Tag Archives: France

Walking is not a sport

Frédéric Gros

Rarely does any book, let alone one on philosophy, start with such a trenchant opening sentence. Gros, however, is not one to mince his words. In his surprise best seller, Gros explores the whys and wherefores of walking, to construct ‘A Philosophy of Walking’ or ‘Marcher, une philosophie’ in the original French.

Only a French person could turn an act of everyday motion into a philosophy, and one with such depth and breadth. Traditional English philosophers are more concerned with logic and language. The newer French school is interested in the everyday, the ‘quotidian’. Gros regards ideas derived from the re-examination of academic treatises as as dusty as the books from whence they came. Only by enveloping oneself in the everyday, can ideas be vibrant and relevant.

Gros first noticed how many other philosophers had walked; not walked as in go upstairs to their studies or to libraries, but walked in cities and the countryside. Walked in order to think. Rousseau, Nietzsche, and of course most obviously Thoreau, wrestled with their philosophies on long walks. All came up with their concepts and ideas whilst tramping through streets and landscapes.

Gros explores walking by examining notions of a higher order, and presents them as short, eminently readable chapters in his book. Gros locates walking in an envelope of big concepts such as solitude, slowness, freedom, silence, repetition and weariness. Take gravity, an essential element to the act of walking, without which we would bounce, fly, hover, but never walk. Gravity is as essential to walking as a pair of legs. Gros explores the relationship between landscape, body and mind, describes how in walking, sometimes the only noise can be the conversation a walker has between their body and their soul.

In one arresting chapter, he describes how walker and landscape draw ever closer through walking. The mere act of walking, not the purposeful walk to the office or house, but the physical absorption into the landscape that all walkers intuitively understand. He talks about the “sedimentation of the presence of the landscape in your body.” Walking so as not to conquer the earth, but to be of it.

I have a place, not thirty minutes from my house, that I return to time and time again. It requires effort to access, being a stiff climb to a viewpoint overlooking a hidden valley in the garigue. Once there, I find a convenient stone and sit looking over the landscape. Apart from hawks and songbirds, I have never seen any larger animals there, although I know that higher in the mountains live deer, wild boar and possibly even wolves as they migrate across Europe from the east.

I have visited this place of quietness and solitude many, many times. There exists an ancient spell over the valley, rendering it eerily silent. I have sat there and absorbed it, and it has absorbed me.

I have been promised that this is where my ashes will be spread. This is of little comfort to me in death, since I have no belief or interest in an afterlife. But it will comfort me in dying to know that some of the sedimentation of the landscape that is now in me will be returned, so that I am no longer a thief of the landscape, but a partner involved in an equal caress. 

Maybe returning my absorbed sediment to the land will also break its spell of silence.

Gros, Frédéric, Marcher, une philosophie. 2011, Flammarion, Paris. Gros, Frédéric, A Philosophy of Walking, 2014, Verso, London

Thick Skins and Tin Hats

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After multiple false starts, it finally happened. The last day of January 2020 was the date when the country of our birth and nurture left the cradling warmth of the European bosom that had held it for so many years. Previously, the March 2019 deadline had come and gone, our earlier Brexit party had been more a celebration of political incompetence than final curtain. This time nothing could arrest the foolishness of our politicians. Brexit, the reason behind our last 18 months of relocation, renovation and outright effort, was upon us. We were leaving.

Hubris to the right and hubris to the left. Over the previous years, posturing liars driving a downward transformation of our economy and world status were perfectly matched by fantasists led by a man adept only at talking his way into a paper bag. Liberal and European fraternalistic principles sacrificed on multiple altars of, twisted logic, racism, anti-Semitism and rank incompetence.

Of course, for us the game is not over. We are stuck in an existential no-person’s land, at the mercy of attack and counterattack. The dreadful deed, now completed with little in the way of reinforcements or reserves, requires lines of barbed wire to the front whilst our rear is open to the encroaching forces of deregulation, chlorine and unaffordable medicines. Beyond the wire, potentially reprisal fodder, stand those of us still wedded to the European ideal but through accident of birth now fair game for our erstwhile allies. Innocents in the crossfire.

During our last 18 months we have made many new friends of all nationalities. Mostly, unfortunately, our non-British neighbours regard us with incredulity. They seek explanations which we find hard to elucidate. It is as difficult for us to explain cultural prejudice as it is rank incompetence. Almost impossible to talk about the false gods of colonial memory, about misplaced anger from those left behind, the gullibility of the desperate and the insidious power of a press tethered to the desires of billionaire proprietors.

