Month: May 2007

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Back To Work, A Little

Dear Peggy,

As I mentioned previously there I was quietly settled in my little village in the southwest of France watching the summer arrive and the flowers bloom when the World Bank called and asked if I would like to come back to Washington and work on a project for a few months. No not to replace President Wolfowitz, just to help out with a telecom project.

So as it is an opportunity to see my children and as I have scheduled medical tests due with Drs. Ed Cullen and Sean Dwyer et al, and as the Bank bought the airline ticket here I am back in the US until late July. It is a funny old life, each time you think things are spiralling down as appropriate for retirement and approaching (increasing ??) decrepitude, up pops a chance to go rattling off on another journey.

And of course for there is the pleasures of to-days airline travel;
At check in, why must you have an isle seat sir ?, to make it easier to go pee every few hours and put the people next to me at reduced risk of waking up suddenly and violently mistaking why I am trying to crawl across their laps and consequently causing us both to become damp and odorous.

Having the security people triumphantly seize the toothpaste tube with little bit of toothpaste remaining that you have purposefully left in order to comply with the rules, but the regulations say under 3-oz is allowed, yes sir but the container exceeds the length allowed. Let me roll it up, no sir that is not allowed, can I borrow one of the many pairs of dangerous nail scissors you have seized and cut off the required amount of the tube, no sir but you are holding things up and I will have to ask you to step aside or I will have to call my supervisor.

Then the announcement we are now ready to board, so we all shuffle into the required long line with the anxious the halt and those looking forward to a long flight with small children at the head, the announcement the captain has found a technical problem so please sit down, followed less than 2 minutes later by the problem has been cleared and we are ready to board. Chaos with those that were previously checked through insisting that they go first and the last now trying to be first.

Enjoying airline food, will you have the chicken or pasta ? no thanks I brought my own sandwich, half a baguette with salted butter, Serrano ham and Dijon mustard – wait a minute I forgot it and the apple in the mini fridge in the hotel, I will take the pasta, sorry sir only chicken left.

On the descent into Dulles where we hit a sustained period of turbulence and the pilot announced in French, it was Air France after all, cabin staff please be seated immediately as we are experiencing severe turbulence. Followed later by a now securely belted cabin staff person telling us in English we are experiencing turbulence and to please return to our seats and fasten our seat belts. This was news for all the ashen faced passengers with white knuckled hands clasping their arm rests. God knows what it did to those in the toilets with one hand full of toilet paper and the other between their knees clasping their underwear.

Ah well if you are terrified in a confined space it is a small comfort to know that if you fall to earth at least I didn’t pay for the ticket.

More later on the opportunities for upward mobility at the Bank, although that may have only been available to those serving under Mr W. such as his girlfriend
I will give you a call during the week.

John

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Hello Again

 Dear Jim, Ann,


First Jim, what is the news on the tender process for your contract award. Having travelled around Melbourne with you that very enjoyable day I am sure no one has any complaints and your company will win the award. So please bring me up to date.

As for Ann I am sure like all good schoolteachers she working much too hard if not obsessively, and like myself in my own working days I am sure it has at least something to do with proving to “them”, (imposter syndrome)  that we are worth our salary and position if not our very existence. As we used to say, or what I used to tell Americans  was an Irish saying, you are a long time dead. So if the person who never learned to follow his own advice can say it – Ann please keep a little time for painting. All my friends love the one you gave me now hanging on my living room wall in Saint Denis.

Tell Keith to get the job settled, get some time in and come on up and make a trip around Europe and the US and even Canada and Ireland. The wine cellar is always full, more or less, and he has family in Boston and Washington that he really must meet and will be happy to provide him a bed.

Other more local news from St Denis.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday with my friends Claude and Violette Carlier. I don’t think you met them during your visit. I was sad to learn that Claude had recently had a small stroke which required a couple of weeks of hospitalisation. The good news is they seem to have dissolved the clot and he apparently suffered no long term damage. Mostly, take note, due to his having decided to go straight to the hospital when he noticed the symptoms.

But it is amusing or I try to find it so, that now no matter which friend I visit there are often large quantities of  medications in sight, or frequently they are filling as I now do,  their plastic pill holders with the next weeks supply of variously coloured and shaped tablets.

Naturally most of the conversation circulated around our ailments and those of our friends. A sort of puzzled and even surprised examination of and reporting on our new and inexperienced journey into increasing decrepitude, foreseen but somehow unexpected in the rapidity of it’s onset and domino knock on impact. Pending future challenges were examined briefly and with an blurred astigmatic focus by for example Violette describing other patients with similar maladies seen in the hospital, unable to walk or feed themselves. A situation observed but somehow kept peripheral to the reality of our own inevitable  journey.

Jessica continues to work enthusiastically at her new job which she still loves very much. Pat and Adrienne, with a little assistance from Dad,  are in the closing stages of buying a condo in Boston supposedly equi distant between MIT and Harvard. It is a real if vicarious pleasure to listen to them work their way way through getting a mortgage, having a bedroom for the first baby, fixing up the kitchen and changing the colours (Adrienne – big smile) in the bathroom.

