Mary Fleming

Getting the lay of the land Friday, 12 July While thinking about how to approach the first entry of this re-christened Paris-Perche Diary, I returned to the beginning, to the first blog I

Straße des 17.Juni: "Der Rufer"(The Caller), statue commemorating the uprising; the Victory Column in the background Friday, 21 June Our move from Berlin back to France last week was

Friday, 7 June During our three-week Berlin stint in May, I drew up two lists, one with the preparations for the move mid-June and the other a personal catalogue of what I wanted

Friday, 17 May When my friend Cathy S was a little girl, she came home from school one day and said to her mother: “I’ve made a new friend.” “That’s nice,

Friday, 3 May I grew up on the ninth floor of an apartment building in Chicago. But I dreamt of living in the countryside surrounded by nothing but nature. In my active fantasy

Friday, 19 April Much ink, both real and virtual, has already been spilled and I begin this blog uneasily. What more can I possibly add to the outpour? On the other hand how

Friday, 5 April Last Friday we once again survived the 1126km (700m) road trip from Berlin to Paris. This one clocked in at 11.5 hours, despite minimal stopping and some very fast

Anything else out there but the rising sun? Friday, 22 March If we move Tasha moves, though not always in the same direction. She sometimes has her own adventures. During our almost constant

The Cloisters, New York Friday, 8 March During my constant movement over the past six weeks (Paris to Berlin to Paris to London to Paris to the US to Paris), I have been

Friday, 15 February We’d been talking about the trip for some time. Ever since our children finally got their belongings out of our cupboards and culled into a heap in our garage

A shadow of myself Friday, 25 January After the immoderation of Christmas and New Year, January is usually a month of resolute plans for a fresh start. A time when we promise to

boulevard Saint Germain Friday, 11 January Exactly one hundred years ago, January 1919, W.B. Yeats wrote his most famous poem, The Second Coming. It's the one where he talks about things falling

(needlepoint portrait by Catharine M) Friday, 28 December It has been almost two years since Tasha crash-landed into our life. But since we were in India last December, this has been her first

Friday, 30 November It's a law of nature: if you are down, someone else around you will be up. As readers of my last blog will know, it has not been a great

Friday, 9 November I am returning from an unexpected sabbatical. It started with nine days in Berlin’s Charité hospital. Oddly the notification came at another branch of the Charité complex, the heart

Friday, 5 October Paris is under siege. It often is in September-October. The traffic is terrible. Disgruntled workers, back from a month’s holiday, start striking and demonstrating and generally adding to the

Friday, 21 September Writers block is bad news for a writer but a much more critical condition is affecting me at the moment: brain block. I have been suffering from it since July.

Friday, 7 September Every year in the middle of August a miracle occurs in Paris. And I’m not referring to the Virgin Mary’s trip to heaven on the 15th. I am

Friday, 13 July We have once again crossed the Rhine. It does not get any easier with practice, even on a Sunday. Half of Europe was on the road with us in cars

Friday, 29 June As the US prepares to celebrate 242 years of Independence, some citizens may be buying their charcoal with a certain feeling of superiority or at least a belief in their

On a clear day you can see forever, or from Tbilisi to Mount Kazbeg anyway Friday, 15 June According to Greek myth, Prometheus was the saviour of mankind and the wisest being in

hard to resist Friday, 1 June Today I would l like to proffer a small piece of advice: if you are thinking of adopting a dog from a shelter because it will be

Crow, sofa and Elsa's ear Friday, 18 May For the last three years I have rounded the corner with trepidation, expecting the worst. But it's been okay. Until last week. Our little Kiez

Friday, 4 May When I wrote about shopping in Berlin two weeks ago, how could I have neglected to mention the most German part of my routine? Every few weeks—and really I

Friday, 20 April Even with only two of us in the house, I seem to spend a lot of time shopping, especially when we’ve just changed cities, as we recently have, and