5 words : Yellow. Expedient cord. tears dentist

Annemarie's story

Could it be?

Henri Rousseau never left France; so we are told. Despite a popular rumour during his lifetime that he had travelled to Mexico, he eventually admitted that the story was not true. Famous for his lush jungle scenes with exotic animals, he based his paintings on his own imagination and visits to the Jardin des Plantes and natural history books and museums.

However, just like Agatha Christie's mysterious disappearance, there was also a mysterious missing fortnight in 1897 when Rousseau was fifty-four years old. He had retired from his job as a toll collector and was concentrating on his art. Did he decide to take a secret holiday?

I ask this because a few years ago in a Parisian flea market I bought an 19th century art book - "Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux" by P.J. Stahland - and tucked between the pages were a few  battered leaves from an old note book. Predominantly a travel journal but a few sketches as well.

Since childhood I've always been an admirer of Rousseau's art and on the off chance decided to get the tattered pages investigated by Juliette Degennes, Heritage curator at the Musée de l'Orangerie and a leading expert on Henri Rousseau. Finally, and with the additional help of a renowned handwriting expert, those  battered leaves have been pronounced genuine. I will read just a couple of his somewhat scribbled pages, which, I think, proves that he did leave France during that vital fortnight and he spent the days somewhere in North Africa... And inspired one of his most famous paintings.

I have brought one of the original pages, which I have translated - excuse my translation.

 

From Marrakesh I travelled into an ancient land of desert sands, with my easel, chair and paints. The nights were chilling cold, the days were blazing hot, my blistering feet on burning ochre sands. Beneath a distant range of ghostly mountains I rested in the lengthening shade of a solitary tamarisk tree. Then came a gypsy woman, skin like ebony, hennaed hair in twisted cords. She wore a robe of rainbow stripes - azure, orange, greens and scarlets melting into indigos and violets, amethysts and golds. Slowly she tilted her gargoulette and placed it carefully to her lips as I imagined  the water gurgling from that terracotta pitcher. And carefully again she placed the pitcher on the yielding sand, the red against the yellow.  With slender fingers she picked up her lute and plucked a chord across six strings, then gently laid the lute beside the pitcher. She placed a folded bundle beneath her head and lay full-stretched on the shifting sands, her wooden cane grasped firmly in one hand.    The  evening  sky descended, and a  hunters moon arose, the opalescent disc illuminating the gypsy. From the darkness a tawny lion walked into our desert camp. Perhaps it would have been expedient to leave the scene but mesmerised I watched the creature standing behind the sleeper, tail pitched high in the air. It bent its head and smelt the sleeper; it turned its head and looked at me, bared its teeth and growled. Then tears fell from this mighty lion's eyes. Those teeth were rotten, the stench was putrid and he left the sleeping gypsy with her dreams. This lion was going cold turkey, this lion required a dentist.

The Sleeping Gypsy    by Henri Rousseau

________________________________

Jackie.  

Yellow,  Expedient, Cord, Turkey, Dream, Dentist, Tears_______

He knew something was wrong the moment he walked into the surgery. The screen beside the entrance scanned him from head to toe, taking in all his information simply in a second.  Then, to his horror, it wrapped a long spiral around him, made up entirely of words.

A friend had recommended this new surgeon, but judging by the yellow curtains, yellow chairs and yellow carpet, the surgery felt less like a dentist’s office and more like being trapped inside a giant lemon.  

There was no receptionist, cloaked figures filled the waiting room, he wondered whether he was in the right place.   As he sat in the dentist’s chair he closed his eyes and opened his mouth.  The dentist examined his tooth and picked up a very large drill.   Don’t worry said the dentist this drill is programmed to alleviate the pain.   “programmed !!!  he screamed looking at the size of it and hearing the whirring of blades.   Tears started to pour down his cheeks – this must be a dream”  how can you program a drill.      A metal smile crossed the surgeons face ,  screws and bolts and nails that made up his head churned and spun in different directions.    A robot he thought in terror as he perceived bio plastic wheels with flashing yellow lights and just behind the right ear it was turning red to purple.       The transparent eyes were looking straight ahead and not at his teeth  

In the end the dentist had to pull out his patients tooth with a cord as the drill had disfunctioned – the turkey in the garden next door screamed so loudly the rest of  the patients in the waiting room turned yellow with fear, and he decided that the most expedient thing to do was to run before  the machine removed his whole head!

 

 

Why did you lie to me

Annemarie's story

Why Did You Lie to Me?

You told me angelica (which I loved) was candied celery - so that I would eat celery - it did not taste like angelica.

You told me that I would see you soon when you put me on the train to go to my first school - it was 3 months!

You told me it wouldn't hurt when you dug the jigger from foot - it did - a LOT,

You said the fairies would give me 6d. for each tooth I lost - they may be magic but they never found the hidden drawer where I had put the teeth. (I did when I was 22 and the fairies don't give backpay.)

You said you would write a note so I didn't have to eat swedes or turnips. You never wrote the note and I ate, or put in my skirt pocket, swedes and turnips for 7 years at boarding school.

You said I looked lovely in my tulip fairy costume - not after the crepe was drenched in orange juice and fell apart leaving me in my knickers and all the other kids started laughing

You told us the meal was roast chicken - it was the shape of Snugglebug, our pet duck who was frightened of water and couldn't swim.

