Francesca Bossert's Blog, page 54

RIPPLE

Another #tinywinterpoem prompted by Beth Kempton, today the word is “Ripple”. I wrote it in a couple of minutes, and it’s put a smile on my face. I hope my smiley ripples reach out and tickle the corners of your mouth!

RIPPLE

 

The tickle in my tummy as I head upstairs,

To my bright sunny room with a keyboard.

In the morning.

In the afternoon.

In the evening.

Those wretched insomniac hours?

My tickle can turn them to thrilling hours!

A windfall to spread ripples of tickles,

To places no other tickles can possibly reach.

 

 

WOLF : a poem, written in a few minutes from a prompt proposed by the lovely Beth Kempton. Go and find Beth; you’ll love her, if you don’t already!

I’ve been so afraid of the big bad wolf.

For many years he prowled above my keyboard

Teeth bared, with mocking, slitty eyes.

Don’t you dare, he growled lazily,

As my fingers twitched above the keys,

Desperate to play with the many fragmented sentences

Trampolining in my head,

Straining to get a clearer glimpse of the figure on the chestnut horse,

barely visible through the fog of warm wolf breath.

You’re old and all puffed out, the wolf taunted.

And that woman in tears you think you see?

That’s just you, you big silly!

Don’t you know no-one wants your warmed-up porridge?

You know damn well it’s over.

You’ve done it once, and that was that.

I cowered.

I cried.

I tried.

So, I left the keyboard and returned to the source,

To splash around, play in the sun.

I knew this path led back to fun.

The wolf watched me from a distance,

He yawned, closed his slitty eyes.

I thought, maybe he’s moved on…

I crept back to my desk, smiled at him.

Watch me! I laughed, then bounced and bounced.

And just like that, poofff…. he was gone,

Far too haughty to partake in fun.

 

Signorina Giuseppina - an excerpt from an unpublished manuscript called Turn Left At The Ocean

This particular excerpt is special to me because, although nothing in this book is based on my parents’ life, whenever I think of it I feel a tightening in my chest. I suppose it could be the father’s (Nikos) speech patterns, or possibly subconscious memories of my Italian grandparents. I had no intention of digging it out of my hard-drive today because I was busy working on my current WIP. But somehow I got side-tracked, sucked into it, and ended up fiddling with old words for a couple of hours. Which is probably just a waste of time, really. Nevertheless, I’m glad I did, because it brought me a wonderfully soothing feeling of nostalgia. Signorina Giuseppina is not the title of the manuscript, just the name of one of the minor characters in the story who nevertheless plays an important role. I had set out to write a sweeping, epic, romantic love story set between England, Sicily and Ithaca, Greece. The manuscript currently lives in a drawer. Once I’ve finished my current WIP I might go back to it… I don’t know.

Maybe you’ll enjoy this excerpt. Let me know.

This is a scene on a beach in Sicily.

******

Reading between rondos of hand movements and invocations of the Madonna, we eventually learn that the lady’s full name is Signorina Giuseppina Santini. Proudly expressing herself in a self-taught English strongly flavoured with Italian, she informs us that she’s seventy-three, that she’s my mother’s cousin and that she’s been waiting fifty years for this moment.

“Che meraviglioso,” she exclaims, her shrill voice a menace to our eardrums, her arms rotating like windmills, her mouth stretching like Plasticine. Then she embarks on yet another round of hugs and kisses. Overwhelmed, we give in to her affectionate pummelling, smiling like imbeciles.

“Venite ragazze!” she says, encouraging her black-clad lumpy girlfriends to move in a little closer and check us out. “Madonna! Ma che fantastico! Che sorpresa, such a surprise! I am a watching you all morning on the beach. And I am thinking me, madonna, those people, I know them. Is it possible? But then I tell myself, ma no, ma Giuseppina, ma hai perso la testa? Have you lost your head? Nikos Prasinopoulos, his Angela and her friend Tessa here in Santo Stefano without Allegra? Sei pazza! Completely crazy! So, then I think my eyes are making the tricks on me. And, insomma, to know people when you only see them on the photographs, well, is not la stessa cosa, not same thing. Molto difficile. Molto. But then I hear Nikos speaking the English, hear him say the name of Angela and I think my heart is explode with the happiness. I say me, is miracle! Is them!”

Her soft bulbous body bobs up and down like an old cooking apple. Her rubber mouth is all over the place. Oh God, I think she wants to kiss me.

“Angela!” she exclaims. “Bella! Bella bambina!” She grabs my cheeks between her thumb and her fist and squeezes hard, shaking my head back and forth as though I’m a chubby six-year-old. Her dark eyes then flit towards Tessa, who grins at her while warily backing up a few steps.

 “C’e anche la Tessa! Tessa here too! I hear much about you. I know all things about all of you. Incredible. E davvero una giornata benita di Dio! A day blessed by God!” She whirls around, her cellulite ravaged thighs shuddering as she beholds my father with adoring eyes.

“And Nikos…” Giuseppina stops to catch her breath, a labyrinth of blue veins mottling her gelatinous bosoms. She leans towards him and sighs. “Caro Nikos, still so handsome! You naughty boy! Mascalzone! You break my heart when you run with my cousin Allegra.” She waggles a finger at him, her dark brown eyes sparking all sorts of mischief, then she throws her head back, cackling with delight at his bewildered expression.

