So Many, But Which One?????

Where are you going?
This sounded more like an order than a question.
Mrs Lao was in the left wing (I call it that because she always chooses on a Sunday to sit on the left of our conservatory to read her right-wing publications – hedging her bets?).
I said I am going to put something on the Forum.
Leave me out of it this time, she said.
I wouldn’t dream of it, I said.
Without looking up from her broadsheet, she sort-of snorted a look of implied, understated contempt and said Just be sure to let me see what you write before you post it.
I said I thought I’d post that lovely photograph you took, darling, of the Vatican Gardens.
Is that really necessary?
Well, it is a gardening forum, that’s the kind of thing they are interested in, and I always try to be relevant … and I thought I’d mention our visit to the Vatican museum.
Well, if you must. Just be sure to be politically correct.
Excuse me?
You heard.
I puzzled over this for a few seconds and said You mean “grammatically” correct?
No, dear, “Po-li-ti-cally” correct.
Is that a thing?
No reaction.
I had a light-bulb moment: Oh, I am not going to mention the American election, if that’s what you mean.
No reaction.
Or the budget.
No reaction.
…
I am now sitting in front of my keyboard, thinking of my artistically-hungry fellow forum foragers and my fingers automatically type: “Stick to your garden. Look no further. Il faut cultiver …” We had timed tickets to the Vatican, so we could jump the cattle-queues sloping down the road, diminishing, Uccello-like, to a vanishing point [chance would be a fine thing!], Mrs L. is a fantastic fixer and destroyer of booking bots, imposter websites, commercial trickery of all kinds re flights, trains, cars, hotels, restaurants, museums, you’d get dizzy just looking at the notes resulting from her fanatical research; she leads, I follow without so far having fallen into a hole. What’s not to like?

I must have been very naïve and absent-minded these past decades. To put things in perspective, I’ll give you just one example: in 1991, young and wide-eyed, I waltzed into the Accademia in Venice - no queue, quiet street prior - and, on several occasions, found myself in one of those vast rooms with just two other people, an adult holding his little boy by the hand. The reason I remember this so well is that the man was no other than Simon Rattle whom a few weeks earlier I had heard in Birmingham conduct the Resurrection S. for the opening of Symphony Hall. You’ll be pleased to hear that I resisted the impulse for congratulations and left them well alone.

Back to the Vatican of a couple of weeks ago. Things started well enough in the philosophical atmosphere of Greek and Roman sculptures. It became more turbulent with the Egyptians and, suddenly, the moment there were signs pointing towards the Sistine chapel, things became unbearable – of course, it’s hard to complain because we were culprits ourselves – guilty as charged. We were abruptly seized by a human torrent whose current was inescapable; no free space between the walls; occasionally, you had to perform an emergency stop or crash into a group who unexpectedly stopped dead to listen to a guide, or countless blocking self-photographers who, judging by their compositions, were more interested in themselves than in the art works. Up and down the rapids of the stairs, the atmosphere became unbearable. Mrs L., just like Noisette, found it increasingly hard to breathe.

What to do? Tourism has murdered travel as we once knew it. Perhaps an entrance exam, with a really difficult question like: “Who painted the walls of the Sistine Chapel?” Those who answer ‘Picasso’, or go one better and say ‘Andy Warhol’ can’t go in. But that would be elitist, wouldn’t it?
Oh! …
… I think I may have come dangerously close to being politically incorrect. Time to stop. I know my place … it’s in the garden, or, for the multi-linguists, dans notre jardin!

 

You misquoted me.
Did I?!?!
You wrote “No reaction” three times … You don’t listen, do you?

I now record our conversations, so I can quote them verbatim (just editing out you-know-who’s constant repetitions).

She can’t have done!
What?
Walked 40 kilometres.
Why not?
At her age!?

I thought about it for a minute. We don’t know her age.
PAUSE
I suppose that depends how you interpret the ‘47’.
I said No, that number has been the same for years. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Of course, she didn’t walk 40 kilometres. Nobody is going to do that! At any age! She was using ‘irony’, dear. Because I’d been banging on about banning cars, so she goes: “oh yes, no cars!? So now I’m going to walk 40 km, am I, to get plants, which I then won’t be able to carry home?! What kind of an idiot are you to think that modern living can even be possible without a car?" That’s what she is saying.
I suppose so.
Don’t forget, she’s got breathing problems as well!
No, she doesn’t … Anyway, it’s all speculation … Have you taken out those Michaelmas daisies? I need to plant those tulip bulbs (*).

(*) I’ve never mentioned this before; this seems a good time: Mrs Lao is Dutch. Make of that what you will!

 

Hooooo!!! (French exclamation, not asthma ). Quel toupet! In fact, it's never occurred to me that it would actually be preferable to adopt my département number as my age...
As for walking 40kms, I've patiently explained to my GP several times that English gardening practices knock spots off French randonnées for exercise value. He thinks it's all about tripping round a small plate-bande wearing suitably-branded Aigle clothing and genteelly snipping the faded blooms off rose bushes He's not got a clue about the similarities to a 2-hour workout on a cross-trainer with added slipperiness or the heaving of damn' great tree branches and trunks onto the colossal bonfire heap. Don't the Dutch do randonnées? It's an absolute obsession amongst the French. They're a nosy bunch
I loved driving over here, as I'm sure you loved bombing around on a moto....You wouldn't be doing it now, though, unless you wanted to launch yourself into orbit.

 

Good advice; we are still very active on the moto, albeit no longer in France where, since the children, we tend to resort to car-hire.

Safety at all times; I am attaching a photograph of when I took Mrs Lao to the hospital to deliver her first baby (out of two) - the hurry was because she had broken her waters by mistake.