It is Sunday July 10 in the Haute Savoie and I am a prisoner of the Tour de France bicycle race. Not the real one—the pretend one. Today, if I chop off a leg with the chain saw, fall through the hole in the upstairs floor or blow myself up while applying fire-starting gel to the BBQ coals, then I’m a goner with a capital G.

Medical assistance is not an option, as 15,000 people dressed in almost identical silly spandex clothes are riding their fancy bicycles in the summer heat over four mountain passes to complete one of the difficult mountain stages of the Tour de France.

And so, our escape road from mountain to city is officially completely closed.

These amateur cyclists are leaving in large packs at about 5-minute intervals. They make a road block 68 kilometres long and each has a yellow number attached to his/her handlebars.

(By the way, the REAL Tour de France comes through next week and takes about 5 minutes. I know as I’ve seen it. Once, sitting on a bench in front of the church gossiping with my old farmer neighbours and the priest, it zipped past in an almost silent buzz of energy.)

So, on this day of enforced physical and emotional stasis I am taking stock of my valley.

At the top stand the mountains strong and still – the Aiguille Verte, La Tête à l’Ane and the Mont Blanc catch the early morning sun.

Half way down, the yellow building cranes stand inactive on the new Club Med construction site that has (now that there is no snow anymore and global warming is firmly established) finally been given the green light at the ski resort across the valley. Soon more than 1,000 tourists will be able to come and cavort there in the winter rain and mud.

Further down the mountainside there is the latest landslide that suddenly opened up a couple of months back. Everyone is waiting for the condemned house at the edge to finally fall into the abyss. The insurance man has asked me to give him a call if I see this happen.

So, on this action-packed day of high summer in the mountains, I will set myself up beside the sand heap and the cement mixer. I will get out the green and white parasol to add a festive touch. I will read my book, and doze, and sip mountain-cold spring water. I will try to stay out of trouble and will wait for the evening and its freedom that I will no longer desire.

But right now … if someone could just get me the binoculars.

 

 

 

Summer in the Geneva countryside can be glorious, but there are dangers dangling under every leaf. And not just for the plants.

For example, there is the revolting tick situation. Ticks of all shapes and sizes find me attractive and alluring.  Hats, socks, sprays, elastic bands and duct tape cannot keep them away. Just yesterday a pin-head-sized mountain tick came with me to visit the lowlands. It was a one-way trip.

Successfully removed in an operation requiring husband, flashlight, magnifying glass and tweezers—tricky as he only has two hands—I did a tour of several drug stores this morning seeking medical advice.

My home-base pharmacy where I regularly line up for hours and spend hundreds of francs, told me in no uncertain terms to go away and phone my doctor. This was not successful as the phone was not answered and there was no helpful message. Obviously, she has run away for her summer holidays and is jet-skiing and kite surfing in some tick-free part of the world.

Crawling reluctantly towards of the local emergency health clinic, I thought I’d get a second opinion. Fortunately, here in the Geneva outskirts, drug stores are ubiquitous. They are like 7-Eleven convenience stores in Sweden or Japan. There is one on every corner.

This turned out to be much more satisfactory, and the nice lady told me to do nothing, but keep a close eye on the situation and seek medical help if the bite-site got bigger and/or turned into the famous tick bull’s eye which is a sign of long-lasting complications, multitudinous painful symptoms, and eventual death-by-tick.

Buoyed up no end, I thought I’d chance a third opinion. This was better than ever. The amazingly friendly and intelligent drug store lady put on her spectacles and examined the red blotch. She gave it a poke. She called over a colleague and they had a little conference which included the idea of photographing the site to keep as comparative evidence. She asked if I had the body of the perp (for a post-mortem, one assumes). I was ready for DNA testing myself. She then sold me a nifty product – a roll-on disinfectant and anti-inflammatory especially designed for bug-victims.

Back at home, after a delightful festive tick-free lunch with the cat, my rational mind was formulating plans for an afternoon under a tree with a book when the neighbours’ unsightly bamboo poking through the lawn brought out the inner Wimbledon-Grass-Cutting-Maniac in me.

Now hot, sweaty, and happy, I’m revelling in the knowledge that a well-tended garden should be entirely tick-free.

We’ll see.

Well, on April 12, 2016 at 15:36 a 28-metre, 4-ton log smashed its way through the back wall of my mountain house (fondly known as The Shack.) Having slid down from a considerable height, it was moving at speed and went on to pierce the upper floor, the middle wall, and the front stone wall. There it came to a halt and that was that. There was an uninvited log in the house.

