Category: observations

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YOLO

Dear Jean,

I moved to this corner of France about 16 years ago with two French friends from the World Bank, Pierre Mersier and Claude Carlier. Pierre died in December and last Thursday afternoon I learned that Claude, after many years of struggling with Parkinson’s disease had died in his sleep during the previous night. So I went to his home in the next village about 5 PM. 

Claude’s wife Violette is 84 years old, very deaf and very blind. The housekeeper had come to the house at 9 AM and as usual found them both in bed, one sleeping and the other not. She called their doctor, their daughter in Brussels and the funeral home. As I sat on the couch with Violette she would sometimes ask me where is Claude. When the two guys from the funeral home showed up about 6:15 I kept her busy in the kitchen while they removed Claude’s body. The housekeeper prepared a light supper for us and left. Violette and I sat on opposite sides of the table, she ate and I tapped my fork on the plate, I had no appetite and anyway she cannot see. We had some very bizarre exchanges, me shouting replies across the table to her questions about where was Claude. 

At some point she would start confusing me with Claude insisting that I eat everything on my plate. Then according to her habits at around 7:30 she closed all the shutters, locked the doors, turned out all the lights but one and announced it was time to go to bed. I persuaded her not to turn on the alarm as I would need to go to the bathroom. I turned on some lights and settled in on the couch to read and stay with her until her daughter arrived in the morning. 

They keep the house extremely hot 28C according to a thermometer on the wall, and I was reluctant to fiddle with the thermostat so I spent the night in my underwear drinking a glass of very old wine from bottle I found in the kitchen. I looked everywhere but could not find his whiskey. Somewhere in the early hours I remembered that their daughter mentioned to me she had a camera installed in the living room so she could see on her smart phone how her parents were doing, so I stopped scratching where it itched. Their daughter arrived around 0830 the next morning.

Today I went to the funeral home to sit with Claude for 5 minutes in the dimly lit small room where he was laid out, and to reflect on his very interesting life. He was born in Vietnam in 1934 during the French colonial era. When he grew up he joined the French merchant marine, jumped ship in Tahiti, found a job there in a phosphate mine and met and married Violette. A few years later when the mine was exhausted his parents, still living in Saigon bought them the tickets and they travelled to Vietnam with their two young sons on a flying boat, flying only during the day, landing on the water as night approached and taking a boat to their hotel. He found work on a rubber plantation outside Saigon and eventually ended up the plantation director. He told me it was complicated as he had to deal with US army during the day and the Viet Cong communists during the night.

I abruptly stopped my daydreaming when much to my surprise the noisy refrigeration unit built into the underside of his bed started up and scared the sh.t out of me.

His funeral service was at 10:30 on Tuesday in a small Catholic church in another nearby village. 


You Only Live Once, But if You Do it Right It Is Enough.

Best wishes from the last man standing.

John
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Books Are Expensive

Hello from Vancouver.
This morning I was walking past the Kitsilano public library when a man pulled up, parked and went in. He was driving a Bentley. You can get that model here second hand, only 6,000 kms on the clock, for $280,000, I checked on line. Admittedly C$. I guess some folks just don’t like to pay for books.
YOLO Take your smiles where you can find them

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Agen

Becoming invisible happens gradually and is seemingly related to becoming older. One day you find yourself invited to another wedding and you are seated on the fringes of the event, no longer at one of the top tables. As the children of the distant relatives seated around you become bored and run more amok it comes clearer to you that despite your interesting life, which you only need the merest invitation to recount, you are now assigned to the outer circles of events to which previously you were an important guest.

As I walked through the morning market recently in Agen, following behind Aurelia and her friend Eva, taking pictures I was again reminded how younger people no longer “see”  the older, how age apparently makes you increasingly invisible until finally when visibly very old you are recognised once again, but this time with a kind of a patient indulgence. 

But what people don’t know, how could they, is the wonder of the lives that Eva and Aurelia have lived.  