We will steadfastly pursue our dream through this nightmare. Hold close our beliefs in equality and fraternity. Establish a home in the heart of an ancient settlement where French friends welcome us, bestow gifts on us from their gardens and seek to include us in their multiple societies and associations. Helping to breathe additional life into a community, to give as much as we receive and to avoid the stereotype of the Brit holidaying abroad as if the rest of the world was merely a temporary playground, to be abused and soiled as an act of modern conquest.

It will cost us more than we had anticipated. Reciprocal arrangements on healthcare are likely to detonate as collateral damage. Freedom of movement will be curtailed. It will be harder to assure our French administrators that our intentions are pure and not associated with the poisonous bile coming from across the cliffs of Dover. 

But we will strive on. Our personal worlds will not be reduced. We just must be careful now. Our words and behaviours will be judged more harshly. We will need to be more gentle but also firm when talking to those encouraged by watching our leaders, who assume we are in step with them. But we will do it. Because our European future goes well beyond the myopic utterings of a country now so lost to us.

We ‘remain’ believers in the power of community, the strength of diverse peoples and the security of friendships. Our country may be foreign to these ‘others’. On January the 31st 2020 it became more foreign to us too

Thick skins and tin hats.

The Bar is no more: long live the Bar!

When Alain announced that he was ‘retiring’ (having once already retired from the gendarmerie) there was consternation among the disparate and ragged band that frequented the village bar. Always an uneasy coalition of the French barflies and international expats, both groups considered their future with trepidation.

Both the French and international community tended to be split down the middle. Many indigenous inhabitants never went near Alain’s. The combination of rugby decor, constant TV and dubious hygiene arrangements attracted some and repelled others. The same equation applied to the village incomers – some would walk by on the other side of the street, others regarded Alain’s as their spiritual home from home.

Perhaps the major factor driving footfall into Alain’s was the issue of tobacco. Alain’s outrageous flaunting of the indoor smoking ban, permitted through his contacts with his ex colleagues in the gendarmerie, attracted some but left others cold. Literally cold in the winter. Either you tolerated the smokey interior or missed the bonhomie inside.

For welcoming, Alain’s bar certainly was. The consummate people person, Alain had time for everyone. Conversations were of course generally conducted in French no matter your level of comprehension, although Alain did attempt to make payment advice in English as a friendly joke. It would take a special person to replace the flawed genius that was Alain and his cafe.

The idea that he should close, therefore, brought a mixture of delight and fear amongst the village, depending where you stood on issues such as smoking, TV sport and of course decor. Would smoking be allowed in the new establishment? Where would those without expensive TV packages go to watch the Champions’ League? What could possibly replace the bright green and red paintwork?

For at least a year, rumours circulated and swirled around the leaf festooned pavements of the village. Potential patrons came and went. A team of international inhabitants even put up a proposal for a community buy out. Eventually, however, a long handover process began whereby Alain transferred his reputation and good offices to a new couple – Stéphane and Juliette.

This being France, the bureaucracy and paperwork took around six months. There were issues of finance and restrictive covenants; Alain should not inaugurate another bar within a certain radius. An unlikely outcome, at least not until Alain had regained his energy by sleeping for around 18 months, for he was observably shattered at the end of his tenure. Running a bar from eight in the morning until ten at night with only one week’s holiday a year does tend to take it out on a fella.

So, with impeccable timing as we arrived for our autumn visit, hoping to complete some essential jobs in the house, Alain’s bar shut its doors for the last time. We missed the closing party by a day. During the next two weeks we occasionally peeked a look inside at the work which was being undertaken. This was probably not a good idea. One morning we arrived to see Juliette on her knees scraping away the layers of protective grime that had accumulated behind the bar over the years. Sadly, there were probably antibiotic organisms there unknown to medical science now lost forever as the cleaning frenzy began.

The renovation period stretched from the planned two weeks to four and then six. By this time we had left the village for a while in order to satisfy our contractual employment commitments and replenish our bank account before sterling became even more of a joke currency as the UK voted once again for a europhobic government. Fleeing back to the village a month or so later, auspiciously the day after the UK drifted off somewhere into the middle of the Atlantic, we discovered the bar was now open once again. We stepped across the threshold.

