-WINCY SPIDER

There was a tiny window

For a cutie.

For an incy-wincy

Alfa Romeo Spider,

Ideally

Aqua-blue,

As seen in my dreams,

Post-Bird-on-a-Wire,

romcom-adorable,

with a tape deck to play

Boys of Summer nonchalantly

Yet at full blast,

Especially at red lights.

Like, duh.

 

Oh look, there’s one! I squealed, as we zoomed past. Fancy that!

 

Hand-brake U-turn.

 

Reader, he bought it for me!

WE GATHERED: reflexions on witches

We gathered in secret. You gave us no choice.

 

Fearful of your jealousy, of the frustrations and anger that so often saw you stumbling home in an inebriated, violent, and sexually entitled stupor, much later, when the storm had passed and our home had returned to silence, we crept out in silence, gathering with our sisters in dark places. In the colder months, we lit fires and huddled around them, swaddled in layers of clothes and hats to keep warm. We shared stories, encouraging each other through difficult moments, consoling one another, doing whatever we could to bring each other moments of kindness and respite in a world hostile towards women. We spoke of remedies that had helped our loved ones, we shared knowledge we had inherited from women before us, knowledge that would help our families and communities, and that we too would pass on.

 

You say we stirred up trouble in cauldrons? We were making soup, you delusional morons! Soups to feed our families. Soups to feed our communities. Broomsticks? We spent our lives sweeping up the muck you traipsed everywhere!

 

You spoke of us gathering to prepare spells and to brew potions. Yes, we gathered. We gathered berries to make sweet deserts, and herbs to make medicines and poultices to heal sickness and battle wounds. We gathered to help ourselves, but also to help us serve you better, so that you in turn might serve us better. We gathered to make a better world.

 

Our gatherings stemmed from necessity. We were brave and caring, not deceitful or scheming. Were we evil? When you showed us cruelty we may have needed to fight back with a pinch of cunning.  We learned to work around you, and to tiptoe on the eggshells of the fowl that we later killed and plucked and cooked so that you could rub your bellies and belch. Afterwards, we offered you sips of herbal concoctions to soften your indigestion.

 

We gathered for the survival of our communities, to find the courage to go on, to find ways to live with you and without you once you were gone and we were left alone. We gathered to find ways to ease our gruelling lives. We gathered in solace, to enjoy fleeting moments of laughter among ourselves, because we wanted to air our minds and laugh among each other. We stole moments to dance and sing, but mostly we cooked and cleaned and worked the land and dealt with animals. We gave birth, and if that didn’t kill us, we raised children.

 

Mostly we worked and endured.

 

We did not gather as witches.

 

We gathered as women.

 

KITTENS!!!!

We woke up to newborn kittens on our outside sofa this morning!

 

It has been raining a lot these past few days in Spain (thankfully, our area has not been hit by flash floods and total devastation, the deaths and damage further south is heartbreaking), so everything is soaked. A mother cat needed a dry place to have her babies and found our outdoor sofa on the terrace. She had her kittens there during the night, so when my husband came downstairs this morning he saw what he initially thought might be something I’d left outside to air overnight! And then he looked closer and saw that it was a tortoiseshell cat with four tiny kittens curled up together! The mother was out for the count for quite a while; I came down soon after my husband and we were able to admire them through the window for quite a long time before she woke up, saw us and became a little unsettled.

 

So, we backed off and left her alone while we had her breakfast. She had two grey kittens, as well as one black, and one ginger. The ginger kitten was clearly the strongest; it was elbowing the others out of the way and kicking like mad to feed, and was noticeably bigger than them.

BUT THEY WERE ALL SOOOO CUTE! 

I had to leave for an appointment in Girona, so my husband took over kitten watch, but a gardener arrived next door with a leaf blower and the poor mama cat got scared and ran away, coming back a little later to carry away the ginger kitten. Sadly, four hours later she still hadn’t returned for the others, who were getting cold, and there were leaflblowers on full blast everywhere, so the mother wouldn’t have dared come back. We tried to call a few local cat associations, and a vet; the vet said he couldn’t do anything, and the associations didn’t respond. We brought the kittens into the house and put them in a basket with a little towel to keep them warm, and googled how to feed newborn kittens (a full time job…) and then a HERO showed up!