For my first job  you said 'it was just an interview, just be calm' - I wrote my birthdate wrongly and it was announced to all the interviewees " where is Annemarie Page - you say you are 7 months old." - I was not calm , I was very embarrassed and became red.

They said I could have braces, you told me I should be pleased with the teeth God gave me, so no braces. 1, God didn't give them to me, my parents did. 2. My parents would have let me have braces.

You told me it was easy to hop up into the attic - yes but I waited two hours for help to get down.

You told me childbirth was easy...oh! Oh! Oh! What a lie!

You told me I could easily give a talk to your women's group. I said I was hopeless at that sort of thing. Afterwards you said " Oh , you meant it."

'Go on,'  you said, 'it's fun and you'll love it;  it's the highest slide in the water park.' A 5-minute climb and no turning back, I could see into another country. Down I was pushed and ended up drowned with the biggest wedgie ...and I was red AGAIN.

You said I would love golf and gave me 3 lessons for Christmas. I didn't... but the long lunches and the people are great.

You told me we'd queued 3 times and the bobsleigh ride would be such fun...it wasn't; I was traumatised so was youth gripped by my legs?

You said I looked good in that tangerine swimsuit I bought for our Italian holiday. Well, maybe but not when we won the botcha and a bottle of cava was sprayed over us - the costume became transparent. I became red...again.

 

Oh, why did you  lie to me?

_________________________________________________-

Jackie

The  sixteen year old girl watched as her mother filled a suitcase with clothes, photos and various bits of her personal items.   Puzzled she asked her mother where she was going.   Oh don’t worry I’m just going away for a few weeks – it’s the school holidays soon and if you like you can join me later on.     But it was the end of May, graduation day was coming and mother going away meant that she wouldn’t be there for the big day.   She said nothing and waved goodbye.   After a few weeks the young girl received a letter saying everything was fine and that if she liked she could get herself a plane ticket and go to be with her mother.     Arriving in the UK from the USA she was met by her mothers family and on the way to the north of England on that long car journey she learnt that in fact her mother was in hospital in a special palliative care hospital;  Not really understanding what it was until her father arrived unexpectedly in the country that her parents told her the truth.  Her mother had an incurable blood disease called leukaemia and wouldn’t recover.  

Why did you lie to me?  She sobbed I’m quite capable of knowing about life at my age she argued why didn’t you tell me about my mothers illness.    It wasn’t really a lie you see we just thought it best to let you live as happily as possible and thought that a 16 year old wasn’t able to take in that kind of information.      We were  protecting you and we thought once you knew you would fail your exams and ruin your future.   So it wasn’t a lie.

I was brought up as a Catholic and a lie was a black mark on your soul.    Confession of even the smallest most insignificant lie (white lie) was expected.   Absolution after confession was a relief and a special prayer to God expected.        To me, now, this is an excessive behavior which has made me move away from Catholicism.

Which led me to research what is a lie and a white lie.   I found out that in general lying is a normal human behavior almost everyone lies occasionally.  But there can be a loss of trust if the lie is discovered and damage to relationships.

   The 16 year old girls parents were acting on being protective and so therefore not telling her about her mother was not really a lie or a bad thing.  

Whether it truly benefits someone depends on the situation, and in many cases, the long-term costs outweigh the short term.

 

Describe your bedroom when you were young and your feelings for it

 

 

