Wednesday 14 October 2020


EASTER EGGS


 We are endeavouring to be on our best behaviour at this time of the year. We have disturbed memories, you see. Last Easter weekend saw Beagle and me qualifying for Guests From Hell status.
Sunday morning we gathered together our bi-national offerings (Italian olive oil and Cadbury’s Easter eggs), rounded up the dog and tripped lightly downstairs  to stuff it all into opposite ends of the Chelsea tractor.
Trip was the operative word. A litre of  olive oil goes a horrendously long way on a marble floor and takes the best part of half an hour and most of the Sunday Times to mop up.
Hound was subsequently inserted with some difficulty behind the dog-proof iron bars, having picked up the scent of the eggs at 100 yards. I might also mention at this juncture that Beagle’s personal vision of Paradise consists of a large meadow dotted with rabbits (real, imaginary or chocolate,) and laced liberally with fox poo.
We were thus a little late starting out on the requisite trek to the country for the traditional Easter Egg Hunt.
Technologically Impaired husband watched with some scepticism as I deftly programmed my girlfriend’s postal code into the GPS and then turned on the radio. Soothed by the dulcet tones of Ms. Sat Nav, however, he relaxed sufficiently to obey her instructions for once, instead of arguing furiously with her disembodied directions at every crossroad.  I sank back to listen to the chewing-gum-for-the-ears braying of the Omnibus Edition of the Archers. Something about the combined effect of these two acoustical elements  must have dulled our already waning critical faculties. We had the motorway to ourselves and had made up for nearly all our lost time as we swung triumphantly through the gates and up the drive to our hosts’ magnificent residence.
Blindly obeying our front and rear sensors, we parked expertly between a Land Rover and a Bentley and began to unload.
Realisation hit the pair of us more or less simultaneously. It was the wrong host. Wrong lunch party. Wrong girlfriend. Wrong post code. Clearly there was an Easter lunch in progress here too – witness the cars all over the drive. But not the one to which we had been invited.
It is not an easy feat to back a 4 x 4 silently out of a gravel drive with a Beagle howling to get out for a sniff at one’s non-host’s lurchers’ backsides, but we managed it. Except that having scrunched back up to the main road spitting gravel to left and right, somehow the main gates had closed on us…..
The good news was that I had, at least, chosen the right county, and after a highly apologetic phone call to explain in graphic detail the tremendous traffic jams we were encountering on the M20, we finally reached, as Ms. Sat Nav sexily remarked, our destination.
Our real host had been obliged to open an additional bottle of fizz which had clearly not overly amused him. His guests were starving and pie-eyed. The cook was threatening to resign as she watched her succulent pink lamb turning to strips of grey leather. Beagle had an immediate fight with the house Labrador about who had territorial rights over the last remaining smoked salmon canapé left on the plate for Miss Manners. The children sulked throughout lunch refusing to eat anything at all because they had been deprived of their Sunday morning egg hunt.
I slipped out into the garden as soon as coffee had been served and started to hide the eggs in as many Beagle-proof places as I could find. This, I realise in retrospect, also rendered them completely invisible and unattainable to anyone under the age of 15 or below 6ft in stature. The oldest child was four and a half, though with the lungs of a thirty year old coloratura.
The score at the end of the day was as follows:
2 yr old girl………..three daffodil heads and a peony.
Older brother……....two shiny flat stones, three pellets of goat droppings, one fir cone, two lost golf balls,
Black Labrador……. look of extreme guilt, four remaining mauled eggs. Estimated eight swallowed whole complete with silver wrappings.
Beagle………………nowhere to be seen. Later found in hen house consuming a raw omelette having rolled in all the fox poo.
Him and Me………… a fragrant and silent ride home.


 

BUT NEVER FOR LUNCH – SANDRA ARAGONA

 


Further exploits of an undiplomatic Beagle now in retirement with her owners and not even Trying to Behave. Whilst our former Ambassador endeavours to maintain his standards of sartorial elegance and diplomatic sensitivity, Madame revels in the liberty to refuse a luncheon invitation, ditch the high heels and head for the countryside. Beagle of course never really tried to behave in the first place, but released from the constraints of Embassy protocol, she indulges in her own vision of heaven, be it exercising young racehorses, chasing cats up trees or simply peeing on the roses.