Tessa nudges me, softly humming the four infamous notes from the Twilight Zone soundtrack. We’re trapped, encircled by Giuseppina’s cronies who stand with their stumpy legs splayed, swollen hands resting on lumpy hips, beaming at us. I can tell that my father is mentally ransacking each nook and cranny of his brain, searching for the slightest trace of this eccentric old lady.

Giuseppina shifts her weight from side to side, eyeballing him. “I not make impressione on you!” she says with an accusatory pout. “You no remember me? I save your culo, your bottom, many times. Mio zio, my uncle, he furious when he find out about you and Allegra. He want come after you for many years. I know where you were. I know all things. But I keep my mouth zip,” she concludes proudly, chin up, miming the motion. Hands on her hips, she looks around at her friends, willing them to acknowledge her honourable achievement with thunderous applause.

“Sorry,” says my father, thoroughly perplexed. “What you know?”

She rolls her eyes and throws her hands skywards. Plainly, my father is an idiot. “Sapevo tutto io! I know everything! I know you are in England. I have your address! My cousin, your wife, she write me. Always. Every month. She send me photographs, tell me all the news.”

I notice my father tense slightly, but Giuseppina pats his arm. Her mouth pulses. “Calma! Don’t worry, I keep quiet. Always. Never say nothing to no one. I hide letters in box of wood in my cupboard.” She slaps him, cackling gaily. “You safe. And now the bad persons all dead,” she adds, making the sign of the cross. “Now tell me. Where Allegra? She no here?”

My father flinches and absent-mindedly picks flakes of paint off the old wooden sunbed. “Allegra died last month. We bring her ashes back to Santo Stefano. It’s what she wanted. Now she is here forever.”

Giuseppina gasps. “Oh Dio!” Her hand jumps to her mouth. “Mi dispiacce. I very sorry. A big traggedia, no? She write me little time ago. Vediammo, what she say?” She frowns, thumbing her lower lip, trying to remember. “A si! She worry about Angela.” She turns to me, her mouth pintucked. “Your mother worry about you go to the Americas,” she says accusingly. “You find nice man in the Americas?”

This woman knows more that British intelligence, I think with amusement. “No,” I say, smiling. “I didn’t meet anyone.”

“And you sell business?”

Incredulous, I nod. “Yes, actually. We did.”

“Hmm.” She frowns, considering this. “Get good money?”

I chuckle. “I suppose so.”

“Brava,” she says, her whiskers twitching with approval. “Is good for woman to be independente. Me, I be independenteall my life. No man ever tell Signorina Giuseppina what to do. I am a, how do you say? Yes, I am a feminista in Sicilia.  Giusto raggazze?”

“E!” the ladies agree, hairy chins wagging in unison.

“What did you do?” wonders Tessa, nibbling on a coconut slab.

“I selled underclothe,” she says, proudly hitching her humps. “Very success. People need always underclothe. And I also selled, how do you say it in English, costumi da bagno?”

“Swimsuits,” I offer.

“Swimsuits! Certo!” She sits up a little straighter, puts her hands on her hips and jiggles her over-generous flesh. “I first girl in Santo Stefano wear bikini!”

“Opa!” My father blinks, reeling at the image.

“Yes,” Giuseppina continues proudly, plonking herself on my father’s sun bed. “And I first woman speak the English. Learn myself. I watch movies – America movies.” She giggles. “I also have America boyfriends! I like America men! And America men, they like very much Sicilia lady. And love my underclothe.” She waggles her torso from side to side, like a Sicilian Mae West. “Ha! I trap them likes zanzare! Like mosquito! Clak!” She slaps her thighs, wheezes a little, spits thick gloop into the sand. “I never marry. Terrible bad reputazione in Santo Stefano!”

“My God,” gasps my father, hitching his swimsuit nervously, his blue eyes as big as serving platters. He’s about to say something else, but she beats him to it.

“Santa Madonna! Is lunch! You be very ‘ungry. You come back my home. I cook real Sicilia food. What you say? Come eat my Maccheroni alla Nonna. I cook the sauce all the morning.”

“That sound… that sound very nice,” stammers my father. “Err, what time we come?”

Groaning, Giuseppina heaves herself onto her tumescent feet. “Eh! You follow. That way you no lose my home!” She giggles. “I am sure you not run away! Ah, Nikos! How my heart bang when you near! Ufa!” She fans herself theatrically, as though sizzling at the memories. “Let’s go. Get up. Come,” she urges, starting to lumber down the beach with her friends in tow. They’re all babbling at once as they head towards their parasols and pack up their beach gear.

My father mops his brow. “Thee mou! What I have done?”

“Do you remember her?” I ask, while vigorously shaking sand off my towel.

“Maybe…” he says, putting on his socks and sandals. “The name, it is ringing a bell. But I didn’t know that your mother she writes to somebody in Sicily. For so many years. Is crazy. Allegra, she never say anything about this, but this Giuseppina, she knows everything about my life.”

