red tee..

Late last year we took Long Service Leave and had six weeks on the road. England, France.  I was keen for Ireland but my husband thought differently. "Too many narrow roads, not enough live music in the pubs" we were there in 2007and this is how he remembers it.    I've written elsewhere about the 2010 trip and this is a nothing piece but earlier today a woman in a shop told me she liked the red tee-shirt I was wearing. ( I bought it in an alleyway in Amboise, a riverside town south of Paris.)  Another woman standing nearby looked up and said  "I bet you don't know what it says."
 I came home and found a French-English translation website.  I'm walking around with this across my chest.

A style, Mado, some, the Others, Instructions:

It was once Mado, a style, a history of some for the Others. A thought, clothes, words for a history of mode... For some, style is Mado, for the Others Mado a style is.. Life taste of some, style of Others... Fashion passes, style Mado stays... Mado is a way of life for some and instructions for the Others. Style is the clothes of thought. For some rest white for the Others it is black!!

Code Mado: Get dressed in the cloakroom of the one and carry it as the Other one. Mado, one day, clothes form a colour, a style... Mado conjures in all time all persons, all styles.. The back it is the place, the place it is the back and vice versa...


Yes, well..

gift..

She gives me two bars of Fry's Chocolate Cream and a packet of unsalted cashews.  I bring her a bowl of pumpkin soup and a pink rose.  In the last couple of years we've become good friends.
I'll miss her company when she's no longer living at home.
I use her full name to say goodbye.  She looks across the table and smiles. We get into a discusssion about names, particularly voguish ones that some children have nowadays then I run down the ladder of my own brothers and sisters..  Desmond, Michele, Paul, Michael, Joan, Patrick, Elizabeth and Gabriel.
She listens with all her might.
"You couldn't do better than that" she says.  "You couldn't do better than that.."

She's that kind of friend.

actress of a childhood..

Liz Taylor died overnight. I heard the headlines on the news when I woke this morning.. she was 79..  the first memory that came was the image of her as a young girl with a pale face and blue-black hair riding a horse by the sea in National Velvet ..  when we were kids during the school holidays we watched movies that featured her and Mickey Rooney.  my brother Paul used to remind me of Mickey.. he had bold ideas about what we could do..
when I looked at the Guardian online today the link to the old film was there.. here it is..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/mar/23/elizabeth-taylor-career-in-clips?intcmp=122

After the tsunami comes the grief .. guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 March 2011 22.11 GMT

The reporter from the Guardian is walking along a muddy road surrounded by debris .. He's in the coastal town of Shintona in the prefecture of Miyagi, an area devastated by the earthquake and tsunami last Friday.. Those two words flotsam and jetsam are never more real than when I look at the screen.. A stretch of railway track has been lifted up and plonked sideways by the road and looks like a picket fence..  The reporter stands near the track then reaches into the rubble and picks up something he's found.. A dinner plate ringed in mud.. He turns it in his hands while the camera zooms in on a decorative blue and white plate.. Around the edges are the words Tonight is the Star Festival

A blue body bag lies not far away, tied at the top with  thin blue cord..

Tonight is the star festival
Tonight is the star festival

That line sits with me all day long.. Around 9 I'm standing out the back with the dog, rubbing his head ..There are crickets in the grass and a light, cool breeze and  tonight can I  tell you the sky above is  starless?