The Washing Shed

 

They are doing construction work on the washing shed. It is located next to the river which often is dry.

When I was first in Argelès a few decades ago, I was intrigued to see women using the large sinks inside to wash their clothes. They could use the clothes lines outside, although most of them took their clothes home to hang on lines outside their windows. Sometimes it felt as I was walking down the narrow streets under a canopy.

Even as recently as the pre-covid 20s, I would see women there. It was definitely older women, whom I called mamies (not to their faces), grandmothers who I would enjoy chatting with when we met on the street or the shops.

These same women would often put their chairs on the street outside their front doors and chat, sometimes watching grandchildren, sometimes mending or knitting, sometimes shelling peas or snapping beans for lunch. They also had a village bench where they would gather. 

The men, dubbed The Senators, had another bench.

One by one these women have disappeared. I watched as their energy was reduced, started using canes, although they still could carry their laundry from home to shed. Originally, they used wicker baskets but over the years these were replaced with the big plastic bags from the grocery store.

I wrote a poem a few years back that captured the moment.  In a way it is sad that tradition of the washing shed will disappear, but the daughters of the women, even those raised in the village now are working women and have washing machines and sometimes even dryers.

THE WASHING SHED

The washing shed cooks in the sun.

Women stand by soapstone sinks

scrubbing stains from clothes

as their grandmothers did.

The smell of bleach and soap

mingles with sweat.

They brush hair from their eyes.

Children play underfoot

                  as the river flows by.

 

They talk of Pierre beating Marie,

Sophie’s new job in Toulouse, Michel

cheating on Chantal, fresh garden

basil, the price of apricots.

Some own washing machines

white and shiny in lonely kitchens.

Better to carry baskets and powders

to the shed where gossip steals time

                as the river flows by.

 

Vignette The Taxi Driver

 

This is the first in a series of vignettes about chance encounters I've had with people over the years in different places.

My friend called her favorite taxi driver for me. It would be easier than lugging my suitcase and laptop to the number 144 bus, La Défense and Gare du Lyon.

I'd spent a week with her, my former neighbor in Geneva, in her tiny Paris flat. When we lived across the hall from one another, we'd shared meals, experiences joyful, frustrating and ordinary. She had become a family member of choice. 

Now she lived in Paris as a medical resident I would visit often pretending, I too was a Parisian and Hemingway writing and looking out her window at the Paris rooftops when I wasn't exploring the city.

Mohammed, the taxi driver, was on time. With his long beard, he would have been at home on any street in Damascus, Algiers or Cairo. As I do with taxi drivers, I engaged him in conversation.

From then on whenever I left her flat to go home to Geneva, Mohammed would drive me. Our conversations covered everything from Obama, French politics, Afghanistan, Iraq, Damascus, food, family, and being an outsider from our birth cultures.

After one Christmas visit when my daughter had joined us, he took her to Charles de Gaulle. "She's the most precious person in my life, be careful," I said to him.

"I know," he said.

On one trip, he said, "You have to meet my sister." He dialed her. On speaker we had a three-way conversation. She was an English teacher, but to not exclude him, we spoke French.

"The next time you're in Paris, you'll have to come to me for couscous. I make wonderful couscous."

Mohammed confirmed that. 

It was not to be. My friend moved.

At Gare du Lyon, he handed me my laptop.

"Shukran," I said.

"Awfan," he replied.

 

Free Write--The spiral staircase

 

It was 8° centigrade with wind between 65-90K an hour. We wanted to do the Free Write within the warmth of Mille et Une's tea room fueled by Earl Grey tea and hot chocolate. Next week's will be more of a challenge with each of us in a different country. 

D-L's Free Write - Looking Downstairs

Nine-year-old Leah lay flat on her stomach looking down the spiral staircase. 

Since they'd moved into this modern house three years ago, she often snuck out of her loft bedroom to watch the goings-on below.

Parties were especially fun to watch, although one time a neighbor, who was drunk, threw up on the rug.

Her mom had acted as if it didn't matter, but when every one had gone home, she complained so much and so loud that Leah's father told her mom to shut up.

Sometimes her parents watched TV and ate popcorn. Leah could see the screen. More than once naked men and women crawled over each other. 

The last year or so, she could watch and listen to her parents fight. Sometimes her father threw stuff. A vase disappeared. A picture frame had to be replaced.

Lately, the arguments were almost every night and were louder and louder.

Tonight was the worst ever. Leah didn't sneak out of bed until it was quiet.

She didn't see her mom. 

What was her father doing scrubbing everything this late at night?

The smell of Clorox wafted up the spiral staircase.

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at: https://dlnelsonwriter.com

Julia's Free Write - The Stairs

Geometrical patterns as well as light and shadow were her "thing", that and numbers.

But this particular stairwell brought more the philosophical to mind.

Empty with no one in sight, neither up nor down. Would they be noticed!