“I think she’s a trip,” shrugs Tessa, lying back on her towel and wriggling into her shorts. “And she clearly knows all kinds of other interesting stuff.”

I nod, wondering what the other interesting stuff might entail.

But my father is increasingly unsettled by this encounter. “This is meaning that, all this time, your mother she knows what is going on over here. And she never tells me. Why she doesn’t tell me? Why?”

Tessa discreetly pulls a concerned face at me as picks up her bag. “Err, well, maybe she didn’t want you to think she missed her family.”

“Yes, but…” He shakes his head. “Why she never says to me that she wants to come back and visit? Many times I ask her, always she say no. But we could come. Twenty, thirty years later, her father is not going to jump out from behind a palm tree with a Borsalino and a machine gun.”

“Forza ragazzi! You come?” Giuseppina, way down the beach, is getting impatient.

“We’d better go,” I groan, dreading it.

“I guess she didn’t want to come back here for the same reasons you didn’t want to go back to Greece,” Tessa suggests as we slowly head towards town.

But my father only grows more agitated. “No! Is not the same! Is different. I have nothing to go back to. My life there, it is destroyed by the earthquake.”

Tessa shrugs. “You could have gone back on vacation years later. You could have visited old friends.”

“What friends? Everyone is dead!”

I make big eyes at Tessa, silently asking her to drop it.

“And I am happy in England,” continues my father. “And we are busy. We have children. A business.”

This is the excuse he’s always spouted whenever anyone broached the subject of going back to Ithaca. I’ve never known why, and until now, I never really cared. “But you often talked about Ithaca. You’ve had loads of opportunities to go back there, not necessarily when we were kids, but it would have been easy in the past few years. Why did you never go back? I mean, it’s kind of crazy if you think about it; I’m half Greek, and yet I’ve never set foot in the country.

“Then why you didn’t go? We never told you not to! Your mamma and me, we have not the money to go,” my father hisses angrily, suddenly standing still in the middle of the dark, narrow street. Tessa glances at me, and I shrug. We keep moving, letting my father slightly fall behind.

Minutes later we enter Giuseppina’s dark, dank little house, and know right away that her Maccheroni alla Nonna will be amazing. The recipe is simple: thick slabs of eggplant are grilled golden, then simmered for hours in a tomato sauce with a sharp, herby kick.  Her pasta is homemade al-dente perfection, and as soon she’s put it together and added a sprinkling of peccorino cheese, I know without a doubt that I’ll be clamouring for seconds.

Giuseppina shows us a series of photograph albums in which we all feature at various stages of our lives. I find the experience disturbing, as though we’ve all been watched through a double-sided mirror, the minor and major events of our lives played out in secret to a stranger thousands of miles away. After dessert – a homemade Cassata Siciliana – Giuseppina delves into the depths of a dark, chiselled wood cabinet and extracts the wooden box containing my mother’s letters. “Ecco!” she says, tearing off the thick rubber band holding them all together. “Is all here. Your lives.”

“Can I see?” I ask, then immediately change my mind.

She hands me the pile. “Caffé per tutti?” she asks, scurrying off through the heavy curtains that separate her ornately decorated dining room from her kitchen.

I start to push the letters towards my father, but he turns away. “No. Is between your mamma and this woman.”

He’s right. It would be like reading my mother’s diary.

The smell of coffee precedes the bubble-hiss of the Bialetti percolating on the gas stove. We can hear the old woman fussing around, piling things onto a tray. She reappears, tongue wedged between her front teeth, fine china balanced precariously on a melamine tray. “Here we are!” she says cheerfully. “Un buon’ caffé! And have some Amaretti. These are being made close to Santo Stefano. Veramente deliziosi!” She pushes a plate of the famous almond biscuits, individually wrapped in brightly coloured paper, towards the centre of the table.

We drink and munch in silence for a while as Giuseppina finally seems to have run out of steam. Then, suddenly, she says, “Oh, Nikos. I near forget. Two years before, lady come to Santo Stefano. She speak the English, I think she say she from America. She una vecchia signora, an old lady, but molto elegante, very elegant. Very, err, how you say? Ah, si. Very distinguish.”

She takes a breath, hesitating. “This woman, she look for you. For Nikos Prasinopoulos.”

I glance at my father, but he’s just sipping his coffee, his eyes firmly on the table.

“Do you know why that woman was looking for my father?” I ask her.

“I not know,” she says, frowning. “But she spend long time in Santo Stefano, ask questions, try to find out informations. The post office send her to Signorina Giuseppina Santini. They know Santini know Prasinopoulos at post office.”

“What did she say?” asks my father, unwrapping another Amaretto and popping it into his mouth.

“She ask if I know where she find you, if you still alive. I tell her I know you alive, but I don’t want give her English address.”

I pour myself another coffee. “What was her name?”

“Angelika. She say her name is Angelika.”

My father’s cup slips through his fingers, crashes onto the table where it breaks into dozens of tiny pieces. Thick brown liquid seeps into the antique yellowed lace cloth, as,  choking, he spits the partially chewed biscuit into his hand. “Angelika!” he murmurs, ghostly white.

Tessa and I glance at each other.

