January 2026

2026 is here – and my brother and I wish you all a very happy new year.  We miss our mother desperately.  Molly has been gone for six years.  The time it apparently takes for wounds to heal enough to be able to put plans in motion – plans to put her writing online to keep her memory alive.  And to comment, as she would have, on changes taking place in her beloved Principality.

It has taken six years to face the New Year’s Eve ballet without her.  The event is a tradition many hold dear and a new production by the endlessly talented Christophe Maillot, Ma Bayadère, has just made its debut in Monaco.  With my best friend no longer by my side, I took myself to the Forum.  I was warmed but sad to read in the programme that the new ballet was dedicated to Kathy Plaistowe.  She deserved no less but left us too soon.

My mother would have been devastated by her loss, as she would have been if she had known that Kate Powers had also left us.  Some institutions in the principality depend largely and heavily on a single dedicated individual and their loss reverberates endlessly, leaving unfillable spaces.  I haven’t enjoyed facing these things without her, but I am glad she was spared some of the pain of the last six years.

Sadly, she didn’t witness Monaco in all its silent Covid splendor, nor could she celebrate the opening of the ambitious Mareterra land extension and the new Larvotto promenade.  She would be impressed by the new hospital.  Her resting place at the cemetery is also being upgraded.  She will have to be temporarily moved, something she may have had to face in life if the Bahia had got its planned facelift a little sooner.

The sound of Pharrel Williams singing “clap along if you know what happiness is to you” rang out so frequently over the loudspeakers on the promenade this holiday season, as if on a loop, reminding me, every time I felt sad, that I should instead be happy.  As though my mother, who had enjoyed the song, was wishing for me to be happy – in fact, insisting.

The sun has been shining brightly this week, reflecting on the “shunkly” sea – shining and twinkling at the same time, as she would say.  The beach decorations have come down and the new year is easing its way in.  It feels to me like the aftermath of an earthquake when the rattling has finally stopped.

 Happy New Year and Augüri Sciurri 2026.

Clare Brown