Being a polite log, it had just barely missed all supporting beams and its discreet exit was underneath the living room window and above the basement door. Damage was considerable, nevertheless, and the shock-value was tremendous.

To remove the log was dramatic and dangerous. More damage was inevitable, but total disaster (house collapse) was miraculously avoided.

The new open gashing wounds were again boarded up, pulverized furniture dragged out into the rain, the stones from the old walls gathered up, and unrecognizable debris shovelled into industrial-strength garbage bags.

Meetings were held to discuss insurance claims and counter-claims. The youngest man on the wood-cutting team was held responsible. Adjusters were called in, photographs were taken, and the site examined and re-examined. Estimates were submitted, convocations sent out, contracts signed, and the repair work has finally begun.

For example, there is a cheery orange cement mixer in the filthy, yet breezy, living room.

Yesterday, on June 23, 2016, by a majority of 52%, the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. England was always a renegade log ready to slip down the mountain on a rainy day.  And, sure enough, it has pierced the house that is Europe.

But, like The Shack, old Europe has not fallen. Its beams have not taken a direct hit; its foundations are holding.

Neither accident seems to have been either an act of God or a natural disaster. Any insurance company worth its salt would easily blame the cocky young woodcutter, David Cameron, who has now suddenly discovered that being prime minister can be an extremely dangerous job. He has decided to quit. Lumberjacks on the same team (Northern Ireland and Scotland) claim their complete innocence.

But now is the moment when serious attention must be paid. Removing the British log will be difficult and dangerous. If it’s successfully removed new rents and fissures will appear, more stones will fall, and more glass will be shattered. If it’s pulled out too fast or too hard or too carelessly, beams will give way, the roof will cave in, and Europe will fall down.

It will, of course, take years to clean up the mess, to shift through the rubble, to try to find things that can be saved, and to not cut oneself on the broken crockery.

So, Europe, on this shocking day after the Brexit vote, take heart. It’s a huge mess, but with hard work, honesty, and a lot of luck, perhaps you, too, will have an orange cement mixer in your miraculously-saved living room one day.

Old folks on electric bikes are sure getting some very bad press these days. A report just out illustrates the close relationship between seniors, their electric bikes, and the hospital (or even the morgue). They’re reported to be going down like flies.

This does not surprise me at all, as all the seniors I know were born in the 40’s and 50’s and were die-hard rebels. They know they are going to live forever or die trying. They are also greenies when it suits them, on a fixed income, and, considering their pre-death status, have no time to waste.

The dangerous e-bike reports are also a tad irrational. As more e-bikes are being sold, there will of course be more accidents. Logically, as well, the more elderly segment of society is buying them. We already have to deal with bad knees, replaced hips, dodgey backs and reduced lung capacity. Who needs a hill?

One old lady I know (several years my senior) has gleefully been riding a souped-up e-bike since the day they were invented. Several others are constantly looking into the matter of getting their speeds up on flat runs.

From my point of view the problem is not with electronic bikes and seniors it’s with everyone else—especially cars and their attitude of complete entitlement to anything paved.

Youngsters with cool traditional bikes are just plain jealous that they are being passed all the time by casual, un-sweaty, mechanically-enhanced oldies humming Beatles songs. That this geriatric segment of society can neither hear nor see very well and have almost no reflexes left is entirely beside the point.

Car drivers cannot stand them as e-bikes can approach unnervingly quickly from various directions and cannot be completely ignored (like classic bikes can) and are often spotted too late. E-bikes can get up to the speeds of scooters, but are less visible as they have no headlight or big-blobby helmet filling up the rear view mirrors. We are the stealth riders.

Of course accidents can happen. A most embarrassing incident comes to mind from a year ago in Münster—the bike capital of Europe. Stopping at an intersection (on a normal city bike) I applied simultaneously the back-pedal brake and the hand brake. I came to a complete stop and then, gracefully, I like to think, tilted sideways and the line-up of bikers to my right went down like a house of cards.

So, fellow-e-bike riders, soldier on. Be courageous, be swift, be careful, take the back roads, and stay forever young.

