Not Christmas

Here’s a funny thing. A person can spend literally years ranting on about two important things in life….long-term friendship and the joys of France…and suddenly become disaffected with both after a matter of days. I can’t remember the last time I went on holiday and was anxious to come home. Until now.

Having recently been set back by work-induced exhaustion, both daughters have now decided that everything will be better due to new carpets and curtains. Bless them for caring and worrying. And it’s true that I’ve become obsessed with the black fluff on my new carpet which originates from my son’s socks. I bought him slippers but, apparently, due to global warming, it’s too hot to wear them.

They think I’m not happy living in the Twilight Zone. Well, it’s true that it’s in the middle of nowhere and the neighbours are awful but it’s quiet. I like ‘quiet’. I lived in Boscombe for seventeen years. Anyone would like ‘quiet’ after that. And there are far worse places to live. The trouble is that everyone now appears to believe that my house, which is quite nice actually, is a root cause of distress. One friend who I recently visited seemed to think I would be much better off living in a caravan. Why? If you’re reading this, I'm tired. That’s all. It’s nobody’s fault.

Clearly, when someone phones up in the middle of all this angst and asks whether you’d like to share the cost of a ferry and petrol down to the south of France you’d jump at it. I didn’t think twice. I probably wouldn’t again as long as it wasn’t the same self-obsessed person. How to ruin a latter-day obsession with the land of the frog:

Firstly, the other person decides that you’re going to do 800 miles plus in one fell swoop. The one redeeming feature of this most dreadful journey is the moon. Having been lost so many times that it’s impossible and, indeed, pointless, to recount the agonies, we emerged from the darkness of the interior of this most enormous country to take a long downhill turn into Macon. There was nothing to look at. Suddenly, on our left, a huge bright orange moon, with one small missing segment, had fallen out of the sky and was hanging precariously over the town. Its picture-book face was smiling awkwardly at us as, accompanied by the strains of Mumford and Sons, we searched for the motorway. That suspended pumpkin which was virtually touching the roof-tops, was not our moon. We saw our moon later; high in the sky where it should have been.

Finally, we arrived at our destination twenty hours after we had started. It was so cold that I went to bed wearing a chunky jumper over my pyjamas and slept under three quilts. The French passed Les Paques in their own inimitable way: days spent sitting outside smoking in the warm sun; nights spent watching unbelievable rubbish on TV; truly, they have perfected the art of wasting time. Mostly, this was redeemed by a drunken enjoyable Easter Day with thirteen for the lamb and a melange of vegetables. Sadly, for les Anglais, with only a few days to spare, it was disappointing. Still, there's always August.