JUST FOR FUN

SMOKING GUN !

I found this fascinating photo of my mother Madeleine, she was a fleet street journalist in the heady era of 'check book journalism ', I have no idea what this strange picture was connected to but I imagine that she was probably writing an article of how woman had become sophisticated smoking in bars and flaunting their new found freedom ! I can also imagine that since she had to rush the article for the Sunday press she used herself for a model and probably charged the newspaper the expenses !!! I really have no idea but I love this, today naughty image !

THE BEST OF THE ITALIAN SUMMER

Our Summer holiday

Henrietta, my sister looked quite smug, as she mused the future holiday, " this time it will be wonderful , we have a villa with a swimming pool and I have checked everything , not like last year in that grotty apartment that you chose " . I had already hung my head in shame remembering the last year which had proved very disappointing in a tiny apartment with no room for us , so I was quite happy to let her organise this year .
It had been my suggestion from the start to exchange our summer houses in order to see other places and give our children other experiences and it seemed a cheap way of arranging accommodation. so I was quite happy with to let her get on with it and didn't even check out the details of where we were going until the last moment .
We were heading for Alicante in Spain and as we landed,it did seem rather barren , there were no trees or green, it all seemed rather dry and lots of building cranes around but as they are always building around airports I still had my hopes quite high and even ignored the comments of my driver who asked me why on earth we were coming from" beautiful Italy "to this place, however he did manage to make me feel slightly uneasy as we were zooming up the motorway and the scenery was not improving . in the distance, I could see rows and rows of little white houses and even more building cranes, I was still feeling optimistic and was looking forward to arriving at our private villa !

Our villa was horrendous , it was a tiny bungalow , we could hardly get in it for ugly furniture, the bedrooms were very small and poky , It was unbearably hot and the sun terrace was just the flat roof of the building, with a view of a main road and a sofa factory . it was so ghastly that it was beyond description . The area was a kind of neglected, newly built ,shanty town with only for sale signs outside, the area had prostitutes on the corner, the beach was a least half an hour away , drug pushers were on the other corner and it had a little supermarket and one pub, the swimming pool was to be shared with all the other poor victims of the shanty town . There was only one thought in my head when I arrived, it was to ESCAPE !!

(more on this another time !!)