Mary Fleming

Writer living between Paris and le Perche (Normandy). For more information on her novels SOMEONE ELSE and THE ART OF REGRET: https://www.maryfleming.co/

In Memoriam

Friday, 23 June In April my mother was hospitalized, once, then twice. Her health had been declining steadily for some years. Osteoporosis had reduced her from a stately 5ft9 to a hunched and crunched 5ft2. My mother and sister Catharine, 1968 She’d had several falls and brittle bones had

Lessons for Living

Friday, 28 April “Have you done any yoga?” asked Anna, the dog coach, as we sat around our living room for the first session. We had met her at the vet when we took Tasha in for an eye infection that wasn’t going away because even David and I

Thinking makes it so

Friday, 14 April Two days ago I had a birthday and aged 15 years. At least to my eyes and in the eyes of world I did; the difference between being 59 and being 60 is that big. Because at 59 it's still possible to convince yourself you

La Terreur des Tuileries im Treptower Park

First paw-prints in Deutschland Friday, 31 March Usually I return to Berlin with a certain eagerness. There are so many elements of our life there that I like: our lovely apartment, the park and woods nearby, the scarred streets that hit me like a jolt of electricity after the graceful

Tasha Outside and In

Friday, 17 March Unfashionable though the truth may be these days, I am going to be honest with you: Tasha is not an easy dog. Astute readers of this blog may already have picked up on this but it has been hard for me to admit. I would like my

Danger! Men at Work

Friday, 3 March It’s hard to know in New York. Is this edgy, flinty, vigorous city a trend setter or just a particularly intense reflection of the times? Or is it sui generis, a one-of-a-kind kind of place? Generalization is of course a dangerous exercise and New York is

New Horizons

Friday, 17 February Even in a buzzy, beautiful city like Paris it’s easy to fall into a rut. To find yourself getting up in the morning, putting body and mind on automatic pilot and just enduring the day. To feel at every trudging step as if you’ve seen-this-done-that.

Good Intentions

Friday, 3 February When our Elsa died in December, I got many wonderful messages of sympathy (for which I send heartfelt thanks across the blogosphere) but one particularly stuck in my mind. My ex-sister-in-law Anna F., who has had countless canines, wrote: “I often have the feeling that the previous

Adieu et Merci

(photo by William Fleming) Elsa, 17 December 2001 (Tours)-8 December 2016 (Berlin) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, 16 December Our dear Elsa is gone. She died last week, just short of her 15th birthday, and we are bereft. When our other dog Lily died, it was also very painful. But there was

East-West Thoughts

Dismantling the East? Friday, 2 December This will undoubtedly come as a shock to anyone who knows or lives in Berlin but people sometimes say to me, including a few who have actually visited the city: “There’s no difference between East and West anymore, is there?” It’s true

Fly Me to the Moon

Super-gibbous-moon Friday, 18 November This month the moon has been following us closely. It has in fact been as near to the earth as it ever gets, making it appear 14% larger and shine 30% brighter than usual. The scientific name for this phenomenon is a perigree-syzygy of the earth-moon-sun

Taking Stock

Selfie, Puschkinallee Friday, 4 November It is quiet here in Berlin. Or so it seems after months of intense movement— moving out [https://mf.ghost.io/stewarding-spiders/] of a house or travelling far [https://mf.ghost.io/hope/] and wide [https://mf.ghost.io/steep-steps/]—that certainly went well beyond

Steep Steps

Iranian woman and tourist overlooking Persepolis Friday, 14 October I have just returned from a trip to Iran, and one of the first things I noticed, besides many women swathed in black, were the steepest steps I've ever seen. They were everywhere, from mansions and palaces to mosques

Adieu to a Corner of Paradise

Friday, 16 September Late August, spider season begins in Normandy. It means that armies of arachnids scurry on all eight of their legs into your house in search of a sheltered spot to mate and make nests. Which also means you can sweep or vacuum to your heart’s content

Hope

(photo by our guide Ferdinand) Mother and Daughter and a Mama Gorilla Friday, 12 August We have just returned from a tour of Rwanda, organized and led by daughter Georgina who has been working there for the last year, and I have discovered that the world's not all

The House Next Door

Thursday, 28 July This summer I’ve been thinking a lot about the house next door. Or what’s left of the spacious bourgeois property covering an entire side of our country lane. For the last decade it has been abandoned and nature has been left to her own devices.

Worlds Apart

Friday, 15 July It is 6.30 in the morning and all around me is calm. Cool country air is wafting through the window, the sun is beginning to burn away the fog in the fields and the only sound is the odd chirp of a bird, the burble of

Friends and Family

Friday, 1st July Monday afternoon I flew from Paris to Berlin. I travelled with my British passport, a document I have carried with pride for over 30 years. My British nationality, gained through marriage to my first husband Charles, has meant I am part of Europe, the continent to which

The Pace Quickens

The morning after Friday, 17 June Just before France hosted the World Cup in 1998, I was a real spoilsport. In the days running up to the tournament, I lamented: Oh no! We’re going to be overrun with rowdy, unseemly hordes! It’s going to be awful! I wish

Sirens Singing

Le Vert-Galant Friday, 3 June On Wednesday, working as usual in my office, an air raid siren began to wail. I looked at my watch and sure enough it was 12.00 on the dot. Because it was also the first Wednesday of the month, I was not distressed by

Restraint Systems

Homme et Femme, en Buste monotype from the MOMA exhibition Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty [http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1613?version=meter+at+0&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.fr%2F&priority=true&

Learning German

Friday, 29 April In the first part of our long drive back to Paris yesterday, we were listening to the radio and I was thinking how much my German vocabulary is a mirror of the times. Here’s a sample of some words that, had I moved to Berlin in

A Fine Balance

Elsa's first trip to the seaside Friday, 15 April On the road again, this time to the farther-flung Rügen, an island that hovers off Germany's northern coast in the Baltic Sea. It’s a place that everyone seems to love, and we could see why almost

Reincarnation

Friday, 1st April My husband David has special powers. I discovered this several years into our marriage, on a very cold, very dark December Sunday in Frankfurt, where he was working and I was visiting. We’d taken a bike ride without an exact destination beyond lunch in mind. After

A Safe Place

Good Friday, 25 March At 7.30 Tuesday morning I was as usual walking Elsa. As usual I was listening to the news on Deutschland Funk to improve my German. And I said to myself: Thank you, President Obama, for visiting Cuba. You may be supplying Americans with yet one