parismarisamadonna

Hotel California – The Eagles 1976

An interesting fact about my life, or maybe not if you are one of the many who think my life is not at all that interesting, is that I spend on average 3 weeks a month in hotels. For the millennials among you who know that FourSquare is not a kind of country dancing, I’ve managed to ‘check in’ 8 weeks in a row at hotels. In the pointless yet highly addictive game that is earning points on FourSquare, I beat my friends simply be being away, all of the time. 

Understated Italian Hotel Style

Spending hours whiling away my life in trains and airports, I’ve taken to reflecting upon the finer points of hotel service; finer points that I myself was once responsible for in a galaxy far, far away, in my former life on the red dirt, as an employee of InterContinental Hotels in Sydney. Working in a hotel is like joining the army; the dress code is as rigid^, the hierarchy as strictly observed, and it is a job destined for those young people who didn’t get good enough marks in high school to do what they really wanted to.

Hotels are designed to make the visitor feel at home, the people who work there are employed to make you feel welcome and the amenities in a hotel room are intended to bridge the gap between your house and theirs. So why is there a telephone in the toilet?

German Emergency Loo-Phone

I’ve lived in more than a dozen homes in my life. Just like hotels, these homes were furnished with a bed, a sink, a television and a toilet. Like a hotel, in these homes I have slept, I have washed, I have watched television, I’ve gone to the loo and I have often made phone calls. My enormous brain fails to comprehend is why hotels install telephones in the toilet. In all of the places I have lived, I have never felt the urge to pee come on at exactly the same time as the need to make a phone call, a phone call so urgent that it could not wait until after I had finished my ablutions.

Moreover in this the age of the Smartphone, does anyone even use the telephone in a hotel? On the numerous occasions I have slept in hotels, and they are super numerous, I’ve never actually used the telephone in the room other than to ask reception for a wake up call. Despite being adept at multitasking, the urge to request said wake-up call has never come upon me so urgently that I felt the need to make that call while sitting on the loo. Having even one phone beside the bed seems a waste of money, let alone an additional handset coated with other people’s bacteria and microscopic dots of crap installed inside of a room reserved for expelling material while reading a newspaper and not indulging in light conversation.

Breakfast in London including mini Flowerpot - just like at home...

My father was one of those people who lived for free stuff. He would never pay for a meal in a restaurant without eating every last mouthful…including the curly parsley garnish…because he had paid for it. He was what many an Australian refers to as a ‘mean-whinging-pom’*. He would not pay for us to go to the annual Royal Easter Show in Sydney and buy us Showbags because “you can go to Woolworths (Sainsburys or other) and buy the same chocolate in a much less fancy plastic bag for a quarter of the price”. One of the earlier memories I have of him was our first trip to Europe, I was ten, and he was almost forty. I was left in England with relatives while he and Motherbear travelled around 12 cities in Europe.

Thirty years later, I remember they visited twelve cities because when he returned to collect me in London, he had twelve different brands of tiny bottles of soap and shampoo, each one removed from each of the hotels in which he slept. He took it, even though he didn’t need it, because he had paid for it.

Nordic Minimalism in Stockholm

Today, in these terrorist-troubled times of not being able to carry on luggage that contains a bottle of anything larger than a tampon, I (perhaps foolishly) still check in my small suitcase, replete with normal sized bottles of shampoo and soap. I incur this additional inconvenience despite being afforded many an opportunity to pinch the little ones from the many hotels in which I find myself on a weekly basis. I don’t take them out of the rooms because despite being British and a bit of a whinger I am not mean, a credo to which I have strongly cleaved…until recently.

I have lately discovered a hotel that has teeny-weeny bottles of stuff that you actually want to take.  Indeed, I must be a snob, because I never took them, but now that it is Malin + Goetz, I have myself become a mean-whinging-thieving-pom, albeit a mean-whinging-thieving-pom who washes her hair at the gym with Cilantro Conditioner and Rum Body wash. Finally, a hotel that gives away something worth taking! 

Unlike the sewing kit.

I’ve given this one a lot of thought, and have significant personal experience. Being a fan of the twin Swedes that clothe the better part of the modern world, Hennes & Mauritz (that is H&M for the uninitiated) I wear more than my fair share of crappily constructed clothing sewn together in China. I have many a button that falls off, many a hem that drops down and many a seam that pops#. However, strangely perhaps, when I am in hotels, my buttons do not all spontaneously and simultaneously pop from the shirt upon which they are fastened. When I walk into a hotel I do not suddenly have the desire to sew up the many hems I have stapled, super-glued or blu-tacked into submission. When I am in a hotel, I do not think about sewing or darning, I think about how many hours of cable television I can squeeze into 24 hours. Why don’t they give you something small and handy that you might actually use?

I don’t polish my shoes everyday. Those who see me regularly know that I usually wear patent leather shoes eliminating the need to polish them at all, let alone daily. So why oh why do hotels spend thousands of very un-eco-friendly dollars on such frippery as shoe sponges. I’ve lately learned that the good folk of Germany must also have difficulty shoeing themselves on normal days. Hotels in the Bundesrepublik come with not just the sponge, but also a mini shoehorn. Maybe after drinking ten jugs of beer a day the Deutscher struggle to bend over and slip on their boots.

Many a time I’ve forgotten toothpaste, a toothbrush or a razor to sort out my unruly legs, so why don’t they give us toothbrushes instead of a showercap? Even so, I have never ever, not in this lifetime or any other that I remember, walked into a hotel and thought to my sweet self, “bugger, I forgot my boot polish and shoehorn!”

Little bottle of milk for coffee (I took that)

And then there is breakfast.

Everyone is different. Some people scull a coffee and walk out the door, healthier people sit down to fruit and yoghurt, the good patriots of China eat congee and the United Kingdom fries the best part if a pig every morning for breakfast. As for me, an Australian lass born and bred, I eat two slices of grain toast with Vegemite, simple, reliable and packed with Vitamin B and thanks to the travel tubes of veggie, available in every single city I visit.

The cornucopia that is spread across a buffet in a hotel at 6am blows my mind. If there were only four types of bread, would anyone actually complain? Four kinds is three more than your average human being has in their pantry at home. If there were only regular full fat milk, would you refuse to eat your cereal? If the orange juice was only pedestrian orange and not Spanish Seville blood orange, would you call the United Nations and plead diplomatic immunity? Do you eat eggs, bacon, sausages and hash browns every single morning? Do you need to eat it when you are in a luxurious five-star hotel and not stranded like a refugee in a McDonalds?

Three kinds of yoghurt, no Vegemite

Why then do most hotels spread out forty-five kinds of baked flour and yeast? Not just sliced grain and sliced white but little rolls and pastries and ten kinds of berry jam and salted butter and unsalted butter and cheese and pate an ham and salad and salmon and despite this they still don’t have bloody Vegemite…

 

 

Bring your Own Vegemite in Berlin

*For the foreigners, mean in this context refers to their tightness rather than their personality

#Although that may be down to my penchant for Foie Gras and Frites more than the quality of the workmanship

^Frustrated and broke after putting a finger through my black nylons almost every morning, my time at IHG was cut tragically short

Dizzy Miss Lizzy – the Beatles 1965

Today I handed over the princely sum of 1500 Euros to fly to Sydney in May. It was particularly expensive this time round as my trip across the sky to the red dirt coincides with no less than four French public holidays.  I wouldn’t normally choose to travel at exactly the same time as half of France, especially the half under the age of 14 as I’m not very calm inside aircraft, but duty calls. My sister is having a baby.

