Verdi in Shorts

A friend of a friend left us two personal invitations at the artists' entrance of La Fenice in Venice for a final rehearsal of La Traviata. To go or not to go? Forty-degree heat, a train trip then a tramp through tourists; dodging, sweating, running over bridges in my suede YSL wedges (thought they needed an outing), and GG my singing daughter who has opera ambitions in a big shades and a Gazel hat wearing more sensible flat sandals.

We made it. Found the door, the cranky woman, our passes, the door after door after door through the back and we were in there, in the cool of the theatre. Breathing the rarefied air of that other world. About to see an opera that was first performed in that same space in 1853.

Sitting inside of La Fenice is like sitting inside a Fabergé egg. Or a French patisserie layered with cakes. The voices thrust out into the golden air and seem to swill in space, layers of sounds perfectly unfolding. It is a small intimate theatre newly rebuilt after being burnt down in 1996, so that it still feels heavily crafted, a little too pink and gold.

Oddly at first, the singers were wearing street clothes so that it looked a Pina Bausch production on the wrong channel. Only the Russian Violetta, dressed in white, was incandescent under the stage lights. The other singers looked like a supermarket crowd suddenly roused to perform a flash mob - à la Verdi. Floral summer dresses, old jeans and t-shirts, interruptions from the conductor who quipped to family members, while the tenor's twins wriggled in front of us and his beautiful wife mouthed the words.

In a word, overwhelming. Even more impressive than when we had tickets and were perched up there with the gods. Along with a bunch of Venetian doyennes who urged my daughter up to the gilded rail between them. Who criticised the Nabucco cast while I thought they had been brilliant. Heavy jewels and bouffant hair. Chanel jackets.

Afterwards, we had beers. Watched the tourists. Toned down after the adrenalin of the performance. I asked GG if she thought she could give it a shot. Music studies, years of being groomed, corrected, realigned; if she could stand up there and give her best.

How magical to think that each one of those unearthly voices belonged to a man or a woman who was once a child, a child with a good voice and edgy hopes, a child buzzing inside with music.

The Common Good

At times it seemed as though I were back in the western region of Ghana, listening to the village expire at night. The sky infused with stars, low lights and the occasional sweeping of trees. Bare feet in dust. Siblings speaking instead of spellbound by the TV. The muffled end-of-day speech between man and wife.

Of course we were all in high-tech tents with our phones on roaming and our Chinese-produced camp kitchenware and some people with the luxury of a small fridge.

But it was there at times. The quiet dynamic of village life, so far removed from fences, neighbours, garages, elevators, numbers on doors. Families living alongside one another, in space delineated by nothing more than a line of damp towels. A group of women cooking in the half dark, or a pair of teenagers tramping up to the washrooms afterwards with a tub of dishes. Long table talk into the night, a game of cards, a man snoring on a hammock.

* * *
The sea was a dusty trail away. Green translucent water, a row of yellow buoys to swim towards and back, over and over. A wooden bar for pastis around midday or some chestnut-derived Corsican beer. Crepes for when hunger kicked in somewhere along the afternoon. Rum in my espresso (recommended for the most languid afternoons).

As well as the almond oil I think I polished off four books.

On the ferry back I slept on deck under the massive iron funnel where the wind swept in the night. Storeys of cars and tanned holidaymakers underneath. The hardness already flexing in people's eyes, the idyll over. Back to cities and cars. I burrowed down in my sleeping bag on the bench. Watched the dawn wash over Livorno. Felt degrees of serenity, exhaustion, resolution.

It's going to be a tricky task getting back into work.

Corsica calling

I can hear the sea. Even here, in the middle of cornfields and vineyards and the quarry over the hill, I am sure that whooshing noise must be the waves caressing my thoughts. Surely? Calling out, Are you ready? Are the headlights still bung? Have you bought that 3kg gas cylinder yet?

Yeah, surely. And then the waves are sucked out again like my thoughts. I am looking at my feet in sand with that crappy blue nail polish my friend gave me. Waves rippling. Moonlight.