I lean towards him, place a hand on his knee. “Baba, what’s the matter? Who is Angelika?”

But my father doesn’t answer. He leans onto the table with his head between his hands. When he looks up, there are tears in his eyes. “Angelika from Ithaca.” His eyes flick back and forth between the stained table cloth and me.

“Who is Angelika?” I ask again in the smallest of whispers, squeezing his hand.

He closes his eyes. “She was my first love.”

Curry in the Chem-Trails, and…could this be THE magic serum?

I wrote about Cicaplast Baume a little while ago on my Instagram author page, because my skin had become so dry when I was in Spain, despite lotions and potions and all sorts of other self-proclaiming miraculous unguents. I had a tube of Cicaplast, usually reserved for my more remote bodily parts that might suddenly require urgent attention, and decided to give it a go. Well, it has been a revelation. My skin went from being rough and flaky and patchy and basically crap, to being…well, looking much nicer and feeling far more content. Also, I could probably buy a gazillion big tubes of Cicaplast with the amount of money spent on the multitude of creams with blingy names sitting in my bathroom cabinet.

And then, one day, I came across this…

Well! Look what I found today!

I don’t know if I’ve been living under a rock or spending too much time making up fibs on the computer, or I’m totally losing touch with the wonderful world of beauty products, and somehow missed the launch of this Cicaplast Serum… but I had to leave the keyboard today to go and buy some deyellowifying shampoo and conditioner as banana yellow is not a good color on me. Is the ozone layer killing my highlights, or are the baddies putting curry in the chem-trails?! Anyway, hopefully Christophe Robin’s ludicrously expensive purple mask will turn me back into an ice princess if I’m patient and leave it on long enough (I’m not patient with these things but, hey, curry chem-trails…)

Anyway, after purchasing the purple stuff and getting talked into buying the new amazzzzzzing Shiseido foundation by a twenty-two year old who assured me I’d be glowing (we shall see), I went to the pharmacy to fill a prescription and checked out the La Roche Posay area and there it was: Cicaplast Serum! I tried the tester on my hand, and it was nice, so I brought one home with me. Has anyone tried it? What do you think?

I shall try it tomorrow and report back 😝❤️

#larocheposay #cicaplastserum #francescabossertauthor#beauty #swissauthor #skincare #writersofinstagram

DAYS OF DRAMA: Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific!

I keep thinking about a shampoo called “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific”. Yes, I know, it’s ridiculous, especially considering it’s a shampoo I’ve never even used, because (as far as I know) you could only buy it in America, and I’ve always lived in Switzerland. Plus, it appears to have been discontinued in the 1980s. It’s on my mind because a friend recently gave me a book of advertisement compilations from the 1970s (“70s Fashion”, published by Taschen. Some of the ads are REALLY funny!), and it’s featured in there. I was a bit bummed Taschen hadn’t included the advert for a perfume called “Wind Song”, because that’s another one I’ve never forgotten - in fact I still remember the catch phrase for it: “I can’t seem to forget you; your Wind Song stays on my mind”. And although the photograph was all wistful and romantic, it conjured up a totally different kind of atmosphere if you had a penchant for poopy jokes like we did in my family.

Anyway, the last time I saw “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific” advertised was probably 1975, while flicking through the pages of a copy of Seventeen magazine that I’d pinched from one of the cool American girls who’d forgotten it in the senior lounge, located on the right-hand side of the hallway just after the main entrance to the school cafeteria. There was a jukebox in the senior lounge of the International School of Geneva (aka Ecolint), and lots of big bean-bag type cushions to flop around on if you were lucky enough to get a spot. The cool boys played Aerosmith’s “Dream On” a lot. And now that I’ve remembered that nugget of information, I’m going to have the screechy part of the song stuck in my head all day.

There were a lot of Americans in my school back then, and they had all the best stuff. Back then everyone was obsessed with America; everything in the US seemed better, bigger, more advanced, and, well, just way cooler than what we had in Europe, be it music, television, movies, cars, candy, cosmetics.

Also, so many of my American classmates seemed far more confident, far more outspoken than most of the rest of us. I always felt rather intimidated by the groups of gum-chomping girls with flicked out hair and twangy accents who flounced around the campus, elbows linked, commanding right of way. In the warmer months they’d go and stretch out on the grass on the slope that led down to the football field, all gossipy and giggly, tossing their hair and flirting with boys. In class, they flirted with some of the younger teachers, too!

I watched them, those gorgeous shiny girls with quick, albeit sometimes acerbic repartee, who seemed to have opinions on everything and inspired an odd cocktail of curiosity, admiration, jealousy and apprehension. They chattered about cheerleading and shopping malls and drive-ins and McDonalds. They had subscriptions to Seventeen magazine, quoted fun lines from sitcoms that had never made it across the Atlantic. They’d watched films on intercontinental flights and seen all the Hollywood blockbusters during summer holidays in Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or New York, or Boston, or Florida.

How could girls like me compete? Those girls had Noxzema and Revlon and Bonne Bell and Coty on their bathroom shelves, while I just had Clearasil and spots. They used Coppertone fake tan and displayed remarkable orange legs during sports classes, not white mottled pasty pins like me. Also, they nabbed all the cute boys simply because they had shampoos called “Short and Sassy”, or “Long and Silky”, and – obviously – “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific”. All I had was Dop.