Like Mick hollers in the Rolling Stones classic Beast of Burden; my little sister is a pretty pretty girl. She is also a very beautiful woman, but her resemblance to one of Michelangelo’s cherubs is a minor detail. More significantly, the Art-Sist-ologer is a talented scholar, a gifted painter and a dab hand at mixing a Martini. All of which are essential life skills when you share 24m2, one towel, one bed and a plastered right leg. 

We came to Europe together to share the world’s smallest living space in France not that long after our father went to share a celestial flat with John Lennon. Pooling our wealth, our three languages, our brown curls, our dimples and two suitcases we went in search of herring, Hammershoi and life experience in Europe. After trundling around the freezing north in frozen trains for two months we settled in Paris, in an attic apartment with a bed and a bath and walked the streets of Paris until the fateful day a bike diverted its path across my right ankle. She went home 8 months after we arrived and I am still here. She browns her freckled face under a luminescent blue sky while I go blind in weakening sunlight. Sitting here after two weeks of sub-zero cold, I wonder who made the smarter decision.

Whatever the answer to that question, I have only one sister so I can say without bias that she is my favourite.

A dedicated enthusiast of the Mafia, she is more than a little obsessed with all that is Scorsese, de Niro, Pacino, Corleone and Soprano. I’ve known her to say on more than one occasion that she wished she had been a gangster’s moll. Not for the money and danger but because they had better clothes than we do today and her just-so-bobbed hair would have suited the Prohibition Era fashion for headbands. Or maybe, like her elder sister, she has a thing for muscled Italian guys with guns? Guns between their shoulder and wrist, not the more deadly lead variety.

A graduate of one of Australia’s finest art schools, she is naturally a keen observer of all that is visual, balanced and beautiful. She has taught me about the significance of the naked woman who sits beside her clothes and stares at the voyeur in Manet’s Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe, the importance of the division of space in David’s The Death of Marat and the beauty of shadow and light as defined by Raphael and Vermeer. Lessons I memorised and have since put into practice, visiting Europe’s art galleries without her as my personal tutor. I’ve heard her voice in my ear last year when I stood in front of the Girl with the Pearl in The Hague and she silently advised me again last week as I was transfixed by Venus’ eyes in the Uffizi. Her encyclopaedic knowledge of European Art History does not explain why she spent a year painting putrefied rotten potatoes.  Although I will admit that their extra-terrestrial otherworldliness fascinated me when they hung on the walls of our shared apartment. I think I miss them.

  Pomegranates - 2006

For 10 years I carried one of her earliest oeuvres, a cigarette and a cup of coffee sketched onto the back of a Post-It sized bus ticket, inside my shiny red wallet. A wallet that was distressingly stolen one night while drinking in a bar close to the flat we shared in Glebe. Crying to the police officer as I listed all the cards and ID that had to be replaced, the constable couldn’t understand why I was so upset about losing a bus ticket.

Ironically it is I that writes upon these pages for the world at large to read, while she is far more talented at articulating a discourse, logical and pragmatic, to convince the reader of her chosen argument. Sitting in the back seat of a sweaty Sydney bus, I remember her asking me once to proofread an essay that she had written for her history class. An essay unclouded with my melodramatic emotion but balanced with an eloquence she inherited from our parents that I unfortunately did not. She, reason to my passion, we do make a formidable pair.

Our adventures as little women in a house lorded over by a macho carpenter had their highs and their lows. Sisters, only 20 months apart, there were times when I was just that little bit older and the sight of her reminded me of the Barbie Dolls I had outgrown. A few years later, we reached the point post puberty when we became partners in crime, partners in love and defenders against the oppression of the parental unit.

After a year as exchange students in France (me) and Sweden (her) and under the European spell of nicotine, we would lock ourselves in her patchouli-scented bedroom, the only room in the house that locked, and smoke illicit cigarettes. We shared secrets and lies, stories and rumours, a brother and two parents. I find it uncanny that what we share is only equal to that which we do not.

She sees the world via the stars and milky impressionist images, I see it as an interminable range of mountains to climb and battles to win or lose. She has made many friends for life; I am the transient traveller who has never settled. She observes and acts with prudence and careful judgement while I jump in head first, often breaking something (leg, arm, heart) upon landing.

Today, the Art-sist-ologer shares a proper-sized home with the Professor, and her protruding belly ripens with their progeny. I’ve not seen her in her latest incarnation as Persephone of Petersham, but I talk to her often and I have no doubt that she’ll make a wonderful if slightly offbeat mother. A child of two artists, that little person inside will most definitely have an eye for all that is spectral, balanced and aesthetically pleasing. My childish curiosity wonders only if she will inherit her mother’s melodic giggle, fantastic hands and tight-knit curls.

As the eldest, there is something unsettling about the reality that I’ll soon be an Aunt to children of both my younger siblings. I’ve come to accept that life has laid a long road before me that won’t necessarily include the milestones of marriage and children of my own. In the confines of my overactive grey matter, I’ve learned to imagine what I don’t have. It comforts me and provides me with plenty of inspiration for what I hope will one day be a novel in my name, the closest thing I have right now to a child. All the same those three little people growing strong under the Southern Cross are among of my life’s greatest treasures. I just wish it didn’t cost a king’s ransom to go and see them. 

Ti Amo – Laura Branigan 1984

All roads definitely do not lead to Rome. 

If ever there was a city or a even an entire country where you could hope to find yourself during a natural disaster, might I recommend Hong Kong, that small point at the civilised end of the People’s Republic of China. Stuck in petrifaction like a starfish upon the sweaty isle, midway between my old home and my new home, for an entire week during the 2010 Iceland Volcano Explosion, I subsequently praise their organisation, their hospitality and their ability to inform the stranded millions of our potential fate. Rallying the troops and moving a sea of humanity from point A to point B is certainly one of the advantages of such a humungous population.

The place you never want to find yourself during any kind of crisis is Italy. Italy, the country whose government is held together with primitive glue made from flour and water, pasta. 

Shrouded in a whole 10 cm of snow (I hear the Scandinavians giggling), the city that gave birth to modern man, aqueducts and a profusion of black leather came grinding to an icy halt. Romans can withstand the 30-year rule of a slimy, corrupt, sex-addicted president and they can smile through the cliff dive of their economic vitality, but sprinkle a layer of frozen water over them and their already vivacious hand gestures become positively epileptic.

  Milano Marshmallow

This week, for the first time in 20 years, it snowed in Rome. 

Having already travelled through the mountainous northern regions of Lombardy and Piedmont in the few days preceding my Roman Holiday, I had become accustomed to spying the fresci, the stucco and the handsome uomini through a veil of up to 50cm of freshly dumped white powder. In the North, so used to snow they’ve even hosted a Winter Olympics, the inclement weather did nothing more than slow down a bus or two. The cars moved, the roads were clear; there was enough salt and grit to keep everyone walking briskly on the streets in their bespoke Italian leather pumps. I even noticed that their platinum blonde heat-straightened hair holds up excellently in the ice.

