May 21st 2007
Today we left for Nice and I know what you’re thinking and yes, we saw Joan Collins at the airport. She comes up to my ankles and is a hundred and fifty two.
I recognized her because she was talking very loudly with intent to encourage gawking from fellow travellers like my mother, who stared and said “it can’t be her, that little thing is dressed too badly.” Granted my mother was speaking in French, a rare language known only to the French and those few countries she colonized.
Today is Monday and by Friday my sister will be married in a little rustic medieval village called Bormes-Les-Mimosas, a southern village so typical you might actually see a man in a stripy top cycling with a string of garlic around his neck.
Disaster! The weather forecast for the French rivera shows rain. My sister has called to lament.
“So it might drizzle,” I told her, “its not like thunderstorms,” I say reassuringly.
“No, they said thunderstorms” she replied, “and the day after the wedding I have reserved the restaurant of a beach for everyone and there will be thunderstorms.”
“So even if it rains, the beach restaurant will be fun, its not like its going to be a hurricane” I replied.
“No, they said hurricane” she replied solemnly.
Inconsolable, if I had told her that at least a volcano wasn’t due to explode, she would have confirmed that no, in fact they had forecast a live volcano to sprout and erupt in the village during the champagne reception. I don’t blame her I suppose, if it were my destination wedding that everyone was flying to, I too would be seriously bummed out by shit weather predictions. And I can’t get that damn Alanis Morrissette song out of my head.
The flight went by in a blink, mom who was sitting rows ahead of me sprinted out of the plane to beat the rush and I followed suit. Racing through the airport tunnels in Nice through passport controls towards the luggage carousel I easily spot my mother, she's the one in the pink sweater, staring up at Claudia Schiffer.
“The other one is prettier,” she whispers to me motioning to Elle McPherson who is standing next to Claudia. She is indeed, dressed in black leggings and slip dress, acres of tan skin, flawless makeup free features. Claudia, like my mother has always contested, looks like she fell into a barrel of bleach. Her hair is white straw and everything else about her is beige, but painted up I can see how she looks every inch the Barbie.
Poor old Joan Collins is hardly noticed as she and young husband number seventeen push through the crowd to collect twenty-five pieces of battered Luis Vuitton. She is wearing a necklace that says “legend” in diamonds that are “probably not real” if you are asking my mother. I watch them push their trolleys towards Nothing to Declare and wonder if she is running out of money.
“They might be on our shuttle bus for the car rentals,” mom says reading my brain.
We wait for our suitcases. Portly men stand between the supermodels on our right while their portly male friends conserve the moment with cell phone pictures. Claudio and Elle look like they are on stilts. At five foot eight, I feel short and dumpy. This is unfamiliar territory. A quick bathroom trip confirms that nothing revolting happened to my face during the flight, I don’t feel unappealing given the company, just invisible. I walk out of the bathroom and am standing in front of Eva Mendes. I now feel ugly. In platform sandals, she comes up to my kneecaps looking like Cindy Crawford and Marolyn Monroe’s love child. Incredibly, my friend Benjy thinks she looks like a maid: “When I look at her, it reminds me that I have to call my housekeeper. If I met her, I would give her an apron and dustpan.”
Though bizarre, it does not surprise me that my mother feels similarly “I have no idea who this Eva Mendes is with her little forehead, but remind me that we have to sweep the floor when we get home. ”
We the normal people on holiday stand waiting for our luggage and smile at each other happy to be amongst the immortal, pleased with the stories we will tell our friends. Four major celebrities in a small airport, waiting around a carousel just like us. Two dwarfs and two giants, on their way to the Cannes Festival a fact that takes the edge off the surrealism.
June 4rth 2007
Well folks, the celebrity circus just doesn’t end. It seems that none other than Richard and Judy are gracing the upper class of my return flight to London. I spotted Jim in the BA check in line at Nice. He walks about with a swagger like he knows he’s hot celebrity shit, leather jacket swung over his shoulder with exaggerated emphasis like a nine year old emulating his older brother. Judy looks every inch the mismatch for despite Richard’s refusal to dress his age, his facelift has been well executed and he is tall and lean and nicely tanned. Altogether not unpleasant looking, I checked him out and he noticed and re-flipped the leather jacket back in place over his shoulder.
On the plane now. We just experienced an "air pocket" drop in altitude so horrific that everyone screamed, a couple of people are in tears and mostly everyone is covered in tea and coffee. I thought we were going down. My little mother sitting in the row ahead was terrified but as the plane plummeted towards certain doom, heart in my throat my only thought was "I'm going to die with Richard and Judy".
Your fan,
a.
