Delicious food from the Mediterranean
The Mouse in the Kitchen… extract from The Lotus Generation by Carole McCall
The interior of the shop was gloomy after the bright summer sun. As I adjusted my gaze I saw a young woman looking haughtily back at me. In my haltering French I started to ask her if she knew where the village that we needed was situated. She put her hand up like a policeman in rather an imperious manner.
“Stop, stop, Madame. Do I look like the kind of woman who cannot speak English?” I hung my head in shame although I was not quite sure why. “Oh” I said and wished I had not asked for her help. With that she pulled her pinafore over her head and said “The shop is not busy, I will close up for a few minutes. Wait for me at the front of the store.”
As I got back into the car, she whizzed around the corner in an old Renault and took us the ten miles that we needed to go. We waved our thanks; she scowled and was on her way. I love it when something unexpectedly good happens; it confirms your faith in human nature!
The farmhouse loomed large into view and we all stared hard as we had not really known what to expect. Grant opened the door with a huge key that, as directed on his notes, was under the third stone on the left. The door creaked as he pushed it open and the four of us peered round the corner. A dim pall was cast over everything and a solitary mouse took a moment to stare at the intruders and then scurried across the stone kitchen floor.
“Great start” mumbled Grant as we stumbled forward. We all fanned out to investigate the rambling house and discovered that there were nine bedrooms on three floors. Enough for all our guests in comfort we calculated. On the third floor there was an attic bedroom with a huge four poster bed with an old iron chandelier perched precariously over it.
I reached out and gently patted my hand on the old damask bedspread. It had that vaguely cold, damp feeling that sends shivers down your spine. “We will take this room” I whispered to my husband as I thought the rest of the house might be warmer for our guests.
Slowly over the next two days they began to arrive………..
THE LOTUS GENERATION by Carole McCall. Available from today to pre order on Amazon
“Living is a magical thing. Each day is a gift to be treasured, because it will never come around again. We have everything we need within us to live the life we want to live. Consider the most amazing of journeys, a life full of possibilities.”
This story is about Carole’s journey and about the choices she made and the heart-searching and hilarity she experienced along the way. It is about the search for fulfilment in her heart, her soul and her mind in the mid-phase of her life. She needed to have the wisdom to make choices and then to take complete responsibility for the path that she chose, even after those decisions turned out to be less than perfect!
It is about the importance of having the courage to maintain a real sense of self and ultimately have peace of mind about who we really are. We should bear in mind that we know much more than we think we do and that there is no failure only the opportunity for feedback.
How do any of us make a choice? Well that’s easy, we use our value system. This represents a person’s sense of right or wrong, i.e. what they think they ought to be. A value system is a consistent set of beliefs and principles. Our personal values provide a reference for what is good, important and beneficial in life and it is the personal belief system by which we live our lives. However at some point in life values need to include one’s own personal wellbeing and growth.
This is the story of that phase of life after children have flown the nest and it involves change and challenge. In mid-life Carole decided to go and live and work in Spain for a while and then travelled extensively around the world. Although it was lots of fun it was also filled with some difficult soul-searching. Carole remarks, “I think I definitely lost my perfect person status along the way, but I gained some real self-esteem and definite fulfilment as a woman.”
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Tagged Canada, Family Hoildays. Values, France, Friendship, Fun, Life style.Spain, Sand, Sea, South America, Travel
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” Dance to the Top” an extract from The Communication Generation by Carole McCall out in December 2014
The early morning light was of that opaque, ethereal quality that casts deep shadows on the planes of your face. I was wearing hastily cast on jeans and a t-shirt and comfortable pink footwear.
As September was wearing on, glorious sunny days were now proceeded by misty chilling mornings and the high Georgian ceilings in this house meant that floors were decidely chilly .
I stepped forward and nervously knocked on the heavy wooden study door. A querulous voice invited me to enter. Sitting in a row on a cream sofa were my four youngest grandchildren, who are all under eight.
Clad in their pyjamas and slippers they all smiled. “Good Morning. Who are you and what are you going to sing for us today?” said the youngest Gideon.
“Well as you know I am your Granny and I am going to sing”…..well then my mind went completely blank.
I heard a voice say “Ah! …”Shout to the Top” by the Style Council
I surprised even myself by this unusual choice and once I had uttered the words . “And every shop window I looked in just looked the same”…. those being the only ones I could remember …blankness decended.
After several attempts at the chorus of “Shout to the Top” all that was left was a lot of humming and twirling.
Eventually Oscar put up his hand and said “You can stop now, thank you.”
“Thank Goodness for that” I thought as I leant back on the piano to control my dizzy spell. Whilst they conferred I glanced through the gap in the door towards the hall clock.
This was a very early edition of the pretend X Factor as it was only 6.25 in the morning.
Eventually somebody piped up “I am afraid the melody was poor and the dancing worse but we have given you a chance and you are through to the next round of the X Factor.”……..
Extract from the Communication Generation by Carole McCall due out in 2015
Pienza: all Renaissance towns should have a bird that talks like a refrigerator
Love this place…
During a fascinating period of the Italian Renaissance, humanist scholars and architects set out to create the ideal city. Surprisingly, one of these urban planners was a pope–Pope Pious II. Pius II (formerly known as Enea Silvio Piccolomini) transformed his home town, Cosignano, into a miniature urban Renaissance Utopia. He hired the architect Rossellino to rip down the every-which-way jumble of medieval buildings, replacing them with an orderly town square. Cosignano was renamed Pienza and it’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. No, wait, not only is Pienza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the countryside surrounding it, the Val d’Orcia, is also a UNESCO site. Seriously people: UNESCO squared. Given my passion for UNESCO and that Renaissance humanism is my religion, Pienza was a place we needed to visit, stat.