A day later, two hours to the south, I disembarked at Roma Termini. In an instant, I thought myself walking onto the set of The Day After Tomorrow. Ancient monuments were poking out from under a marshmallow layer of thick white frosting. Deprived of a ready supply of salt to prevent crunchy layers of ice coating the filth of twenty centuries of man, the pavements became impromptu skating rinks. The only thing missing from the scene was the syrupy baritone of Morgan Freeman calling out the rhythmic announcements of further delays, further cancellations and heightened chaos.

  Roma Termini or Dante's Inferno

In the station hall, women and children clung to each other like the polar Inuit for warmth. The drunks, usually happy to lie in the street, had gathered inside were singing jolly songs to each other in the hope of encouraging a coin or two from the pockets of the passing commuters. Especially entertaining were the employees of Trenitalia, the public train company. Instead of offering aid, advice, support or random scraps of information to the thousands of stranded travellers, they amused themselves by laughing at the lost groups of Japanese, they shared coffee while ignoring the locals shouting over their shoulders. In short, they did absolutely (insert appropriate curse) nothing. At least the now infamous Captain Schettino did something, if only to “accidently fall” into a lifeboat. 

Despite the trauma of a week with no sensation in my left hand and thigh cramps from too much time spent sitting in a train, my love for Italy has only waned ever so slightly. Offsetting the glacial travel experience is a newfound love affair with a tall, dark and handsome man. Before you all start buying wedding gifts, this is happening entirely within the confines of my own cranium. However unlike my passionate pas-de-deux with Michael Fassbender, this new man actually exists in my actual world, actually knows who I am and has even touched my actual skin.

What is it that gets me so hot and heavy about Italian men? Being as I am, of Pinkish-White European origin, my speckled complexion must be magnetically drawn to their olive cocoa skin, creamily moisturised so much better than any woman. Their dark curly locks, drooping seductively over a dark eye, framed with long black lashes and an arched question mark of an eyebrow. The overall chocolatiness of the Latin man is no comparison to the bronzed Aussie surfer stereotype so favoured by female visitors to Australia and so vanilla to my bored blue eye.

  Understated Italian design including Gold Chair

Latin men dress in real clothes, pants and shirts that fit snugly against their muscled torsos, not oversized t-shirts and baggy shorts. They dress well enough to be manly but not appear gay, a balance that David Beckham is yet to strike. They talk about food and wine with as much energy as they argue about football. During one memorable dinner, the men at the table spent ten minutes discussing a brand of couch, commenting on the quality of the leather and how the colour complimented the carpet.  My female friends and I don’t talk about furniture with as much vigour as these guys do. 

And then the Latin man speaks…the rolling of their R’s as they intone English vaguely reminiscent of something like cunnilingus. His voice is always deep and rich, the bass of his vowels evokes the heroic strength of Atlas and, excuse my French, it is quite simply, pants down, out of breath, call the doctor, f**king sexy.  Yes indeed, I love Latin men. Antonio, Al, Gael, that guy in Love Actually; all macho and leather and long hair and broad shoulders and tight jeans and sultry sexuality.

So back to the story…

  David - Uomo Perfetto

The latest object of my affection, will be known here as David. David as in Michelangelo’s stone ode to the ultimate perfection of masculinity, David as in “I’ve got more of a chance of kissing a giant cold slab of carved white marble than I do of getting anywhere near this guy” David.

David is someone that has been in my life for a little under two years, someone with whom I’ve recently been obliged to spend increasing amounts of time, someone who has arms like oak tree branches that could break a woman’s back (*sigh*), someone who stares into my eyes with a dark intensity, a stare that I’ve cerebrally decided to define as uncontrollable instinctive desire. Although it is most certainly acute concentration as he doesn’t speak perfect English and is not accustomed to Australian accents, especially Australian accents thrown forth into the ears humanity from within the lungs of the loudest most emotionally volatile woman in Europe since Maria Callas.

David thinks I am really funny. Funny like a comedian. Perhaps funny like a clown.

The reason I am funny around David is because I am paralysed with anxiety. Every time I talk to him, I nervously resort to talking non-stop in repetitive staccato like some sort of bouffant-headed Uzi gun. Taut nerves in the company of a man are not the most attractive of my feminine traits. My constant embarrassment at myself is only heightened by the fact that he must think of me as some sort of sideshow in a street fair.

Roll Up! Roll Up! Come one, come all and marvel at the wonder of the elastic mouthed spring-jawed woman who never shuts up!

Annoyingly, he is quite a tactile man is this David. Could be a trait native to all Italians? Could be that he seeks out every available opportunity to touch me? Let’s go with the latter. He is one of those men who drape his arm across the back of your chair while he turns to talk to you. He grabs at my hand to get my attention; he brushes his shoulders against me to underline a particular point in his conversation. And every time he does this, I have to breath quietly and deeply to myself trying in vain to keep my pulse down at a non-audible level.

Finally, David has a particularly provocative way of sitting. I wasn’t sure if it was a display of attraction intended only for me, or something he does to everyone. In my head, which naturally favours me, I’d like to go with option one.  He sits with one leg draped high over the arm of the chair, the other on the floor, legs spread at 180 degrees, showing off all the angles of his manly accoutrements. Unlike Michelangelo’s David who stands to attention with his gear at the ready, my David sits much in the way that a lion might, hips splayed, in front of his pride of lionesses showing off just how he plans to draw them in to the circle of life. My eyes, circles of life widening at each of these phallic exhibitions, struggled to stay focussed above his neck.

  Did no one realise the tower was off-centre until AFTER it was finished?

My head, frozen out from the layers of wool protecting me from the sub-zero Siberian air, is a perfect Petri dish for fantasy. Suffering from the affects of chronic fatigue, alcohol and shoulder-crushing stress, all kinds of wonderful things happen as my grey matter is charged with electricity.

I am at least two sizes smaller, I have unlimited financial backing, I have Miranda Kerr’s legs, and David is in love with me. He is waiting only for the right moment to paint his chest in dark chocolate with two magic words that will see us run off into the sunset of Portofino, his muscled arm around my waist, my hair bouncing in the breeze behind me, no humidity drenched frizzy fly-away hairs at all.

 

The words… I hear them now…in my head… Ti amo.

Somebody that I used to know – Gotye 2011

Thursday of this week, the 26^th of January, was Australia Day, a national public holiday in my native land to celebrate the arrival, 224 yrs ago, of Captain Arthur Phillip and his fleet of 12 prison ships filled with Britain’s finest bread-thieves, poorest prostitutes and canniest criminals. Unlike the Americans, who have thrust the Independence Day upon all humanity, reminding us annually of their self-designated supremacy over the known world as well as the lower echelons of their cinematic oeuvre, yes I am talking to you Will Smith, Australia Day is a relatively quiet affair.

In their homeland, Australians aren’t a particularly patriotic people. We aren’t united under God and we’ve never had to slay a Dragon to become a nation. One day, after the criminals had learned how to raise enough beef to keep Queen Victoria in filet for a lifetime, the English decided to afford us the right to govern ourselves. A century later Elizabeth let us introduce our own money and even make up our own flag. We just never really gave a s**t enough to fight. #

But, when flung to the far reaches of Europe and beyond upon the aluminium Flying Kangaroo, our native lethargy is replaced by a sanguine impulsion to remind all and sundry, even the decent man who sells me apples, of every microscopic claim to fame from that sparse red slab of dirt stuck to the earth somewhere below China. Did you know that the black box, Cate Blanchett, Animal Kingdom, Julian Assange and Gotye are Australian? If you didn’t, stand next to an Australian in a London pub and she’ll be sure to let you know. Whether you care to be told or not. 

