A pot of geraniums

Paula's story

One month after the wedding festivities of the retired dentist and the young widow, a chic former Parisian shop owner, Alicia Mépris, who had abandoned Paris in the aftermath of a love affair gone sour, arrived  in St. Martin-sur-Flumes, a sleepy little village in Burgundy. Or so she thought. Her plan was to hide away from city life by opening an eight-room boutique  inn, and she imagined rustic charm, discerning guests, and leisurely dinners served on her terrace at sunset.

Instead, shortly after she opened her doors for business, she was cited by the mayor’s office for repeatedly leaving her trash bins outside long after collection day.

Alicia was incensed. She was convinced she was the victim of a campaign by the villagers who resented “la Parisienne.” Now, it’s true that she showed nothing but disdain for the villagers. She ignored them because they were not paying customers. And it’s true that she insulted the village by hanging a sign on her spacious terrace on the Rue de l’Aventure, proclaiming “Privé: Only for guests of the hotel.” It’s also true that the bar in the hotel reception often played loud music past the hour of curfew. And it’s true that she allowed her guests, against strict regulations, to park their cars around the inn, clogging the small village lanes.

But she decided that in the matter of the trash bins, she was being singled out, and that she must prove it by documenting every infraction she saw. Armed with a camera and a notebook, Alicia stalked the village like a nature photographer, hiding behind walls and hedges to get the perfect shot to prove her point.

For example: Monsieur Bernard routinely parks in a non-legal space. The widow Hugette's hedge is several centimeters too high. The baker leaves flour sacks blocking the lane. The deputy mayor's dog roams the village off-leash. Madame Fournier puts glass in the recycling on the wrong day.

Unfortunately, Alicia was terrible at surveillance. And the villagers quickly noticed. But, being French, they decided not to confront her. Instead, they began posing for her. When her neighbors saw her approaching, they dramatically dragged their poubelles in with military precision. Or someone measured the exact distance between their pots of geraniums with a tape measure. Or the village children made funny faces for her. Or the church secretary swung the huge iron gates of the sanctuary open exactly on time. Even the mayor cheerfully saluted her. 

Soon everyone in the village began to compete to appear in what they were calling  “Le Collection de Mademoiselle Mépris.” But Alicia Mépris was clueless. She continued to collect evidence she considered incontrovertible, and when she finally submitted it to the village council, she expected to immediately expose the hypocrisy of the village. Instead, two days later, the mayor announced an upcoming photo exhibition celebrating village life. Alicia’s hundreds of photographs were mounted in the salle des fetes as an affectionate portrait of the community.

She was dumbfounded. She could hardly believe it as the villagers, instead of being ashamed of themselves, crowded around to laugh at themselves in the pictures. The only absent photograph in the exhibit was one of Alicia — because she was always behind the camera. Until the villagers unveiled dozens of photos they secretly had been taking of her: Crawling through bushes. Hiding behind bins. Standing in a ditch with binoculars. Balanced precariously on a ladder. Sprinting after the recycling truck.

Red-faced, she realized she had been the village's favorite entertainment all along. And as her neighbors gathered around her to congratulate her on her photos, she finally came to understand that perhaps the best part of village life was simply to be a part of the village.

A week later, Alicia hung one last framed photograph, this time in the hotel reception, where the raucous bar had been shuttered for good. It was a picture of herself rolling her bins inside immediately after the weekly collection — while half the village applauded from their windows.

 

 

 

 Geraldine's story.   

A POT OF GERANIUMS

 

I was staring at the crowd entering the marquee where we were all dispatched looking forward to a  fast adoption. 

This is going to be my day. I’ve gone through so much during the last 6 months that surely the winds will become more favorable to my future.

It started when I was just one millimeter and had been rescued from a general floor sweep and put in a little pot of earth, in the shed for the winter.

I wasn’t alone though !  Lots of little pots were sitting side by side in the shed and regularly scrutinized by a human eye.  Every now and again a little pot would be emptied and I would change neighbours.

