FEAST OR FAMINE

  When it rains, my hair frizzes and curls – and I get stopped in the street by people thinking that I’m Meryl Streep! Even Parisians stop me. Even Iraqis stop me. Meryl Streep is 7 years older than me, and I have been mistaken for her for about the last 40 years – since The Deer Hunter in 1978. And especially since Mamma Mia in 2008. So, here I am today, with a Meryl photograph of 2008.    On the weekend, at a Parisian restaurant, the waiter found me a table by the window, saying “for the best actress in the world.”   The funniest episode was when I was in the middle of outback Australia in Alice Springs, where Meryl Streep had finished filming Evil Angels in 1988 (remember the lines, “the dingo’s got my baby”?). I was in a bus travelling to Darwin, and the passengers would not believe that I wasn’t Meryl. When we arrived in Darwin, they bought me dinner so I could regale them with stories.    When I was in Nairobi, Kenya, where Meryl Streep filmed Out of Africa with Robert Redford in

  The Oyster Bar – Le Bar Huitres – on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris has now closed. In its place is the new Broadway Café, another American in Paris, following the traditions of the 1920s and 1930s.    MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS   is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan 

MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

The Heaven of Animal (2014) was named one of Amazon’s best short story collections in 2014. The stories are set in America.   The collection includes 17 short stories, with themes such as happiness, friendship, adolescence, family, children, ethics, depression, empathy, and mostly hope. There are a lot of baby and children stories.   In each story, there is a choice to make: ‘to face the people we are when we’re alone in the dark.’   The stories are NOT about animals, except some animals seem to accidentally appear in a few stories, such as an alligator, a gecko, a cat, insects, a wolf, bison, fish, snakes, and some dogs. A film that a man and his biologist wife watches is set in the Serengeti Plains in Kenya and mentions lions, cheetahs, crocodiles, gazelles, antelopes, zebras, hippopotamuses, and water buffaloes.    In one story, Aaron’s therapist calls him a ‘wounded bird’ and there is a park with monkey bars and someone eats turkey. And there is this sentence: ‘Suddenly, meaning at

MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).