Nevertheless, I tried. I spent my pocket money on Maybelline mascara and Cover Girl lip-gloss and Rimmel foundation. I borrowed my mother’s curling iron and spent hours trying to master that characteristic outward flick. I begged my mother to buy me Levi’s, and Adidas Rom, and cowboy boots, and black clogs. I even persuaded my father to ask one of his American colleagues to order me a jacket I’d spotted in the Sears catalog during a sleepover at a friend’s house. It was fleece-lined denim, guaranteed to boost my popularity tenfold. That jacket, worn with my navy-blue flared corduroy Levi’s, my Smiley Face tee-shirt and my Adidas Rom, was certain to have me in the arms of gorgeous Chip Buddhi within the first few mournful notes of “Angie” at the next school dance.

Sadly, there was some sort of mix-up with the fleece-lined denim jacket. Instead, Sears sent me a padded bright purple waterproof monstrosity with multicolored embroidery down the front, and a hood edged with black and white fake fur. The one time my parents forced me to wear it to school I removed it the second my father had dropped me off and hid it in my locker, preferring to freeze than commit social suicide.

Chip Buddhi probably still doesn’t know I exist, although according to his profile picture on LinkedIn he’s now bald and somewhat slimy looking, so I’m not that fussed. Looking back, I suppose it’s hardly surprising because, when the bell went at breaktime, he was always the first on his feet, out of class, down the stairs and across the courtyard, eager to flesh out his chiseled cheeks with American candy on the two days a week the tuck shop was open.

In those days, before the Sugar Police existed, Ecolint had a small shop called The Green Window that sold Love Hearts, Hershey Bars, Laffy Taffys, Gobstoppers, Tootsie Rolls, and a particularly vile looking spaghetti-like red liquorice. Where did this regular supply of tooth-wrecking booty come from? I can’t be sure, but I’m guessing it was flown in by parents who often went back to the US for business. I never braved the US candy queue; it was far too rowdy for me. Instead, I usually enjoyed a raisin bun in a quiet corner of the cafeteria with the less cool kids, and to this day remain clueless on the merits of Laffy Taffys and Gobstoppers.

I did, however, have an American boyfriend in 11th grade, but he was quite shy. Gobstoppers weren’t his thing; he much preferred raisin buns and pains au chocolat. He was extremely cute, and tall and slim, with silver-blonde wavy hair, golden skin and big blue eyes, and he always smelled amazing. He wore nice clothes, too, and I especially remember his gorgeous tan suede waistcoat that looked fantastic with white shirts and faded jeans. He also had an off-white Catalina jacket which, according to my friend Bettina, was all the rage in Norway. Best of all though, he was really, really nice!

It's funny how, one way or another, all these memories are linked to that advert for “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific”, which has been been stuck in my mind since puberty. I even included it in a scene in my romantic comedy, “Just Like a Movie”!

Seeing it again in the Taschen book took me straight back to those days of drama in high school, when I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who believed that having the right shampoo and mastering the outward flick would turn my life into a Hallmark movie.

The Beach Beyond

There’s something so uplifting about a coastal walk in the sunshine with a good friend. There is an easy, beautifully maintained path from the pretty coastal town of S’Agaro to Sa Conca, one of the most gorgeous beaches in this area of the Costa Brava. S’Agaro has some lovely restaurants, such as La Taverna del Mar, located right on the beach. It’s a little pricey, but the food is great, and the inside decor is really pretty even if the weather isn’t ideal. Also, a little further down the beach, on the other side of the road, you’ll eat well at Villa Mas. Villa Mas has a fabulous big terrace, but I think prices are similar to Taverna del Mar.

This is S’Agaro, where we start.

Bougainvillea!

But let’s get back to the walk.

The path to Sa Conca can get a little busy at times (although never crazy stupid annoying busy, I promise!), but it’s smooth and easy to navigate, and the views are stunning. And there’s BOUGAINVILLEA (I’m obsessed with bougainvillea!) so it’s a no brainer if you want sea air without having to worry about twisting your ankles, or losing your balance on rough terrain. And you definitely won’t get lost!! It’s wide enough to walk side by side and chat, and you don’t need to watch where you put your feet, which is always a big plus in my book. It’s great for families with young children, too.

I just love this walk

So, if you’re ever in the area, and fancy an easy but beautiful walk, this is definitely one to check out. I think it’s about 5,5 kms from S’Agaro to Sa Conca and back. And Sa Conca is magical… I went swimming there with a friend on New Year’s Eve last year (2022), but having had Covid a few weeks ago I’ve not yet felt brave enough to dive in. Maybe in February, when we return?

Sa Conca, in winter… heaven!

Sa Conca in early summer, also beautiful!

Proof of winter courage! New Year’s Eve, 2022. And I promise we went in all the way!

Happy New Year!!!

THE BEE

I’ve felt low on energy since having Covid earlier this month. I craved an infusion of sparkle while my children were here with their partners over Christmas. I felt guilt for having such intense fatigue in both my body and my mind, and struggled to fully emerge from my boring foggy fug.

