Life of a peach
The French boyfriend has arrived. Oh, did you wonder why I have been quiet?
French boyfriends take up time. Not just for 18 year-old daughters, but for the whole household. I meant to tell you that he was coming. Because it was quite an event. Out to the airport we went to collect him late on a Sunday evening. There was no chance of a chat and a glass of wine when we got home, it was just too late. Too many yawns. And they needed to be alone. I just made myself scarce. I always wondered how in movies and books people did that. Now I know what it means. It means you disappear behind a door and you don’t emerge until it is safe, and sunny, and late morning, and people are ready to make polite little bits of chit-chat over coffee. Being scarce. I’ve spent a lot of time doing that over the past two weeks.
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He’s charming, of course. Absolutely charming. He stayed for two weeks and ate everything I put in front of him. I was cooking barley a lot. I couldn’t help it. It’s just that I was doing recipes using barley for a magazine. Six of them. And they needed to be tested lots of times. We had four meals of barley, on the trot. Barley this and barley that. Our bowels were certainly getting a workout, though I’m not sure it is an appropriate thing to discuss so I’m going to pretend I didn’t say that. But the young, you know, they don’t even notice things like this, they just roar along, burning it off, wake, and take on the day and all it brings. But once your bones start creaking and you ache in iddy biddy bits of your body you didn’t even know you had, it’s probably just as well you are banished behind doors at such times.
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I will have to tell you about barley some time though because it’s a superfood, and one that is often ignored. But just not right now. I think I’m over it for the present time. Barley-ed out.
I’m going to lead a barley-free life for a month. THEN I’ll tell you all about its virtues.