And were they going up or were they going down? Where had the owners put their safe? Down in the cellar, up on the top floor?

Not your usual burglars, but rather friends looking to anonymously give them some cash to tide them over a bad patch.

Julia has written and taken photos all her life and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/  

 

Rick's Free Write  - The Staircase / Les Escaliers

Geoffrey peeked through the posts at the spiralling staircase and the floor below. He wanted so badly to go down there to see what was going on, but he was not allowed. 

The stairs were dangerous – steep and with narrow steps, especially on the inner part of each step. He had heard more than once when someone had fallen, then yelled out in pain. And there was the time when his father had dropped some dishes and glasses, shattering them all the way down les escaliers.

Even if he were a ‘normal’ 3-year-old boy, Geoffrey would have difficulty navigating such a hazardous climb. But he also suffered from a rare neurological disease which made it difficult to control his legs.

On occasion, his father would carry him down the stairs in his arms and put him in a wheelchair to roll him around the village so he could get some fresh air. It was a difficult thing, even for his strong father, and the climb back up to their living quarters was even more difficult. Plus, his father worked a lot as the owner of the restaurant on the ground floor.

Geoffrey wished the could live somewhere else, some-where on the ground floor where he could use the wheel-chair every day.

He leaned against the post and pulled a photo from his pocket. He misses his mother too.

 Rick is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices. com

Trump--the novel

 

"If this were a novel, no one would believe it," my husband said watching the beginnings of Trump's trial.

I thought about it. 

He's right. 

Many changes would have to be made.

First: Names of the characters must be changed. They are too unbelievable.

Trump...it can be a card. It can mean getting the better of someone. Take away the T and you have rump which can mean a small or inferior remnant or the hindquarters of an animal. A ridiculous name for the hero of any novel.

Pecker, the first witness's name ... I suppose there's an irony in the vulgar description of a male's organ in this trial with its sexual themes.

 

Stormy ... the prostitute who was paid to keep the secret of a liaison. It has unleashed a storm. But it is too obvious for good fiction or bad reality.

 

Second: The hero can't piss off the judge. 

 

Conflict, yes, is good for fiction, but in a case before a court, it is just plain stupid at best and idiotic at the very worse. It would be hard to believe the hero would do that. 

 

Third: Fairness...

 

Despite that everyone in the U.S. is supposedly allowed a fair trial, many are not. This trial where the defendent seems to get advantages an average person would not. I suspect they would have been in jail for contempt of court long ago. 

 

So where does that leave a novel based on the Trump trial? 

 

No where. 

 

It is bad enough in reality, that a fictionalize version would be just too depressing to write or read. Bad enough that the U.S. has sunk so low that this character had ever set foot in the White House. That too is unbelievable -- except sadly it's true.

James Joyce Free Since 1941

 

"It went on and on for five pages," she said about Anna Karenina.

Our friend and her husband had joined Rick and me on our patio for a mattress celebration apèro in the late afternoon sun. We were sheltered from the Tramontane which had been blowing for the past three days.

They had recommended a friend who had sold us the new mattress, so this was our thank you.

My mind jumped back to how I read most classics at uni including James Joyce.

When I was at Joyce's house in Dublin, I saw his desk and thought how he must have written Ulysses there. 

I had loved Dubliners. For Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, I went from doubt to considering it a treasure hunt.

As for Ulysses, I've never made it past page 42. Thank goodness for Cliff Notes.

Joyce died in 1941 in my country, in Zurich to be exact.

I will never finish the book even though I tried after uni several times. I can live with that.

I took comfort in a travel guide of Switzerland that said about Zurich "James Joyce free since 1941."

I joke that my grave can read "She never finished Ulysses."

Whew

 

 After 18 months of research and writing, I've finished the first draft (really many drafts because I edit along the way) of 300 Unsung Women. All the -mini-bios (100-200 words) are written, the formating is done and the women are in 68 categories such as activist, astronomer, doctor  inventor, lawyer, resistance fighter

Who are these women?

They did spectacular things, breaking the bondaries of gender limitations over the centuries.

•  Some were never known but their work made a difference
  
• Some were known by a few but are mostly forgotten
• Some had their work stolen by men

I want to sit down and chat with them all. I would like to thank the women who invented the dishwasher and windshield wipers. The woman who had to teach behind a screen so she wouldn't upset the male students. The ones refused degrees or were called names because they didn't fit the stereotype of what a woman should be. The spies that fought for their beliefs often sacrificing their lives.

I had help in finding the women. When I mentioned the project to friends, they would add names to those that I had already found. 

Then it was my job to research and write. I ended up with more than 300 women and the decision of whom to include was difficult at best. My husband said, there could be volume two.

Tomorrow, I print out the book to edit it again. Then my husband, also a writer, will edit it and probably after corrections are made still another editing before I am ready to send it out into the world.