Monday 18 July 2011

YOU ARE MOST WELCOME, FRANCIS, ALBERT.

Mister London Street is a natural born writer. His work seems effortless, his caricatures as sharp as razor-blades and his insights illuminate the human condition. No-one can take the mundane and turn it into magic the way he does. I tell you this as a preamble to this next post because, although I have given up aspiring to his degree of perfection, he does often inspire me with a subject, and this one was dislodged from my porridge of a brain by Absent minded a post about  his recurring Daydreams.

As a child, a young child my recurring daydream centered around the house of Rupert Bear [the only books to which I had access] His house was my house. I warmed myself at his hearth, ate at his table with my mother, my brother and a new father. And my father had a 'bear' look about him. His hair was the colour of Rupert's fur and he had a soft beard of the same hue. He was big, cuddly, bear like and I would sit on his knee sometimes. We would have Rupert Bear type adventures and at night he would read me to sleep.  These daydreams stopped when mother met Harry.

The next, and last recurring daydream began shortly after we bought The Meadow of Pears [I have given the English translation because I STILL cannot find the accent aigu] our Lavender Farm in the Alpes des Haut  Provence. A large rambling Mas of pale stone  set on a promontory 11km from Sisteron.


It was 1972 and this was taken as our car rounded the corner and I got my first glimpse of our new holiday home with it's eleven hectares of ancient Lavender. For twelve years we spent every holiday - Easter, Christmas and the long summer break here in this lovely setting. It is isolated from the  tiny village way above us, a few houses, nothing special-a  goatherd who ran his  flock over our land, farm workers, one holiday home; perhaps three vehicles a day going up or down.

Francis Albert had retired...and I missed him. I was more than a fan, short for fanatic...I did not want to be Mrs. Sinatra, had no fantasies that we would meet and that he would fall in love and whisk me away from my beloved JP, I wanted to be the one he would call when he was down; that was my original daydream. Then, lounging in the courtyard with the doors to the house open and his music pouring out on the rare occasions that I was alone-they expanded. We met accidently.[I never could work out how] He was not well and was very unhappy. We invited him to the farm should he need a bolt hole. The unfinished upper half of the building which we had always meant to turn into a suite-was made over for him and one day he arrived, no fanfare, no entourage, just him in a hire car. Sometimes I imagined that he wanted to be alone and I prepared meals for him and took them to his room-or that he came to our table and ate my food with gusto. I daydreamed that we would talk for hours, about family, regrets, gossip sometimes. Then he would leave as easily as he had arrived . 
These daydreams came, just once in while, each one more elaborate, down to the ingredients of each meal, the contents of each conversation. Sometimes it was just a phone call to say 'hello, how are you', or a card for a celebration. We were his big secret and he was ours..

They daydreams stopped when he married again and he was happy.

We saw him once, much later at The Royal Albert Hall. Number one and only son bought tickets for us to see the Show with Sammy Davis and Liza Minneli. They opened the show and were both brilliant but when Francis Albert's figure entered I stood up, cheering and whooping 'I love you Frankie' and did not care that he was two millimetres high [this was before big screens] It was enough that I was in the same room with him.

Now I don't daydream about what might have been, I reminisce. 

16 comments:

  1. Sometimes for the sake of our sanity we need to escape from the grey and miserable world that we live in and who better to escape with than some one famous who we admire. I am sure that we all identify with this post and could write our own version of it.

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  2. I could (and do) spend many hours day dreaming. I love being in a place where everything plays out just the way I want it to.

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  3. I have always been subject to day dreaming.
    When I was a child had had real dreams that sometimes would repeat themselves several nights running. Strange that.

    I always loved Rupert Bear.
    Maggie X

    Nuts in May

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  4. okay, okay. You will never guess what I had to do before I understood this post. I had to google Frances Albert. lol My mother-in-law would be ashamed of me. I didn't know Frank Sinatra by any other name than Frank Sinatra.
    I am jealous that you saw Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minneli with him!!! Did she sing New York, New York? Did Sammy sing Candy Man? That would have been a wonderful show.

    Did you ever find out if Buddy Greco was going to be performing somewhere near you? Did you get tickets??

    When I was a kid, my parents loved Elvis....and so did I. I would sit and kiss his album covers and I was sure I would marry him. lol We all have our daydreams!!!!

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  5. My daydreams were about Davey Jones (of The Monkees) and Shaun Cassidy. I was too young to dream about more than things like kissing in the moonlight... but my favorite daydream was that one of them would get lost driving someplace and just happen to be on my street, come knocking at the door asking directions, and get invited in to dinner.

    And you're right - the more often you daydream something, the more details get added in, and the easier it is to remember the whole thing as though it really happened, as a "memory" later on.

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  6. This was really, really lovely. And I quite like the way you daydream.

    The ending was just perfect.

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  7. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, thanks to otherworldyone's twitter prompt to check it out.

    Your writing has such a gentle, peaceful style that really suited the topic and made me feel as if I was watching the thought bubbles as they floated above your head.

    Really beautiful!

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  8. My friend and I had similar daydreams.. or we'd build the stories for one another. About a Beatle. A Monkee. A character from Dark Shadows. Whomever was the latest teen heartthrob. Such a fun, nostalgic post.

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  9. The farm is in a wonderful setting! I'm jealous. It would be a treat to photograph the area. (And I'm sure Francis Albert would have enjoyed it too.)

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  10. Mr Francis Albert Sinatra....oooh what a man....a voice like no other and although I suspect he was a nasty piece in one way he is/was just fascinating.....the person in the room that draws in all the attention......how lucky you are to have seen him.

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  11. I used to have amazingly impure daydreams about Christine McIntyre, who was a bit player in Three Stooges comedies (and a good 25 years older than she had been when appearing in them by the time I was watching them.) I never thought of settling down with her, though. To each his (or her) own!

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  12. Thank for cheering me on in my cloud cartooning on my blog! I had so much fun imagining what those clouds were. That was what we did as kids on a lot of our afternoons...lie on our backs and watch the clouds and make up stories about what they were. I will do it again next time we have those big cumulus clouds(which I hope is very soon, and they bring rain before we turn into a dust bowl!!)

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  13. Yes Old Blue Eyes was the king, but some might despute that! Some would choose Dean Martin. Well I don't day drean about either of them . . . . but . . . . well perhaps I'd better not say LOL. We all day dream especially on this sick world where reality is sometimes awful. How's the hip? Mine is well but the other has started groaning. Hugs ~ Eddie

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  14. hey Moannie!!

    come see me at me new space....fff
    (as discussed)

    Alice x

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  15. The kind things you say about my writing easily beat all the awards and Post Of The Weeks I've never received. Thank you Moannie, I loved this one of yours.

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  16. I love the way you write, and I loved this. I do the same about Clooney, but don't tell anyone. ;-)

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