And finally – I promise. Last night I had supper with Joseph and Jeannot two retired and now in their seventies, former farmers  in their very, very  old farm house with the food, vegetable soup, coustelous (spareribs) 2 ribs each,  prepared on the perpetual wood burning fire in the kitchen chimney, followed by cheese and an apple. I asked politely during the meal why some of the French put water in their wine. Joseph said the taste of wine is too strong and Jeannot after a pause said the taste of water is too plain. Is it possible these two old unsophisticated were messing with my widely travelled head.

Please say hello to my Auntie Madge and tell her I hope her cataract operation was a success and I expect to see her, having recognised me from afar, to come running to greet me with arms outspread and a cold bottle of chardonnay gripped in her teeth when I next arrive in Melbourne.

Be well, and if you are having a good day remember as Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle used to say on a sunny day drinking lemonade under a tree “this is probably as nice as it gets”

With love.

John

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Shock & Horror and Banzai

Della,

Because of the time difference between Vancouver and St Denis I opened your recent picture of your head at breakfast. It really brought home just what you went through with the melanoma and how much pain you suffered and of course how very frightened you must have been. Congratulations again on fighting your way through it all and remember to be kind to yourself for having the courage it required to do it.

On a lighter subject, dogs which I know you like and apologies if I have already told all or some of this. At the end of the field which is supposedly my garden some folks have built a new house and then got a very large and very young dog, some kind of setter. Any time they open the door to their house the dog makes a run for the great outdoors which has rabbits, cats and who knows what else to be investigated. When they notice he is gone the kids, usually the daughter who is about 10 or 12 is sent out to track him down. When she spots him she takes off running towards him and he thinks this is great and runs towards her, passes her on one side or the other and goes off in a new direction with her in pursuit. This goes on for a while a lot like a Charlie Chaplain movie until she is pooped and he is bored and then he heads off on new adventures, sometimes coming up to see me. After we have said hello, usually him jumping all over me and nearly knocking me down I get a hold of him and walk him back down the field to his home.
About a week ago on a bright sunny day I was outside digging some dirt that nature had put in the wrong place and taking it and putting it around the house. At the same time I have a big bonfire of dead wood and windfall burning in front of the house, which requires watching in case I become the Irish man in the village who set fire to a neighbours chestnut trees. After a few hours I saw that one of the two seasonal winds that local people keep talking about, one from the Atlantic and one from N. Africa,  was bringing large rain filled clouds. So I poked up the bonfire and start shoveling out the last wheelbarrow of soil at double speed when I suddenly started feeling very short of breath, very much akin as I understood later to the shortness of breath that accompanied my heart attack two years ago, but yet not quite the same. So I was shoveling madly and trying to assess subtle variations in shortness of breath and the possible terminal stupidity of what I was doing, when I suddenly experienced what felt like a very heavy blow across my back. I stopped myself from falling over by leaning on the spade and thought shit, not really thought as not enough time elapsed to take in what was one of those first time experiences. Suddenly Banzai the dog as he is named, appeared this time in front and jumped on me again from that side, being exceedingly happy to be outdoors and to find a friend, even if it was now raining. And after I took it all in I was exceedingly happy to see him, a large and increasingly wet dog.

A couple of days later I was again outside working in the garden when a couple of friends stopped by unexpectedly. I put some bottles, glasses and nibbles on the table on the terrace and we sat and chatted for a while. Then about 7 PM I remembered I had promised to have a drink with some other friends in the village. My guests understood and I saw them off, ran around closing up the house and went outside, late but on the way, to again  be greeted warmly by Banzai. Shit again, I am late but if I leave him who knows where he will end up. But to walk him back down the field where the grass is now extremely tall will take forever. So I opened the back door to the car and tried pushing him in and he thinks this is a great new game and around and around the car we go. Finally by opening both back doors and getting on the opposite side of the car I enticed him in and closed the doors. But he was most upset and either wanted out or maybe to drive but he clearly now wanted to be in the drivers seat with me.

So we compromised by my opening the passenger window for him an showing him how much fun it is by shoving his head out the window and off we went to his home. There a very sad little boy became very happy said merci monsieur we have been looking everywhere for him – again. But now Banzai does not want to get out, he is sitting in the passenger seat waiting for the door to be closed, us to get underway and to stick his head out the window again. Finally the big sister came out and gave him unbridled heck, he jumped down, sat at her feet and she proceeded to give him an intense finger waving lecture. And I swear it was the first time I fully understood the expression hang dog. I lack the skill to properly describe him, he had his head down and to one side but his eyes were sort of looking up at her and he had this kind of kind of really sorrowful but also shit eating grin which conveyed “OK you got me and I am sorry but we both know that next time the door is open…”

Be well, and if you are having a good day remember as Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle used to say “this is probably as nice as it gets”

Your friend,

John