Eva with her Czech mother and Russian father who declined Stalin’s invitation to return home and instead sought asylum in Sweden where she lived from 4 to 20 years of age, speaks Russian, Czech, Swedish, French, Dutch, English, and Italian, has travelled the world and spent her career with the European Space Agency  

Aurelia whose grand father served in the Spanish army in Santiago de Cuba and whose father and his 5 siblings were born in Cuba, speaks Spanish, French, English, Portuguese and Italian  has been a rally driver, an ocean sailor and spent her career with the European Commission in Brussels.

And here they are strolling the Sunday market somewhat invisible, but with a lifetime of profound experiences and wonderful stories 

We returned to Eva’s home, designed by her husband and built on a hill outside Agen.    

Eva is recently widowed after 43 years of marriage to Simone a Dutchman, Aurelia for 5 years, having married Jorge a Spaniard twice, but that is another story. They prepared an excellent  meal from our shopping expeditions to the market.

As we reached the end of the meal and two bottles of wine they reminisced on the years they had lived separately in Rome. They were in hilarious agreement about well dressed, macho southern Italian men, that they were attractive, fun, charming, amusing and serially a worthwhile experience. But only to be enjoyed as an entertainment, as they always went home to their mothers at the weekend and eventually married their fiancees. Aurelia told a story of her first “real kiss” at 16 years of age in Rome with Giuglio, under a tree in al Piazzalle delle Muse and how on returning to the Piazelle 50 years and a life with it’s joys and sorrows later, she and the tree are still standing. 

The next day we went to a Michelin starred restaurant and for €32 each and the price of a bottle of wine had an excellent meal in a tree shaded, sun dappled, walled garden opposite the restaurant, better remembered by not being photographed.

I wish I had a way to tell all those people busy in the market about the wonderful lives of these two beautiful ladies, with adventures, histories and stories better than a lot of fiction, so I am telling you instead.  

We said goodbye to Eva.

And as we drove away I realised how lucky we were to spend those days together.  

My conclusion, as the first acorns fall from the trees and crack underfoot, if you are fortunate to be born the best thing to do is dance.  

Hasta La Victoria Siempre  

John

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La Ultimate in Malaga

Dear Celia, Abrao,
There is small butcher shop on the street close to the apartment where we are staying. Two butchers, one man one woman each with a steel mesh glove on their left hands were working behind the counter and two more men were working in the back. Today Saturday there were quite a few customers, nearly all women, and I noticed as each came in they asked “la ultima” and someone nodded. After a while I figured it out, the question is “who is last.”
The little greengrocer shop on the corner is run by an eccentric man who when someone asked is this fresh replied; “Fresh, I am constantly bothered by government inspectors wanting to know how come my customers are so healthy”. To the question do you have eggs, “no but I am saving up for an operation to look Chinese, (there are a lot of small Chinese stores selling some of everything, mostly cheap junk) then I can sell eggs.”
La Ferreteria, the tiny hardware shop around the corner, normally with three customers max at the wooden counter is run by, dare I say it, an older lady and her daughter and after 5 or so visits I have never seen them return from the shelves in back without what the customer requested. They clearly know many of their customers and the customers know each other so a lot of chatting takes place when one of the owners is cutting a copy of a key or searching in the back.
The smaller shops open at 10:00 close at 14:00 and open again at 17:00 and close at 20:00. With all the catastrophic news you hear about the Spanish economy these days a lot of life seems to go on normally; in the morning the school yards are full of small laughing, screaming kids and in the afternoons there are streams of older children returning home wearing their school uniforms, precluding an annual expensive clothing style competition.
The large clean double length buses run regularly, a trip costs 85 cents and younger riders give their seats to older passengers. On a sunny day the sidewalks in front of the restaurants are full of people seated at tables having a coffee, beer or glass of wine. Mostly groups of older ladies chatting and rueing with a smile that dear Paco or Mi Pepe is finally with God.
Aurelia is sitting on the couch laughing at a book of Mafalda cartoons by Quino, who fled Argentina for Spain in 1964 before the dictator Peron could have him killed. La plus ca change….
It is nearly 20:00 so we have to go out for a few potatoes and a stop at the coffee shop with wifi so I can send this to you.
When we asked the green grocer which potato was best for steaming he said take this one it is good for boiling, steaming and frying, you you must have seen the ads for 3 in1.
LOL
John