Patriots we may not be, protective of our national treasures we are.

  Frocked up for Australia Day in London - 3 degrees

I don’t care how rude Russell Crowe was to that porter in New York, it was simply a case of the yanks not understanding how tight a window we emigrants have to call home on any given day. Julian Assange is not a rapist; he is the genius who exposed the hypocrisy of politics to the common man. I’ll allow that he desperately needs to rethink his hairdo. The Crocodile Hunter, far from being a man who preyed upon the innocent beasts of the swamps of Far North Queensland was a conservationist determined to protect the native fauna of his homeland. So concerned about their welfare, he died after giving a giant human sized stingray a cuddle.

We’ve even managed to find a little love in our hearts for the rusty headed Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, after her brush with death this week, on Australia Day! Dragged from among a crowd of protesters, Cinder-Julia-ella lost her glass slipper (a navy suede wedge pump) and was manhandled by her security guard into a waiting car. The image of the head of our government, in a headlock, wearing only one shoe, could have been mistaken for a snap of any drunken reveller being carried home after a few too many sherbets.  Instead, it was slapped across newspapers far and wide, Julia went home and had a spent the following days justifying the actions of her staff and Australians sympathised for a short time with the mumsy woman who leads the Nation.  

On Australia Day, we also announce the name of the next great Australian to be placed upon the great green and gold throne as Australian of the Year. This year, it was the rubber faced acting legend, Geoffrey Rush. He of the rather large nose piercing a sunburnt canvas of a visage, a passion for Shakespeare and most renowned as not being the guy who won an Oscar for The King’s Speech. Australian of the Year doesn’t hold the same potency as the awards the Queen gives to her own. There is no sir, no dame, and no sword tapped on the shoulder, just Julia in her best summer frock squeaking out your name.

Posh Vegemite in Selfridges. The English trying to gentrify our National Breakfast?

On the 26^th , the one thing I do miss over here in Francalia is the annual tradition of spending the day in the sunshine, listening to the Hottest 100. Triple J, the national broadcaster’s youth station has conducted an annual vote for the best song of the year since the 80’s. The 100 songs are played out over the course of the day with number one announced at around 6pm, just as everyone is packing up the BBQ to go home. On my last Australia Day in Sydney, I could hear the whole street respond as the songs were announced. Increasingly inebriated, the cries of disgust or joy at the placement of a favourite song become increasingly animated as day becomes night and one beer becomes twenty.

This year, Gotye took out the title, he of the dubiously French sounding name and Belgian heritage. The fact that he is now well respected throughout the world affords us the opportunity to induct another Australian into the hallowed halls of "Australians Who Aren’t Really Australian But We Tell Everyone They Are". Just ask Russell Crowe, Olivia Newton-John, Crowded House, Ben Folds and Sam Neill. All great Australians who simply happen to be born somewhere else.

No beer, just Tim Tams, a rather low key celebration at the office...

Listening to a bunch of songs on the radio while carbonising some beef on a barbeque and drinking your body weight in beer. Not an army parade or a frenzy of choirs singing the national anthem, but as much of a tradition as a 224-year-old nation can muster together.

Happy Australia Day.

 

 

 

#I am well aware that my simplified version of events appears to belittle the horrors inflicted upon the native people of Australia by the colonialists. My goal is to stick to what I know and have personally experienced rather than to patronise the exceptional cultural importance of the Aboriginal people.

 

 

Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush 1978

I’ve decided that from now on, I’d like to be known as Lady M. I’d also like to have a button on the wall beside my bed that I could press upon awakening, a button that would bring forth a black and white uniformed maid proffering breakfast in bed on a silver tray. A maid on hand in the morning and again in the evening to dress me, arrange my hair and make my bed. After I was dressed in a corset that would work physiological wonders on my waistline, I would walk serenely into a well-appointed dining room and liveried footman would serve a three-course dinner upon a table for my own bacchanalian pleasure. I would rise after said repast and retire to the parlour to play cards and listen to conversation that would never venture beyond the weather and the latest goings on among our small circle of friends. At some point, a man most certainly resembling Dan Stevens would wander in and stare longingly at me from across the sumptuously furnished room. 

Then I woke up and realised I don’t live in Downton Abbey. That I don’t live at Pemberley, Thornfield Hall, Wuthering Heights, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park or Rosings. For that matter, I don’t live in any bonnet drama. I live in a 40 square metre damp flat in the 18^th arrondissement of Paris and live in the elasticised cocoon of a T-shirt and leggings everyday. My life is more of a Bother Drama. Which begs the question, why do I torture myself and watch these shows...over and over…and over again?

  The sacred altar of the Bonnet Drama

Obsessed with the search for the divine truth in all things, as I am, I’ve actually tried to research this, both anecdotally and from within that font of recently blacked out knowledge, Wikipedia. In recent years, Downton Abbey has been the biggest thing on UK telly apart from the X-Factor so I’m not alone in my love of pretty dresses and well-mannered men.

Whether it is Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, any one of the prolific Brontës or their contemporary cousin, Julian Fellowes, Bonnet Dramas have that same soothing effect as a golden syrupy glass of after dinner Sauternes. At first glance it appears to be old and yellow and destined for those intellectually superior to oneself, but take that first sip, and alas, the sugary sweet haze takes over. You are lulled into a sense of sublime comfort and cloudy relaxation until that rude awakening when someone asks you to pay the bill, or in this case, the credits roll.

  Hot and Heavy Heathcliff or Tom Hardy before he met Hollywood

A regimented world ordered by daily rhythms and unbreakable rules. A sex-divided world where women wear dresses and hats and gloves and embroidered shoes and perma-smiles. A world where upstairs and downstairs was the only class divide. A world where race and sex and colour described your horse. A world where the guy gets the girl and the girl knew it all along. A heap of steaming bulls**t that we have dreamt ourselves into while we are scrubbing last night’s dishes, or worse still scraping away yesterday’s fossilised mascara.

Unlike the reading of classical novels, where you are forced to look up the words you don’t know and your imagination is exercised as you mentally create the visages of each character, modern day Bonnet Dramas have no intellectual import. The language and the etiquette have been dumbed down for 21st Century audiences. People hug each other and say ‘Hi’ both inventions of today’s Americanised society. Kisses between heroes and heroines are rather more lingual than they might have been 150 years ago and situations like the ever present ‘entail’ must be explained for the modern viewer who has no property to inherit regardless of whether they are female.

I know Bonnet Dramas are the two-minute noodle of literary culture but I watch them all the same.

  Richard Armitage pre-Hobbit as your Northern-bit-of-rough Mr Thornton

Mr Rochester brooding in front of the fire, Mr Thornton striding through the cotton mill, Captain Wentworth staring across at Anne in the music hall, Edward Ferrars fumbling his words, Darcy jumping into the lake and more recently Matthew Crawley on bended knee in the snow at Christmas. These are the starched collar romantic heroes a Modern Day Gal would lay down her waxed-legs-email-speed-dating-life for. Or at least we think we would.*

Staring into the handsome hero’s sultry eyes it is oh-so-easy to forget that were we to jump into Marty McFly’s Delorean and speed away into life in that sepia world, we would in exchange, have to forgo modern day luxuries such as toothpaste, Diet Coke, H&M and tampons. Shudder the thought!