It seems I am ready to cut loose. The edits are nearly over. I've sent on my last chapters and my Ed will send his last whole version which I will - groan - print out and throw into my knapsack. I read there was wifi where we are going. Groan again. I had really wanted to sever ties.

But at least there will be no computer screen for me. I've yet to select my half dozen books. Or heels beyond my sassy espadrilles and a couple of sheer dresses. Along with all those hats.

Friends of mine suggest I will be bedding Corsican men in my tent. Or one of those single dads requiring english translations and a cup of geniune Japanese green tea. I'm not so sure about that. I'm coming down from a long work run and the usual disenchantment with the exes. I need breathing space. I don't need to cascade into something delirious that will knock the wind out of me.

Okay, you win. I'll throw in that black crotchet bikini from Paris, a bottle of rum, some almond massage oil. I wish I didn't know myself so well.

The waves, the waves.

Goth Mother Urges Readers

Marissa Toffoli has kindly posted an interview with me on the very interesting site wordswithwriters.com

So far, my daughter says I look like a man and my eldest says I look like a goth. Eeek!

Do feel free to add yours. Oh and do read the interview and make sure to vote!

The boys are back in town

It happens every summer. The exes come to town. Their visits overlap, or almost, it is all so horrid.

Why so horrid? Because I feel I am the overlap in person, I am that intersected ellipse where these two men collided. I have given them children that are half-this and half-that. My life was quite this, and then completely that.

Having them around I feel shaky. Was I really that woman, tethered to that life? Was I really that fiend, that crazy loving lover?

A woman could not have chosen two more opposite examples of the male species.

That is why I have been withdrawing. If I think about the exes too much I want to run. And hard.

When I finish these damned edits I am out of here in a muddy jeep, big hat and my hiking boots.

Back in the saddle

Three days afterwards and my neck and legs no longer ache. There is something to be said for dancing in purple plastic heels designed by an architect. Just what that something is, I don't know yet. My brain is not engaged. I wonder if I am the only divorcée in Veneto who throws somewhat-wild-but-mostly-cool parties, gets herself in a tizz, dances herself dotty, sees in the dawn then finds a mattress. (But the mates! All too young, or too not-right, or too visible. And I am past the age where I need to throw myself about for validation. But hmmm there was a pair of shoulders I could have helped myself to.)

Now that the house is almost scrubbed clean I must hose down my brain.

My Editor is back on track and I have zipped up a denim halter dress and sat down to work. In truth I'd rather be starting off on the new books kindly ordered by-myself-for-myself that came in yesterday ('Having Cried Wolf' by Gretchen Shirm of Affirm Press OZ and 'A Little Javanese' by Andre Mangeot of Salt Publishing UK) and okay I confess I have read the first story of Shirm's collection, but I have just downloaded my own book and seen guiltily how hard my Editor has been working.

DLC has been formatted with a lovely typeface that is not my own, the front pages have been spaced out elegantly, the words look at me eagerly from the page. My own words. It is a slightly silly book, but it is my book. And it is coming to life.

On my horse.

Midsummer bash

This week my editor has abandoned me. Happily, I evade the screen. Though I am certain the next round of microscopically-adjusted galleys will soon plonk into my lap.

In the meantime it is time to party. Though I weary very quickly of people and crowds I do like occasional insanity and my character profile seems grounded upon this. Every July people look forward to the big summer bash I have here, without realising I use it to cover my social obligations for the year - seeing people I haven't sought out for an age, having a dance, having a moment of craziness without needing to catch a plane or drive all the way home witless. I see it also as a great opportunity to clean, exploit my sons and get the garden in order.

Now I have written my last lists. The portico has been repainted, the lights tested. The yard will be mowed today. I am about to shop and stuff the fridges. My towering plastic violet heels have been primed. I am almost in freefall towards the big event.

In past years I have danced in a fury, fondled men, drank way too much, woken to find bodies sleeping peacefully on the grass. In tents, on hammocks. A communal snoring. Then the next day in the sun begins and we sit slowly and without speaking under the trees thinking This is it, This was our party.