I don’t really want to say this, but sometimes life in Geneva can be a bit slow. I mean I, personally, really like watching the hedgehog do her long-legged stroll through the garden in the evenings. And I am thrilled by the redstarts teaching their children to fly. (Henry, the cat, shares both these interests.)  The snails gathered around the newly sprouting dahlias protected by their blue chemical circles are a constant source of suspense and worry; and the neighbour’s bamboo shoots pushing up vigorously through my newly-mowed lawn arouse feelings of vague disquiet.

Despite all this, there are moments when you just need a little more action, and so you cross the border into France.  Now life in the French countryside is not exactly Niagara Falls either. For example, there is no waxworks museum starring Justin Bieber or fire alarms going off in your hotel at the crack of dawn; but there are casinos, outdoor markets, water parks, strikes, and malls.

A Sunday or two back, for example, I awoke to an unfamiliar noise. It wasn’t a bird. It wasn’t a plane. It was a Mothers’ Day Stock Car Race. Taking place on a patch of wasteland down by the Rhône River it buzzed its way through the day. I don’t know if mothers were driving or watching or at home with pillows over their heads, but it was loud and cheerful and a complete anathema to our Swiss Sunday rule that we cannot disturb the neighbours by cutting the grass.

French Sunday morning markets are also completely charming. Shunning the supermarket, and with pockets full of euros one approaches with an open, friendly, giving, attitude. This is rewarded by the Candy Man, the Vegetable Man, the Bread Man, the Roast Chicken Man all awaiting you with open arms.

The Cheese Man is an especial favourite as he saws you off great chunks of ancient Beaufort and brébis and cheerfully philosophises that for a produce that tastes so good, money is entirely irrelevant.

The Fish Man explains how his trout are stocked in a pure mountain stream that comes from a tinkling mountain spring, and the fish swim to his door in the morning happy for their filets to be taken to the market.

The Pirate-Gypsy Provencal Man in his fedora and golden earring behind his mounds of olives and tapernades looks way more wicked than any waxworks Johnny Depp pirate.

Bags full and pockets empty, you start to leave, but are hailed by Swiss-village acquaintances who are refreshing themselves on benches under a shady tree with local wine – the light bubbly sort suitable for breakfast. So you join them for a glass.

You finally make it home—completely satisfied and exhausted with your delicious purchases and all the social excitement.

You prepare a plate of bread, cheese, and paté forestière; pull up a lawn chair: put in your earplugs; and settle in to see what the redstart chicks and the bamboo shoots are up to.

 

 

 

 

This morning, it seems, Switzerland is at the very centre of things. BBC World Service radio news has featured three Swiss stories: the triumphal inauguration of the Gothard base tunnel (two tubes of 57 km—longest, deepest and best in the world), the lady who walked 900 kilometres to Geneva collecting peace-in-Syria messages, and the Swiss-German village that has voted to pay rather than take in nine refugees.

The tunnel success story I regard as my own personal triumph. My federal taxes over the past 17 years have paid for the technology, the machines, the workers, and even the ribbon-cutting politicians.

So, Europe, you’re welcome! May you put your Gouda cheese on the train in Rotterdam, and send it straight as a non-polluting arrow down to Genoa. There may it be unloaded, and replaced with Parmesan cheese to be sent right back to Holland. This is the Europe that we have come to know and love.

The second story was about a lady called Katherine Davies who has just completed a walk from London to Geneva to tell diplomats at the UN to stop the war in Syria.  To help her in this quest, she has collected messages—both real and electronic—from people she has met along the way to tell the diplomats to stop the war in Syria. She feels that if enough people do this, then the diplomats will stop the war in Syria. She was interviewed, and she feels very optimistic.

I wish her the very best of luck.

So far, so good. However, every belly-button, no matter how well-kept, has a bit of lint at the bottom. And so it was with story number three.

This concerns an unpleasant situation in a small pleasant village called Oberwil-Lieli which is near Zurich.  The unfortunate set of circumstances includes: a right-wing mayor, a homogeneous population (only 10% foreigners), wealth (10% of the inhabitants are millionaires), and a crime-free population of 2,200 people.

Last year the mayor refused to take in a handful of refugees (“Le Village Suisse qui Choque l’Europe”—le Matin 25.09.2015) and a recent village vote has given the no-refugee crowd a very small majority.

The BBC interviewed a reasonable-sounding young woman from the village, and she explained that it was the “old people” who were responsible for the “bad vote” as they didn’t want crime, rape, bedlam, or having non-German speakers about. Taxpayers and individuals are ready to cough up the 290,000 Swiss franc fine instead.