Yet my lack of sparkle somehow heightened the experience of being with my family during those few days, wrapping it in muffled softness as we walked along the Catalunya coast in the sunshine.

And then my babies were gone, back to their lives, leaving me with softly sparkling memories and a smidgeon of nostalgia.

A little ache. Okay, a medium sized ache…

So…the first thing I did this morning was sign up for Beth Kempton’s Winter Writing Sanctuary - I was literally still in bed when I remembered its existence and pressed the button to participate. I’ve been reading her essays on Substack, and in a world filled with agression and anger and violence and insanity, I’m craving softness and wonder, empathy, kindness and connection.

And can I please get a very large side order of silliness, giddiness and fun?

Beth encouraged me to go outside and write a Haiku, which initially made me sigh a little, and puff out my cheeks, because it sounded limiting and formal, and what I really wanted to do was run around and let rip, and besides, how could being formal and attempting to write poetry possibly be fun?

Nevertheless, I sat quietly on the terrace and observed. And heard a muffled guzzling among the pink cyclamen, realised what it was, and smiled. Then I wrote:

“A chubby bee boogies

Into pink winter nectar

Happy just to be.”

I wrote two others, too, but I like this one the best. Because I’m hoping to boogie into a little pink winter nectar at a party tonight. And who cares if it’s not perfect Haiku, because it was fun!

Thank you, Beth Kempton!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Thank you so much for reading my book, as well as my little bits and pieces. It means far more than you could possibly imagine.

Lots of love,

Francesca xxx

Miserable in the Mountains

I found this in the depths of my hard drive today… I gave up skiing long ago and, while reading this, I had a giggle remembering why!

*****

Oh no, it’s coming to get me! It’s long, it’s white, it’s freezing, it’s... the abominable ski-season! Living in Switzerland, barely an hour away from the bracing mountain air, the virgin slopes, the challenging black runs andall those sexy ski teachers, I know all about the ski-season. Some people send insulting letters to the weatherman if he fails to deliver snow before Christmas. Not me. I find the entire package a complete and utter bore.

Just think about it. Consider the preparations. All that bulky skiwear, all those sweaters, that thermal underwear, those heavy shoes and boots you have to cart around, and that’s before you start wrestling with skis, poles and snowboards. I have come to dread weekends during the seemingly never-ending ski-season. There’s simply no escape from this conspiracy: everyone gets all psyched up, banging on about the latest in skiing technology, how Wanker Skis are better than Wonker Skis, although Wonker’s new pink and orange carvers are like, totally cool, and whoa, wait ‘til you test the new Snitty-Snotty snowboard! Then there’s the dilemma of what the best dressed skier will be wearing this year, a tricky question since what’s “in” in one ski-station is totally “out” in another; get the wrong outfit and you’re in the dorkzone.

 

Year after year, you sit in crowded, damp après-ski cafés, soaking in the aroma of sour-sweat, listening to people with chapped lips and stringy saliva relive their ski adventure of the day, comparing ski paraphernalia and bragging about how they conquered Mount Too-Bloody High’s north-facing, bone-rattling mogul-field during the blizzard of the century.

 

It’s all supposed to be clean, healthy fun. And skiing can be fun: in March, on a weekday, when it’s warm and sunny, when there are not thousands of people bombing about on equipment they can barely control. Danger doesn’t lurk; it zips by, cuts you off, knocks you over. Migratory habits are one thing in the summer when the entire Northern Hemisphere heads for the sun: once the choice destination has been reached, everyone just lies down on a beach. But in the winter, those very same people all decide to be Tomba La Bomba on the same mountain, all at the same time.

 

Personally, I’m a cautious skier. I can control my speed, hardly ever fall and am famous for never choosing a challenging slope over an easy one. This chicken-livered strategy has proved invaluable over the years, ensuring that my technique has never improved. I am therefore never expected to rise at dawn, quivering in anticipation of being the first person to breathe-in the teeth-grinding, metallic reek of the telecabines. Warm and smug under my duvet, I let the ski-desperados squabble over being the first to carve perfect parallel turns in fresh powder.

 

Hours later, I finally venture out to meet my husband and his friends, miserably crippled in those impossibly uncomfortable contraptions called ski-boots, sweat droplets making their way slowly but irrefutably into the gusset of my underwear, struggling to keep my skis and poles from maiming chic ladies in sheepskin coats promenading dachshunds. Then I find myself muttering expletives while trying to remove my ski-gloves without the inner-lining coming out, in order to pay Weasel Man in his funny little wooden hut the ridiculous amount of money he demands for the ski-pass. By this time I can barely contain my excitement at the thought of what lies ahead: QUEUES !

 

All those interminable queues get to me. All those strangers who cuddle up to you, congealed snot and squeezable blackheads in Panavision, their rancid breath sending you scuttling down your turtleneck in search of your own comforting odours. When you finally elbow your way inside one of those flimsy, suspended, metal contraptions called “eggs”, you are rudely confronted by the etymological source of the name: skiers breakfasts die-hard.

