I was seriously thinking of giving up vacations for the greater good, but this time, for once, nobody invaded a small defenceless country or blew up a national monument while I was out of circulation, so maybe we’ll send for the usual mountain of brochures with a view to going exploring again in a year’s time. And thanks for asking, yes, I had a lovely time, thank you. Though after 200+ e-mails (not counting the spam, which fortunately is less of a problem now Phil my techie guru has sorted out the filter) and a small rain-forest of post, it’s already beginning to feel as if it happened long, long ago instead of just a few days.
As usual, the house and office both threw a sulk when we got back. Don’t ever tell me inanimate objects don’t have feelings; they hate to be ignored or abandoned just like humans do. We had no hot water for twenty-four hours, until the man with the big spanner came and whacked it into submission. And for the first half-day, my computer resolutely refused to send the replies I’d written to some of those e-mails. I did the highly technical thing the manuals all recommend – turned it off and turned it on again, several times in fact – but it took its own sweet time before deciding to be friends again. If technology wasn’t so damned complicated, it would remind me of a toddler showing mom who’s boss.
A few memorable moments:
- Eating chestnut-flavoured ice cream in a pavement café on the edge of a town square straight out of a picture book of rural France. Yum.
- Finding the little roadside market where the fruit and vegetables were grown on the guy’s own farm. Even yummer.
- Cote d’Or chocolate with hazelnuts in every supermarket. Ours used to sell it, but not for long. Don’t people have any taste in this country?
- Knowing that the bottle of rosé our friends brought to the barbecue was made just a few miles down the road (my Shirley Valentine moment!) Actually I prefer red to rosé, but it’s the thought that counts.
- Seeing the Pont d’Avignon. Yes, it’s real, and yes, it only goes halfway across the river just like the pictures. I didn’t dance on it in a circle like the song says, but I did get to ride underneath it.
- Being harangued by a long-time resident of the village we stayed in. At least, we thought we were being harangued, probably for parking in her space, but when our vestigial French finally made sense of her Languedoc accent it turned out she was telling us about the olive oil mill her daughter ran – because my own daughter had mentioned to the village grocer that she’d like to go and see how the stuff was made. The haranguing part was just her frustration with the ignorant Brits who didn’t understand her. Don’t you just love French villages? And yes, we visited to the olive oil mill. More yum.
- Driving past the Etang de Vaccares in the Camargue, willing the flamingoes to come out and pose for a photo or two (they didn’t) and having a good laugh when the mellifluous-voiced sat nav lady went into a sulk because we ignored her repeated instruction to do a u-turn at the next opportunity. She clearly didn't like the Camargue as much as we did. We’d never had a car with sat nav before. It was an entertaining experience.
- The Selected Works of T S Spivet. You HAVE to read this book. It’s not crime fiction, but I make no apology.
- Simon’s blackberry clafouti. Ambrosia by any other name.
OK, so the last two could have happened anytime and anywhere, but they did happen because I was on holiday in France at that particular time.
I’m sure Maureen made a great job of filling my slot – in fact I know she did, because I read her posts – but I’m afraid you can’t keep her because I need her to write the next Bev Morriss. A Crème de la Crime list wouldn’t be a Crème de la Crime list without Bev.
And now normality has kicked in again. Well, almost. My gym kit is still buried somewhere in the six loads of laundry I did within a day and a half of landing, so the autumn fitness regime has yet to begin. But the computer’s behaving again, so I’ve just about reached the end of all that accumulated post and e-mail, and as of today I’m back in getting-2010-organised mode.
I think I need another holiday…