Sarah's bedroom story

I didn’t have  bedroom of my own as a child.  As a baby I must have been in my parents’ room, I suppose, and who knows about the next two years, when my mother and I lived with my grandparents, successively.  When I was three my father came back from the war and bought a house, fully furnished.  The bedroom that fell to me was not a child’s room at all, but simply the second bedroom, after my parents took the master bedroom for themselves.  Six months later I was joined there, I imagine, by my baby sister, and from then on I never had a room of my own for almost sixty years.
There was nothing special about the room, but I adored that house.  A small American version of English Tudor, but even more charming, with its gable front, it’s rounded oak door, the little arched passage to the side door for the milkman and such, the leaded small-paned windows and the great shutters that could actually close (no such thing in the typical New England house we lived in later where shutters were simply decorations to keep a house from looking too spare).  Not to mention the lawns and the trees and the garden front back and sides, with tulips, irises, daffodils, azalea, mock-orange, hollyhocks, roses, phlox and what have you according to the seasons.  Even lily of the valley in a nook in the shaded north corner.  It was a fairy-tale house like those in my picture books, and I imagined that the lead in the windows was ebony, just like the windows where Snow White’s mother pricked her finger.
Five years later we left that house for a very spare one in Vermont, a clapboard box surrounded by a bare lawn and that was that.  My father was tired of spending his weekends raking the leaves or caring for a garden.  I missed the old house endlessly.  As for the room I still shared with my sister, there was still nothing personal there.  For several years we continued to share the double bed that had come with the furnishings of the first house, a situation that resulted in innumerable squabbles.  After a few years my parents invested in a pair of twin beds, that at least.  But although I made plans for them to raise the roof, as various neighbours had done on their houses, so as to be able to cut our room in two, they were not persuaded.  As for the decoration of our room, that, like everything else in the house, had been decided upon and put in place by my father before the rest of the family even arrived.  So we had, as well as a bookcase and a chest of drawers each, three Godey’s Ladies Fashion prints, a reproduction of a 17th century Dutch painting with a windmill, a portrait of my father as a young officer (very handsome) and a chromeo of the Holy Family walking the streets of Nazareth.  I, for my part, liked all these very well; it never occurred to us to want to pin up movie stars or rock stars or pictures of dogs or horses the way teens are generally supposed to do.  Still, I would have like to have some private space of my own.
I lived in that room for not even seven years before I went away to university, first college then graduate school, during which time I always had a room-mate.  When I came to France I shared a studio with a French girl.  Then I married and as one might expect shared a room with my husband.  (The Hungarians traditionally had a much better system, at least among the bourgeois and the aristocrats: each member of the couple had his or her own room.  One knocked to enter and could be refused.)
So the first time I ever had a room of my own was after my divorce.  The flat in Strasbourg is really mine, mine alone.  But my room there is also the place where I put everything I don’t know where to put elsewhere, so that it is really only a place to sleep in.  That leaves Flavigny.  For the last few years I have been working on transforming our old bedroom into my little kingdom, because the house as a whole is somehow not really mine but that of the whole family.  I had no peace when the computer and the telephone were downstairs so I made a little study in an alcove of the bedroom and installed my books, my computer and the internet box there.  A lovely place.  But …
That was not taking into account that my grandchildren are now teenagers or almost there, and that Wi-fi is as necessary to their lives as breathing.  So now when I open the door to my room it is likely as not full of kids, filling the chairs or draped over the beds (because I do have a couple of extra beds in there for visiting family if necessary), playing video games or talking to their friends.  Only when the family is visiting, of course, but that is very often—and is the moment natually when I most need a place to retreat to.
A room of one’s own—a theme of Virginia Woolf’s.  An unreasonable desire, an unattainable eldorado?

______________________________ 

Paula's bedroom

Paula O'Byrne

11:28 (il y a 1 heure)

	À moi

 When I was a girl, my bedroom was a playroom and a place of refuge, a library and a laboratory, a café and a cabaret. It harbored happiness, and heartbreak, and healing. It was a place of whispered secrets and whiskered pets. In that room, there would be afternoons of raucous laughter or resentful tears. It contained whole worlds, in dreams and poems and stories and songs.

 And it was never truly my own, because through it all, I shared that room with my sister, 18 months older than me, one grade ahead of me in school, and light years ahead of me in sophistication.

 The room was at the back corner of the house, across the hall from our parents’ bedroom, with two windows overlooking our backyard, and one window looking out onto the neighbor to our left. What began as two little girls in a trundle bed with a single play chest morphed through the years into twin beds on opposite sides of the room, and our own dressers and closets. As we got older, we were constantly rearranging the room to create distinct and separate spaces that we could call our own.

 I came home from school one day to discover that our mom, in an effort to produce some cohesion in a space shared by two very different personalities, had made up the beds in a bright floral fabric of blues, purples, and greens, with curtains to match, and a fluffy blue rug on the floor. Would her two younger daughters, one moody and deeply introspective, and the other, funny and outgoing, find harmony in such an environment?

 This was around the time that my sister, Dawn, began playing nonstop on our shared turntable the albums of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. I had to wait until she went off to smoke dope with her friends before I could put on my Beatles, and Sly and the Family Stone.

 The hard-fought harmony we finally established, in no codified way, revolved around who could have friends over, thereby banishing the other sister to the rest of the house. I spent plenty of afternoons and evenings in the family room, or doing homework at the dining room table, or playing Kick the Can in the streets and yards of the neighborhood, or sprawled on my older sister’s double bed, staring at her poster of Fontainebleau as she did her college work at her desk. I envied friends who had their own rooms, their private spaces, their personal sanctuaries.

 When Dawn left for college, I got my wish, for exactly one year. Down came her posters of meadows and streams, and up went mine of Joe Namath and Paul Newman.  I bought a bean bag chair to curl up in and read for hours. I pushed the beds together and luxuriated in the feeling of a double bed to myself. My friends and I would sing along with my Paul McCartney and Harry Nilsson records at top volume. We would stand in front of the mirror for hours, trying on clothes and experimenting with makeup. We would pop popcorn and bring a huge bowl upstairs to sit on the floor between us as we played gin rummy or Yahtzee. We would make up funny stories and act them out, using my family’s Mardi Gras costume closet for props, always collapsing into such fits of giggles that my father would often bang on the door to ask if we were choking. We would perch cross-legged on my bed across from each other and talk about boys. We’d  wonder about the wonders of sex, and about what lay ahead for us in this world.

 Then, of course, I, too, moved on to college, then marriage, never again really having a room of my own for decades.

 Years later, when my parents died, and my sisters and brother and I began cleaning out the house to prepare it for sale, I realized how truly small our bedroom was, while our big sister and younger brother had rooms of their own. We were always so busy fighting for a space for ourselves that we never really made space to get to know each other. Such a small space, struggling to hold the big dreams of two very different girls.