The plaza, Pio II square, is a trapezoidal shape and is much smaller than it appears. Did you notice how…
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Which are you?
Love stories about snow and foxes
A fox who lived in the deep forest of long ago had lost its front legs. No one knew how: perhaps escaping from a trap. A man who lived on the edge of the forest , seeing the fox from time to time, wondered how in the world it managed to get its food. One day when the fox was not far from him he had to hide himself quickly because a tiger was approaching. The tiger had fresh game in its claws. Lying down on the ground, it ate its fill, leaving the rest for the fox.
Again the next day the great Provider of this world sent provisions to the fox by this same tiger. The man began to think: “If this fox is taken care of in this mysterious way, its food sent by some unseen Higher Power, why don’t I just rest in a corner and…
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Is that the question? extract from The Nextus Generation due out in December 2015 by Carole McCall
I got up one morning recently after having had influenza and then moving house,
I looked in the mirror and saw my mother’s cool green eyes staring back at me. I could see they were paler and smaller than mine and a little too crinkly to allow me to apply the usual eye makeup that I had worn for years.
However as I stared, with my face so close to the mirror that it began to steam up, I realised it was actually the expression in my eyes that answered the question of whether I could get back onto the other side of the stream where lightness and vitality signalled middle age.
That particular day, with the question on my mind I put on my middle age uniform of jeans and a sweater and combed my perfect artfully highlighted caramel and golden bob and set off to walk to the park with my youngest grandchild.
Blonde, blue eyed Gideon was already a faster runner than his Granny at two years old and needed to be watched every minute. He was very precious to me as he was the baby, the youngest grandchild in the family, as all my children were getting older and leaving their baby years behind them..
As Gideon ran along beside me, a grey haired lady with a shopping trolley who was probably not much older than me smiled and said to him,“Gosh, young man you are tiring your mother out today.” Usually a comment like that would have made me smile with pleasure but today it made me start to wonder about the ageing process in the modern world……..
“Gosh,I thought you were still in the shower.” Extract from The Lotus Generation by Carole McCall
I began to walk along the path and took a deep breath. It was a lovely bright summer’s morning. There was not a cloud in the azure sky and the pink sunrise cast a pearlescent glow over everything it caressed. I closed my eyes for a moment and reached blindly for the scent in the air.
Whatever it was, it whisked me away to my kitchen and towards the vats of tomato sauce I was prone to make on a weekend without a plan. Then I recognised the wild oregano and thyme that were growing all around me. As I was stepping on them the scented oils were being released into the air around me.
As I stood looking down, the faintest of breezes made a serene, whispering sound as it travelled across the top of the long grass. I looked down the hill and noticed a narrow winding path that I had missed as I rushed past in the car. I looked around and decided to follow the trammelled pathway; I had my phone with me so I felt a burgeoning confidence.
I could see a lemon grove in the distance and decided to head for that. The sun was out now and I could feel its gentle warmth on my head. I took a deep breath and relaxed my shoulders. The scent of the lemons reached me first, sharp and pungent and utterly intoxicating.
Beyond the grove I could see the sea. The blue water was sparkling and shimmering with millions of diamond shapes. As I focused my attention on the lemons I could see that some of them were as big as a tennis ball. I leant forward and placed my warm face in amongst the light green leaves and breathed in the lemony air. I had never felt more alive.
My feet began to move easily down the path and I felt full in control of my downward journey. It was then I noticed the plume of colours amongst the green of the wild herbs and grasses. There were blue cornflowers to match the sea, startling red poppies and many varieties of pure white flowers that I did not know.
I Suddenly as I rounded a corner I juddered to a halt as I realised my feet were now lovely and warm. The path had finished and through my sandals I could sense the perfect white sand. I bent down to remove them and scooped up a handful of sand. I allowed the sharp, tiny grains to trickle through my fingers. I noticed with surprise that my finger nails were painted the same colour as the pink sunrise. I walked over to the shore and slowly followed the water’s edge allowing the cool water to lap against my free toes.
I stood for a moment and drank in the life energy that was all around me.
A delicious smell of coffee invaded my thoughts and I began to look up. There was a small beach café in the near distance. I quickened my step and soon arrived at the source of the coffee aroma. There were a few locals enjoying the early morning.
I recognised the lady at the counter as she waved at me. She ran the bakery in the village nearest to our villa. She picked up her order of olives and paté and signalled to ask if I wanted a lift with her back to the villa. I grabbed my coffee to go with a big smile of thanks.
I perched on the side of her bread delivery van and we began the tortuous, perpendicular climb. I began to feel a nibble of anxiety at the corner of my brain but firmly dismissed it. I climbed out, with wobbly knees, from the van and waved a cheery farewell to my companion. My adventure ended as I rounded the corner with an armful of fresh bread for our party. They were all around the table on the terrace and were cheered by the smell of the new bread to go with their breakfast.
My husband stared at me quizzically as he pulled out a chair for me, “I did not even realise you had gone out, I really thought that you were still in the shower.”
Extract from The Lotus Generation by Carole McCall due out December Ist 2014
Carole McCall Author and Coach 