Weekly Stories

Built to last: day four in Barcelona

We saw a more complex side to Spain today. We went to a huge flea market (the Mercat dels Encants) the boy’s idea. He and his Dad poked around old tin boxes full of vintage keys, coins, religious medallions and military badges. Flea markets aren’t really my thing. Perhaps it’s the fleas. But I was happy to visit a neighbourhood in Barcelona that didn’t feel as touristy. Poking around garage sale items in a different country is so revealing. I see why an ancient civilization’s dump site is where archeologists often gets their best stuff. It’s like being a maid…

A family travels Spain day three: Glorious day in the Gothic

A huddle of physical labourers get on the metro with us, all older, between their forties and sixties. Maybe they work with stone. I don’t see paint but I see white dust on their overalls. They work as a team, there is a clear relationship between them all and their history is evident in their shorthand and ease. The oldest one is stoic and quite beautiful with his grey hair wavy across his dark skin. He gets the first seat, the youngest hangs onto the rail, two who seem like brothers sit together. The joker of the bunch sits across…

A family travels Spain day Two: Holiday luck

I wake to the sound of a hundred children laughing. The sun beams through my curtain and I realize the church with the bells also has a daycare. It’s a glorious good morning and I roll over with my pillow and laugh along with them as the bells toll for playtime. Playtime indeed. It hits me: I’m on holiday. I’m on holiday for the longest period of time in my life. My first feeling is panic. How am I going to pay for this? I bolt up in bed. How is Forbes doing house sitting all our animals? How is…

A family travels Spain day one: getting there and so not bragging how

The first host to greet us in Badalona is a curiously light orange cockroach wriggling on his back with glee on the bathroom step. “Hola, welcome to Spain!” I look over at my bedraggled daughter whose face is looking alarmingly like her 95 year old grandfather, Mille, except he was very handsome and usually smiling. We have been traveling for twenty four hours at this point. “Honey, it’s just best if you don’t look.” “Oh God, Mom, is it a bug, is it big?” ”Likely bigger than you may anticipate…” This is so not an Instagram moment and this is…

Airbnb etiquette: how not to be a horrible guest

Having hosted an Airbnb for a couple of years now, I have had the pleasure of meeting wonderful and rather immaculate guests from all across the world. I really love providing a clean and restful beautiful space for people to have a quiet getaway or a writer’s retreat, a family gathering or a romantic outing. Our two bedroom suite is newly renovated with white carpets and wood floors, high count cotton sheets, fluffy towels, a garden BBQ area, an ocean view, a tub big enough for two and a dry sauna for those cold wintery nights. Sometimes I walk down…

Saskatoon: punctured ears and flying fathers

Walking down 20th in Saskatoon, well beyond the hipster hangouts, I pass a rumply dark green and brown clump of chums clustered around an old crusty bicycle by the dollar store. They’re planning something for later. Sounds vague. Sounds noncommittal. Sounds like more of the same. One of them is to the side of the circle, shaking out his hair like he’s applied dry shampoo. The bright pink of my coat catches his eye. He makes a pivot on his heel and decides to walk beside me. “Hello there.” He smiles at me. I do the usual woman once over…

Butterflies and Creepy Cowboys: a girl turns 13

“You always drive a cute little sports car, Mom, and it always has a rotten banana in it.” I laugh and bat at a fruit fly before I shift gears. She’s so right. Between the two houses and her dance lessons and my gigs, we spend an awful lot of time in the Mini Coop. For her thirteenth birthday she wanted to recreate her two fondest memories from childhood. One was a hike through the “magic forest” with her Dad and one was a road trip with me. She puts a new CD in and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs blast…

A Greater Chance at Sunrise

I awoke in the blue hour with a nightmare (the constant plague of the active imagination). Every time I batted my eyes a new bloody dismembered something was in the muddled straw of my Uncle’s barn, being nibbled by a pig crossed with a baby. Yeah. That isn’t creepy. Last week it was sharks. My entire cast of Les Belles Soeurs were pulled under to be munched on, one by one. I managed to get my daughter on top of the upturned boat but some of the cast members were trying to pull her off so they could scramble…

giving and receiving criticism: what to say after a sucky bad play

I’ve waited to write this post for a time when I’m between shows as both a participant and as an audience member. Thirty years into the biz, I’ve seen many brilliant moving and life changing shows and I’ve even been in some. I’ve also been in and seen shows that have made me want to perform a root canal on myself with dirty pliers while listening to The Backstreet Boys rather than sit through act two. It’s the latter that can be tricky to negotiate when someone asks with flushed excited cheeks, “So, what did you think?!” There is a…

settling

Nora and I are standing at a forty-five degree angle eating someone else’s Thai food. I would have never normally chosen green curry octopus but there was a mix up of take-out bags and some lucky person made off with our double Pad Thai and almond chicken. The chewy curved criss-crossed flesh of the octopus reminds me of a bike tire. That said, the flavour is superb. I give Nora all the prawns and salmon chunks in the green curry and I take the octopus and the three large fishy mussels, but my motherly charity only goes so far. We…

Lucia Frangione