Magnetic Magneto Michael Fassbender, Mr Rochester broods like no other

Contrary to popular belief, men watch bonnet dramas too. They just don’t readily admit to it. They also long for a time when the manliest challenge of their day might have been walking the dog. They wish for a world where they could don their favourite tweed jacket with the funky leather elbows (and not all ironic and Paul Smith) and shoot at defenceless game birds for fun. Most especially, they imagine a place where women shut their effing mouths and did what they were told, where marriage meant they were assured of healthy issue and a pretty face to entertain the party guests rather than the 21^st century reality of shared housework, couples counselling and witnessing the birth of their child from that most intimate of feminine biological geographies.

  And in 2012 we have the honest to goodness sultry stare of Dan Stevens - Matthew Crawley

Surveying friends, colleagues and family I have come to the conclusion that we long for the quiet order and bucolic simplicity of the places depicted in the Bonnet Drama. 

In an increasingly chaotic world where the simplest of tasks have been mechanised and snap frozen, we wish we could take the time to actually cook something. Instead of texting or liking or tweeting we would welcome the opportunity to have face-to-face conversation with a lover and argue about something real rather than bitch about the snide comment his ex posted on his Facebook page. Rather than scanning the online profiles of a potential mate we want to be Lost In Austen’s Amanda. We want to be courted by a man who opens the door and kisses you sheepishly on the hand instead of groping your left one while he drunkenly shoves a hand inside your jeans. 

Like all of life’s great questions, this isn’t an easy one to answer. If you don’t mind, I’ll spend the next few months puzzling over whether courtly love and sultry stares from a man in tight pants and a cravat, who is not gay, would be a fair exchange for the silky smooth cover of Tampax.

I’ll keep you posted.

 

 

* Yes people actually took time out of their lives and made all of these YouTube videos, so I am not the only sad person watching…

Bette Davis Eyes – Kim Carnes 1974

Another year over. 

    New Year's Eve chez Louis

To borrow from the second best Elizabeth on this earth, she of the crown and posh accent, I am very glad to have now seen the back end of my annus horribilus. While there was certainly plenty to be happy about, I can run faster, I can smile and I am far from destitute; there was a cataclysmic shock to the system in the spring that defined my 2011 and all of the events that followed. Everything I did became about ‘getting over it’, feeling better about myself and redefining my existence balancing upon that ever so thin line between Bubbly Bridget Jones and Melancholic Miss Havisham.

Motherbear tells me I am a drama queen, my colleagues tell me I shout too much, I write about the most mundane events of my life on a weekly basis, twisting words to make grocery shopping or catching a train sound like a War or the Worlds/Gone with the Wind mash up. Why settle for mediocrity when language can transform your life into a one-woman stage play? Births, deaths, marriages, holidays, break ups and make ups, visits to places I’ve not seen before, pilgrimages back to the parched red clay of my homeland, hired, fired, happy or sad, there has been one constant throughout it all. 

My eyes.

 

They are slightly larger than they should be, occupying a full third of my face. They change from turquoise blue to clear grey depending on the colour of the sky or the tone of my shirt. They are often hidden behind red-rimmed glasses of all too rapidly increasing strength. But unfortunately, (in my annual performance review for example), no matter how politic I attempt to be, these eyes are a dead give away to every micron of emotion, kernel of opinion or fragment of thought.

If I don’t like you, the crease in the middle of my eyes will inform you of my hatred even if I don’t. If you pinch my delicate sensibilities, the welling dampness in the corners will give away my pain despite my carefully constructed response feigning indifference. Carried away on the waves of comedy, I try to giggle discreetly but my eyes will be saucer-wide with hysteria.

In the corporatised planful* world that we live in, it is no longer socially acceptable to be someone who wears their proverbial heart on their sleeve.

Crying with despair at your iPad when Red Dog died, in front of a full carriage of channel tourists in the Eurostar is a minor infraction. After all Red Dog was red and a visually expressive dog. Watching him pant in pain after being poisoned is more than most people could bear. Crying in pure desperation as you stand under the soothing water of a hot shower is my a weekly ritual; the water trickling away a little bit of the pool of steam that fuels my shallow temper. But crying during a catch up with your manager, or in the middle of a meeting of 100 colleagues, or as you argue with the banker about how to fill in a form or worse still, on the Metro, in front of 1000 people, because someone has just pushed you over…again…and you fell…again…bags akimbo…well, it is really not very cool. 

Feet that struggle to keep the eyes upright

Not that I have ever been cool, but roll with me here…

I find some relief in the knowledge that for every tear I’ve shed, there has been a raucous laugh of equal intensity. I love to laugh out loud like a man and I’ve been lucky to have plenty of reasons to do so over the last few weeks.

Firstly, I discovered The Inbetweeners Movie. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Such astute and witty commentary on how ridiculous the English become when on holiday, languishing beside one of Europe’s many Mediterranean beaches is exceptionally funny. And then there is ‘The Dance’. EMPIRE magazine, my personal film bible, listed it as the second best film moment of the year just after Harry Potter killing Voldemort. I found a link in YouTube here but without the context of the film, I’m not sure you will laugh like you should.

Secondly, I have a most talented friend, Collette, who wrote the funniest one-women Opera, about a girl who spends too much time on Facebook. The Opera was brilliant, if scarily biographical, and ever so cunningly funny. I laughed, like an infant watching the Muppets, for 45 solid minutes. Other people laughed too, like they should, but I was slapping my thighs, doubled over in peals and at one point shed tears. I say, why just be an observer when you can truly participate?

 

Then Finally, I have comedic friends, my own troupe of Monty Pythons. Those you know, La Franglaise, Braveheart, Louis XIV, and some new ones, lets call them Don Juan and the Milky Bar Kid, cohorts with whom I have spent too much time over recent weeks.

A glass of wine after work, an apero at the weekend and even full blown benders that end at 4am are threaded together with the telling of stories, the reciting of experiences and the fact that we all have something in common, something that I cannot reveal here. Their company has afforded me a winter of side-splitting laughter alleviating the weighty stress of the daily grind. La Franglaise’s biting wit, Braveheart’s genuine joy for life, Louis’ faux-snobbery, The Milky Bar Kid’s refreshing innocence and Don Juan, apart from being dark and mysteriously Iberian, is blessed with an earnest belief in the innate good of human nature, a belief in which I am gradually proving him wrong. 

Imagine that fantastic scene in Pulp Fiction with Christopher Walken and ‘this watch’; hear that voice, see those eyes and reflect on this.

These eyes, these eyes have seen more of this world than they ever thought possible. These eyes look into the dark grey wintry sky of Paris and know that tomorrow will still come. These eyes look out into the world in the naïve hope that Colin Firth might dump his eco-wife or that Bradley Cooper might decide to perfect his French from within my flat. These eyes stare into the LED void of a computer screen and hope that you feel a microscopic shard of something after you’ve read this. These eyes just shed a tear. These eyes look into the sea of people pressing upon me as I whistle a happy (OK, Madonna) tune.

‘you know how to whistle don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

And the beat goes on...

 

 

* How pleased was I to see a squiggly red line under this word. A word used increasingly in the working world, a word that does not exist and is certainly nota replacement for the dictionary approved prepared

The Name of The Game – ABBA 1977

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a good fortune (and not of a husband) must be in want of somewhere to spend the Christmas Season. It is a truth slightly less universally acknowledged that she should seek out a foreign place that chooses to celebrate the festive season with at least twelfty million varieties of alcohol, one to accompany each of the traditional festive dishes. Perhaps one that tastes like liquid Christmas Pudding, another that tastes like a mixture of Guinness and curry powder and only if you are very fortunate, one that tastes like a mixture of petrol, toilet cleaner and Zippo lighter fluid. But onto the story… more about the alcohol later.

