Visite Surprise for Michael in la Chocolaterie

By Miki

Well, Michael, on your birthday, I took the special Cafe Crem Machine from our Croc-Air Company and flew to Paolo Coelho. I remembered how you had wished to be with him on the boat in front of Notre-Dame, so I thought you would enjoy to meet him personally in one of your favourite cafes.

So I asked Mr. Coelho if he would be ready to fly back with me to la Chocolaterie de Marie-Claude and meet you there. Of course, well-informed as he always is, he knew about you and all your books, and about Cafe Crem too. And open to new ideas as he also always is, he accepted at once! So we flew back to la Chocolaterie and he waited for you there.

Unfortunately, everything went wrong then! I had no possibility to inform you, and Mr Coelho had no time to wait until I could reach you, so I just took a photo of this very special moment before I had to fly him back. Sorry! I guess it would have been a very interesting chat between two writers!

But as we said in France:

“C’ est l ‘ intention qui compte!”

Could YOU abandon this baby?

Well, here she is, Gypsy, the latest (perhaps) addition to our family… will she really become my first daughter, or not? I have about 10 days to decide… Kevin is useless here, as his heart has already turned to jelly!

So guys, what do YOU think?

MIKI

We miss you all so much!

Perhaps you have noticed it, Kevin and me are since one week now banned from the Internet – a disconnection due to a technical problem after a storm. Yes, even in Spain there are storms! We are fighting all the time to get reconnected, but in Spain everything takes ages to get in motion! We are forced now to go to an Internet cafe to be in Cafe  Crem! What an irony, somehow. an internet cafe within another internet cafe!!!

Anyway, we hope that the problem will be solved this week. But we feel very frustrated, we had no real chance to participate to all the entries or to make entries ourselves, so we want to propose, if you don´t mind, to extend this wonderful theme -thanks so much again, Psychscribe, for the wonderful idea! – till the end of the month.

I want to thank you all from the heart for this incredible life you brought to Cafe  Crem in our absence, we are deeply touched. We miss you all so much!
MIKI  & KEVIN

Oh Maman!

“Maman”, this is how children call their mother in France, the French equivalent to “Mom” I guess! And most of the children, when they grow-up, keep calling their mother “Maman”, at least when they have a good relationship to her, and are not too posh or too proud…

My mother will always be Maman to me, this is for sure! I loved her intensely as a child, and still do. I remember, there was a time in my childhood – I might have been about 13 years old- when I spent all my nights crying, just imagining she could die… After some weeks I stopped tormenting me and my imagination, but only just out of exhaustion!

Anyway, I feel I love her too much to write any interesting words about her… at least for a start, Today I just want to show her to you… so here she is, Maman, in July 2006, on her 60th wedding anniversary… laughing all the time… as she always does, despite of her husband, my father, always trying to stop her… but this is another story for Cafe Crem, another day!

MIKI 

Eid-al-adha

Hi Folks

Just a little bit on my experiences on Eid-al-Adhaa, or ‘’Festival of the sacrifice’’ as known here, I have always celebrated eid in England, and never in Kashmir (where my family originates from), where I believe there is a world of difference as to how this occasion, spanning 3 days is spent.

Eid-al-adha represents the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and their hardships and trials that they faced in order to prove their love of God, they went through all the other tests and succeeded but the final and most challenging and extreme task for any human, for him to prove his devotion, was to sacrifice his own son, the beloved Ismaa’il, and that they chose to be blindfolded as they could not bear the sight of what was to happen, but once they lifted the blindfold they saw that in his place a goat was slaughtered instead and there stood Ismaa’il, smiling back up at his father.

The Hajj (pilgrimage) represent’s the above, which comes to a close, the night before Eid, with each person sacrificing an animal, a goat, sheep, lamb, cow and sharing the meat with the poor. The Sacrifice (Qurbaani) is obligatory upon every-able bodied adult, though I’m not sure if its obligatory every year upon the same individual? Its all about how much you can afford.

For the rest of the world, it all depends on the sighting of the moon at its correct phase, and soon as it is sighted in a suitable region of the world, an announcement is made by a responsible committee, that Eid is the following day.

Back to my own Eid-al-Adha experience, I have spent a lot of time in Pakistan/Kashmir but have never been there around Eid time, which is a shame, as I know in Pakistan/Kashmir they have a tradition where a week or two prior to Eid, each family buy a goat (or a few, depending on how rich they are) and they then take the goat(s) home and feed, groom, exhibition them until their time is up (gulp!). The local butcher does his rounds and goes through the Slaughter (Zibaah) procedures, where the meat is then ready to cook, before moving on to the next house. This is more the theme in the cities, in the more rural and agricultural areas, the families take from their own livestock and then carry out the sacrifice themselves, as per they’re ordinary routine.