Although we had been partially forewarned by Bud our German/American friend who had sent us some pictures, nothing could prepare us for the transformation. Gone the tobacco stained ceiling. Gone the green and vermillion paint job. Gone the coffee and wine stained wooden bar. Alain’s had been transformed into a hospital clinic waiting room. All was white, even the wood. There was no escaping the new decor as multiple 1000w lamps beamed down from the ceiling, illuminating the new owners’ statement of intent. We are CLEAN! they shouted out. There was certainly no denying it.

RIP the Last Greasy Spoon in the Minervois

High Altitude Hipsters

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“Désolé monsieur, nous n’avons pas de l’eau”

Not quite the auspicious greeting we had hoped for on deciding to try the new restaurant further up the valley from our own village. 

“Est aussi,  nourriture froid seulement

Not getting any better, we thought. No water or hot food. We looked around at the carefully constructed shabby environment and then back at the effortfully effortless garb of the person imparting this bad news. One of our companions began emitting, and then hastily concealing, snorts of amusement. Our first attempt at demonstrating to friends that our region was just as up there with modern city living was floundering badly.

“High Altitude Hipsters”, he sniggered. “What do you expect?”

As has been noted elsewhere in this blog, eating out in our region is often characterised by traditional village cafes, in our village for example, offering a robust mix of tobacco infused basic home cooking and cheap cold red wine. By far the best value eating is to be found in village cafes, local auberges and restaurants. But ONLY at lunchtime. Given the need to fill those empty hours between the morning work period and its afternoon aftermath – under most circumstances a good two hours break – the French worker piles into the nearest local eatery, expecting to be fed a full three course meal including bread, wine and coffee for around €12-€15 a head.

How restaurants do this is nothing short of a miracle. In most establishments these ‘menu du jour’ are not of the sausage and chips variety found in the UK. They represent proper French cooking with cheffy salads beautifully presented, expertly constructed sauces, and simple but delicious puddings. The wine rarely tastes like vinegar and the coffee is usually that bitterly barista-like flavour so beloved by the French.

Part of the secret lies in good, from-scratch cooking, but probably more importantly this is due to the restricted menu. Often there is only a choice of one or two items per course. Most restaurant reviewers naturally regard this as a sure sign of a good restaurant, a chef that knows what s/he is doing. Either way, you will be constantly amazed at what is on offer. However, woe betide you if you fetch up at the same restaurant in the evening, where as if by magic the same dishes then appear on the a la carte menu. If you choose them you will pay double for the pleasure of ordering them compared to the midday meal.

On this occasion we had eschewed the usual set menu midday approach and had instead made our way to and had opened the hidden door to a restaurant we had seen advertised locally. The mountain village in question had lost its existing restaurant some years previously and we wanted to see how the new guys were getting on. First impressions were favourable. Modern metal braces holding up a small hanger shaped, glass-surrounded eating area, running alongside a bar listing interesting and funkily named local red wines. Although too cold for this time of year, the outside garden looked interestingly stocked with herbs and edible vegetables, covered by a large taughtened parachute. The same purposely understated mix of wooden floors and tables, set off by old but definitely not twee decorations. Hipster heaven.

The Aude and Ariège regions of France have always attracted those looking for an alternative life, particularly in the mountains. Both regions have a history of depopulation and have over the years welcomed outsiders, less concerned about their habits and beliefs, more interested in their spending power and contributions to the local economy. Each new wave of settlers reflects their genesis. As we walked into this new restaurant it became immediately apparent. They were modern examples of this trend. Hipsters. In the mountains. Miles from anywhere. Not just hipsters but high altitude hipsters.

My male friend and I looked at each other. Both of us bearded and clothed in jeans and check shirts clearly looked the part. Equally, we both share a penchant for artisan produce, especially craft beer. This was our kind of place. We quickly forgave them their deficits. After all, their problems had arisen because of the once in 20 year floods that had struck the region just a week previously. Several months rain had fallen in as many hours, devastating lower laying communities and causing boiling torrents of water  to forge new pathways down the sinewy mountain valleys, taking the local water treatment plant with them. 

We enjoyed our cold meal very much. The quinoa was lovely, the pomegranate seeds delightful. The local(ish) IPA was full of hoppy goodness and the chestnut pure made a fine addition to the hand knitted yoghurt. Our check shirts and beards blended in well with the aged wood and faux artisan nick nacks. The smooth jazz and alternative indie music tracks were the perfect companion to the slightly unreal environment, stuck as it was in the middle of an old monastic garden in a medieval alley at the heart of an ancient mountain hamlet. There wasn’t a non-hirsute male face in the place. Traditional French cooking in a traditional French restaurant at a traditional French price it was not. But it was delicious, relaxed and a breath of the new/old in a resolutely traditional area. We loved it and we go back often.