 

 ----------------------

 

_Jackie's bedroom

When I was about 4/5 years old I lived with my parents in a caravan when we arrived back to the UK from South Africa.    The caravan was small for my parents and myself - a narrow space with kitchenette and I slept in an alcove just next to the little bathroom.    The caravan was parked in a field belonging to a lady who had lots of dogs, geese, rabbits, goats and sheep.   It was doggy wonderland with kennels and puppies running all over the place.     My father built a house for us on a plot that they had bought in Ferndown south of England in Dorset.   In the brand new house I had my own bedroom.    It was wonderful.  A real bedroom all to myself as I had no brothers and sisters.      I was young though and don’t quite remember everything.    But I do remember a comfortable bed reading to chaffinch my pyjama dog before bedtime and looking over fields and trees and the vegetable garden with chickens and angora rabbits that we bred.

After a few years we moved to San Diego California.   Living in a rented flat for quite a while I had my own bedroom but don’t remember one single thing about it.       Then we moved again further north to Burlingame – just south of San Francisco.   We rented again my parents sacrificing a bedroom by sleeping in the sitting room but again I have no recollection of that room.    Then, they managed to buy a house – a garden and I had my very own room.  This was situated in a quiet street lined with eucalyptus trees – when it rained,  and it didn’t very often, the smell of the eucalyptus was wonderful.    Smell remains my best memory of that time .     The house was built in wood on a slope and stairs led down to a garden and garage and my father installed a desk for himself downstairs as he was a ham radio operator in his spare time and in my bedroom I could hear him speaking to other ham operators in the world.    

 My father pulled down walls built cupboards I was allowed to paint the walls of my very own bedroom the colors I wished.  I chose orange for one wall and yellow for another.  These are still my favorite colours today.      Another feature of my bedroom was a sort of outside sculptural grid over the porch before the lawn and the street.   This grid felt protective  and was a really nice feature of the house and let loads of light into my room.      

I felt secure and really at home in my own space.   I could shut the door and my surroundings felt so familiar and so me.    The squiglly house phone cord reached into my room and I spent hours gossiping to my girlfriends from school –  at my desk making scrapbooks and reading Seventeen magazine. I collected leaves and cinema tickets and receipts and newspaper cutting for my scrapbook Writing up my diary daily and dreaming of boys in my class..     I wrote numerous letters to a cousin I had met in England during holidays and waiting patiently for return letter but as he was training to be a catholic priest  I was dreaming for nothing.  

Being so tall was a handicap for me as most of my school friends were quite small and I always seemed to have the smallest girlfriend in the school.    Opposites attract.  We were in that house for a few years before my mother was diagnosed with leukemia.    I wasn’t told at the time being considered too young (16) to deal with it.   So it was a shock when she went back to the UK just before my graduation from high school and it was a sad day for me as my Dad was at  work and no other family around.     I flew back to England end of June for holidays and sadly never saw my wonderful bedroom again as my father knowing that my Mum was ill travelled in a panic to England leaving the house intact.  Later neighbors had to go in and pack everything up and send on to England.   Probably quite a few childhood treasures were lost in that move.  

A few years ago I went to California and stood outside the house – it had been entirely renovated with a second floor added onto the roof.   As I stood outside memories flooded in my mind and I looked at the sculptured grid and longingly wished I could have had a look inside at my old bedroom but it wasn’t to be .    Perhaps better to keep  souvenirs intact.   

_____________________________________

Annemarie's bedroom

My Bedroom (age 7 x 14 year old)

Thunder rumbling, the rain rattling and trampling over the corrugated iron roof, pattering loudly.  I'm lying in bed under the mosquito net, listening to its hypnotic, steady drumming, sometimes fierce, sometimes whispering as it pours its way into the two huge water tanks outside the bedroom.

Our simple bungalow was built on a level cut into the side of a hill, each room having a view over the coffee plantation.  My sister and I always shared a bedroom, beds side by side separated by a huge African drum, covered in  cowhide.  When it was too slack for purpose  Indahano, he who drummed the beginning, middle and ending of the workday for all the workers, gave it to my father. I can still hear the mellow thrum of it waking us each morning as we lay beneath our brightly coloured patchwork quilts made by Mum. Our beds made,  our mosquito nets were tied into loose knots, so inviting ...and we did swing on them one day, and we did break them.

We had  wire-netting windows, no glass.  In stormy times wooden shutters sheltered us from the rain that drove horizontally across the verandahs that surrounded our home.  From my bed I could see the beautiful jacaranda tree with its fat panicles of mauve-blue flowers and the orchids gathered by Dad and placed by me in the cleft of the tree. A  red clay-tiled floor was covered with vibrant rugs. Once or twice a year it was polished with red Cardinal polish.  I loved seeing Sebewe slide his feet into a couple of small sheepskins and shimmy his way round the room on polishing day but  we girls were expected to sweep the floor and and make our own beds every morning. Opposite our beds was an enormous wardrobe, at the bottom of which was a huge long drawer where Mum kept all her fabrics - the Mirikani Drawer.  On top she kept all our school paintings, at least some of them - or perhaps just the ones which won prizes!    

  When the sun went down  the Flit gun was sprayed everywhere. The smell was awful and the rooms out of bounds for a while. Then four kerosene lamps were lined up. Watching the light being pumped into the coloured net wick inside the mantle never failed to fascinate us.