The days became shorter and shorter.  The skys looked grey.  Little light appeared less and less for what seemed  a very long time.  Then, suddenly, the sun shone again and I was taken to a bigger pot as a few leaves had grown with the miracle of photosynthesis. From that day, I started watching my next to kins and, each time we were given a bigger pot, we would start talking together trying to imagine what would happen to us in the near and far future.  We usually came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to keep close to keep safe and face life together.

Time went by, the sun shone more and more brilliantly, the nights shortened and I got looked after more carefully, with water being shed twice a day. 

The inhabitants of the other pots seemed to have darker leaves than me and day after day,  little red coloured blossoms started appearing.

I began to feel lost and sad.  Why wasn’t anything like that happening to me ?  Till the day where a very fragile stem started growing and at the top of it, finally, a little white flower made it’s way through.

Although the plants next to me were growing faster, we spent good times together discussing about what we looked like, who was the prettiest, our different shades of red and why was I left out like an albinos, not turning any other colour than white.  But they were nice to me, very supporting !

Then, a nice pretty deep red geranium explained to us that around Ascension, she had heard that a lot of people really enjoyed displaying us in windowboxes all around their houses and were usually very nice and looked after us very well.  We would be scattered in different places, but never alone in a pot, so our friendships could expand.

One day, we had been moved around a lot and put in large trays, very tight but given water.  A very high pitched sound was heard as a huge green and white truck stopped in front of where we were waiting and started loading us tightly in this huge dark space.  Bang ! We were in the dark.  Bumping up and down, then sideways, getting knocked around but still standing straight cause we’d been gathered together so tightly !

It seemed ages untill we came to a stop.  The doors opened.  Sun and light came streaming in and we got unloaded quite gently untill we got displayed.

So many of us waiting to see where we were going to land ! A house, an appartment, a garden, indoors in an office, a shop?  And who would be looking after us : nice people, negligent ones, loving ones ?

The rush hour was there.  My friends, the ones I knew, seemed so far. As time went by, pot after pot was picked up, looked at, evaluated and taken away.  Nobody even gave me a glance !  What is a white albinos geranium doing on this shelf hoping to compete with all the different shades of red !  No way ! The days went by, the shelves got scattered and emptied.  Finally I was left alone , unwatered, no one to talk to, my dreams of adoption fading away.  Untill an ultimate hand took me, looked busy clearing the mess up and threw me in a big dark bin where all my hopes evaporated.

___________________________

Jackie's story     

 

A pot of geraniums

The 6^th floor tenant was admiring the view from her apartment overlooking the Eiffel Tower.    she placed the bright red geraniums in their blue pot precariously on her balcony ledge  as she admired the lights starting to flicker on and off that showed off the glorious ironwork like a protective fairy godmother

– a present for her birthday – so pretty she mused but as her hand gave a sudden jerk she watched with horror as the pot went over the edge and started to fall – a long way down to the pavement below. 

The 5 th floor family were getting the children ready for bed – the sliding door of the balcony was open, not enough for an adult but a four year old could easily slip through and seeing the red pot of flowers fly past the window he quickly slipped through to see if he could catch it.  Mum busy at the stove and Dad watching a football match was just in time to see his only son running along the balcony of their apartment arms outstretched and looking for a way to climb higher and catch it – in a flash he was outside son in arms safe and sound the red pot continued on their way down

4^th floor couple having just met the previous evening were still in bed and had just opened the sliding window to get in some fresh air when a strange object flew past their window in slow motion;   the lovers  rushed out onto the balcony in their birthday suits much to the delight of the opposite neighbors

 3^rd floor – Mrs Wilson was stone deaf, lived alone with her 12 year old poodle Amelia who barked incessantly at her mistress who screeched at her  - driving the inhabitants in the apartment building mad.    It was time for the evening walk    She liked to go out early before it got really dark and then could relax in front of her favorite series on tv.   Putting on her coat and the dog on her lease she stepped outside to wait for the lift to arrive,  she pressed the down button – somewhere above her the pot was falling.  