We never did find out why the food was cold though.


The Last Greasy Spoon in the Minervois

The smoke rose up from Cécile’s ‘hidden’ cigarette, curling towards the ceiling of the bar, adding a further coat of yellow covering to the years of tobacco infused paint. Despite more than ten years of public prohibition, Cécile and her partner, Alain waged a campaign to preserve the old ways. Or maybe they were just addicted and there were things to do. After all, if they had to go outside to smoke they’d never actually get any bar keeping done.

‘Chez Alain’, their village bar, provided a reminder of how things used to be. Go there during the short but cold Minervois winter and as well as arriving to a very warm welcome you will be assured of leaving with a throaty phlegmy cough. Need to clear your chest? Alain’s is the best medicine.

Although the Minervois is still dotted with a decreasing number of village cafés, Alain’s is probably the last to provide this level of customer service. Despite a rebellious, even seditious tradition, most of the bars have succumbed to the rule of law. Smoking outside on the pavement is still de rigour of course. However, inside fuming is generally off the behavioural repertoire.

Nonetheless, there is more to Alain’s bar than a smoky interior. Alain designed his village watering hole to be a sport’s bar. Alain himself is heavily involved in the local village rugby club and his TV shows all manner of sports games, rugby in preference but plenty of football when international and European club championships are underway. The local, mainly male, clientele prop up the bar on these occasions, shouting Gallic encouragement as their favoured players succeed or fail at their chosen sport. In the winter, the tougher of the village population of younger women gather to smoke their ways through packets of cheap cigarettes whilst the occasional worker pops in for an early morning Ricard, that quintessential French aniseed infused spirit. It would be a bit of a stretch to describe Alain’s Bar as family orientated. No yummy mummies here.

In Alain’s mind, the perfect environment in which to watch the big game is to be bathed in a riotous colour scheme of bright green and vermillion. If the game proves to be tedious, in Alain’s Bar you actually can watch the paint peel without fear of boredom.

Sadly, the paint is indeed peeling at a remarkable rate. Alain came to bar keeping rather late in life after – so doubtful and unconfirmed rumours go – a career in the police force. How else to explain, other than through prior law enforcement connections, the survival of Alain’s now unique establishment? On one memorable occasion, a representative of the local Gendarmerie popped in. The assembled multitude hastily stubbed their cigarettes out and looked apprehensively at Alain, fearful that he was about to be reprimanded for his flagrant flaunting of the law. With classic French insouciance, the Gendarme leaned against the wall, took out a packet of Gauloise cigarettes and calmly lit one up. The clientele breathed, and coughed, again.

But time, and Alain, are getting on a bit. He and Cécile are trying to sell the place. If they succeed it is unlikely their carefully constructed piece of living history will survive as is. All over the Minervois the lure of the €8 plât du jour and €12 menu du jour is proving less attractive to locals and tourists alike than the more pricey and – let’s face it – more upmarket French restaurants and auberges. Village cafés are either closing, reducing their opening hours or being turned into fancy restaurants. With their closure comes a diminishing of village life, hearts being ripped out of communities, the foci of local gossip disappearing.

But for now Alain and Cécile survive and it was to Alain’s bar that we navigated. The hasty conversation with Jeannette had hatched a plan for her to leave our keys behind Alain’s bar. As we wandered down the village street Alain spied us coming and greeted as long lost friends, suspecting rightly that his income was about to see a boost. For we love Alain’s bar. We love the cock-a-snoopery, the industrial fizzy beer, the cold red wine and the never changing menu. We love the early morning coffees, the breakfasts we buy from the local boulangerie and eat at his tables, and the nights watching Champions League football. We love how Alain will search through his endless television channels for particular football matches we are interested in seeing on his huge TV. If we could save his business singlehandedly we most certainly would.

