Holidays
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.
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 piano recital in Les Columbières. I know nothing about music but the 23year old’s talent was unbelievable.
After Easter, my sister and brother-in-law came to visit me in Menton.
It's great to be a tourist in your own town. We travelled on the little tourist train, that trundles through roads that I know well, I have much to learn about where I live and, seeing things through other peoples' eyes is always enlightening.
We walked around Val Rahmeh, jardin botanique. It is just a stone's throw from my apartment but I don't visit often enough. What a delight to see it in April.
I find myself emphasising my Englishness, since living in France. I baked scones, shortbread and Easter biscuits so that I could invite a few friends over for afternoon tea before my sister and brother-in-law left.
I returned with them to London together and we parted at Heathrow. After an overnight stop in Cambridge—and a catch up with my mother-in-law—Stuart and I set off for Tenerife, to get a little sunshine and visit my older brother. Just one sibling to check up on and I’ll be all caught up.
On arrival at Stansted, there were no queues at car drop-off, bag drop, security or cafe. There was no waiting at the gate. We took off on time, there was no turbulence, screaming children or awkward customers.We landed five minutes early. I wondered if I had entered a parallel universe...
I did have a rather odd episode a few days ago in Menton. Heading out for a walk I came across an Italian removal at the gate. The driver showed me a delivery docket with my address on. My shocked face, rather than my garbled words, will have told him that I was not expecting a van load of furniture.
He called his office and was directed to a garage on the other side of the building. The garage door was open, there was no one to ask. I contacted the Syndiq who couldn’t see what the problem was. I couldn't work out what was going it.
It wasn’t until I spoke to one of my neighbours and she explained that the address, that I thought related to my apartment, relates to the whole building. The apartments aren’t numbered or named, the postman and deliveries go by the names on the post boxes—made more complicated by the fact that there are three separate entrances on different sides of the building. Bizarre but at least someone hadn’t stolen my address and attached it to an empty garage!
This was my reading before coming on holiday. Orhan Paul led me to E M Forster. Both are series of lectures given at very different times about the art of writing a novel. The Dubliners led me to Ulysses. Ulysses is on hold until I get back....
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