 When my parents went to bed and all lamps extinguished everywhere was pitch black. Later they had an 'engine ' house which they operated from a button by their bed. When we heard the dugga- dugga- dug of the engine dying we knew it was blackness again till morning.  We would lie in our beds listening to the croaks and trills, whistles and squeaks of frogs, nightjars, crickets - sounds of the African night.

 

Before going to bed Mum or Dad would pull back the sheets to make sure there were no  snakes, having once found one snuggled in my sister's bed. The scotching stick (in the corner of each room) was used to evict the intruder. Dad would cosy us up in bed while he read a bedtime story, mostly Rudyard Kipling -"The Just So Stories", "Thé Jungle Book". Perhaps because as a child he had, with his father, walked their dog with Kipling on the South Coast; or perhaps because he was enamoured of India after training there during the war. We loved the stories and knew them off by heart. One time Dad explained the meaning of 'scent' and many nights I would wake up from terrible nightmares when a tiger was hiding in the Mirikani Drawer. I remember feeling  paralysed with fear until I suddenly managed to get out of bed, rush through the darkness into my parents' room and literally jump on top of them, shouting "It's scented me! The tiger's scented me!" The engine had to be started and the entire Mirikani Drawer emptied before I was persuaded there was no tiger.

 We had very few toys as we spent most our childhood outside come rain or sun but I did have a beloved rabbit who lived on my bed.  He had white fluffy feet and 'hands', head and ears and was dressed like a gentleman in felted green trousers, felt black jacket and a black bow-tie around what I thought was a blue shirt. One day, having learnt to sew  I decided to make Snowy a new outfit so I, with tremendous effort (pulling), eventually released him of his gentleman's outfit only to discover he was blue-skinned all over, no shirt at all. I never felt the same about my naked, blue rabbit with fluffy white extremities and a bow tie sewn to his blue  neck.

  Mostly our 'toys' were real animals, usually orphans brought to Dad by the workers. Snugglebug, our duck who couldn't swim, had roaming rights in our bedroom, as did my pet rabbit (he had proper fur all over). Dad converted Mum's wire-netted meat safe into a two-level home for the baby chimp who shared our large bedroom for the time he was with us. The chimp was allowed to run around the room, leap over the beds and generally cause mayhem.  At eventide, before 'flitting' I had a long net to catch insects in our bedroom; these were for the orphan  bush baby, so tiny with such huge eyes and baby-like wails. Dad taught me their needs, and 'never to give them names' and to set them free when they were able to fend for themselves. Not a single pop star poster in my bedroom  - just my sister and animals.

 

Mirikani - Swahili for material (coming from American, as  much fabric did come from USA)

 

   

The sun came out when .....

Annemarie's story

The Sun was Shining When...

I don't like visiting Emmaüs especially on a Saturday. Granddaughter was due to stay with a friend and their old bikes were now too small. New helmets will probably cost more than a second hand bike!   It was hot and of course I got the opening time wrong. There was already a standing queue of nearly 100 people and the sun was shining when we arrived half an hour early. Spotting a low walled shelter we opted to lose our place in the queue and just sit out the wait.

  Minutes later a sunflower yellow van arrived and and an old man clambered out. His back was bent, his nose was bent, he wore Coke-bottle glasses and he appeared to be somewhat toothless. Wearing a brightly checked shirt and baggy blue trousers held up with braces he shuffled to and fro from his van and with the help of his daughter (same nose, same checked shirt and trousers but no braces although she did have teeth) they pulled out from the van a trestle table, flipped its legs out and placed it very precisely facing the sweltering queue.

"Il a quatre-vingts ans," said the daughter, very proudly, to us  watching-sitters-on-the-wall.

 Two more tables were erected in the same precise manner - slow and steady.

  Back into the dark of the van and the old chap manhandled a metre-wide chiller display cabinet and carefully positioned it on the table.

" A lot of effort to sell a few things," remarked John, sotto voce but they had only just begun disgorging the van.

Out of its depths the daughter brought trays of succulent scarlet strawberries and knobbly avocados and laid them on the low wall, winking appetisingly at the queue. There followed string bags of unwashed potatoes placed in mounds under the trestle table. A crimson cloth embroidered through with silver thread was spread over the trestle.  Wooden boxes of oranges were carefully  placed beside low crates of frilly green lettuce, whose leaves were teased and fruffled  as though preparing for a debutante's ball. Out of the magic yellow van appeared trays of pink radishes and boxes of long elegant cucumbers destined for the smaller trestle. Towers of cardboard egg trays displaying a melange of brown and white eggs, a few feathers clinging to the corners of the trays - hinting at how recently the eggs were collected?

Trays of leeks, their straggly, hairy roots sticking out of the box ends like too tall people in too short beds, laid facing us and, finally, bunches of green asparagus wrapped in brown paper, the woven tips beckoning us - 'come and buy' or perhaps being French vegetables - "Allez, approchez".

  Six varieties of young tomato plants stood on the low wall at the back of the shelter. We were obviously sitting on their shelf space alongside two women and would soon be asked to move. The queue now snaked into the open, the sky a sea of cerulean blue devoid of clouds and the sun beaming down. It was hot. We'd stay sitting a little longer.

  One of the two women wearing a hijab, the folds  falling neatly around her cheeks could resist no longer. She rose and surveyed the produce, picked up a bunch of asparagus, sniffed it, put it back, peered at the strawberries, stroked the oranges while being watched implacably by the vendor. He was not quite ready primping and placing his wares.

