Zesty Mumma's Words

A life lived without passion is a life half lived

Archive for the tag “hope”

27 Oct 2016

I Love Paris – part 2 – Ooh Lah Lah. – How Could Anyone Complain!

img_1605“Free wine and cheese for happy hour between 5.00 – 7.00pm, every night, really?” I gushed during check in at my exquisite new hotel, followed with ” I love Paris”, and so began the happiest five days of my trip. Honestly there is very little bad you can truly say about Paris, that’s why I have purposely separated last weeks blog from this one and yes I’m going to say it again Paris is amazing!

In contrast, what I’m now about to say may seem a little harsh and at this moment just want to point out I do truly love the Spanish. They are kind, generous and passionate but for the most part if something in Spain is beautiful it is either built by the Romans or Moors or by accident and don’t get me started about their food presentation. However, the French do nothing by accident, it’s all about the beauty and ascetic’s, whether it be architecture, dress or humble food presentation.

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My week in Paris was dominated by clear blue skies, so very perfect for walking, and walking I did. The main tourist paths around the city are for the most part flat and easy to get around by foot, however, if needed the metro is a useful choice with minimal difficulty and should you need help there is always someone to ask. Most French living in Paris have at least a little English and freely admit it is the international language, unlike the Spanish. I know there is a lot written about the attitude of the French but I simply didn’t find it to be true. Ok so they don’t gush all over you and sometimes appear to be growling and love to argue but they treat each other in exactly the same way!

By far my favourite mode of transport was the many bush bikes available for a small fee at docking stations around the city. Having blistered my feet walking hundreds of kilometres while wearing inappropriate shoes, the bikes were a welcomed relief. More importantly I knew I never wanted to be Lucy Jordan, who realised to late “she’d never ride through Paris with the wind blown in her hair” (it’s a Marianne Faithful, song check it out). Really, if I ever had a out of body experience on my trip it was that moment, riding to Galleries Lafayette on one of the hottest days of the year was worth the third degree sunburn I got!

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The only downside about Paris at this time (due to no fault of their own) is the confronting moment you are happily strolling along, turn left into the Rue Du Temple and come face to face with two French soldiers walking toward you with machine guns. Honestly though, even soldiers with guns walking around your neighbourhood becomes ordinary when you see it enough but I can’t imagine what it is like for Parisian’s living with the situation all the time. In spite of this there wasn’t a single point I felt unsafe in my entire week (except of course the climb up the ancient staircase come slippery slide belonging to the Appi Hotel).

Don’t go to the Louvre on a Tuesday it’s closed! A sad fact I discovered too late so ended up at the Musee D’Orsay instead, which as it turned out was the better choice. From the outside the Louvre is extremely impressive and containing such a huge percentage of this worlds history, would be no less inside I’m sure. However, from what I gleaned from others who managed to actually get inside the experience while still amazing was greatly marred by the vast numbers of other tourists they were sharing it with. The beauty of D’Orsay is the fact that there is only a fraction of the crowds compared to the Louvre yet still contains many examples of the worlds most famous works of art. Degas “la Petite Danseuse” , the beautiful bronze of a fourteen year old ballerina is exquisite while Van Gogh’s “Starry Night Over The Rhine” is breathtaking and just some of the amazing pieces on display.

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In fact the forecourt of the Louvre was actually the only place during my stay that I came close to being robbed. The involuntary response all tourist develop when viewing places of beauty, much like a nervous tick, is to drag out whatever photographic device they may have and begin snapping away. This practice can make you a clear target for those of the human race that only see dollars signs ( or in this case Euro’s) painted on your back.

Dragging the iPad out of my for the thousandth time I had barely entered my passcode when a good looking Frenchman with sparkling, broad smile appeared, offering to take a photo of me in front of the Louvre. Instantly alarm bells went off in my brain, I may not have been in Paris long but it was definitely long enough to know that the French never smile at you like that so he obviously wanted something. Thankfully I’d also seen “French kiss” enough times to know that Meg Ryan’s character had her bag stolen from the same type of slimy lothario when she let her guard down. So frowning at him I declined his offer but he tried one more time before taking his beaming smile of insincerity off to target the next hapless victim.

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Yes Paris is full of amazing buildings and museum and of course the Eiffel Tower but the other thing that it has in abundance is parks and those parks are overflowing with masses of brightly coloured flowers and succulent green grass. Having just spent eleven weeks in a baking Spanish oven where the grass (if there was grass at all) resembled dried golden wheat, I just wanted to squish it between my toes and roll around in it. You’ll be happy to know I settled for squishy toes!