  Gothenburg

Those of you who did not read this would not know that I was destined to spend a celebratory week in a sort of far off city, invited by a sort of family of mine, a family blessed with stunning good looks and bright blue eyes, a family who live in a place of elegant and harmonious design, a family that live in Sweden. Let’s call them the Nobels; Nobels in part because the name is synonymous with Sweden but more specifically a name synonymous with the pursuit and achievement of excellence in all fields, science, the arts, philosophy and peace. 

  Stockholm

Despite my being in possession of what I would call more than reasonable intelligence, let’s face it, I alternate between 2-3 languages a day, and I’ve managed to figure out the French income tax website, I’ve never felt so dumb in my whole life as I have for the last week.

A week with the Nobels in Stockholm and I’ve learned more about romantic English poets that I did in 8 years of advanced secondary English …in an English speaking high school. A week with the Nobels and I learned more about Roman gods and mythology than I did after 25 years living with the Art-sist-ologer. Yes, a qualified astrologer taught me less about Venus and Mars than the Nobels did. A week with the Nobels and I lost a week’s wages betting on questions about popular movies. They’ve got all the bases covered from pop to polar physics, from Lisbeth Salander to Elizabeth Bennet, there is a reference book to answer every potential question, there is an expert on every subject, the room is unseasonably hot with the competitive sprint for the correct response.

Being correct is not something I’ve ever been overly concerned with. I am much more in the line of sounding 150% convinced of everything I say …even if I am wrong… I always appear to be right. After a rather devastating week for my finances, I’ll never stake my own money on appearing to be right ever again.

So now down to the facts.

 

Every single window in every single abode in every single city in Sweden has the same seven-light Christmas decoration. Despite the wealth of knowledge to be found at chez Nobel, no one could tell me why everyone has the same lights. The 10 million inhabitants of Sverige have no idea from whence the seven-step-light tradition originates, but every one from Alexander Skarsgåd to Lisbeth Salandar to Stellan Skarsgåd (Google them if you don’t know) has one in their window. Given they are tiny lights, they are nigh on impossible to photograph so here is an example. Who knew Scandinavian Volvo/IKEA socialism could be so conformist?

 

I’ve written before about how well-organised everything is in Sweden, they have a customised solution or even better, an IKEA produced item of flat-pack furniture to solve all of life’s problems. They’ve also figured out the chaos of Christmas.

  Pickled Herring and Mustard Herring

Smorgasbord. Or during yuletide, even more specifically Julbord.

My Julbord...note the Cheese..

The Swedes invented the art of organising a variety of small plates on one table allowing the diner to choose exactly his or her perfect mix of shrimp, herring, sausage and egg to create a personalised Christmas lunch plate. Allowing the diner to choose? How very unlike the anglicised tradition of forcing every poor soul from infancy to infirmary to eat their body-weight in dry turkey and saccharine sweet cranberry sauce? The Swedes have also matched a different beverage to every element of the traditional Julbord. Spiced wine Glögg for aperitif, spiced beer Mumma when you are eating and spiced Schnapps with dessert. Don’t make the mistake I did of relying on the middle Nobel to serve your Schnapps or you may need to run to the bathroom and revisit your lunch. Rather surprising given my iron lady like liver that has withstood triennia of abuse.

  Glögg ..and a sun-damaged Australian finger

Mumma and Schnapps - big Headache meets little headache - in Finnish Ittala glassware

Beyond Christmas, Sweden has also solved the problem of alcohol in general. 

In a country famous for the creation and proliferation of pornography, there is a certain irony in the government-controlled distribution of alcohol. If you wish to buy any kind of alcohol, you must visit a System Bolaget. The green and gold# sign can be seen on many a main street, crying out to the would be alcoholic, “come hither to my fluorescent aisles and get thee a box of wine, a box of Glögg or a keg of Absolut Kurant”.

  Stockholm, photo taken at 4pm

Nobel is most famous for awarding their peace prize from under the three golden crowns representing the three ancient kingdoms of Scandinavia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Even if the Swedes gave away Denmark to an Australian (okay Tasmanian) and forgot about Norway’s penchant for harpooning whales, they keep the three crowns as their national symbol. Famous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize include Desond Tutu, Jose Ramos-Horta, Al Gore and the man with the stars and stripes tattoo, Barack Obama.

  Need to hang your coat in a busy restaurant, problem solved

While I cannot pretend to be a diplomat of such international reputation, I can pretend to be an English-Australian who lives in Paris and spent the yuletide with a Swedish family and lost 100 EUR betting on an American movie.

I am the white (Ok, reddish) dove of Peace with a Dragon Tattoo.

 

# I too find it ironic that the alcohol board has the same colours as Australia.

 

Swedish Ryvita and a Carpicorn Birthday Present...

 

Lyin’ Eyes – The Eagles 1975

I am slightly ashamed to admit that after living for a grand total of 5 years and a little bit in La Republique of Le Coq I had never been to her second city Lyon (or Lyons for the language purists). Not really that shocking when you consider that I live in the first city (Paris) and prefer to go only to weekend in places where I know someone with a top floor terrace apartment like The Body in Firenze or Louis XIV in Evian.

Not unlike Miss Havisham* I am a woman of means doted with a passion for the melodramatic visualisation and characterisation of daily, unordinary, mundane events. Not unlike Miss Havisham I am also given to abusing the hospitality of my friends who live in places far more interesting than mine. However quite unlike Miss Havisham, I do still leave my house and as such, embarked upon the great southern city of Lyon, perched between the Le Rhône et La Saône, and rather significantly the home of the Godfather of French Cuisine Paul Bocusse and rather serendipitously, the ancestral seat of the family of Louis XIV.

A big white church on a hill not in Paris

La Franglaise and I were fortunate enough to have a very good reason to visit and as such I can now say that I have visited, tasted and drunk the health to the home of salty, dry Saucisson, fluorescent red Tarte Praline and fresh Beaujolais Nouveau.

Tarte Praline - take a bag of lollies, a bucket of sour cream, a tart case and a defibrilator....

Dionysius and his younger Roman counterpart Bacchus are indeed the someone’s who watch over me as I roam the great wide yonder upon this earth. How surprised was I really to discover that the one day I happened to be in the capital of the Rhone wine region coincided with the festival celebrating the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau for 2011. Stalls lined up along the streets of Lyon proffering sliced saucisson to accompany a thimble-sized glass of the recently released acidly green tasting red wine.

The festival for the Beaujolais Nouveau

 

Be sure to review the comments section at the bottom of this page because if I get any of this wrong, Louis will most certainly correct me.

In ancient times, Lyon was the capital of France. The Twin Rivers allow for easy access to the ports in the South and the invading hordes. As such, the rather more land-locked Paris eventually got the job of bossing around the realm of France. The city of Lyon, not quite as inhabited as Paris has managed to perfect that tenuous balance between having everything, and not being so inundated with humanity as to be impossible to live in. The architecture is reminiscent of Paris with it’s Haussmannian symmetry, the streets are laced with restaurants and bars if only the people were a little bit less up their own bums I could seriously imagine myself living there.