So, Katherine, you’ve come to the right place.  I don’t think you should stop in Geneva (we have lots of refugees and asylum seekers here) but keep on walking over Oberwil-Lieli way. It’s not that far (248 km / 52 hours) and it sure sounds like they need all the help they can get.

 

 

I have a hedge. It has a monstrous life of its own filled with birds and cats and caterpillars and cobwebs, and stands fat and strong between my jungle-garden and the race-course road where people travel at top speed towards town in the mornings. The trajet home is even faster as who wants to miss their apero?  They are going so fast that it seems they have never noticed the speed limit which is a clearly-posted, sedate 30 kph through the village.

And now it seems that one of these drivers has complained about my hedge impeding their vitesse while sailing over the speed bumps around the corner. There is also a neighbour who is also a possible suspect. Anyway. I’ve been busted, yet again, by the hedge police.

This time they’ve even sent coloured photos: a set of four. In them the hedge looks quite perky and healthy. In the background, over the road is the ugly house that was built in the nature reserve. Needless to say, they do not have a hedge, so are possibly jealous of mine.

Anyway, we are routinely busted by the hedge police as both height and width of roadside verdure are strictly regulated and seriously enforced. A young city-slicker usually arrives with a clipboard and an attitude. Long conversations with cantonal officials have resulted in civil engineers surveying our property, the hedge, and the road. We keep winning (Geneva has stolen a bit of our land to widen their road) and the hedge keeps growing. Nothing else happens.

One of my summertime jobs in Canada was pruning baby Christmas trees, so I consider myself something of a pro when it comes to pruning. Needless to say, I never get to stand on the ladder or use the electric trimmers except as a special treat. I’m the orange leaf-rake and green compost-bag girl. I push the communal garden refuse container into place. I snip the odd branch with the old-fashioned, dull, wooden-handled shears.

So, I will pay my annual respects to my hedge. I will clip the fragrant wet cedar, spruce, laurel and other hedge-bushes that I don’t know the names of. I will work diligently for an hour or two and fill the compost bin and revel in a feeling of deep satisfaction. I will have a bath in water that will become like the insides of a China tea pot – flecked with green leaves and mysterious brown bits.

I will obey the Geneva Ordinance of the Roads dated April 28, 1967, L1 10, article 70 et al. and will (temporarily) be back in from my walk on the wild side of the law.

 

If you don’t get bitten by one of the millions of poisonous snakes on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa you will live a long, long life.  Centenarians abound.

This has been attributed to the food: purple sweet potatoes, canola oil, tofu, ginko nuts, vegetables, konbu seaweed, squid and octopus. Fish and Vitamin D from the sunshine also help. Add to this their famous healthy black sugar and a little bit of Okinawa pork belly which is quite good for you.

Jasmin tea, turmeric supplements, and hitami lemon all help tremendously.

Their philosophy for eating stipulates that you do not eat to bursting point, but stop when you feel 80% full. This is called hara hachi-bu. And in Okinawa, there is no word for retirement. You continue working until you stop permanently. The population is not stressed by time, and Okinawans live in a perpetual state of sun-kissed contentment.

But what really keeps you going for a century is the Okinawan salt. It is sea water salt extracted by using a natural temperature instant evaporation technique. It is full of potassium, zinc, iron, copper, and manganese. There’s even a plan for taking the sodium chloride out of it to make it the first super-healthy non-salt salt. It actually lowers the blood pressure, and as the island is unendingly battered by storms the magic sea-salt is in the air at all times. Baby Okinawans absorb its goodness from the day they are born.

Now, living in the Geneva countryside we are going to have to mix and mingle some of these exotic products and techniques into our new improved health regime. It’s a bit like moving the furniture around in the house. I will change my tea to Jasmin and see if the vegetable barn lady has purple potatoes. The fragrant clouds of grilling squid and octopus are bound to surprise and delight my neighbours this summer.

I will go for a troll on the internet to see about procuring black sugar, konbu seaweed and Okinawa health-salt. And I will eat as much tofu and turmeric as I can until some new study shows them to be poisonous.

I really feel that by adding these new health-foods to my daily rigorous regime (a walk for the legs in my rice-paddy shoes, a dose of right-handed pro-biotic yoghurt for the gut, a glass of Geneva red wine for its antioxidants, and lots of black chocolate to fight stress) I might be on the verge of a brand-new new life-changing live-forever epiphany.

