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Holidays

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 I am writing this beside a rooftop pool in Los Cristianos in Tenerife.  If I had known that retirement was going to be so wonderful I wouldn’t have worked so long—although perhaps that thought is lacking some logic. When we arrived in Tenerife, the sky was an odd translucent white . A thick mist of dust blown in from the Sahara—la calima—was blocking out the sun (but not the heat). I had left Menton in cloud.  Easter had been very wet! When it wasn’t raining the humidity made you feel as though you were in the centre of a cloud. 248mm rain fell in March (average is around 50mm). A quarter of the month’s rainfall fell over Easter. It was wet…There had been some sunny days since but everywhere the weather doesn't seem to be as it should be. Several events were cancelled over Easter—Easter Egg hunts, the procession from the Basilica—not as you'd imagine because of the weather but because of the threat of terrorism. On Good Friday, I was lucky enough to attend a wonderful pian
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Doubts

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In just over six weeks I will be walking part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. I am starting to have some doubts about my ability to complete it. I worry about holding people up, letting others down. Although I walk regularly, I am wondering if I will be able to walk 150km in a week.  I did it before, without major difficulty and surprisingly, my feet were in exactly the same state—ie not perfect—at the end of the walk as they had been at the beginning.  Those feet are now two years older and have walked an additional 6000km. The body, that those feet are carrying, has aged. Its joints are more worn, organs more strained.  To spur me on,  when I walk, I am aiming to raise money to help to maintain the building of the church and its attached library, both of which rely totally on donations for their upkeep. I don't want to disappoint anyone who has made a donation in my name but more importantly, I don't want to let myself down. https://www.justgiving.com/page/jacqueline
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It's Raining Again

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  It’s raining again. That's a phrase I didn't expect to use, living here in the South of France. I returned to Menton last weekend, imagining constant sunshine. I had spent a brief but very pleasant sojourn in England—catching up with friends and family, getting the final things out of storage ready to be transported to France and of course checking out what's new in John Lewis.   At 4am last Saturday, I was woken by window-rattling thunder and simultaneously, spectacular lightning. It rained persistently until Monday morning, I didn’t step out of the door for the whole of Sunday. Fortunately the apartment stayed snug and dry but it rained so heavily that the library was flooded and water got into the church. In the library, no books were damaged but several of the photographs, put up ready for the forthcoming exhibition, fell from the sodden walls—it was as well  that they weren't irreplaceable watercolours .  Further afield there were mini mudslides and  swollen rive
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