Besides being a really very beautiful city, the best thing about Lyon is the food.

Saucisson de Lyon ad infinitum

Australians will know that during her seminal series, French Food Safari, Maeve visited Lyon several times. While not busy fawning over the gallant gallois Guillaume, she found some time to sample the wares at Les Halles de Lyon, an enormous food market bursting forth with charcuterie, a plethora of cheese and the most delicious patisserie. Only in France could the most significant tourist attraction of a significant city be its food market.

Fromage Lego

I was not able to spend more than 36 hours in Lyon and so not much more to talk about than the exceptional food. I will be certain to remedy this as soon as the exigencies of Festivus are done with in mid January.

But as always, Louis to the rescue with his chariot of gold (OK, a SEAT Ibiza), 2 hours in the car and hop, we were in Evian. Louis, trained to five star level in the arts of aristocratic entertaining is always the best host and did his utmost to make us feel at home. Some cheese, some wine and then some cheese and then some more wine before we were off to the baths.

Yep, that's the logo of the Evian Bottle up on that hill

 

Switzerland is the calmest of countries to be pinned to the terrain of this earth. A Saturday night, at 7pm, it is the only place you could find all the youths of the surrounding area, semi-naked in once place. Not a smoky nightclub, not an underground drug-den, but thermal baths. The place to be for the residents of La Suisse Romande on a Saturday night in winter is gathered together within the safe refuge of a giant swimming pool filled with the warm waters springing forth from the mountains upon high.

What better way to sweat out the lactose and the alcohol than banded together in a giant bowl of hot water?

More to come after the remainder of Festivus to be spent in Sweden, the home of pure clear alcohol and small rooms filled with steam. A recipe for disaster or delight?

  Geneva proves that size does matter

 

 

*For those of you who don’t know who Miss Havisham is, Google Great Expectations, or even better, get thee to ITV so you can watch the new version with Gillian Anderson (yes Agent Scully) playing the formidable femme fatale

Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town – Bruce Springsteen 1973

Bah Humbug!

Starting this missive with the words of Dickens’ most infamous personage certainly sets the scene for just how wildly un-Christmassy I am feeling this year. A bad case of the flu, persistent memories of last year and the incessant teeming rain are all serving to remind me on an almost minutely basis that this year, Christmas is not much more than an mucous stained, rushed, overly commercialised reason to empty my wallet.

My very little eco-friendly fake Christmas tree

Unlike Ebenezer, I’d be more than happy to be visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. At the very least spectral beings would be a welcome break from the hoi polloi that I am obliged to mix with in the freezing damp streets. 

I despise traditional Christmas food. Everything is laced with cinnamon, dried orange peel and raisins. 

Normally, I am no more prejudiced against cinnamon and raisins than porridge, stew and all other items I lump into the general category of nanna food. Food that was eaten during the war, invented as a result of government enforced rationing prior to the dawn of globalisation and the advent of fusion cuisine is nanna food. Why make a solid brown cake that could easily be mortared between two bricks when you can eat a creamy fresh Panna Cotta. Is there one good reason to eat a pudding that is strung up in a muslin bag over boiling water like a dirty medieval criminal and cooked for four days? Is it wise to eat something that can be stored for a month and eaten at Valentines Day? I won’t even comment on the Bûche de Noel, a butter-cream covered woodlike monstrosity that the French swallow whole at Christmas.

I will avow that a 30 years spent eating fresh seafood, chicken salad and ice cream on Christmas Day has potentially created a bias towards the traditional perfumed stodge so loved in the Northern hemisphere. 

But then there is the shopping.

Shopping at Christmas time is an arduous task of Herculean proportions. The French, so proud to be the last bastion of everything-closed-on-a-Sunday (in a secular country) open all of their shops on the three Sundays prior to Christmas in the hope of injecting some much needed cash into their increasingly downgraded economy. From somewhere far away, the entire population of Paris descends on the Grand Magasins to invest their not-so hard earned Euros on all manner of crap and clutter. In London, they go one step further and close Oxford St to traffic. The sea of humanity halted only by the twelfty million police officers attempting, in vain, to control the flow of chavs onto the unclosed cross streets.

  All of London gather and pray to the God of Christmas - Selfridgus

So how about some free gift-wrapping Madame? Sure, are you going to pay me a year’s salary while I queue and wait for that unfortunate Eastern European intern to stretch some tin foil around a box? The meditating exercise of wrapping Christmas presents is surprisingly one of the few pleasures this obsessive-compulsive Ebenezette actually looks forward to. Just give me the paper and I’ll do it when I finally manage to squeeze myself past the swelling hoards of and get home.

Mouth agape in shock, I learned from an affable black cab driver that spending time with Santa, an invention of Coca Cola early last century, at one of the larger stores in London is reserved at least month in advance and depending on where you go, costs a yuletide fortune. In Hamleys, a one-hour tour with the polyester-bearded red man will set you back a cool 45 pounds. I suppose he uses it to pay for additional flu meds to ward off the myriad bacteria he is subjected to as they are sprayed forth from the orifices of London’s snotty children.

11 months of the year I quite like children. I don’t own any myself but I am quite fond of those belonging to my brother and other friends in Paris. Kids are cute, they say daft things and they are allowed to wear leggings as pants outside the house. Three qualities I am rather envious of. But in December children turn into demon-possessed monsters. They holler in a high-pitched banshee-like fashion at the sight of anything remotely Santa-ish while waving their mitten covered hands in all directions with no regard for anyone or anything nearby. They also seem to be constantly dripping with syrupy moisture from the eye, the nose and the mouth for a whole four weeks before returning chameleon style to the dry, well-mannered little humans we love them to be in January.

Actual Santa, while barely tolerable, is nothing compared to the horror that is the modern corporate invention, Secret Santa. Devised most likely by a well-meaning HR Manager in the mid eighties who was trying to eliminate the high-flying competition of Christmas present purchasing in a Wall St investment bank (Here is your Audi Smythe and thanks for the diamonds Cornelia), Secret Santa has since become the sole reason pound shops have not gone the way of the dodo. 

Watching the dweeb from accounting giggle behind his toupee while you unwrap a penholder that farts every time you remove your pen is a delight reserved for that most festive of moments.

  A Lego Christmas Tree in St Pancras - I can admit it, I liked it.

It must be said that spending time with people you don’t really like is truly the shining star on the just-cut-from-virgin-rainforest Christmas Tree. Running between a candy cane swirl of drinks, dinners, parties and cocktails is not a bad thing, especially if there is free alcohol. Being asked over and again, why I am not flying to Australia (too expensive) whether I will be alone (I won’t) and will I be fake-sad-eye-look “OK” (I will) requires more than the one free glass of cheap wine that I am injecting into my eyeball to avoid having to listen to another mundane conversation about just how great/tough/quick 2011 has been and what about those floods in Queensland blah blah jingle blah.

I am not going to get all ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ on you here but not unlike the Christians perched upon requisite soap boxes screaming to the earphone-deaf hoards about the ‘true meaning of Christmas’ I would like to take a moment and remind you to reflect on what Christmas should be. A time to spend with family, a time to remind each other about the delights of giving rather than getting, and most importantly a time to eat a bucket of fresh prawns.

 

Bring on the starry newness of 2012, I am more than a little bit over 2011.

 

Dog Days Are Over – Florence + the Machine 2008

There is a place so magical and bright that even the distant memory of my first visit to the place brings a nostalgic tear to my increasing short-sighted eye.