 

So, I take a deep breath and emerge further up the mountain red-faced and light-headed, wondering how most people manage to look like the sleek characters in James Bond movies when I feel like a Bette Midler comedy. Determined not to be a grouch, I put on my best ski-bunny face and spend the rest of the day out of breath, trying to keep up with the other bum-waggling members of the party and desperately dodging the hoards of manic snowboarders, the out-of-control, flown-in-for-the-weekend, hung-over from too much partying slope-terrorists and the crash-helmeted mini-champions who hurl themselves from all sides, oblivious to one and all.

 

For a cautious skier like me, making my way down a bottlenecked intersection towards the end of the day feels like tackling mega-spaghetti junction in the rush hour with a wonky clutch. Timing is all: launch your skis a split second too soon or too late and you risk, at best, being the recipient of a stream of insults, or, at worst, fatal injuries from head-on collision. But when you’ve gotta go you’ve gotta go. Stall long enough and you’ll be flagging a ride under the stars from Weasel Man’s best-buddy in his snow-caterpillar while everyone else is consuming copious amounts of cheesy concoctions, ingesting white wine and wondering where on earth you got to.

 

So, this year I might just let them wonder. If my wallet won’t stretch to behold-my-bikini-time in the Bahamas, I’ll have to find another solution. There’s supposedly a new aqua park opening on the road to snow-city. It boasts tropical temperatures, giant waterslides and Margaritas by the pool. Cheesy? To each his own fromage.

 (written in 2000)

Covidians: May the Snot Evade you

Good morning,

 

It seems I’ve dodged a miserable Covid Christmas by indulging in viral festivities a week early. Yep, I got run over by the Covid bus late last Wednesday morning after swaggering around my poorly husband, declaring that since I’d never had it, I was clearly Covid immune.

Well, the prickly little sucker (the virus, not my husband) pulled the rug under my Uggs at exactly 11.17 with a sudden brutal a wave of wooze. I staggered around for a few hours, trying to retain the upper hand on the bastard, but was eventually coerced horizontal. After three days of experiencing life underneath the duvet, when I awoke yesterday feeling far more myself, I thought the Covid fiesta was over. Turned out the little bugger was just tricking me, enticing me to run around with the vacuum, tackle some ironing, a mountain of laundry, and make a hearty soup, only to bonk me on the head with an encore mid-afternoon.

Meanwhile, my husband recouped in record time, and has been out golfing in the Spanish sunshine with barely a sniffle to spare. I must say that his Covid test was far less of a clear-cut statement than mine, so maybe he got a faulty version of the virus.

Today, I shall proceed with caution as I plan to be splutter and wooze free by Friday when our children arrive with their partners, looking forward to a good dose of Christmas cheer.

 

Stay healthy, good people!

 

xxx Francesca

Christmas Crackers

Ever since my son was born on December 10, 1992, I’ve made it a tradition to put the tree up just before his birthday. When he was small, I liked to put it up because it gave his parties more of a festive atmosphere when all his adorable little friends came over, got high on the sugar content of Nigella Lawson’s buttermilk birthday cake, and went completely crackers. I vividly remember one particularly wild child, already quite a strong, sturdy boy at 4, who stood on the armrest of the sofa on his tippy-toes and tried to grab the silver-wrapped chocolates I’d purposely hung out of reach on the upper branches. Inevitably, he lost his balance, fell headlong into the tree, knocking it over and causing major bauble devastation. When he emerged on all fours, clearly unscathed and laughing like a character in a horror movie, I wanted to truss him in tinsel, take him outside, and leave him there to wait for his mama.

But I’m nice, so I simply used my words through gritted teeth, put the tree back upright, and got the brush and shovel.

None of the out-of-control kids seemed to register that there even was a tree during the most memorable party of all. My son’s 18th was beyond epic, with pukey Magalie defiling my Ugg slippers while I was wearing them, and inebriated Ivan standing on the toilet in the bathroom on the lower-ground floor, opening the narrow window and propelling himself upwards and outwards into the garden with the brusque, scissoring leg movements usually reserved for underwater activities. As a result, Ivan kicked a massive hole in the toilet bowl. Moments later, not-so-smart Alex felt an urgent need to use said toilet, flushed it, and stood there like a stoned dumbass as a mixture of water and soggy toilet paper shot out of the broken bowl, inundating the bathroom as well as a good portion of the hallway.

As early as nine o’clock, my son had come to find me with a worried look on his face, saying, “Mama, they’re awful! I wish they’d all go home.”

So did I.

Getting them to go home proved problematic, not only because most of them were so off their heads they couldn’t even remember where they lived, but also because most of northern Europe was in the throes of a blizzard. Idyllic from a purely esthetic point; my garden resembled a set for a Christmas movie. But my husband, away in London on business, called me in the early afternoon to say his flight had been canceled; nothing was taking off. Since he’d promised, hand on his heart, to be back to help with the party, he took the Eurostar train to Paris, followed by the TGV to Geneva.

When he finally walked in just after one in the morning, he found me curled up in the fetal position on the living room sofa, slipperless, my eyes glazed over, my last nerve long gone. Which was hardly surprising considering I’d just spent the past six hours trying to keep some sort of control over sixty-odd beer-brandishing teenagers blasting tuneless music with rude lyrics. They’d had a grand old time, traipsing in and out of the house in their muddy, slushy shoes, rolling around in the garden making snow-drunkards, lighting their farts, and playing beer pong in the laundry room.