Paris is of course a Mecca for travellers from all over the world and rightly so, however for one group of visitors it apparently does not live up to their imagination thus causing such severe disappointment that they suffer a breakdown. The Japanese are the main sufferers of a debilitating illness called Paris Syndrome ( no that isn’t the all consuming fear that Paris Hilton would once again be the constant source of news for the worlds media). This relatively new mental disorder is characterised by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations and feelings of persecution.

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The Japanese often picture Paris as a land of their dreams; the land of beauty, culture and sophistication. However,  thev soon find the dizzy heights of their imagination does not fit with reality. French women aren’t as stick thin as models, they don’t wear high end designer cloths around the street and Paris isn’t as sterilely clean as they imagined . To add insult to injury, the fluctuating rhythm and harsh tones of the French language create the impression that the French are rude, as a result the Japanese government is forced to repatriated a number of their citizens home every year. There is even a hotline set up for suffers so they can get help quickly!

All I can say is no city on earth is perfect but Paris comes as close as you can get!

Tips

  •  When in Paris walk walk walk – breath it in, immerse yourself in it, experience it!
  • Parisian supermarkets sell great salads, sandwiches and readymade meals at good prices
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02 Aug 2016
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Step out of Your Comfort Zone and feel Alive

Learning to drive  a car for most people comes during teenage years and offers your first taste of freedom from parental constraints. I however didn’t get my licence till I was thirty two! Living in a coastal village it was easy to get myself around town on my bicycle; work, shops, beach, everywhere. Friends still remind me of the massive amount of grocery bags that could often be seen dangling from the handle bars.

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Even when my children were born I still had no motivation to get my licence. “Why do I need it, I can walk with the pram, it’s good excersise,” I told myself. Not until we moved to a rural property did it quickly became apparent that me getting my licence was indeed a necessity.  Now many years later and thousand of kilometres of driving under my belt it is unthinkable for me to imagine living in a world without my licence.

Then I came to Spain two months ago and couldn’t possibly imagined driving around the countryside. As I’m sure most are aware, like the Americas, European countries (except the United Kingdom) all drive on the right hand side of the road and therefore so does Spain. For those of us that learnt to drive in the 30% of countries that do so on the left, the thought of even attempting to make the switch is inconceivable.  I even get confused when  I am asked to give directions, I inevitably choose right when I mean left and visa versa. The thought of me hurtling down a Spanish motorway at 120 km an hour was never on the cards, but then the weather got hot!

When I say hot I mean baking oven, burnt to a crisp, hard to breath and not only did my friends husband have to work but my friend had answered a question wrong when renewing her Australian licence online. The Australian government, ever scarred of fraudsters and illegal immigrants, doesn’t give you any chances and refused to allow my friend to complete her renewal online. This left us unable to go for a swim without Victor. In an act of extreme desperation Selena asks me about five weeks ago if I wanted to drive. I thought she was joking at first but she was deadly serious. I was quite impressed with her courage I must say but the fact the beach is actual only ten minutes, four right hand turns and one left hand away might have had something to do with it.  My confidence however, was not so easily strengthened.

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Which brings me back to the reasons I didn’t drive till I was thirty two, basically I was scarred. I know I said all that other stuff about not being necessary etc, but the honest ” face yourself in the mirror” truth be told was; I was scarred. When I first turned out of our street on the road that took us Mazagon I felt like I did in those days when I was learning to drive. Nothing is natural, you have to be reminding yourself constantly of what you should be doing. I even developed my own mantra, ” keep Selena in the gutter” which translates ” the passenger is alway on the right”.  It felt like the car was driving you not the other way around.

After a relatively short time I ventured further a field, Zara, Sfera and many other Spanish clothing brands decided it was time for sales and we weren’t missing out on that. Then a couple of weeks ago we drove to Sevilla (about an hour away) to visit yet another group of Roman ruins. This time I had to travel on the motorway, which I would like to point out has a speed limit of one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, ten kilometres faster than  Australia. Since that day driving on the right has suddenly become second nature and I am pretty chuffed with myself.

I even drove a friends car in Portugal, which has a very old, narrow and poorly maintained road system, when the friend I was with wasn’t feeling well. The fact she quickly recovered after I took the wheel could’ve had something to do with the fact I have a heavy lead foot and she suddenly realised that I had only been driving on the right for a matter of weeks.