I was 22 years old that first time, a virgin whose senses were opened to a place of raw beauty and carnal lust. I had already visited a large chunk of continental Europe, but a well-heeled peninsula had remained thus far elusive. Finally, accompanied by my well-equipped and internet-advised travel companions, Motherbear and AG, we made the treacherous journey over the Alps and down into onto the Elysian Fields below. The fertile green albeit mosquito-ridden fields that entice the uninitiated innocents with their siren call of opera, the syrupy peppery elixir of the olive and the most delicious bloody tomatoes on earth. The place where men, proper good-looking ones not construction labourers, call out to girls like me as my long hair trails in the wind…Bella! A nation where men are men*, they have facial hair and muscly exposed arms, and are masculine enough to wear pink polo shirts and white loafers or the most immaculately tailored suits designed by their countrymen Giorgio and Ermenegildo and still not appear gay.

  Five minutes in town and I've discovered the food

That testosterone charged place is Italy. The Mediterranean Boot kicking France and the rest of Europe far away from its azure watered coast, owning the sunshine, the sea and the sensuous south.

  Pig in all it's forms, be sure to sew up the mouth...

Frequent visitors to the ongoing saga of M will know that my last visit to Italy was cut tragically short by the separation with the F-Word. His opening argument was, “I do not want to go to Florence on Saturday”. Italy being such a hedonistic dreamland fantasy for me, I was more devastated not see Florence than his leaving me. I was devastated that my love of this warm, sensual country would forever be tainted by the memory of his cold dismissal. 

The Farmacia Santa Maria Novella... love potion?

It took me a little over 6 months, but I made it back. I went to Florence; I had a room with a view, a view almost of the Arno and completely of the Ponte Vecchio and I spent three sun-drenched glorious days eating and drinking and sleeping and walking and relaxing and wishing.

Italian Humour

The Body, a most excellent friend blessed with brains, beauty and a job that pays her to live temporarily in the Tuscan capital, has been living the highlife in the ochre-hued town I first discovered on screen in the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s, A Room with a View.  The film that would make a star of Helena Bonham Carter as well as of her long mane of tumbling brown curls. I loved the cream marbled scenery, I fell girlishly in love with Rupert Graves who plays the younger brother, and any movie blessed with the twin RSC trained acting talent of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith is sure to leave it’s mark on a teenage girl obsessed with BBC bonnet dramas. It did, and in 2007 I first made my pilgrimage to the Arno and the ancient city straddling its banks. It was only two days, but in 48 hours I managed to take in the greatest hits of Italian art, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Titian and Caravaggio before leaving all too soon and desperate to return.

  Neptune surveys his domain

This time, recovered from the distress of my last operatic Italian adventure, I was determined to indulge, to enjoy, not to plan, and just take it all in…

On the first day, a three-course lunch in a restaurant that most definitely had a view preceded a three-course dinner with The Body that was preceded by a bottle of Champagne and followed by drinks in a Terrazzo. If you’ve been reading this for longer than a month you are well acquainted with the Herculean strength of my much-abused liver and my passion for too much very good cheese. Truffles, mozzarella, a piece of beef grilled and served only with salt, rosemary dusted potatoes and the creamiest Tiramisu; I mean really, how is it that just one narrow nation can lay claim to so much deliciousness, and that is only the food! The verdant freshness of Pinot Grigio, the spicy warmth of Brunello and the honey-like syrup Vin Santo accompanied by biscotti that you steep in the glass in lieu of a heavier dessert all serve to remind you that it was in fact the Italians who taught the French how to make wine.

The view...over the Arno

The city itself is so beautiful, I can’t pretend to have the words to describe it, and besides, many of you I am sure have seen it before. That so many spectacular Palazzos and marble statue dotted Piazzi could be crammed into a space that requires only a couple of hours to discover on foot is truly incredible. That it has remained largely intact after all those wars, Mussolini and even Berlusconi, is astounding. Every street corner opens up onto another ancient church or some other medieval treasure. David’s steely gaze watches over the crowded hoards in at least three different open spaces in the city. Lovers meander along the lanes, couture-clad women walk about to buy bread and the omnipresent river of American tourists queue to buy pizza and diet-coke only to complain that the pizzas don’t taste like ‘real pizza’.

  David surveys Florence from high above at the Piazzale Michelangelo

And then there are the Italians.

If the Italians created the Catholic Church and there is a God to be prayed to in their myriad ornate marble churches then that God must be seated upon a white moulded plastic chair. Some time after the Italians discovered plastic instead of marble, they decided that all chairs should be moulded from one pristine piece of white plastic and that those chairs should be sent forth into the world beyond heralding the Italian Diaspora, most especially in their restaurants that serve anything at all with a giant Black Pepper Grinder.

  Pure white, pure plastic, pure Italian 

Italians have managed to perfect the art of good living. In France, good living is the logical outcome of their revolutionary individualism. Taking time for a lingering lunch is as much a right as it is a desire to sit and spend two hours eating. In Italy, shaky economy and shakier political scene, they’ve got so much less to lose. A laid-back lifestyle is an antidote to the insanity of their daily evermore-corrupt reality as it is a traditional way of life. And the way the men look at you…I’d risk the safety of my pseudo-socialist Gallic ghetto for a lifetime of “bella!” as I wander the corsos, the vias and the piazzas.

  Perfetto!

The Italians are so unaware of how lucky they are to be native in a country rich from its freezing alpine north to the corrupt sunburnt south with baroque beauty and culinary delights that they’ve become totally oblivious. During that first lunch, I sat in a restaurant that looked over the river straight at the Uffizi. The Uffizi is the veritable home of Italian art. Nowhere in Italy is there a larger and more diverse collection, spearheaded by the big-as-your-living-room Venus di Botticelli, she of the long blond hair and wobbly thighs sprouting from within a clamshell.

  Even the intercoms are bellissimo

As I stared out across the water wondering what Firenze might have looked or smelled like at the time of Sandro and his probable working girl Venus, I noticed a group of ten men playing five-a-side football, sweating and running, bouncing and kicking, cheering and jeering, all against the wall of the Uffizi. That a young misty-eyed girl from Sydney would have travelled across the globe just to visit this one place lost on a group of men who use the foreground of the art world’s Mecca to square up for a bit of Friday afternoon fun. That paintings preserved for 500 years are holed up in the darkened corridors of the Uffizi does not register for the average Florentine. Everything is old, everything is beautiful, the food is always this good, and besides, given the state of the Euro, they’ve got bigger problems to ponder.

Footballers in front of the Uffizi

With my Italian first name, my brown curls and my rounded Botticelli belly, I’ve often been mistaken for an Italian; it should be noted that a good portion of Sydney’s residents have an Italian ancestor or six. While I am the daughter of a post-war immigrant, he came from the conservative United Kingdom and not the sultry Roman Empire. I do love tomatoes, I do love two women, one named Madonna and another named Florence and if I was cursed to only ever eat one thing for the rest of my days I might just choose the aniseed crunch of fennel. With my just-too-loud voice, my hands as punctuation when I talk and my penchant for melodrama, I might just be re-born of some ancient woman of Toscana.

 

Whatever your take, mine is that after three days in the sun, the dog days are most definitely over

 

 The View from The Body's Room.

 

 

* So much so that their former president is better know for his libido than his legislation. Bunga Bunga!