"Where from?"queried the woman.

"We grow it all ourselves on our farm, not far from here," replied the toothless old man.

"Global warming," whispered John, "so I'll buy you an avocado tree for your birthday and perhaps an orange tree!"

Then suddenly a scurrying of feet - two-thirty - the doors were open, the queue was running, the two women alongside rushing to join over two hundred bargain hunters, people in dire need or just a day-out browsing.

  And the shop was open for business; we felt as if we had watched a piece of theatre, father and daughter quietly, relentlessly magicking fruit, vegetables, eggs and plants from the Mary Poppins van, as a magician produces white doves from beneath a handkerchief. To each other we applauded the hard work and enterprise (despite the French not having a word for 'enterprise' according to George Bush). Of course we bought asparagus, eggs, strawberries, hairy-bottomed leeks and the six tomato plants which had just been positioned on 'our' seats. We only came for a second hand bicycle.

_________________________________________

Paula's story 

The sun was shining when my mother died. She keeled over in the garden, where she had been weeding her beloved hydrangea plants. She might just as well have been on her back porch swing, sipping a cup of coffee. Or sitting at the kitchen table playing solitaire. Or enjoying her evening martini with my dad.

She wasn’t that old after all, in her early 70s, and we all thought she was healthy as a horse.

Turned out, she wasn’t.

It was her heart. (It’s almost always the heart.) And she was gone.

I was shattered. I called my mom every day, in that sweet spot between the noon newscast and when one of her soap operas began. We talked about everything and nothing: what she was making for dinner that evening, how she had fared in one of her weekly bridge games, widowed Aunt Margie’s latest suitor, what news we had both just listened to that could end up on page one of the paper I would be producing that night. We ended every call by saying “I love you.” It wasn’t schmaltzy; it was matter of fact.

I didn’t have enough time with her.

I began finding ways to keep her spirit alive in my daily life. I would sing to my son, who was 18 months old when his grandmother died, the lullabies she sang to me when I was a child. If I made martinis for my husband and me, we called them, “Grandma juice.” If my son said he was cold, I would sing out, “Chili today; hot tamale!” and he knew that was one of my mom’s sayings.

So many of mom’s sayings found their way into our daily life. And my son, who was too young to remember his grandmother in the physical sense, began to know her through her songs, and her stories, and her sayings.

When I turned 40, without my mom to celebrate with me, it seemed fitting to commemorate her in some way. So, I made the very unlike-me decision to get a tattoo. What should it be? A playing card, perhaps the queen of hearts, to mark her love of bridge and solitaire? A martini glass, to mark her preference for the cocktail, always made with vodka, not gin?

In the end, I chose a flower, a tiny hydrangea etched on the inside of my left wrist, to mark her love for her garden.

When it was finished, I showed it to my son, who was 5 years old by then. He nodded, smiled, and said, “Now Nana will be with you all the time, won’t she, Mommy? Will you come play legos with me?”

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Jackie's story

“The sun was shining when….”

I am someone who is always cold.   Wooly vests, scarves and super socks is what I wear most of the year.      Having lived in warm sunny climates in my younger years I crave the sunshine to keep me going.   When I feel the sun it somehow lifts me up – everything changes my mood is raised, the warmth permeates my skin I can relax into the coziness of colors that change my surroundings.      

    On a recent trip to visit family in the north of England.    Middle of July and on the high street young girls were wearing crop tops strapless dresses and short skirts.   Picture me, cotton vest, long sleeved tee shirt cardigan and a coat.   Scarf wrapped firmly round my neck.    People stared and I stared back as I couldn’t believe that they didn’t feel the cold.

It was 15° outside.

Why do some people feel the cold more than others.    I checked it out.   People with less body fat or lower muscle mass tend to lose heat faster. Fat acts like insulation, and muscle generates heat.  So where is the butter…

On my trip to Yorkshire I was delighted when the sun eventually came out.    I quickly prepared to go in the garden with sun cream, hat and sunglasses – got the deckchair out and waited.   The sun was shining I was looking up at the sky wondering when the heat would be turned on!    Well have you ever put your hand on a LED lightbulb  –Lots of light yes, but no heat or warmth - well that is what it felt like.    I love living in France and when the sun is shining it’s the best ever. 

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I have never...+ A new member of our group

Wilson

 Paula's story :  

I’m almost 70 years old. I’m not exactly sure how I got here, but like all of us at this age, I’ve survived the ups and downs of life, and 15 years ago, surprisingly enough, I discovered the love of my life. Not only that, but nine years ago, we made the momentous decision to leave my lifelong home of New Orleans and set off on an adventure together: to move to France. Did we speak French? Passably, enough to order off a menu in Paris. Could we learn French, at our age? It turns out, that’s going to take some time. But we did learn enough to pass the B1 language exam, and to apply for French citizenship. (Still waiting for that, but that’s a story for another day.)

We’ve spent the past nine years traveling around Europe, Asia and Australia, and it’s always been a compelling treat to come home to our snug little cottage in the French countryside, where our two cats roam our neighbors’ gardens, nestle in front of the fire, and snuggle into bed with us at night. It’s truly an idyllic life, full of love and laughter and deep, abiding friendships.