In all the excitement, though, I really mustn’t forget to take my pills.

 

 

 

In the classroom students and teachers can neither be equals nor friends. The relationship is infinitely more complex than that. However, with fragile adolescent lives suddenly being ruled by hormones, homework, and insecurities, any physical gesture can be used as a tool of manipulation and misinterpretation. Their hands should not be shaken.

Just as corporal punishment has been banished from schools, I seriously think that handshaking should also be stopped. I taught for decades in high schools in the canton of Geneva and never shook my students’ hands. Neither did my colleagues as far I know. Any act that can be construed as personally judgemental, sexual, political or religious has no place in the classroom. A handshake can be all of these things.

At its best, a jolly good handshake is a formal exchange of good faith and possible friendship. However, the germs of social hypocrisy are well-embedded.  I’m always impressed by two football teams lined up on the pitch to shake the opposing team’s hands before they begin kicking, tripping, and head-butting the crap out of each other.

Handshakes are also bursting with real germs and bacteria. Both the high five and the fist bump have been medically proposed as replacement activities (especially when there are pandemics about) as most people do not wash their hands as often as they should.

Here in Switzerland doctors always shake your hand as their first medical gesture. Strength, grip, temperature, perspiration are all indicators of the patient’s health in both body and mind. A handshake sends complex social and chemical signals that a busy-body doctor can pick up on. (Tip: I always sit on my hands in the doctor’s waiting room making sure they are warm and dry which indicates perfect physical and mental health.)

In the social context of the educational world, physical contact is not entirely absent, of course. Sporting events, funerals, and graduation ceremonies come to mind. However, this usually involves the more complicated Swiss bise (the kiss not the wind) rather than a handshake.

So I don’t know if the two teenage brothers from a Swiss German town who have refused to shake their (female) teacher’s hand are dangerous Muslim fundamentalists or not. However, I do know that in this country where minarets have been prohibited and crucifixes removed from schoolroom walls these two adolescents have brilliantly poked at the soft underbelly of an unnecessary, totally arbitrary, and potentially divisive institutional practice.

Namaste!

Re-entry from the floating world of Japan into the realities of Switzerland is historically bumpy.

The long airplane ride provides a moment of psychological preparation for the inevitable slings and arrows of domestic distress that are soon to occur. Normally well-balanced, I cry my eyes out at airplane movies—even the comedies and documentaries. When I land, I am emotionally worn out and completely ready for anything.

This return was quite successful, however. The heating was still working, there wasn’t a dead cat under the motorcycle cover, the bottom had not fallen out of the hot water boiler in the basement, and there seem to be no mouse families living in the kitchen.

Of course Henri-the-cat and all his friends and enemies have been having peeing competitions and hairball spitting competitions in the front corridor as the cat flap was open. But now that the neighbour’s cat has been evicted from its squat in the bomb-shelter, we are all feeling much better and the quality of the air is much improved.

One excellent thing about being away is that there is that you receive no mail. Not quite true. There was the occasional cheery flyer coming in through the front door concerning a deal for Authentic Japanese Curry over at Ookayama’s Nepal curry shop.

Here the accumulated heaps of bills, newspapers, and advertising tower on the hall table and demand attention by occasionally toppling onto the floor.

Bogged down in the morass of post-trip laundry I miss my little Japanese washing machine (short cycle 30 minutes, medium cycle 31 minutes, long cycle 32 minutes) that played a little jingle–a sort of housewifely hymn–when the time was up. Here, down in the serious Swiss washing room, the ageless Teutonic machine grinds on for hours and hours and has absolutely no sense of whimsy.

And the Japanese baby iron, shielded from dust and damage in its pink plastic carry-case was a much tamer version of the huge hissing and spitting monster that lives, works and breathes here.

I’ve just put my thumb through a rotted peel of a lemon I bought fresh and shiny yesterday.  In Japan the flowers and fruit and vegetables last for weeks and weeks. They are objects of geometric perfection, and though I know we should all be embracing imperfect and rotting things, you can’t help but love a perfectly clean and proportioned carrot or miniature aubergine sold individually and preciously.

So, as I lay awake in my jet-lagged nights, gossamer strands of sushi trains and geisha bars float through my brain. They are starting to be joined by mountains, shepherd’s pie, lawnmowers and grandchildren.

I’m finally floating home.