2^nd floor    

_the pot of geraniums continued its reckless fall and as it passed by the patio door of the 2^nd floor apartment no one seemed to notice as it was a family gathering and candles of the birthday cake were lit.   90 year old granny saw out of the corner of her eye something red with leaves and a large pot pass by outside – pointing and gabbling she was dismissed as having an illusion and everyone laughed at her increasing nonsense

1^st floor    Reaching now speedy proportions the pot whizzed past 11 year old Jan who was frantically trying to finish her homework before Mum got home from work – as the bowl of flowers flashed by she thought goodness it must be time to stop as she was seeing things now.    But would her schoolteacher accept her excuse?

Ground floor

Just as Mrs Wilson and Amelia got out of the lift and into the entrance of the building the pot of geraniums arrived at destination the barking and screeching ceased immediately much to the relief of the inhabitants and miraculously in the mixed up mash of bodies and blood the pretty heart shaped flowers floated free in the breeze

 

Annemarie's story

 

 

The Pot of Red Geraniums

The morning sun hit the flowers on the kitchen windowsill, casting a crimson glow against the tiles. Arthur stared at them, his chest tightening. They had been his mother’s favourite. She had nurtured them for years, a bright burst of life against the grey backdrop of her long illness. Now, three days after her funeral, they were the only living thing left in her apartment.

Arthur was supposed to be packing her life into cardboard boxes. He stood surveying the interwar brown furniture, the books, some still unread. Without the presence of his long-suffering but always positive mother he was overwhelmed by the silence.

The knock at the door was sharp and unexpected.

When Arthur opened it, he found her landlord, Mr. Henderson, holding a clipboard and looking aggressively efficient.

"Morning, Arthur. Just checking on the timeline. The new tenants want to move in by Friday, so I need the keys back by Thursday night."

"Thursday?" Arthur swallowed hard. "The lease runs through to the end of the month."

"Legally, yes, but your mother passed, and we agreed—"

"We didn't agree on Thursday," Arthur said, his voice rising slightly. The grief he had been keeping under tight control threatened to spill over.

Henderson sighed - a practiced sound of administrative patience. "Look, I’m trying to be flexible, but business is business. Just get it done."

He turned to leave, but stopped, gesturing toward the windowsill. "And make sure you clear out the plants. Building policy doesn't allow pots on the exterior sills anyway. Dirt gets everywhere and they're a danger to passers-by."

Something snapped inside Arthur. He left the half-packed boxes and walked over to the window, picked up the heavy clay pot, and cradled it against his chest.

"I'm leaving now," Arthur said, shuffling out towards the

 narrow stairwell. He was quickly pursued by the landlord still

 clutching his clipboard, checking a list of moving-out penalties.

"Hold on a minute, Arthur," Henderson said, blocking the narrow landing. He peered suspiciously at the vibrant red blossoms. "Those flowers from flat 30?"

"Yes," Arthur said, shifting the weight of the pot. "Just taking it to my car."

"Did you check the building bylaws?" Henderson tapped his clipboard with a pen.

"Section 4, Paragraph B. No live vegetation or organic matter is permitted in the communal stairwells. It’s a slipping hazard due to potential soil spillage. That will be 100€ deduction from the security deposit."

Arthur stared at him and between gritted teeth he said

 "The plant is in a sealed pot; I’m holding it; I’m not spilling anything."

"Rules are rules", Henderson said, already carefully noting the infraction.

Before Arthur could argue, a loud, scraping thud echoed from the floor above. A pair of college students were struggling to manoeuvre a heavy, oak wardrobe down the tight space of the narrow stairwell.

"Watch out below!" one of them shouted.

The wardrobe slipped. It tipped forward, sliding down the steps like a runaway boulder. Arthur, seeing it coming, flattened himself against the brick wall, pulling the geraniums tightly against his chest.