And then came Wilson.

I have never had my life upended like this. Well, all right, those of you who know I lost my home and my community in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 might wonder if that particular upending of my life might have been a bit harder to bear than welcoming a new puppy into our home and our lives. I have been trying to figure out why this feels harder.

During Katrina, and the years-long aftermath, I was working as a journalist at the local daily newspaper, and it was that work that kept me going; the sacred duty to gather and produce information that could and did help a community knit itself back together after such a vast tragedy. The long days and nights of editing stories and photos and graphics gave my confused and chaotic life at that time a purpose, and kept me going, though months of uncertainty about the future.

Fast-forward ten years, and the move to France brought new challenges, of course. Joining a new community (of French-speakers!), making new friends, traveling across Europe, finding French doctors, navigating the French bureaucracy … not to mention the challenges of Covid, with the lockdown, the washing of groceries (remember that?), the isolation from friends and family, the inability to travel …

But I am like a cat in that I am very much a creature of routine. As much as I love to travel to new places and experience new environments and discover new things, I am happy to come home and pick back up my life of friends, and reading, and bike rides, and crossword puzzles, and walks, and sunsets, and aperos, and movies in front of the fire at night with a cat or two nearby. It’s a quiet life of contentment and warmth and intimacy.

And into that quiet life came Wilson.

He’s a cute little guy, full of energy and affection. But right now, he is a sucking hole of need: the need to pee, the need to poop, the need to play. And if my timing is off, or if I don’t correctly read the signals, he pees on my floor! (Like he did as I was writing this.)  I’ve never had a child, and kittens are nowhere near this much work, so this constant state of alertness is new to me. Was this what I envisioned when I dreamed of a life in France in my dotage? Not exactly. But when I look at James, and I see how happy he is to have a dog again after eight years without one, all I can do is put on my big girl panties and embrace change. Change, thy name is Wilson. Who’s a good dog??

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Jackie's story

She had never been to heaven.

She arrived in front of the golden gates in all their glory a shining paradise

There was God in his sparkling white robes long hair and beard looking exactly as she had imagined him to be.   

A shining halo around his head she kneeled in front of him and said here I am God I’ve left the earth and I’m here to do whatever you want me to do now. 

And he said well before you commit to entering the gates of paradise you can make one more request to do something that you wished you had done while on earth     Oh she said let me think for a minute.    “I’ve never been able to sing I should like to go back to earth as a  famous singer something that I so admire.   The emotion of music is something exceptional “  

She landed on earth as a baby and began to sing at a very early age had loving parents but who were very poor and slowly but surely she worked herself up to become a well known singer surprising everybody with her beautiful voice and personality Able to buy a house for her parents and diamonds for herself and all the things she had never had in her previous life.  

She had maids and butlers and a chauffeur and a cook.  Becoming more and more famous

Then one day she realized that she wasn’t any happier than her life was all materialistic;   its true that she enjoyed singing but it wasn’t as gratifying as she had imagined.  

At the age of 30 she started to beg the Lord I want to go back to heaven life is very trivial.   The Lord said “no you must live until the age of 86 and make the best of this life.”     “ Another 50 years of living this life of luxury and money and houses three boats and 40 people looking after me –and I can’t go to the supermarket without hoards of people asking for autographs    people touch me and my hair and clothes – uuuhhh “

So God said “You asked for a gift,”.
“But you forgot to ask for meaning.”

“you must discover why you were given this voice—not just for yourself, but for others.   Being a diva was never the destination.” there Is only one way for you to overcome this and that is to do a good deed and make it work and then I’ll call you back. _ A  little girl came up to her and said I’ve never been able to sing will you teach me 

So there began many months and years of training until this little girl grew up and became as famous as herself   

  She was now free to return … I’d never been to heaven and now I’ve been twice 

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 Geraldine's story

I’VE NEVER…

I’ve never walked on the moon although I have so often been in the moon !

I was in the moon at school when I didn’t like a subject or a teacher.  And where would I travel ! Not in the moon cause in those days there was no way to imagine that one could reach the moon and step on it.  Despite the fact that the Russians (USSR) had launched a small sattelite named « Spoutnik » that I saw in 1958 at the Brussels’ International Exhibition and had found extremely small !

I would think I was a bird, just flying all over different places and countries in what I imagined pure freedom.  Not depending on a schoolbus, or a bicycle or a tram or even just my little feet !  I could cross the, Mediterrean Sea and have my first stop in Tunisia untill a harsh voice would bring me back to my desk and the school pall sitting next to me.

I would imagine I was an adult, not having to ask permission to do the things I liked. If I felt like swimming, I could just decide to go, if I felt like going for a  walk in the forest, I could take a moped or a car and just do it, if I was invited to a party, I could stay later than midnight and not fear my Dad coming to pick me up at midnight like Cinderella !

I would go and visit all the places that where shown to us in the Conferences called « Exploration du Monde » where I used to go with my sister.  During a boring math’s course, what a kick to think of the « Girafe Women » in a small Indonesian Island who wore so many necklaces that if they took them off, they would break their necks or die !  Or the Abu Simbel barrage being constructed in Egypt, on the Nil, removing the huge statues to another place, or imagining hiding in the African forest to get a glimpse at the smallest people around : the pygmees !