 

This hero, Sergio, is also a gardener where we live (on a golf course near Girona), and he’d heard about the kittens from the other gardeners (apparently all the resort gardeners came to see them while I was away!), and came to have a look. He asked me if he could have one, and I said of course, and that he could take them all, but did he know how to feed them? He said he did, that he’d done it before, and has another cat, so he took them and looked so gentle and sweet and delighted standing there with his little basket of kittens, so HURRAY! I hope they’ll grow up to live good cat lives. I hope we see the poor Mama with her ginger baby around. She looked so tired and skinny.

 

Sergio said he’d keep me posted on how the go on.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Cesca xx

 

SKATEBOARD PROTOTYPE

I used to skateboard.

Me, aka blonde  imbecile,

In the company of an imbecilic brunette. Because imbeciles have more fun, really.

We sat, laughing our minuscule asses off, upon a rudimentary skateboard.

Although possibly it was a prototype;

We are, nowadays, vintage ladies, after all…

High on Nutella, we could regularly be seen shriek-giggling rattle-flashing down a steep potholed road in a remote French village where you could still buy unpasteurized milk straight from a cow called Edith who mooed as we rocketed by.

Cars never occurred to us.

I guess you had to be there…

BARCELONA, WITH A SIDE ORDER OF EMPATHY AND CAKE

Good afternoon,

We just got back from Barcelona where it was raining like mad! My poor Mama was worried about us as she and my father are always glued to the news, so saw the terrible devastation between Valanecia and Malaga and immediately got their geography in a pickle. I’ve not yet had time to look at what happened, but from the little I saw it seems pretty awful. A year’s rain in one hour is never good.

In Barcelona we had no rain yesterday, so we took a taxi from our very nice hotel on the upper side of Paseo de Gracia down to Barceloneta, walked along the sea for quite a while watching people playing in waves, some even trying to catch a few waves on surfboards. My hair got turned into a Mad Maggie, as my Nana used to say! Then we walked all the way back to the hotel, through little streets (I was secretly hoping to come across one of my favourite shops in the area, but didn’t tell my husband, and as it turned out, I didn’t have my date with destiny! Oh well!).

We had a quick pit-stop in El Corte Ingles, which is a famous Spanish department store (there’s one in Girona, 15 minutes from where I live in Spain but it’s much smaller). Not that I was going to drag my husband through 6 floors or so and hundreds of different brands as there’s nothing he dislikes more than shopping, but Corte have really nice nightwear and since I’ve just chucked all mine out as it was all looking very tatty and embarrassing, and I really don’t like sleeping in just Chanel 5 anymore, I quickly picked up something that wouldn’t be embarrassing to be found found wearing dead in bed.

When we finally got back to our hotel my feet were beginning to burn a little - who else gets that? it’s horrible! And I my “triangle” little toes had blisters in the pointy triangular bits! - so I was happy to take off my shoes and socks and put my feet in cold water for a bit. I checked my phone stats and saw with amazement that I’d walked for over 9Kms!!! Without any hip pain! God bless that Spanish doctor, seriously!

I lay on the bed and read my new poetry book for a while, A Bit Much by Lindsay Rush, which is fun. Have you read it? Apparently she got famous on Instagram under the handle MaryOliversDrunkCounsin. I will have to see if she’s on Substack.

Then we got ready for drinks with friends who were also staying in the hotel, and whom we hadn’t seen for ages. I would have loved a G&T or a glass of wine, but I’m still playing it safe as I’ve only been on my new meds for ten days, and feel so good that I don’t want to jinx anything, so I had Vichy Catalan, which is my favourite sparkling water. Have you ever had it? You either love it or hate it, it tastes a teeny bit salty. I love it. I had a gross club sandwich, and just picked at it, leaving all the greasy bacon, tomato and bread! So basically I had no dinner, but it was fine.

I slept like a log, too! Great bed in that hotel! There’s something about beds in good hotels… And pillows….

I probably sound like a privileged turnip, but I kind of am.

Today, we woke to threatening grey skies, but managed to have a little time outside before the storm broke. There was a sudden clap of thunder and then it bucketed! We took a taxi with our friends and had a lovely lunch. Well, the company was lovely, but my chicken was way too salty. In French we say that the chef must be in love when the food is too salty, and this particular chef must be absolutely smitten. I hardly ate any of it, which I hate as I always think of the poor chicken having been killed for no reason.

I wish I could be vegetarian. With my IBD issues it’s been impossible so far, but maybe in a little while…

Anyway, we’re home now, and on the motorway on the way home I had a little spark of wisdom. Kind of bargain basement wisdom, because I’m no Buddha, but I figure I’ll share it anyway because I’m sure you won’t mind.

ON EMPATHY AND CAKE

Empathy is grossly underrated.