When I chose to take this Solo holiday  I did so for a variety of reason, one in particular was the opportunity to put myself into uncomfortable situations and find answers. Truly driving on the right hand side of the road was one of those situations for me and surprise surprise, I found I could not only do it but do it comfortably. The thing about human nature is that it is easy just living our life in our usual routine and we have a measure of happiness. However, if we choose to push ourself, step outside the everyday, suddenly you feel alive. Each little achievement makes the blood flow and gives you confidence.image

That was my pep talk for the week, now for Portugal. To say Portugal is special is an understatement. I have been across the border a few times during my stay in Palos and noticed that inspite of the similarities with Spain it is also quite different. This trip took me a little further along the south coast to the exquisite Praia de Marinha. This section of the coast and hinterland is called the Algave. It features not only amazing beaches but the remains of lairs of Portuguese smugglers and pirates from a world long disappeared. These bandits notoriously laid in wait for Spanish galleons returning from American, laden with gold and other cargo

Southern Portugal has many resorts  for Northern Europeans but if you venture beyond this artificial world you find the rustic lifestyles of the people is still very authentic and simplistic. My only regret is I didn’t find any surf to photograph for my son and friends but that is further round on the west coast.  I really only scratched the surface of that beautiful country and what I saw I loved, this is definitely a return destination!

Tips

  •  Never leave your home country without an international licence – you just don’t  know when you will need it.
  • Step outside your comfort zone, you just might surprise yourself!
  • Try Portuguese flame grilled Tuna- it’s like no Tuna steak you have ever tried before!

 

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30 Jul 2014

Being a Mum Can Be Bad For Your Health

The woman in front of me looked stressed, her eyes glanced from the pile of eighty five gram tins of tuna she had piled onto  the conveyor belt, past me to grocery aisle behind us. She was careful not to look me in the eye, as is if there was some unknown shame she was trying to hide. Along with the tuna there were other tell tale signs, a three litre container of milk, a twelve pack of jam filled donuts attractively package in a cellophane covered white cardboard box and a jar of no name peanut butter, this woman was a mother.

Now, let me tell you, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I too am a mum.  Her face told the whole story, it was nearly five o’clock, she was still at the shops and she hadn’t prepared tea. Oh the panic attack of it all. I remember those days, the anxiety I suffered if I was still at the shops at that time was intense. As mothers we often placed huge expectations on ourselves. If we don’t get it right our kids will be failures. If we’re late for one dinner everything will come tumbling down. Aaarrgh!

“Have you forgotten something, do you want to go a and get it, I can wait?” I could see her mind ticking off all the things she should have grabbed. It was no skin off my nose I had all the time in the world. I live alone, my children have grown and left home.  What’s more I am finally cured of  that awful panic, but it took a long time.

“No that’s okay, it can wait” she said but her eyes still held that haunted look.

“Your worried about getting home aren’t you?” I couldn’t help myself.

“yes” she said hesitantly, embarrassed at the thought that her  secret was revealed.

“I know that look, your worried that the kids are at home and nothing is done? I remember feeling the same way” As soon as I spoke I could see her physically relax, amazed that someone knew how she felt.

In nursing homes they have a term for dementia patients who go a bit loopy at the end of the day. They call them sundowners. The funny thing is it is often women and it happens at that time of the day when everything gets crazy, kids come home, your trying to cook, there’s homework and fighting, very busy. Those poor old women are probably suffering post traumatic stress syndrome simply because they to were mothers.

I turned to this mum and told her the best advice I could give her.

“I have one thing to tell you, don’t stress, they will survive. If they have to have a can of tuna and a glass of milk for tea, it’s not going to kill them. Just don’t stress.”

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09 Jul 2014
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Expect the Unexpected and You May Be Pleasantly Surprised

 

 

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Have you ever had an unexpected year, a year when nothing proceeds the way you would have thought it would, let alone planned. The year I left my husband and found myself living in a two bedroom flat looking after two grade 12 students, only one of whom was my child, was my surprising year. I spent most of the time fighting tooth and nail to make two  teenagers pass grade 12 , when neither of them really cared that much. Dragging my child out of the surf and the other one out of her bed cause she “just had to sleep a bit longer,” was my usual scenario. I felt like a sergeant major directing traffic, one to Maroochydore High and the other to Mountain Creek. That definitely wasn’t what I expected when the clock struck twelve on 31st December the previous year.