Henderson, still noting the 'infraction' on his clipboard, looked up a second too late. It smashed against his back, and sent him tumbling down the stairs, the wardrobe wedging itself firmly across the stairs.

Arthur looked up at the two frozen faces of the students peering over the toppled wardrobe.

"You need to call an ambulance. I would help but Section 4, Paragraph B says I have to get this organic matter to the curb immediately. Wouldn't want to break any more rules."

He smiled as he stepped over Henderson. The pot of red geraniums was completely unscathed.

 

5 words : Yellow. Expedient cord. tears dentist

Paula's story

The village baker believed in a perfect baguette, peerless pains au chocolats, and punctual croissants.

Every morning at precisely six-thirty, Monsieur Josef Moreau removed the first tray from the oven and then surveyed the square of St. Martin-sur-Flumes as though he were inspecting the troops. If Madame Fournier's yellow shutters opened before the church bells rang, she had slept poorly and would be anxious all day. If old Monsieur Delormé walked his dog before buying his brioche, he had quarreled with his wife. If the mayor crossed the square without stopping for a baguette, some committee had invented a new problem.

The village contained four hundred and eighty-three souls, five thousand opinions, and one unwavering conviction: that everyone else's life would improve considerably if it were conducted according to one's own advice. It was a harmonious arrangement.

Until the hydrangeas disappeared.

The hydrangeas belonged to Mademoiselle Isabelle Dinde, a retired theater professor and undefeated champion of winning arguments after the other party had long since forgotten what they were discussing. Every spring she cultivated spectacular hydrangeas that covered every inch of the small front garden of her rose-covered cottage.

One Monday morning, she woke to discover that they were gone. Every blossom had been snipped from its stem.

By eight o'clock, the entire village knew. By nine, everyone had solved the mystery. By ten, no two theories were the same.

"I am not accusing anyone," Mademoiselle Dinde announced from her garden gate, with the solemnity of a queen greeting her subjects. "I merely observe that someone possessing both gardening shears and questionable judgment entered my property."

"The question," said the cheesemaker, "is motive."

"The question," corrected the widow Hugette, "is opportunity."

"The question," interrupted Madame Fournier, "is why no one trims that hedge  properly."

She pointed across the lane at an entirely unrelated hedge. The village nodded. It did need trimming.

Mayor Étienne Martin disliked conflict because it delayed paperwork, and paperwork was predictable. Conflict required eye contact.

"My friends and fellow citizens," he proclaimed at an emergency gathering outside the village hall, "we shall approach this rationally."

Everyone agreed. They then proceeded irrationally.

The tea shop owner suggested tourists were at fault. "There are no tourists that early in the morning,” the mayor said. "Precisely,” said Madame Fournier. “No one would suspect them."

The butcher blamed the neighboring village. "They envy our flower festival,” he declared. "They have won the flower festival three years running," someone observed. "Which proves ambition,” the butcher nodded.

The mayor rubbed his forehead.

Someone suggested it was the gendarmes. "No," Mademoiselle Dinde said firmly. "If the state becomes involved in gardening, France is finished." This statement received broad approval.

Only Colette Bernard remained silent. Colette owned the tiny bookshop where hardly anyone bought books but everyone sought gossip. She was good at noticing details.

For example, she noticed that the retired dentist, Monsieur René LeBoeuf, had acquired an unusual number of scratches on his hands. She also noticed he became remarkably interested in examining his shirt cuffs whenever the hydrangeas were mentioned. Most importantly, she noticed that he had recently begun visiting the newcomer, the young widow Claire Dubois, who had moved to the village only ten years ago.

She wondered.

Meanwhile, the annual village dinner in honor of the Ascension approached. In St. Martin-sur-Flumes, this was less a celebration than a competitive exhibition of modesty.

"Oh, it's only a simple tart." (He had peeled fruit for six hours.)

"I just threw together a little duck." (She had worked for two days.)

"I hope the wine is drinkable." (It had won awards.)