If empathy were spread liberally, shared indiscriminately, and ingested with relish, life would be a piece of cake.

(should it be “were spread”, or “was spread?” I’m never quite sure…)

Thanks for reading.

I think I’m going to make a cake now. A Spanish Santiago cake. Simple, mega quick, and delicious!

Here’s the recipe: 100 grams of sugar, 4 eggs. Beat together until smooth and light.

Add 200 grams of powdered almonds, about a teaspoon of cinnamon, the zest of a lemon. You can add the lemon juice too, if you like.

Grease a circular mould (I think mine is 26 cms diameter, and I put baking paper in the base, which I grease), and bake at 170 degrees for 30 minutes. You can sprinkle icing sugar on top if you like, to make it pretty!

That’s it! Super easy, the way I like baking.

Love,

Cesca xx

PANDEMONIUM!

Good afternoon,How are you? I've been really well, FINALLY! I truly believe my body wants to be Spanish... Anyway, I started this poem yesterday morning, thinking it was going to be one of my quick Weather Forecast thingies, but then it took on a life of its own and turned into something like a Marvel movie!! (not that I've ever seen one) ...and then, since it was a gorgeous day, and because the day before it had rained, and it seems the next few days are also going to be wet, we drove up the Costa Brava coast towards Roses and went for a long walk in a wildlife sanctuary with loads of towers for birdwatching that reminded of the tower the bad guy falls off in Where The Crawdads Sing. Also, it was super marshy there. Loads of people came equipped with cameras with massive telescopic lenses and binoculars, but we just spied with our little eyes... We saw a few herons from afar...and then set out to explore. The coast there has a stretch of beach that must go on for ten kilometres or so; the light was a gorgeous pale blue and silver, and they are trying to get the sand dunes to come back (I guess they were destroyed by storms, although I'm not sure). Basically we walked for a few hours, including 6 kilometres on the beach, which blew my mind of as I haven't been able to walk much for more than 3 years now, especially not for over an hour along a sandy beach! All thanks to a doctor in Barcelona who gave me new medication. Also, my IBD has gone silent, too, thanks to him. So yes, my body definitely wants to be Spanish!Here is my poem, I hope you like it. There's a little fun poked at someone loads of people aren't too fond of these days...PANDEMONIUM!Sky is poorly, in bad shape,She hasn’t been herself as late.Listless clouds mist lazy drizzleLike weary teachers distilling drivel.Winds are landlocked, spitting tacks,Squabbling behind the Alps.Delirious, high above the greige,Sky scoffs the entire Milky Way!Shocked constellations spread the newsThrough shooting stars and aliens.The Big Dipper shuts down its rides,Urging baby stars to run and hide.Sun gets wind of Sky’s sad blues,Freaks out and rises rays askew.Moon evicts all astronauts,Derails the Sky Train on the spot.Space stations set their spacemen freeBy dropping space pods in the sea. *Sky recovers in good time,Throws on her bluest dressing gown.Noting the world’s in disarray She scurries off to set things straight.Sky gives the winds some extra oomph,They clear the Alps in one fell swoop!Listless clouds evaporateAs Sun appears, magnificent.An electrician from outer space Rewires the entire Milky Way!The Big Dipper fires up its shiny carsTo squeals of joy from baby stars.Moon considers Sky Train’s lot,But Sky Train’s owner’s lost the plot…Astronauts hang up their suits,They’re sick of dressing like big white goons!Sky breathes a sigh of reliefAnd pours herself a cup of tea.Credits roll.Lots of loveCesca xx

INFINITE BLUE

I lost myself, one day, in infinite hues of misty blues. When I finally emerged, blinking, my world felt both softer and brighter, as though each layer of subtle colour on the canvas, each paintbrush stroke, each tiny detail, was a celebration of my life.

Something about ‘Infinite Blue’ revealed my essence, rooted my confidence.

Joy bubbled through my veins. I stepped back and smiled at my creation.

Through this painting I claimed my power. I would no longer think of myself as a canvas-splatterer. I would no longer belittle myself. I was worthy.

I was an artist.

It had taken me almost 60 years.

 

LET US PREY

I might go out to prey today,

Be still for hours,

Admire my nails.

I’ll wait, I’ll watch,

Hide in plain sight,

Then suddenly I’ll pounce and bite.

I’ll play a while, my claws deployed,

An airborne mouse is my favourite toy.

I’ll roll around, indifferent

Elegantly munificent.

And just when mousey thinks he’s safe,

I’ll gobble him up and sashay away.