The day after I moved into the flat in Alexandra Headland I walked to the top of Pacific terrace. The view was amazing, the sunlight sparkled on the water and there was barely a breath of wind.  I sat down to contemplate exactly what I was going to do.

I was 40 something and single, after trying desperately to revive something that I should have left dead and buried, retrenched from my job and at that stage neither of my children were living with me. The situation could have seemed quite bleak, I had left all my furniture with my ex,  lent money to someone maxing out my credit card at the same time and I was broke. Sitting on top of that hill, taking in the view on that spectacular autumn morning, I thought to myself, I can either become bitter and twisted or make this an adventure. I’ll tell you later what I chose.

I got  a job at a local seafood shop, not really very glamorous, but if you have ever tried to find a job when you are over forty you will understand. There was method in my madness though, I had partly applied for this particular job because I knew how physically demanding it could be. At the end of grade 12  I had worked the summer holidays in a fish shop so I knew what I was getting myself in for. I had lost my peace in the last ten years of my marriage and I really needed to rest my mind. After years of office work I thought it was a good way to begin my reinvention.

So there I was shovelling boxes of fish, prawns and ice, in and out of cabinets, I didn’t have the time to sink into the bitter and twisted mind set that I was trying to avoid. I did learn to appreciate the little things. To this day nothing gives me more pleasure than to sit down on a hot summer night with a dozen natural oysters, sprinkled with salt, pepper and lemon juice, on a bed of ice, a can of dark and stormy in my hand, watching the Gilmore girls. Oh the unequalled bliss of it all.

So I rode my pushbike to work every morning, up and over the Alex bluff, sunlight dancing on the water, my mind sorting through all the sludge of the past twenty years, defragging as I went. Early on New Years Eve morning, as the year drew to a close, I was making my way through Mooloolaba.  Riding in the middle of the road as I approached a narrow section near the “Loo with a View,” a racing bike attempted to flash past me. The problem was I had a string bag hanging off my handlebars and his handlebars became tangled in it. As anyone would I came to a complete stop planting my feet firmly on the ground as I felt my bike being pulled by the other bike. Unfortunately for that rider it caused his bike to also come to a full stop, he and his bike then hurtled to the bitumen. I saw the whole thing happen in slow motion, unable to do anything to stop it. I watched his thankfully helmeted head smash into the curb and he lay there with his expensive bike resting on top of him.

I felt so bad ….. really, really bad …. until he started to scream at me.
“You bloody idiot, you moved to the side, you bloody idiot” over and over again. I tried to apologise in a soft consoling voice, but he went on and on. Now I’ve been screamed at by the best of them and the more he screamed, the more defensive I became. In the end enough was enough and I stood over him, hands on hips, waggling my finger and stamping my foot like I was scolding a naughty child. “You listen here” I said in my best school marm voice, “It was an accident and you’re very rude and don’t you ever call anyone a BLOODY IDIOT again”

And that’s when I saw it, I wish I hadn’t, I couldn’t believe it. The bloke lying on the ground, hurling abuse at me, was missing a foot. It was like a scene from a bad Monty Python movie, It was awful, Excruciatingly unexpected.

I do want to assure you that he didn’t lose it when he fell of the bike, I just hadn’t noticed it before.

The missing foot made me feel even more incredibly bad than I already did. I probably should have stayed; however, his behaviour, which I am sure was just shock on his part, had made me so angry that I got on my bike and rode off into the sunrise. I then spent the whole of the day in fear that I’d get a visit from the police to cart me off; cause there emblazoned on my tea shirt was the name of my employer, a well known seafood supplier.

Since then many unexpected things have happened, amazing jobs. I worked for a now defunct Childcare Company as an event coordinator. They flew me all over the countryside. I had one trip to Tasmania to open a couple of centres where I only worked for 8 hours the entire five nights I was away and they paid for it, car, fuel, accommodation, meals, amazing. I do sometimes feel that I may have contributed to the financial demise they eventually experienced.

I’ve even been known to wear a purple bear suit when there was a need, now that is another story. I have travelled to many other destinations, that I actually paid for. I have a peace I didn’t have in my marriage and I am unbelievably happy.

So I guess you know which choice I made! Honestly sometimes it is just that simply, you have to choose. Who would have thought, very unexpected!

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