At sunset, long tables filled the square. The mayor prepared another speech. The villagers prepared to not listen to it.

Then Claire Dubois arrived. She carried an enormous arch woven from hydrangeas.

Mademoiselle Dinde’s hydrangeas.

A collective gasp traveled through the square with remarkable efficiency.

René LeBoeuf stood and nervously cleared his throat. "I should explain,” he said. "You certainly should," five villagers said simultaneously. “You see,” he said, "there was a proposal of marriage."

Everyone turned. Claire DeBois blushed. Monsieur LeBoeuf continued. "I wanted to make an arch of hydrangeas because Madame DuBois once mentioned that, as a child, she had always imagined one in a dream.”

"So you stole mine," Mademoiselle Dinde got straight to the point.

LeBoeuf turned to her and bowed. "I intended to replace every bloom before sunrise,” he said. "But the proposal occurred three days ago?” she asked. "It took me longer than expected,” he said. "There were, ah, emotions."

The villagers considered this. Emotions were notoriously bad at following schedules.

Mademoiselle Dinde stared at the arch. Then at the couple. Then back at the arch. "Why didn’t you just ask me?” she said. “You assumed I would oppose romance?"

"You once said marriage is merely a comedy with administrative consequences," Monsieur LeBoeuf reminded her.

Mademoiselle Dinde sighed. “You aren't angry?” the retired dentist asked. “I am furious,” she replied. The couple bowed their heads. “Because,” she said, “you deprived me of making a dramatic sacrifice.’

The villagers blinked.

Mademoiselle Dinde continued. “Imagine it. You ask for my hydrangeas. I refuse in no uncertain terms. You appeal to sentiment. There may be tears. I finally relent, reluctantly. Everyone admires my generosity while pretending not to notice.” She gestured at the arch. “Instead you’ve made me the victim. It is theatrically disappointing.”

The tea shop owner nodded. “She has a point.”

“The staging was weak,” agreed the widow Hugette.

“The timing,” added the butcher, “needed rehearsal.”

The mayor quietly folded away the speech no one had intended to hear and tucked it into the cord at his waist.

Six weeks later, the wedding took place beneath a fresh arch. This time, the hydrangeas had been donated by half the village. The other half insisted they would have donated hydrangeas if someone had informed them in time.

Mademoiselle Dinde delivered the final toast. She stood and told everyone that true love was extremely inconvenient but occasionally perfectly decorated. No one entirely agreed with her. No one entirely disagreed. Such distinctions were considered excellent manners in St. Martin-sur-Flumes.

And so, the baker resumed observing the square every morning. The hydrangeas bloomed again. And the hedge remained untrimmed,

 

 

 

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

Paula's story

Chapter One

There were four hundred and eighty-three people living in St. Martin-sur-Flumes — 483-and-a-half if you counted Patrice and Marcel’s new baby — and Mademoiselle Dinde knew everything worth knowing about every one of them. If there was anything Mademoiselle Dinde didn’t know, the priest knew it. And if there was something neither of those two knew, then, well, it probably wasn’t worth knowing.

It was early Friday morning, and Mademoiselle Dinde was humming a little tune as she misted her prize hydrangeas in her front garden. The tune was Clair de Lune, and during the difficult parts of the melody, she would break off and coo to her blooms. She believed her cooing was integral to their growth, much more integral than those arduous passages of Debussy that she had never quite been able to master.

Isabelle Dinde was a vigorous 89 years old, and because she had never married, she insisted on being called mademoiselle. Her rose-draped cottage was on the Grande Rue, which led from the village gates directly to the weekly market in the church square. She always managed to be in her small front garden with her watering can on Fridays at 8 a.m., which was later than she usually tended to her plants. All decent people should be out of bed and into their day by 7 a.m., she believed. But by waiting until 8 on Fridays, she was able to see most of the comings and goings on market day. Not that she was interested in the least.

