The famous St. S professional dance troop - or not!

If you remember I wrote sometime ago about having a busy weekend, what with theatre on the Friday night, a day trip to Turin on the Saturday and our local neighbourhood clean-up/BBQ on the Sunday.  What an exhausting weekend that was, but very pleasurable indeed.

As I said, after the clean-up of our little neighbourhood of around 25 houses, we got together to have a pot-luck BBQ.  In addition, just one week before my immediate neighbour's hedge had caught fire while his son was weed-whacking and about 10 families dashed out and for 30 minutes or so fought the fire until we brought it under control.  Man, hedges go up like - well tinder I guess.  It was and has been scorching hot (over 100 degrees) so I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised, but everyone pitched in and helped to get the fire out in the nick of time.

So, this particular neighbour cracked out the champagne at the BBQ to thank everyone for their help.  Add to that, there was plenty of other booze, good food, noise and sunshine, so all in all a lovely day.

However, I learnt to my cost that when said neighbour's wife mouths at you over the noise while doing a little jig, you must - on no account - nod your head in agreement!  Seemingly, what I had agreed to was to attend a lesson (stage in French) for tap-dancing on the evenings of 6th and 7th July for 2 and 1/2 hours a time!!!!  BUUUUUT I wasn't the only one.  All together we ended up being 6 "budding artists" who had agreed to go with her to a tap-dancing stage!!!  Now she has been taking tap lessons for the past year and loves it and, generously, thought we might too, so at the BBQ she took down names for the stage, signed us up and paid for it.  Bloody hell.  It has been consistently over 100 degrees for the past while here so who the hell wants to flail around for 150 minutes (non-stop) doing their dying swan impersonation in that?

But since I secretly had visions of ending up like this:

or even like this:

I put my money where my mouth was and went along.

WELL!  I don't know how I didn't snuff it.  But it wasn't just me.  It was SOOOOOOO hot, no air, and the teacher went SOOOOOOOOOOO fast and barely stopped to let us drink.  After a while I tried discreetly tap-dancing out the front door but he always caught up with us and hauled us back.  I did manage to grab my friend's 14-year old daughter and we tap-danced into a cupboard hoping he wouldn't notice, but no, we got dragged back in again.  I don't think I have ever sweated so much - none of us in fact.  But, I have to say, we had the greatest evening in fits of giggles, being a bunch of (mainly) middle-aged, overweight neighbours who all had our sense of rythmn amputated at birth!  We were in hysterics by the time we crawled walked back home.

I have to admit we looked more like this:

 

 

Er not even actually. (That photo is taken from the Liza Minelli movie "Stepping Out" - which I can highly recommend btw).  To say the least, we were crap artistically challenged!!! But what a fun evening it was.

 

However, I think the next time I'll stick to tiddlywinks.

And even busier - thanks for nothing!!!!

I held off from posting about this for a while as I didn't want to post while my blood was at boiling point.  I thought somehow I might come over as a "hysterical woman" and have my rant put down to the "time of life".  Anyway, now that I am calmer, what do you think of this?

In 2010, my f****-wit ex husband (let's call him P) stopped coming home in the evenings right after Christmas.  Not that I cared frankly because he was usually down town in one of those bars you see in Westerns where they all come crashing out through the windows at closing time (I mean, where-oh-where is John Wayne when you need him?).  Anyway mid-February 2010 he came home all dramatic and announced that he had something to tell me.  He had moved in with B (another bar habituée) and he would be filing for divorce.  (I tell you, I had to nail my feet to the floor to prevent myself from leaping ecstatically into the air - that would only provoke the little man).  So long story short, he moved out.  Then 3 weeks later he moved back in.  Then 2 days later moved out ..... can you see a pattern here?  Frankly she was/is as pathetic as him so every couple of weeks they would have a spat and he would move back in "cos it's still half my house".  Honestly, they were the worst months of my life, worse even than when he lived here full-time.  (I remember coming home from a lovely evening at the theatre one time and finding 2 suitcases AND A BLOODY GOLDFISH in the dining area - that was when I sat down and cried - sorely tempted to flush the goldfish down the loo - but I didn't!!)

Anyway, eventually I  filed for divorce and it was finally granted but only after I agreed to take on all the debts AND pay his share of the notary's fees for him to allow me to buy him out of the house AND pay his lawyer's fees - for the divorce AND for his (latest) drink-driving case that was also going on.  Generous of him wasn't it - because if I didn't agree to it he was no longer going to sign the divorce papers.  And to think he goes round telling everyone how he gave me the house!

So, moving seamlessly on, eventually Tweedledum and Tweedledee split up after she cheated on him with a "friend".  Then obviously he is devastated because there are obviously no more women in France and he hated being on his own.  SHAAAAME!

