New Routines

 Last Saturday during the night, I woke sneezing, coughing, my nose running, eyes watering. I thought I must have a cold coming on.  Because it was the middle of the night, I started to wonder what would happen if I died from this cold. I have no fear of dying, but I do have a great fear of no one knowing that I’ve gone. I couldn’t get back sleep until I come up with a plan to make sure that if I do die here, someone will find me.

Of course, when I woke on Sunday, all signs of any cold had gone. It must have just been an allergy!

Having established that I was unlikely to die and even if I did someone would find me, I was filled with energy, so I went out for a walk. I walked down into the old town, joined the tourists and locals looking around the shops and the market and then climbed up to the Basilica of Saint Michael Archangel. All before lunch.

 After lunch,  I followed the road from my flat and walked 3.8km up to Castellar, the mediaeval town that gives its name to the road that I am living on.

Two black cats greeted me, is that an omen or a good luck sign? not sure. From high up the mountain the  views were amazing from all sides. but sadly nothing much was open—my fault, if I had checked I would have found out that there is a market in the square every Sunday morning—so I walked back down again.

A new week has brought a new routine: wake late, coffee, walk up the hill to get my heart racing and say Bonjour to the dogwalkers, back home to yoga to settle my heart down again, then write.

Of course like all good routines it varies day to day but the bare bones are there for me to work around. What I cannot believe, is that I am managing to write every day. At home there is always a call on my time real or imagined. If it is not something that I have to do, it is simply that my head is full of other things leaving no room for my stories.

 One day this week I was definitely back in my student days.  I was in the laundrette.  The promised washing machine hadn’t arrived and needs must…  

I love laundrettes.  I love the sudsy intimacy of them. There’s something hypnotic about the swish swish of water being swung this way and that in the machine. However, the machine that I chose, sounded as though it was battering the washing on the rocks. Should be clean! I sat on a chair chained to its neighbour (the chair not me), obviously there’s a brisk secondhand trade in plastic chairs in Menton.  

Thankfully the drier was much more relaxing.

I risked a further trip to Nice airport. It was just for practice, so that I’m ready when I go to pick up my friend next week. This time, I wasn’t as anxious about driving, but I still don't like the tunnels. I find the sound distortion very disconcerting.  However, feeling more confident as I drove, I was able to observe that, on the autoroute, that there are two types of drivers, those who drive like maniacs and those who drive sedately.  I will remain in the latter category. 

 The trip was without drama, until I got safely back home and knocked my bank card off the central console, where it had been sitting ready for each peage. It fell down the side of the seat and, in trying to retrieve it, I sent under the mechanism of the seat and then into the no-mans land below. My own efforts, and those of my landlord Jean-Claude and his son Nicolas, failed to retrieve it. I was offered the address of Jean Claude’s nephew who has a garage but I decided to accept the loss of the card and ordered a new one.

 I really must research before I go out or simply remember that nearly everything in Menton shuts for at least an hour and a half at lunch time. I took a walk to the Val Rahmeh botanical gardens and arrived 10 minutes before they closed for lunch. I will visit another day. However if the garden had been open, I wouldn’t have found the Parc du Pian with its ancient olive trees, or had a walk along the seafront in the sunshine.

                                                                                                              

Finally, of all the things that I imagined I would experience in Menton, I would never have guessed that sitting in an Anglican Church, listening to an incredibly talented family, playing mandolins and flute, could be one of them or that it would prove to be such an enjoyable evening. 

https://compagnievbd.org/