In England, the meat is ordered at the Butchers and then its picked up on Eid day or the day before, and when we get to see it, it will come in a huge presented tray, in a variety of specially prepared ‘lamb chop’, bitesize lamb chunks and minced meat, as per our requests, ready to cook as we wish, we are able to save some of the meat and store in the freezer, for a suitable time. The meat is split into little clear bags and then given out to friends, family, neighbours, I’m sure its split in 3 thirds, where 1 3rd we keep for ourselves, 1 3rd between family and friends and 1 3rd for the poor, but I’m not entirely sure. We all help out by dropping these bags off. We cook a variety of yummy food, using the meat, for e.g. lamb chops, kebabs, rice with meat, meat curry and so forth.
I suppose its all become very consumeristic (as everything is becoming in this day and age). We hardly ever think back to the actual real significance of this occasion, more emphasis is put on our clothes, the amount of money (Eidi) or alternatively, gifts we’ll recieve, or give out, how we decorate our houses, who has better food, etc.
P.s. Eidi or Eid money (or alternatively gifts) is what you receive as kids, up till an age where you’re earning yourself and able to give from your own pocket, you give the money out to the children and make their day, this Eid money comes in notes of £5, £10 and £20, some people even give £100, but they’re the ridiculously rich ones, whom I wish would bump into on an Eid day sometime.
Sadly I’m now a giver, too old to be a receiver now, but me and my friends do give each other presents.
As a child Eid was all about an excuse to spend a whole day with friends and cousins of the same age, and we’d be all dressed up, with henna’ed hands and get lots of Eidi, which we would spend at the ice cream van, well that’s when Eid-al-adha was in the Summer.

SUPERSIZEME

The Festival of the Sacrifice, Mali Style -4-

“…For many women these days, it means a lot of messy work and a lot of serving of visitors who arrive at the home–some expected, and some unexpected…”

But some Mali women seemed to have a lot of fun too, in the preparation phase, making themselves looking beautiful… it really didn’t sound as if they were suffering because of too much work, although this here, looks like real big work for me!!! But well, to make herself beautiful, a woman doesn’t hesitate to spend hours of work, and sometimes in the most uncosy situations…

(Photos directly taken from Michael Palin BBC documentary film “Sahara”, during the Festival of the Sacrifice in Mali)

MIKI

Calling Birthday Boys and Girls

“Kevin?”

“Yes, Baby…”

“I’ve got a new idea!”

“Oh God!… does that mean more work?”

Kevin is always scared when I announce a new idea… he knows that I am quite good at always making him work more!

Here it is:

I just read about Danu’s Birthday. I think all we Cafe Cremers should publish our Birthday dates. If somebody doesn’t want to say the year, no problem, I need only the day for my idea. Then on that day, we make a birthday party for the birthday “child”. I mean, everybody (who can and will, of course) tries to make an entry for him or her, in words, photos, paintings, music, whatever!

I would collect the birthday dates in a page which we all can see, so we won’t forget…

So, what do you think?

MIKI

Even Contessine gets sociable…

I don´t know if everybody knows:

Contessine is my niece!

She normally lives here in Spain, very close to me, but she is in France right now, spending Christmas with her Mother and generally at the moment very busy publishing her final study thesis on Proust. So I guess we won´t see her here for a while. So I am publishing her photo myself, but knowing her and her fear to be seen on the net (you know, these aristocrats…) I´ll put a photo of her from behind, and in her favourite activity after reading Proust…

Miki and Kevin in the big project of socialisation!

Taken 10 minutes ago, for all our friends from Cafe Crem!

The Result is in!!!

god, we hated to do this! when the moment came to put all the names on pieces of paper, and I dutifully folded them and put them in a bowl, it was AWFUL knowing we had to abide by the first out of the hat, so to speak. Miki and I thank you all for your participation, and, despite Michael submitting an enormous amount of entries, and a late showing from other contributors, The winner is:

SUSAN!

Miki is worried that you’ll all think because she’s her friend that she rigged the draw, but I can confirm  I wouldn’t even let her look into the bowl as she picked the winner!

We just want thank you all so much for joining in the fun, and bravo Susan for winning the goodies with your wonderful entries.

Your prize will be sent in the first week of january!

Kev and Miki