Mary Fleming

Shell Life

Friday, 22 November For the last few weeks, since the 6th of November to be precise, I have had a physical urge to put my head down and pull it into hunched shoulders, to retreat into a shell. Fortunately it has been relatively easy for me to indulge this reptilian

The Other Side

Friday, 1st November All Saints’ Day, La Toussaint, a holiday in France and it’s dead quiet here at 5.30am as I take my first sip of coffee, open my computer. Tasha is curled up on the floor next to me. Though still dark outside, I can’t imagine

Memory Lane

Friday, 18 October “An imaginary path through the nostalgically remembered past,” is how Merriam- Webster Dictionary defines Memory Lane. Though I was on a real path – a two-week trip to the US – it often felt imagined. Or like a dream, where remembered places are both familiar and foreign and certainly

Happy Birthday, Blog

Friday, 27 September Ten years and eight days ago I copied the snippets of Paris-Berlin life that I’d been collecting on my computer since January and pasted them to my new website, then went live with the first full-blown essay “Elsa, a French Dog in Berlin”. I began this

Small is Beautiful But Endangered

Friday, 13 September If anyone tries to tell you that size matters, send him to Armenia. I have just returned from a five-day trip there to celebrate the 15-year anniversary of my husband David’s foundation The Caucasus Nature Fund (CNF). The country is slightly larger than southwest England, slightly

Aglow

Friday, 30 August A few minutes ago I woke up and didn’t know where I was. Or more precisely, I thought I was still in the Perche and stretched my arm right to check the time (thus hitting my husband) instead of left, the direction of my Paris night

Critical Mass

Friday, 26 July After much drum-rolling on social media, publication day finally came last week for my new novel Civilisation Française. Neil and Nancy J, Paris friends who now live in central London and have the perfect open-spaced apartment for a large party, offered to host the launch. Maybe they

The Path Ahead

Friday, 12 July It’s become an obstacle course, my morning walk. All-natural impediments but the path is overrun with competing plant life. Daucus carota that I wrote about recently still meanders across my way. Though the flower of the wild carrot has mostly turned to seed, she is no

Inertia

Friday, 28 June After travels to Northern Ireland, return to a stifling city. Not the 50°C/122°F in India end of May or in Mecca last week that killed 1300 pilgrims, but too hot for comfort in the stone oven that Paris becomes in the summer heat. It

Dividing Times

Friday, 14 June The disadvantage of a life split between two places is that you are not in sync with the alterations that inevitably occur over time. The advantage, beyond the good fortune of having two chez soi, is that you notice the differences. We had only been gone a

Wild Things

Friday, 31 May Say it out loud: press the L hard against your front teeth, release your tongue for the U, push your lips forward, then let them linger on the Sssshhhhh, and you’ve got it, lush, the word that plays over and over again in my ears during

For the Birds

Friday, 17 May Either my ears have been elsewhere the last five years, or something wondrous has happened to our bird community in the Perche. In the past I have heard light singing early spring on the morning walk with Tasha. I have sat in the garden on a warm

Help Wanted

Friday, 3 May Maybe because of its deep historical roots and multiple associations, May Day in France is a national holiday celebrated in earnest. Spring, the original reason the Romans then the early Christians observed it, is really here, which makes people happy, encourages them to offer sweet lily-of-the-valley to

Looking Back

Friday, 19 April Five years and one week ago today, we took possession of a house and garden and the surrounding fields in the Perche. After a summer-long search for a place in the country within a two-three hour radius from Paris that needed no renovation work, we circled back

Old house, novel ideas

Friday, 5 April A few weeks ago I visited the place des Vosges. I wanted to see the recently renovated Victor Hugo Museum and the exhibition of his grandson Georges Hugo’s art. But I also like to check in occasionally on this 17th century square, the oldest in Paris,

Grey Matter

Friday, 15 March We the People do not agree on much these days, but can anyone deny that the weather here in north-western Europe this last stretch of time has been terrible? I use the term stretch of time because it has felt too warm to say winter. Wherever I

Timeline

Friday, 1st March Every morning, no matter how busy, I take a moment to scroll through Le Parisien newspaper in my inbox. A treasure trove of information about city life, it rarely disappoints and has inspired many a blog. Wednesday I learned about an exhibition of objets trouvés, a lost

Broken Geometry

Friday, 16 February Any regular reader of this publication or anyone who follows me on Instagram will have seen variations of the above photo, the perfect triangle of my morning dog walk with Tasha in the Perche. Even in February, its geometry evokes peace and harmony, a fleeting glimpse of

Islet of Heat

Friday, 26 January The French love their grands projets, and there are quite a few of them in Paris at the moment as the city frenetically dolls herself up for the Olympic Games this summer and beyond. There is the ongoing reconstruction of Notre Dame after the devastating 2019 fire.

Season's Greetings

Friday, 12 January Winter surprised us this week. On Tuesday, when I opened the door onto the dark morning to walk the dog, snow that had not been forecast blanketed the landscape. Better yet it stuck long enough to stick in the memory, and yesterday there were still patches of

New Places, Small Spaces

Friday, 17 November The sun came out a bit on Wednesday, and I decided to carpe diem, to act on a recent article in Le Parisien newspaper about “deux petits paradis aux allures de village” that I had never even heard of: la Butte Bergeyre and la Mouzaïa. Getting to

Inside Out

Friday, 3 November It’s gilet jaune season again – not the human type where the discontented French take to the streets – but the canine version when a dog needs yellow-vest visibility in the face of possible stray bullets. The hunting season in France lasts about five months, from the beginning

Shape Shifting

Friday, 20 October Our local bookshop closed this week. The Labo Land photo developer next door to it and the Café Mucha next to it will soon follow suit. The block of buildings has been bought by a developer who has revoked their leases. Their disappearance marks a significant advance

A Model

Friday, 6 October Earlier this week, I felt an urge to get away, to be reminded that Paris is more than its currently frantic, disfigured centre. Along with pervasive road and building work that I have written about in previous postings, there’s now the Rugby World Cup Village blighting

Finding the Feng Shui (cont'd)

Friday, 22 September Mid-August, I got a shocking email. It was from Orange, our telecommunications provider. They are (slowly) installing fibre optic access in our area and needed details on our living arrangements. The message included a satellite photo that must have been taken last summer: Was it really that