It is time. I fear I have overstayed my allotted spell and getting close to my sell-by-date.
In 1998 I started writing a column “Letters from Paris” for the most important daily in Peru in terms of influence, reputation and tradition. The fact that it had been around for more than 150 years did not hurt either. Writing that column was fun. It also built a bridge between me and my readers, kept me on the lookout for subjects, polished my nascent style and allowed me to work up the courage to write three books.
Over the next 22 years I estimate I wrote 800 plus columns. In the worst of lockdown I started my own blog “Inventing Life” which has posted a total of 187 more. I am about to hit the one-thousand-mark -and suspect I am flying on fumes- so I guess this time is as good as any to say goodbye.
Have no idea how many people read the blog, my guess is anywhere between 15 and 750. That is not the point.
Twenty years ago when a young woman approached me in a restaurant and told me she and her mother, standing rather shyly by her side, never missed picking up the Saturday paper and going straight to my column I felt like I was walking on air. Since then people have quoted me back, often on columns I have no recollection having written, once or twice I fear I have written the same column -this pointed out by hawk-eyed readers to my eternal embarrassment - the result I guess of certain subjects being close to my heart, or a shortage of inspiration, most probably the latter.
The newspaper where I wrote took on an insufferable pompous closet poofter as editor-in-chief who when challenged in front of a very weak board hid behind his posh family ties. I had enough. He did not last very long either. I left and took time to write a second book –the first one written when I moved to Patagonia was a whopping success, based on that I thought the second would automatically follow. Helás! This was not to be although thankfully all copies are now sold. Got re-hired by a smaller newspaper but with a much more attractive editor and after a column with a non PC abbreviation (not even a full word) which triggered a vicious and hate-filled social media frenzy bent on my obliteration, I resigned a second time. The sorry excuse for a man who spearheaded the hatchet job was a relative and presumed friend consumed by a hard-to-understand-jealousy seeing that he seemed to have everything except no talent when it came to stringing two sentences together which if you work in publishing is a depressing condition.
I got up and dusted myself, wrote a third book, a memoir, which not only sold amazingly well but got high praise in high places. I learned to write/edit/post a blog and went on doing what I love best: observing the world around me, trying new places, making new friends while trying to hold unto old ones, stretching my life to the fullest and weaving tales about it.
We now live in lovely Chelsea in the heart of London. Early in the morning I walk my dog in the streets of my neighborhood -which resembles more a charming village than an urban setting- I stop to get flowers form the flower vendor, visit the fishmonger and the veggies and fruit shop, buy my papers from the news agent to better consume and revel in the great irreverent English prose; after more than a year they all know me. I say hello to our caretaker who strenuously tends our communal garden -he started off as rather gruff but has warmed to me as of late- and after having breakfast with my husband I go upstairs to write.
I still don’t own a car nor belong to any club, but having lived through a vicious onslaught of media bashing, an entire winter trapped by Covid and snow in a remote place in the Andes and survived a major heart attack I have a pretty good life although could do with a little less cooking. I am now resigned to the fact that I will never be a great writer – that ship has sailed, actually it probably never made it inside the harbor- but after 24 years of going at it I feel I do a fairly decent job. I know the entrapment of long sentences, appreciate the virtues of the semi-colon, avoid the profusion of adjectives, steer clear of the obvious and try never to start a paragraph with the pronoun I.
A new book is in the making. In English and about one of my favorite characters, I hope I do him/her justice, and hope you will read it too.
Good bye and thank you.
*"Liege", a loyal subject as found in Shakespeare plays. ("Henry IV ", Act !"
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