Fast-forward a few years and I am deliriously happily divorced and he gets back in touch with an old friend from the US.  Oh, back up a bit.  In January of this year he gets himself what, according to my kids, is the sweetest dog.  Fast forward again and the new/old friend comes over from the States for three months and has a whale of a time with him throwing money around like it's going out of fashion (good job he didn't have to pay any lawyer's fees/notary's fees eh?)

So then I get a phone call two Sundays ago asking if the kids had told me he was going to the States, so I said "yes in August to see your mom".  So he goes "no, this Friday and I'm leaving definitively"!  To make an ever-longer story shorter, he and the new gf (of three months) are buying a place together in the States.  When I asked about the dog he asked if I wanted it!!!! I told him if I had wanted one I would have gotten one, but since I am absent at work 12 hours a day I wisely didn't want one thank you very much.  So the poor dog gets shunted back to the dog's home and - get this - while he has given  notice on the 3-bedroomed farmhouse he was renting he hasn't emptied it "in case the kids want anything".  He just buggered off to the States on the Friday and left the house "as is".  I mean, he didn't even do the washing-up!

I was furious.  I have enough to do without emptying out his shit and taking his rubbish to the tip.  And as for the garden, for a man who is retired and the garden consists of 5 rose bushes ONLY (I kid you not) I have never seen such a jungle which will take a good few hours to put right.

Now I know you might think it's not my problem - which it isn't - but here in France responsibility for debts etc. goes on down the family line as far as the grandchildren so I don't want my kids to get into any hassle over this.  Add to that they can indeed take some of his stuff if they want it.  The rest, I will clean up and sell (thanks for the suggestion Sonya-Ann) but do I really, really want all this extra work right now?  I think not - but then again, if the good Lord now sees fit to put an ocean between me and him, maybe it will be worth it!!!

Oh, and where are Steptoe and Son when you need them most?

And you know what, this might seem like a bitter rant (I hope not) but it feels so good to write this down and see if other people think (a) I am just a bitter ex-wife (NOOOOOO), or (b) he has a few screws missing.

Busier than ever!

Crikey, I see it's been a while since I posted.  Trouble is I have been so frantically busy I haven't really known which way to turn.  My work is very cyclical (not sure that's a word) and the months of March - July are frantic and then October - December, with slightly less of a workload in between.  Not that I am complaining, I like to be busy and the time passes faster, but it does mean that some of the other "stuff" gets pushed to one side.

On top of that are all the fun things I want to squeeze in so that I don't feel as though all I ever do is get up, go to work, come home, rinse and repeat.  Just lately though, the "other things" seem to be all happening at the same time.

This weekend we went to see a very good production by the Geneva English Drama Society (GEDS) of Ben Elton's "Popcorn".

 

 

I'm not sure how Ben Elton would sum up his play but to me it was a very clever take on how nothing in current society is anyone's fault - it is always someone else's.  You have a Bonnie-and-Clyde type pair of murdering thugs who break into the home of a wealthy film director, famous for making very violent films.  While not wishing to spoil it for anyone who may want to see the play, the thugs blame the film director for making them kill people - it's never their fault you see - but according to the film director, nor is it his fault, so it must be society's fault .... and on and on.  I realized after a short while that I had actually read the book and while I tend always to prefer the book to the film/play, it was very well done, particularly given that they are all amateurs.

 

I got home about 11.30 pm and then got stuff ready for the next day where I had to be up at 4.30 a.m. to get down into a local town for a trip to Turin in Italy.  The local bus services regularly put on trips to Turin as seemingly quite a few people like to go shopping there.  Turin itself is only about 250 km from here BUT they are 250 mountain km so not exactly a 2-hour jaunt, more of a 4-hour stomach-churning exercise.

 

We went via Chamonix and the Mont Blanc tunnel - a very impressive feat of engineering I have to say, and then down through the Aosta valley and lovely Cormayeur.

 

 

 

 

I guess in total it took us 4 hours to get to Turin market.  The original plan had been to visit the cathedral but since the Pope was due to visit the next day all visits to the cathedral were cancelled for security reasons.  I can't say I minded though as we had a lovely time going round the market.  It is what I would call a "working market" as opposed to a "tourist market" - i.e. your fruit and veg market with a separate area for fish and meat and another large area for clothes.  Things were so much cheaper there than they are here in France and the fruit and veg stalls were wonderful.

 



 

 

(Cherries galore!!)

