So what's new?

For the past couple of months life has been pretty much "samey" in that the heat is hard to bear and very lethargy-inducing. I've been getting round it by trying to get stuff sorted in the house in the mornings (downstairs is quite cool and the basement is wonderful) and then working a little in the garden in the evenings but I must admit I'm starting to get cabin fever right around now - so it's a good thing the weather is cooling and my various classes start up again next week!

Charlie started school (or is it pre-school at age three?) on Monday and I suppose one of the great advantages of having been in day care from a young age is that he skipped off quite happily to his new class without looking back. The only person that got a kiss was Elynn so I guess that let's everyone know where they stand in the pecking order!

I woke up Monday morning to see that I'd missed a video call at 2.30 a.m. from Jordan - not a good feeling at all. Turns out everything was fine though as he reckoned he must have sat on his phone and bum-dialled me. Logically too, if anything serious happened in the middle of the night they would either wake up one of the neighbours or take both kids with them to the hospital because it would take me around 45 minutes to get there anyway. Still, all's well that ends well!

I stopped over at André's place on Friday to drop off his birthday present and he was telling me that he has to go to Istanbul soon to help with setting up one of his organization's upcoming conferences there. I told him to check to see if a good friend, M, might be there as I'm sure he would love to see him. M was a Turkish colleague of my ex who organized a fabulous long weekend for us in Istanbul, his home city. It was wonderful - all the moreso for being shown around by a native, of course - and I think hearing the call to prayer when the sun was going down over the Blue Mosque is a memory that will stay with me forever! Anyhoo, that was when I realized that 31st August would have been my 39th wedding anniversary. We limped along to 26 years but for my part at least, they were mostly pretty miserable years. How sad is that?

Moving swiftly on, my friend and I are off on an overnighter to the fortress village of Guédelon on 25th September, so I'm looking forward to that. We'll get to spend the day exploring the fortress and village at our leisure and then board a boat for an overnight cruise down the river (can't remember which one) before heading back home. I don't have anything else planned for this year, except for my sister and her husband coming out at some point, but I think I might look into another "last long haul" after Christmas. We'll see how I feel in the new year, I suppose!

While I've been puttering around sorting stuff, I've taken to listening to a wonderful young woman on Youtube who goes by the name Cheere Denise! I sometimes listen to my audiobooks but if not, she is my go-to if I want to get an insight into other books. She is one of a number of Youtubers who read extracts from popular books and give their thoughts on it (they can't read the entire book for copyright reasons). So I was pleasantly surprised to hear her read the book The Housekeeper's Diaries, which was written by a woman who worked as a housekeeper at Highgrove to the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana. When I was initially looking for this book (it was written in the '80s, I think) I found out that it had been banned from sale in the UK and the only copies available from outside the UK were going for ridiculous amounts of $$$$$ and no way was I going to pay that. I think the author was fair to both Charles and Diana, but showed that Diana was absolutely not the fairytale princess she was portrayed to be, and that Charles was not a total monster either. She was nowhere near as kind to Andrew and Fergie though (which seems to be pretty much on par with what I've read about them from other sources). What really struck me though is the shocking amount of ££££ that was wasted when, for instance, Diana sent the housekeeper back to London (a journey of about 90 minutes) to get her favourite hairbrush (???) and how when truckloads of gifts were sent to Highgrove, either for C and/or D or the kids, or just from companies trying to curry favour, after taking their pick of what was on offer, the rest was burned??? Again ?????? I think anyone from a normal background would be utterly shocked by this and then maybe they had their reasons, but if so, I can't think of one!

Right now she's going through a book on the Mountbattens and the recent book by Maureen Callahan called Ask Not - about the Kennedys and "how they destroyed the lives of the women that married into the family"! That's still ongoing for me, but again, it is pretty horrific and does much to destroy the Camelot myth!

I'm also reading the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, an investigative journalist who infliltrated the Neapolitan mafia. It's hard going, what with all the Italian names - and then of course everyone also had a nickname - but it goes into great detail about the inner workings of the various clans. The main "commodity" was, of course, cocaine, but surprisingly the next biggest venture, according to him, was arms traficking, followed oddly enough by "cement". I suppose when you think about it, if you control all the component parts of the construction industry you are powerful indeed! Another interesting facet was the "knock off" fashion sweatshops, although in many instances, again according to him, much of the fashion produced in these sweatshops also made it into the big fashion houses in Italy and around the world!

He became quite friendly with a talented tailor called Pasquale, who had such talent and such exquisite taste that he was often sent to pick out the quality fabrics to be imported "duty free" from Asia. He went on to recount how Pasquale was given the measurements of a very famous person and told to create a trouser suit for her out of the recently purchased top notch white fabric. Apparently he loved his work but was horrified to be watching television one night and saw Angelina Jolie wearing "his" trouser suit (to the Oscars? to the Vogue gala? - I can't remember which)! There was no insinuation that Angelina Jolie knew her suit's background, but when he realized that he was being paid just €600 a month to create the exquisite clothes that then went on to sell for thousands of dollars, he refused to work as a tailor anymore and took a job as a mob truck driver instead!

And finally, as I said previously, I was beginning to get cabin fever from spending so much time at home, so my friend and I decided to set off today to visit the Parc de Merlet. The weather was perfect and I can't believe I have never been to this park before when it is only one hour up the road towards Italy!!! Being completely out of shape we struggled even just walking up from the parking lot, but we made it, and apart from a pretty disappointing meal at the one and only restaurant there, we had such a good time we've decided to head out to a local gorge to go walking again on Friday, weather permitting!

Parc de Merlet!

We gave these guys a wide berth!
They can obviously run and jump
better than we can!

The Mont Blanc!

A llama enjoying the view of
the Glacier des Bossons!

And finally, I came across this old "short" the other day and it tickled me so much I just had to share it!