All morning, vendors had been passing her cottage, heading to the square laden with their wares. The baker. The cheesemaker. The florist. The bookseller. The monk with his religious tracts, which were free but somehow never brought him any interest. Unlike the fishmonger, who sold more poisson each week than Jesus fed to the multitudes in the second miracle. The monk decided he must pray harder for customers, and, perhaps ask the mayor’s office if he could take the stall next to the fishmonger.

The air was thick with the scent of lavender, sweetened with a hint of coming scandal.

Madame Claudette Bois, whose husband of 30 years had up and disappeared one day several years ago, by happenstance on the same day that the police chief’s 25-year-old daughter also vanished, walked briskly past Mademoiselle Dinde’s cottage, nodded briefly to the old woman, and continued into the square. She stopped at each vendor’s booth to sniff here, squeeze there, squint here, savor there. No one in the village would think of contradicting this village matriarch, and that included the vendors, who swore to her that their produce, their croissants, their roses were first-rate, the freshest, the finest.

As she strode up to the cheesemaker’s booth to inspect the fromages on offer, she noticed a peculiar absence: Where was the huge wheel of the spectacular Camembert that usually had pride of place front and center, the cheese she was planning to buy for a special family lunch on Sunday?

“Alors. Monsieur Bardot,” she began, as the cheesemaker looked up from his packaging of a purchase, and, wiping his hands on his apron, turned expectantly to Madame Bois. “Oui, madame?” he asked. “Where is my Camembert, monsieur?” Claudette asked, an imperious note creeping into her none-too-quiet voice. “What is the meaning of this? I ordered it last week, and you said it would be here for me. Have you put it away for me? Or, perhaps you have sold it to someone else?”

Mais, non, madame,” Bardot said. “It is right there, in the front, as always.” And the big man reached across the display to pick up the large wooden box. Which was no longer there.

“Ah, putain!” Bardot cried. “C’est incroyable! It was there 10 minutes ago, I swear it.”

Claudette nodded, and a note sounding vaguely of triumph crept into her voice. “There is a thief loose in the village, preying on the market,” she declared. “I will alert the gendarmes, I will tell the mayor’s office, I will call the newspaper!”

One could not call Claudette’s voice soft at this point, and the disturbance caused Mademoiselle Dinde to abandon her hydrangeas and head into the square, where people were already gathered around the cheesemaker’s booth. The dramatically outraged Claudette inspired outrage among the others. “A theft! Of cheese! Mon Dieu!” one man cried. “In our little village,” an elderly woman moaned. “This must be stopped!” Claudette trilled, as shocked villagers rallied around her, muttering to each other in disbelief.

“Oh, madame, perhaps we should not be too hasty,” Bardot murmured to Claudette.  “Perhaps the thief was hungry.”

“Hunger is one thing,” sniffed Claudette. “Theft is another. We are French. We have rules for consumption."

 Just then, the priest appeared from around the corner, holding an empty wooden box, a box that had just moments before contained a very large wheel of Camembert.  “I am so very sorry,” he whispered to the cheesemaker. “My cat has learned to lift the latch on the door, and he escaped this morning. I found this near his bed. And he is looking very satisfied, indeed, monsieur, if that is any small consolation.”

 Mademoiselle Dinde let loose a small smile. As a cat lover herself, the case of the Camembert Cat Caper was the most entertaining thing that had happened in St.-Martin-sur-Flumes in quite some time. Most of the villagers dispersed almost immediately, but Mademoiselle Dinde and a few others lingered, indulging their palates with an order of a round of local Epoisses or a wedge of excellent tomme de Pyrenees. The wronged Claudette suppressed a tiny grin as she loudly asked Monsieur Bardot if he would be able to provide another wheel of his superb Camembert in time for her Sunday luncheon. “Bien sur, madame, but of course, of course,” Bardot said, as he accepted coins from the contrite priest’s purse.

After all, the villagers could forgive a theft if the thief, like the priest’s cat, was a connoisseur.

 

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)