Pluck the Moment Friday, 20 May Once on holiday, my friend Dana loaned me a book on Buddhism. I don’t remember the title or much about the finer points of the exposé, but as is often the case with me and books, I do remember one passage, read in a particular setting.
The Celtic Thread Friday, 6 May When I was about 12, I had to write a family history. Don't forget, the teacher stipulated, to explain how and why your families ended up in the United States. Of my four family prongs, three - the McKnight, Ellis and Hastings lines - could
Warming Up Friday, 22 April Officially, we're done. Ten days ago - and three years to the day since we took possession [https://mf.ghost.io/when-dreams-really-do-come-true/] of the property - we signed off on the interior renovation work of our Perche house. Unofficially, there’s still a banister that
Attempted Getaway Friday, 8 April Extinct civilisations are following me. Or I'm following them. First, the ancient people of Stonehenge [https://mf.ghost.io/drawing-parallels/] at the British Museum exhibition, now those of Filitosa. Those eyes (Filitosa menhir)We stopped there while visiting friends in Corsica last week. Isabelle, who
Drawing Parallels Friday, 11 March It’s hard to imagine, surrounded by the pre-dawn calm here in the Perche, that last week I was staying at a hotel behind Piccadilly Circus in London where the noise of Friday night partying in the bars below kept me awake despite two sets of heavy
Where Are We Heading? Friday, 25 February There I go again, writing too soon [https://mf.ghost.io/fogged-in/]. No sooner had I sung the praises of February than Storm Eunice battered northern Europe with gusts of wind up to almost 200 km/h/120mph. Close to 20 people and countless trees were killed.
February: A Reappraisal Friday, 11 February February has a bad reputation, at least in my book. A short but nasty month. Dark and cold and only fun if you spend part of it in the mountains or at the beach. Since I don’t ski, the former offers no relief, and it’s
Fogged In Friday, 21 January I wrote too soon. Two weeks ago on this screen, I declared the works on our house in the Perche almost finished. I showed off renovation photos. More emphasis should have been placed on the ‘almost’. Just two days later, the house was once again under siege.
Restoration Friday, 7 January The 6th of January seems a date destined to mark important moments in our lives. Fortunately, in the private sphere, it has more positive connotations than in the public, where it may yet go down in the history books as the day democracy in America received a
Told You So Friday, 17 December “Stop being such a pessimist.” “I’m not being a pessimist. I’m being a realist.” This exchange occurred between my husband David and me on several occasions last summer, i.e., every time someone asked us when the renovation project on our house in the Perche
Long Live Duality Friday, 3 December I've been going to the dentist a lot lately, thus giving me occasion to consider a particularity of the French medical world. Doctors here are highly professional, but their context is often quite personal. Rather than being situated in sterile, neon-lit anonymity, the cabinets médicaux
Paris Poubelle Friday, 19 November “Paris is a rubbish bin.” Thus spoke Stéphane Bern in a recent front-page interview in the daily newspaper, Le Parisien [https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-est-devenue-une-poubelle-pourquoi-stephane-bern-quitte-la-capitale-13-11-2021-IAF76QPSMVDKLLOXCJW7Q7R4SQ.php] . Calling Paris une poubelle made a splash not just because he’s a media personality and President Macron’s guru
Plant Me Friday, 5 November Maybe it was the travel, an activity that now seems almost unnatural to me. Maybe it was just the contrast between the two destinations, Arles one weekend and Vienna the next, the first city intimate, winding and narrow, the other outsized and of Habsburg imperial design. Long
Full Circle Friday, 22 October Late last year our son William joined the Covid-inspired urban exodus and moved from Paris to Arles, where his girlfriend Margaux was already living and where he'd spent the various lockdowns during the pandemic. We visited for the first time last weekend. As the high-speed
A Room of My Own Friday, 8 October Something wonderful has occurred the last couple of weeks: for the first time in years—since we started living half-time in Berlin in 2013—I’ve got my old Paris rhythm back. The beat is not complicated: reasonably uninterrupted days where I work mornings, and in the
Birthdays Friday, 24 September My birthday is in April, but I got my present late this year. Daughter Georgina and son Christopher, born on the 19th and 15th of September respectively, decided that they wanted to spend theirs together and chez nous. With brother William, plus partners, plus newly minted grand-daughter
Seasonal News Friday, 10 September In times as out of joint as ours [https://mf.ghost.io/a-precarious-position/], why wouldn't summer wait until September to appear? Certainly August here in the Perche showed scant sign of the season, being cool, often windy or rainy and not everything I cracked it
Confession Friday, 27 August In my many blog posts over the last year about the renovation of our property in the Perche, there is one element of the project that I have studiously avoided, both textually and visually. Rather like tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. And it is large,
Request Granted Friday, 13 August When I pushed ‘Publish’ two weeks ago, it was with a limp finger. I was not completely satisfied with the blog I’d just written and not happy with myself either. Quiet, Please [https://mf.ghost.io/quiet-please/], seemed unfinished, missing a descriptive detail here, a clarifying
Quiet, Please Friday, 30 July Incessant noise hews the mellow summer air and crushes the ability to think. In Paris yesterday, hands over my ears, I stared at our kitchen wall, expecting it to crumble at any minute under the deafening, juddering drilling from next door. In the Perche, the hammering and
Grains of Sand Too many grains of sandFriday, 8 July William Blake may have been able to see a World in a Grain of Sand [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence], but I need something a little bigger to encapsulate my Paris life, which last Saturday 3 July clocked in at 40
Deconstruction Friday, 4 June The last couple of months, we have been attentive observers at an archaeological dig. Or so it has often seemed, since the re-haul of our old house got underway early April. Part One of our renovation project in the Perche transformed a 19th century barn [https://mf.
Lost Time Friday, 22 May Two days ago, I had a Proustian moment. The reverberating memory in my case did not involve a spongy cake; rather, it was conjured by a trip to the Préfecture de Paris. For those of you unfamiliar with Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps
Semi-Detached Friday, 7 May One recent lockdown evening, I watched the new film version of Rebecca on Netflix. Based on Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, it's the story of a young woman who becomes the second wife of the wealthy Max de Winter after his first, apparently
Nesting Friday, 23 April I’ve been thinking about the swallows. As regular readers know, we displaced a large family [https://mf.ghost.io/whose-house-is-this/] of them when we began to convert a barn into living space last year out here in the Perche. Before the works started, while we were
