I once lost a pair of diamond earrings.
I’m born in April so diamonds are my birthstone and I have a very tolerant mother who continues to buy me jewellery even after I repeatedly lose it. Interestingly, while I’ve lost one (or both) of each of the three pairs of diamond earrings Motherbear the Tolerant has gifted me over the four decades I have been alive; I’ve never lost any of the silver she gifted, that is, silver gifted in a pale blue box. #touchwood
Might I venture Motherbear, after so much silver, it might be time for you to gift me some diamonds in a blue box? Or better still, men of the world, it might be time for one of you to grow a pair, knock on the door of the Material Mansion and proffer a blue-boxed morsel of petrified carbon? Only in the name of science of course… #agirlcandream
Musings on diamonds aside, my very obsessive-compulsive nature means that I rarely lose anything. I can’t sit in a restaurant without my handbag rested on my feet; a strap looped over my leg ensuring it can’t be snatched. When I run, I shove my iPhone in one of my C-Cups and a 20-pound note in the other. The phone is my music and map; the cash is another symptom of my anxiety. I might get hit by a bicycle and need to take a cab home, or bribe someone to assist me, or most likely, I might have a desperate craving for a Grande Iced Latte when I get home. #idoexpectthespanishinquisition
It isn’t that I am so very desperately attached to my personal belongings, my accoutrements are rarely worth more than a 3 course meal, more that I just hate the inconvenience of losing something. I once had my wallet stolen from a busy Sydney pub; it took me months to reapply for all the necessary cards and I couldn’t possibly bring myself to shop without earning loyalty points of some kind or another. #thehorror
Several years later, I was once mugged early in the morning as I ran in Paris. The inconvenience of reporting the theft to the police of the 18th arrondissement left me with an inconvenient lack of faith that a French policeman had ever caught the perpetrator of a crime. #toomuchpaperwork #notenoughsherlock I also became morbidly terrified of running past the metro station where the incident occurred and rather inconveniently became aware that my then boyfriend cared less about his girlfriend’s early morning jogging safety that he did about this early morning slumber.
As such, I’ve come to repeat my little OCD mantra on every single occasion I venture beyond my little flat by the bridge; wallet-keys-phone. Every single time I walk outside, I repeat that little triplet to myself verifying that I have on my person the 3 items I require to move about in this busy world.
Imagine then, my abject terror, my crippling panic, my melodramatic reaction, when one of my holy trinity was removed from my person, not by a thief, but by someone I love. #papadontpreach
Regular visitors to these pages, or those I wrote when resident of La Belle Republique, will be familiar with the 5 people I refer to as my French Family. The Belloncles are the very generous folk who welcomed a large, wild, savage and unconscionably loud Australian teenager into their countryside home 20 odd years ago. I lived with them for a year, in a small village bordering Basque Country and Bearn, a small house where they instructed me in the fine arts of consuming petrified ducks, of imbibing Madiron and of aspirating my R’s.*
The 15th of August is one of the most sacred holidays in France; the Sainte Marie celebrates the Assumption of the Virgin. While no one has ever, ever assumed that I was a virgin, my Christian name is a derivative of Marie; and so, the 15th of August is my Feast Day. Outside of France this is wholly insignificant, within France this means I get presents… and a public holiday in high summer; a good as an excuse an any to go and visit the Belloncles.
Spending an extended weekend in the South of France might sound all romantic and idyllic and cinematic but my reality is very different. They are, despite the lack of genetic evidence, a family like any other. They are not Fassbender and Hiddleston and McAvoy shirtless in the sunlight proffering grapes and cold pink wine and … but I digress. I have a French brother who takes the piss out of me when I make mistakes, I have to hide behind trees to smoke and Papa and I spend hours debating the decaying morals of modern society. I do however enjoy the respite of precious hours wandering with my Maman, grocery shopping at the local markets.
I must also mention that they are all fabulous cooks and have a wine cellar bigger than my current London residence. Day 1 was Cote de Boeuf with Pessac, Day 2 was Magret de Canard with St Estephe and Day 3 was Scallops with Risotto and Jurancon…I suppose it’s bearable. It’s bearable because I have an iPhone and a reliable 3G connection. Or at least it was bearable until the fateful morn of August 14th 2014; the day Papa took away my phone.
He said he was doing it for my own good, he said it would help me relax, he said I needed to sleep; he said I was on holidays and should stop working. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything he said, I was laser focussed on the shiny little white oblong in his right hand. I wanted my phone back, without it I was only half a person. #firstworldproblems #shallowIknow
At first I felt lost; literally… I didn’t have a GPS enabled map in my pocket. Then I felt lost figuratively, what if something happened to Mum, or anyone in Australia? How would they be able to reach me? Worse still, how would anyone know if anything happened to me? What if a spider bit me? What if I drowned in duck fat? What if Fassbender kidnapped me?^
After dealing with the fact that I was very much off the grid, I realised how much I rely on my phone to conduct the business of my every average day.
How will I wake up if one of the 3 alarms doesn’t shock me into consciousness at 5.30am? How will I know what the time is ever? How will I know when to eat? How will I know what to wear unless BBC Weather tells me how cold it will be? How do I know if it is a fancy knickers day without my horoscope? How will I remember to buy the red dress in the John Lewis window if I don’t take a photo of it?
Then there are the less than everyday uses for handheld connected devices.
Indulging in a bit of typical French country cuisine, my brother opened his vintage American Mrs Fields cookbook and we baked cookies. I translated the English recipes while he stirred and let me lick his spoon. #thatisyourdirtymindnotmine How on earth was I meant to know what an American cup of butter was in grams without my friendly conversion app, Vert? Later that day, walking through Biarritz we didn’t know when the fireworks started. Deprived of Google, we actually had to just wait! During one of the midday meals, someone asked a question, to which I didn’t know the answer…without my phone I had to accept that I just didn’t know and would live the remainder of my life in ignorance of the year of Henri of Navarre’s death.
Beyond trivial information, there is the vital. #IsharethereforeIam
Does anyone know where I was if I don’t check in on Foursquare? Does anyone care that we drove to San Sebastian (in Spain) to watch Valencia compete in the International fireworks festival if I didn’t share a photo? Does anyone know that I ate if I didn’t Instagram the aforementioned Cote de Boeuf? Did anyone even notice I was gone?
Rather than bore you with a lengthy lecture about the role of technology and the demise of human interaction in the 21st century, a lecture I am now well versed in after rehearsing it daily with Papa, I will say only that I was eventually given back the phone.
I counted up the unread emails, the unseen texts and the fact that for an entire 2 working days I was unreachable. I reflected on the sense of unease, the fear and the deafening silence. I read an entire book in less than four days, I slept in past 9am, and my eyes have regained some of their sparkle. I looked into the sky and saw sunshine and rainbows.
I also had my iPad.
*In French, R’s are aspirated, which is the very fancy linguistic term for rolling spit in the back of your throat. The resultant effect is that when a man utters a word like chéri, it doesn’t sound like a small red stone fruit, it sounds like a man just breathed sex into your earhole
^Just so I could Instagram him sleeping!
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