Sandra Aragona’s latest book of anecdotes to cheer you up during lockdown is now available on Amazon. Order it from:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08KKQ85FN    if you live in the U.K.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KKQ85FN       if you live in the USA    

https://www.amazon.it/dp/B08KKQ85FN            if you live in Italy.

and have it sent, gift wrapped and with your personal greeting, to all your friends. Forget the cracker jokes. This is far more entertaining.

Beagle: Beagle and I had a serious talk the other day.   Look, I said. I am prepared to take you horse riding with me on two conditions. She rolled over in the approved “Save me, I’m only an innocent Beagle” position.  One, I said sternly, you stay right away from the muck heap and two, you do not eat anything at all, neither alive nor dead nor pre-digested.
Got it?                                                                                                       

Got it, she said, and made straight for the front door. Deaf as a post but understands every word you say.” 

Travelling in India: You have to respect a camel.

Anything which can look so damn supercilious and make you feel so damned inferior whilst looking down at you from the top end of an S-bend has to be admired for its sheer aplomb.” 

Grandchildren: I suggested we might all go to the Zoo. Grandfather, (His former Excellency), set the tone by getting lost before we were even through the turnstile. He finally caught up with us after I had put out a lost child announcement and requested that he should make his way to the restaurant where his mummy would be waiting for him. He was not at all amused.”


Monday 4 February 2019

DELAYED



I have to confess that my Christmas tree hasn’t actually found its own way back into its very dilapidated box quite yet, presumably because it is hoping to meet up with the budding branches dripping with multi-coloured Easter eggs on its way out. Also it only seems like yesterday that I was unwrapping coloured balls and partridges without pear trees and turtle doves a-perching and glass baubles from the Highgrove shop, (well we do a naice class of Christmas kitsch when we put our minds to it. How many people do you know with HRH's baubles on their plastic, sorry, ecological Christmas tree? In Rome?)  Hooray for small things and may they never grow up and be too old to appreciate a chocolate sovereign or a soon-to-be earless bunny hanging from a droopy branch.
So I thought I might add a belated description of our late lamented festive dayandahalf.

It began with a string of Whatsups on a group chat between myself and the daughters, following my 'umble request to know how many people wished to sleep chez nous over Christmas?

Daughter No 1 (sent from a swimming pool in Morocco) : "all 3 of my kids if poss. "
Daughter No 2 (from her office, working her butt off) : "um - thought maybe just my 2 little ones, so that I could hit the shops together with my sister...."
Right. So they had that sorted nicely, didn’t they?
I wait 20 mins till they get desperate for an answer and tentatively start wondering between them whether the parents couldn't possibly go out and buy a bigger house with a couple more bedrooms? Then I put them out of their agony.
No probs, guys. Mattresses spread over the floors and warning notices will be posted to Father Christmas when he comes down the newly swept chimney because otherwise he might trip over all the bodies.
And then some eejit with a drone intervened and suddenly it was looking like half the family wasn't going nowhere. Daughter No 1, back in London from Morocco with a fading suntan, began researching trains to Brussels (huh?) having discovered that anything from the U.K. to anywhere in Italy had been booked out solid for the past 24 hours and that a train would cost her £800 for each member of the family. Finally, in the manner of all the best stories, just when we had all given up hope and she was resigned to rushing out to buy her own turkey and trimmings, a last minute message arrived.  She had found flights for "the equivalent of a small mortgage"  to Pisa whence they would drive to Rome.  Arriving on Christmas Eve. At that point, all we needed was the wrong sort of snow on the runway.
So I collected the turkey and forced it into the oven and slung a freezer full of variegated sausages over to Daughter No2  who was taking care of the trimmings.
Each sausage was decoratively adorned with a colourful flag denoting its suitability or not  for those with specific beliefs, religious or humanitarian, all dietary requirements being faithfully respected in this household. As usual all adult females were squashed into the not enormous kitchen when not frantically wrapping stuff behind closed doors whilst the men were slurping away when not wondering when the mince pies and espresso would finally emerge, (very bi-cultural, my lot). And throughout all this the kiddies were, according to age, prodding packages or their screens and generally bonding over the fact that Christmas was SUPPOSED to be celebrated in pyjamas without neat pony tails or anything on your feet.
So we dutifully cooked and ate and drank and made merry and went to church until they all flew off on holiday somewhere for a couple of days.


Question: Why do all my friends keep moaning about how much weight they put on over the Christmas period?  I lost two and a half kilos and haven’t been able to stomach anything fizzy for a month.

Now that IS tragic.