I have never written a book !  But I’ve written so many in my mind.  I even started one a long time ago and in the 3 first pages, I managed to set an action on the « Quai du Point du Jour », just because I found the name of that place so dratmatically open to anything following, but nothing came…

I’ve never painted a sunset although I’ve tried painting at different times in my life.  Does this mean I’ll never paint a sunset.  I don’t know…. I even think that as I’ve mentionned this, I might pick up the challenge and try one day.  Meanwhile, I have so many bad photos of sunsets, that I could pick one and try to translate it into a painting.

Are these « nevers » unfinished beginnings.  Will they come to one day ?  Why and when ? 

If I think of my youth and all the things I had never done in those days, I figure I’ve filled in quite a few of my dreams and wishes.

 When I was twenty, my dream was to live in France, in Paris.  I did it.

When I was 30, my dream was to have 6 children !  I had 3 and stopped when I understood more would be too hard !

When I was 40, my dream was to set out a house full of children, it’s garden, a few animals, learn how all this was manageable. It happened.

When I was 50, I thought it was time to deepen my professional life, take more responsibilities, improve my skills and use them to improve my career. Done.

When I was 60 , we decided to travel for many years in a sailing boat, around the Mediterranean discovering the cradle of Europe, the different  civilizations around it, what it means to come accross a storm at sea or to get stuck for hours with no wind before docking. It was great !

When I was 70, I got to know 10 little toddlers who gave me and still do so much love, interest and joy : these are my grand’children who are now becoming adults and who knows, filling the gaps of their own « I’ve never «

But I would never have thought that so many « I’ve never » would come true. Does all this sound pretentious ?  I don’t really know.  With all my « I’ve never » and all the achievements, I feel I am, to-day, a fulfilled and happy woman

 

Annemarie's story :  

I have Never ...

I have had 24 cats, 5 dogs, a pot-bellied pig, a baby chimp, 2 rabbits, Snugglebug the Duck  an African Grey parrot, a Komodo type lizard, a galago (bush baby), a 'patchwork' tortoise and a tame gecko but...I have never had my own camel!

 

 The sun dipped below the horizon as our BOAC plane taxied down the barely visible landing strip that sliced through the dusty dry desert at Wadi Halfa.  Silhouetted against a rickety fence, munching and ruminating on scrub were strange distant objects.  I was five years old and in five minutes I had fallen in love. "I want one,Daddy," I pleaded. And, no - of course no baby camel appeared on my birthday. But the yearning for one never ceased and I always thought I might one day have my own camel.

I wore out the pages on Egypt and camels in my World Encyclopaedia. I still have my scrapbook of magazine and newspaper clippings of camels, the construction of the Aswan Dam and all things Egyptian. Then I was introduced to Wilfred Thesiger's books and  thrilled  to discover that a camel could be as faithful as a dog. To quote from his book, 'Arabian Sands':    “I can remember another camel that was as attached to her master as a dog might have been. At intervals throughout the night she came over, moaning softly, to sniff at him where he lay, before going back to graze."   I learnt that when I got my camel  I should "be careful tethering my camel, as it can use its top lip to untie the knot."

While staying with my Dutch grandmother when I was 12 I spent hours drawing house-plans, always with camel accommodation, never a garage! When my Oma said that camels were smelly I  answered (and in Dutch):   "No problem, Oma. I will get free baby talcum powder from Johnson & Johnson. My camel will be their finest advert."

Living in London as a student  I visited the zoo, where the Bactrian camel stole my heart ... and spat a huge gob of green, vile-smelling spit at a coochy-coochy-cooing onlooker. That same camel nearly cost me my future husband. We went to see the film "Arabesque". During a tense moment  there is a chase through London Zoo, right past  my Bactrian camel; in the very quiet cinema I shouted out "my camel" at the surprise of seeing him starring with the gorgeous Gregory Peck. Hisses of shhh! and 'quiet' and John slid down his seat in embarrassment.

'Ah,' I thought, when we moved to France , 'now I'll have room for a camel. The nearest I got was the offer of 6 llamas after our rescued pot-bellied pig died. Soon after, to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary with our children and  grandchildren John arranged a stay on a camel farm ...in the middle of Oxfordshire.  In aid of raising awareness of the endangered status of Bactrian camels it was a weekend celebrating these ugly, grumbling creatures. Camels had come from various countries to participate in races, a beauty pageant (and they do have the most incredibly beautiful eyelashes - a double set for each eye!), about 30 of them brushed and groomed, dressed in embroidered decorations.

Now that Trump has disrupted the world and oil prices are shooting sky-high I have one more try at having a camel. After all they are cheaper than cars, they are pretty fast and can travel at up to 40 miles per hour. They can slurp up to 40 gallons of water at a time and can survive a week or more without more water and don't need petrol. And imagine the help in the garden! They are very strong and can carry up to 900 pounds for 25 miles a day. That's to the déchèterie and back with all the rubbish. As my hair turns grey no need for expensive highlights - I have a camel. Washing my hair with its urine, not only would it have an enchanting reddish tinge but it would  protect my hair from nits- another saving. I might forego that benefit. Then there's camel milk, so rich in vitamin C... but I cannot persuade John. I have never wanted diamonds, I have never wanted luxurious holidays - I just want a camel!