The cleanup operation the next day? As epic as the party itself. We practically had to mop around several comatose teenagers!

However, come to think of it, my twenty-first wasn’t exactly cups of tea and jam tarts…

Anyway, fast forward to December 9, 2016, when in keeping with tradition I got ready to put the tree up for our first Christmas in our new house. We’d moved in over the summer, and because the house needed considerable renovation, a lot of our things went into storage. Among these things were our Christmas tree and several boxes of decorations.

With both our children soon due back from the UK, I looked forward to making the place look festive for them. I’d selected the perfect spot in the living room, on the right-hand side of the huge window overlooking the pond. The garden looked like a scene straight out of the Nutcracker, with the pond covered in a shimmering sheet of ice and a featherlight sprinkle of snow.

I put on some carols, spritzed myself with Shalimar (Christmas in a bottle!), and went in search of our Christmas paraphernalia.

I’d been collecting Christmas ornaments since my mid-twenties, before I even got married. There were the gorgeous, antique, teardrop-shaped, hand painted baubles that had belonged to my grandmother. There was the beautiful set of glass birds my mother had given me when I moved into my first apartment. There were several unusual ornaments I’d bought during our visits to foreign countries. There was my silly Ricky Martin ornament. Most importantly, there was the funny reindeer with the lobsided smile constructed from ice-cream sticks, red ribbon and dribbles of glue that my son made in Montessori school, and the toilet roll angel with the wild, pink tinsel hair that my daughter made in first grade. There were several wonderful pasta-chains festooned with sparkles and feathers, and adorably wonky father Christmases made from sticks and buttons and scraps of fabric and wool.

But where was it all? The house wasn’t very big, yet there were several places where my husband might have stored it. Could it be in the basement? No, it wasn’t there. Maybe in the bicycle shed? Nope. In the tumble-down garden shed? Nein. It wasn’t in the attic, either.

I looked everywhere. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

“Ah”, I said to myself in a lightbulb moment, “it’s probably still in storage.”

So, I called the storage company.

“Bonjour, this is Madame Bossert! How are you? I think you have our Christmas tree and boxes of decorations! Do you think you can please pull it out for me so I can come and get it this afternoon?”

Brief silence.

“Err, I’m sorry Madame, but we do not have your Christmas affairs. Your husband came by last month to sort through all your things and to decide what he wanted to keep and that he wanted to throw away. I remember being très très surpris when he told us to throw out the tree and the boxes containing the decorations. Very surprised indeed.”

Not as bloody surprised as me.

What the heck?

 “C’est pas possible!” I told the Monsieur. “Surely not?”

But surely oui, unfortunately.

I flopped down on the sofa and burst into tears. All those special, cherished ornaments, some of them over 50 years old, thrown out like they meant nothing. All those perfectly imperfect little decorations made with such concentrated effort by my children’s tiny hands, ruthlessly discarded.

How could my husband have done something so insensitive?

I gave him hell for it, I really did. I was so angry. Now, of course, I’ve long come to terms with what he immediately recognized as a terrible mistake. I can visualize what happened, because my husband is a neat freak, he likes everything to be organized, tidy and clean (which is a massive plus 99,99% of the time!). Stressed out at work, he only had a limited amount of time to spend at the storage company. He drove there focused on being one hundred percent efficient. He switched to robotic mode and got the job done. He didn’t think. To him, at that moment, all that irreplaceable family treasure was just junk in dusty old boxes held together by layers of crisscrossed packer’s tape. Basically, he’d left part of his brain at the office.

He felt terrible.

2016 is the only year we didn’t have a tree set up for my son’s birthday. That weekend, my husband and I went to a nearby garden center and spent loads of money on a big new tree and on loads of beautiful new decorations that will hopefully, one day, be handed down to our children.

Of course, with all the terrible things constantly happening in the world, losing a reindeer made of ice-creams sticks, an angel made of toilet rolls, and a few sparkly pasta-chains is no biggie. The story has become a bit of a family joke, as in, “Haha, do you remember when Papa put Christmas in the rubbish?”, whereupon we all shake our heads and turn to look at my poor husband with WTF faces.

Even if it sucks to no longer have those lovely ornaments, when I look back at that unfortunate incident I can only smile. The weird thing about the moments in life when things go slightly wonky is that they often turn into funny memories. I mean, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to have my feet vomited on, or the toilet explode, or the decorations chucked out, or, or, or, but at the same time, those little bouts of chaos etched those events onto my mental map. How boring would it be if life was just one long beige cocktail party? Often, it’s just a matter of taking a step back and cocking your head until you find the funny angle.

Besides, it’s impossible for me to harbor resentment towards the man who, when his flight home was canceled all those years ago, could easily have kicked back in a swanky London hotel with a glass of wine and a good meal. Instead, he crossed half of Europe on two trains during a snowstorm after a full-on day of work, just because he’d promised to be home.

And those crazy parties? Such wonderful Christmas crackers!