 

Asparagus was €1 a kilo (as compared to between €5 and €8 per kilo here) and everything was so fresh and tasty.  I guess the Italians bring a lot of it up from the south in the earlier part of the year as it really does appear to be sun-ripened and not picked while it is still green and left to "ripen" (i.e. become tasteless) in transport trucks.  (As a side note, in 2003 a Turkish friend of ours organized a long weekend in Istanbul.  It was FABULOUS, all the more so because our friend was from Istanbul and obviously knew where to take us.  The food was so tasty and well prepared that apart from the tomatoes that I grow myself, I don't think I have eaten a shop-brought tomato since as there is just no taste to those perfectly-formed plastic monstrosities that they try to pass off as tomatoes in so many of the shops.)

 

Anyway, I bought so much stuff I ended up having to buy myself a "granny bag".  Man are they great!  The only thing was, I wasn't sure if it was the wheels that were squeaking or my knees!

 



 

Top all that shopping off with a lovely (cheap) spaghetti carbonara in a local restaurant, and I felt like I had died and gone to heaven!

 

On the way back we again stopped off in the Aosta valley at a hypermarket where many people wanted to stock up on wines, spirits and cigarettes etc.  I just bought some mozarella and parmesan, which was lovely and so much cheaper than round here.  So we got back around 9 pm tired but having spent a very pleasant day in Turin.

 

I wouldn't do it often but I think I may take the trip again just before Christmas to go to their Christmas market.  Should be so pretty in the snow.

 

Of course, just to add to the "busy weekend" the next day was our local "neighbourhood clean-up".  Once a year the group of about 25 houses in our little housing plan get together and spend a couple of hours cleaning up our own yards and common areas and then we all have pot-luck lunch together.  It really doesn't take long when you have maybe 30 people pitching in and the whole area looks so nice at the end of it.

 

Our houses are built around a small island so that is where we all set up camp and ate together, and since the weather was great we had a lovely afternoon.  Time well spent indeed, although I was glad to get back to work for a rest!!

 

 

The phantom fart hound!

Many years ago - probably 15-17 years ago I guess - when my oldest son was about 10 I think - he invited a friend over to stay for the weekend.  We live in the French alps and it was winter, so full on skiing season.  My favourite local ski resort is a small town called La Clusaz which is about 30 mintues from home.  Isn't it beautiful!

Anyway, we decided to take our boys and their friend up to La Clusaz for dinner.  Unfortunately, being ski season, the place was jammed to the rafters so the restaurant offered to find us a table if we were prepared to sit "in the back by the bar".  No worries.  Not a problem.

So we ordered our food and sat down to wait.  Unfortunately, my ex and I had both ordered foie gras, thinking it was pâté de foie gras.  Wrong!  It was foie gras itself and we both hate the stuff.  But being typically British (me at least) we were too embarassed to send it back so I set about trying to eat it in tiny bites.  My ex, on the other hand, couldn't stomach it at all and since I wasn't about to eat his also we had to revert to "Plan B".  Plan B, of course, was "give it to the dog".

The restaurant had a lovely Pyreneen mountain dog.  Aren't they beautiful? 



"Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog" by HeartSpoon

Well beautiful when they are clean and dry but wet and smelly is another thing.  Nevertheless, my ex kept trying to feed the dog bits of his foie gras.  Only problem was, every time he went to carry out the dastardly deed, the waiter kept running back past our table to order more drinks.  I swear it took about half an hour to get a small portion of foie gras into what, in all truth, was a very enthusiastic large, smelly dog.  But, persistence prevailed and he finally ate the whole lot, much to my ex's relief.

The downside?  Well there had to be a downside didn't there!  The dog by this time was extremely comfortable and happy - if a little "gassy".  So he made himself completely at home right under our table (hidden by the table cloth), just in case any more tender morsels might be coming his way.  BUUUUUT, what do contented, "gassy" dogs do?  They let rip of course.  The only problem was that while the dog kept letting out these horrendous farts nobody could see HIM - just us!

My ex and I started to laugh and the more we laughed the more the dog wagged his tail - thinking himself extremely clever no doubt.  And the more the smell wafted.  The kids had no idea what we were laughing at, and we were so convulsed in laughter that we couldn't tell them!!!

I'm not sure we ever returned to that restaurant, and goodness knows what our poor visitor thought.  He probably told his parents we really had a few screws loose.  Come to think of it, he probably wouldn't be far wrong!

A journey of 10,000 steps ...

... begins with a single step!  Well of course it does.  I was feeling pretty fed up about my weight (again) this weekend and since I KNOW I am not going to faff around following a conventional diet I have to find some other solution.  I mean, I don't normally obsess about food but mention the word "diet" and I am a gonner.  But I was getting pretty uncomfortable with my undies pinching, not to mention the warmer weather, and "hot and sweaty" for all the wrong reasons is just miserable.  So out, yet again, came the pedometre.

I know that they say that you should push yourself to take 10,000 steps per day to improve your fitness and (hopefully) lose weight.  I also know that when I am at work I average between 6,000 and 7,000 steps per day, so not much.  Well Monday lunchtime I went to the gym (you know the one that is highly-subsidized and just 3 floors above my office that is just too difficult to get to) and piddled around a bit on the bike (while reading) and did a few floor exercises, and you know it feels SOOOOO good on my back.  (Those of you who get "typist's hump" will know what I am talking about).  So why oh why don't I go more often?  Beats me!

Then yesterday I finally managed to get my backside out of bed early enough to make it to the border to get an earlier bus, which allows me to hop off the bus on the Mont Blanc bridge and walk the 3.5 km to work.  And you know it is just madness NOT to be doing this.  The weather is glorious, Geneva is stunning, and I feel so good afterwards.  I mean, look at this for a walk to work.

 

 

 

 

AND .... though I was a little worried that the pedometre would get lodged between my boobs and not register a single step (it didn't - phew!), by walking those extra km from the bridge (3,500 steps for my short legs according to the pedometre) and then walking back into town to the grocery store at lunch-time, I easily made over 10,000 steps before I even left work yesterday evening.  Bliss!

 

 

I think I shall have to have a sit down now as I have come over all faint!

Move over Mrs. Malaprop

Like so many others who work in Geneva, every day I drive to the border where I park and then hop on the bus to cross town to my place of work.  It's about a 40-minute bus ride but I at least get to read for about an hour a day that way.  Listening to the people around me it is obvious there are quite a few English-speakers on the bus too.

One day my friend asked if I could give her a ride home that evening since she was car-less.  So we hopped on the bus heading back to the border and were chatting away (non-stop - as you do - being women of "a certain age").  Ursula has a voice that carries (to put it politely).  She is 10 years older than me and I was (trying) to ask her very discreetly if her doctor was OK with her continuing to take HRT - hormone replacement therapy for the menopause - given that she had been on it for quite some time and was nearing 65.  I was interested because I take it and it changed my life so I want to keep on taking it.

Ursula turned round and said quite airily "Oh yes, no problem.  Last time I was a the vet's he said he didn't see why I should come off it"!  The sad thing is that I understood perfectly what she meant and didn't even bat an eyelid - until I saw the shaking shoulders of some of the men standing just in front of us, trying desperately not to burst out laughing!  Ahha, but one of the joys of being "women of a certain age" is that we couldn't have cared less!

Madame, your feet are on fire!

As I was saying in my last post, I really enjoy the theatre and shows - not so much cinema - I wait for most films to come out on DVD!  So this weekend proved to be a mega binge-fest for me.  Purely by coincidence I spotted posters advertising the 100-voice gospel choir shortly to be playing at the Geneva Arena stadium, and then a couple of days later I saw that the Harlem Globetrotters were also coming to town!  What's not to love?  So a friend and I got tickets for both, which turned out to be playing on the 1st and 2nd May weekend.  A busy weekend indeed.

Friday, 1st May was not a holiday for us (it is in most parts of France) so I trudged to work through an absolute downpour that didn't let up all day.  I wore boots and jeans so I could go straight from work to the Arena BUT it would seem my bloody boots have sprung a leak.  My feet and socks were soaked and I was REALLY uncomfortable.  After work, again in the pouring rain (now I know why they have such big umbrellas in Geneva!) I spent a couple of hours wandering round Ikea (ok, trying to find my way out of Ikea) and then went straight to Arena, which is just next door.

Well the concert was excellent.  Beautiful, powerful voices belonging to all these amazing people with so much rhythm and talent.  When I say "rhythm" I mean it quickly became obvious to me that I really am white once they started dancing around!  Just like it became obvious to me recently in Cuba when someone filmed me dancing salsa - I sure as hell ain't latina!!!  (To give you an idea of my "rhythm" picture Prince Charles in a dress and heels).  Anyway, I digress.  The choir were wonderful and had everyone up dancing and singing.  Since this was Geneva they even had the presenters trying to speak French - which went down very well I can tell you!

Since I was already in Geneva I spent the night at a friend's house and when I took my boots off there was steam coming out of my boots - not to mention a very pungent odour!  Good Lord, thankfully I didn't try to kick my boots off at the show or no-one would have seen much through the steaming mist off my feet.

So then last night we were back at Arena for the Harlem Globetrotters.  Now I have been a fan of the Globetrotters since I was a little girl and the Globetrotters 2015 didn't disappoint.  What a hoot they are - total professionals who made everything look so easy.  And again, this being Geneva they were having to try to speak French - much to the mirth of the little boy sitting next to me.  But honestly, they were great, and brought such joy to young and old alike.  In fact, I have just been sitting here watching old videos of the Meadowlark Lemon era and giggling away to myself.  Definitely worth going to see if they ever play near you.

So tomorrow it's back to work to pay for my sins - but sins very much worth it.  It's good to have a binge-fest every now and again!