Right now, however, we were after another prize. Alain fished in a drawer, shifted aside a messy bundle of receipts and other bar keeping paraphernalia, reached to the rear and came up with a white paper envelope with ‘Dave and Anne’ written on it. Even the misspelling of Ann’s name could not dampen her enthusiasm. For there, in Alain’s hands, was our prize. The keys to the house. Les Clés de la Maison

Les Clés de la Maison

The TGV from Paris Montparnasse to Bordeaux flies along at just shy of 300km an hour, covering the nearly six hundred kilometres in little more than two hours. The landscape, burned brown by the just abated heat wave such that the furrowed fields were rendered indistinguishable from the bleached grass, flashed by. Apart from the speed and the scorched earth outside, the journey seemed oddly familiar – travelling families, backpacks, insufficient luggage space, incomprehensible seat numbering systems – reinforcing a welcome sense of continuity on our journey into the unknown. For this was the moment of truth. This time we were picking up our keys.

Half way between Paris and Bordeaux the landscape changed, as the countryside became more undulating, large swathes of woodland appeared more frequently and the first green ranks of vines appeared. Still, the sun shone down out of an unbroken blue sky and emptied irrigation ponds lined the tracks. Unlike the UK, the great European drought of 2018 still had France in its grip.

However lyrically one tries to observe, record and describe life passing by, the prosaic reality of life soon butts its nose in. Sure enough, crushed between travel bags attempting to eat a French take away lunch proved less than incident free. Having safely navigated a ham and cheese baguette, the strawberry tartelette that followed proved a little more tricky, spilling sticky glaze onto both my travel journal and myself.

Not to be undone, Ann then proceeded to spurt fruit salad juice liberally over the same journal. This brought to mind the infamous occasion when, I having just become the proud owner of a brand new MacBook Air computer laptop [notice the future-proofed writing there?], in the process of opening an individual sachet of train milk, Ann gave my brand spanking new keyboard a liberal milk bath. The lesson I had not learned of course is never to travel with precious things and Ann together. She is an expert in launching food products where they are not normally best appreciated. If you ever invite her round for dinner, avoid asking her to pour the wine.

As the train sped along at an unfeasibly rapid pace, lorries and cars seemed to crawl along the motorway running alongside us, like shiny carriages from a bygone age, polished up for some state carnival. By car, the journey would have taken us a very long day, if not days. Instead, here we were being sped towards our destination in a suitably advanced manner, a metal tube transporting its human cargo, including ourselves, to destinations unknown.

An apposite description so it appeared. We only had vague ideas about the future, our ability to remain in France past B-Day 2019, our proclivity or otherwise for improving our language skills. These were important questions to ponder but first of all something more pressing. Most of all, we didn’t know where to find the keys to our new French life, last seen in the hands of the French estate agent, Jeanette. There had been vague arrangements to meet us the next day, but these had been undone in an email to the effect that Jeanette had decided to take time off and would leave the keys in a bar in the next village.

The phone rang. “Hello, it’s Jeanette. I am not in the village. I cannot leave the keys. What shall I do?”

Existential Refugees

In 2018 I decide to seek refuge away from my native land. To become, in essence, a refugee. I was not fleeing from conflict or for economic advantage, although impending economic disaster was the constant backdrop to my plans. No, I became an existential refugee.

I don’t know if there is a formal existential refugee category, but if not then perhaps that is another example of rejection. I apologise to other types of refugee. I haven’t been tortured, seen my family raped and murdered, nor have I faced starvation or vanishingly faint opportunities for employment. On anyone’s hierarchy of human needs, most of the basic ones are met.

Without wishing in any way to imply moral equivalence to those who flee from persecution and terror, through millennia there has been another factor that has have driven migration, pushing people to uproot themselves, cross borders, arrive in uncharted territory; leave all that is familiar and safe behind.

Equating familiarity with safety is not an entirely self-satisfied first world conceit. The drip, drip, drip of insecurity can build up into a flood of anxiety as the waters rise inexorably, submerging the familiar landmarks that bind a person to their culture or country.

Having spent 20 years evolving a European identity, my country decided that it did not share my sense of who I was. Indeed, the most senior politician in the land of my birth told people of my ilk that we were “citizens of nowhere”. We begged to differ. Suggesting that accident of birth does not bind you to a land, we preferred to be boundaried by political action not happenstance. This did not make me a citizen of nowhere, but it certainly led me to doubt that I could remain a citizen of England.

So we decided to become citizens of somewhere, a somewhere that might grow to love us as we loved it. This is our story, as we race to beat the gathering storms of Brexit – such a hateful and hate filled term – and gain a foothold in a continent that still equates geographical with political definitions, where cooperation is prized and where friendship was seen as the best hope for a collaborative future world.

And that somewhere? That somewhere was France.

You just bought what!!!

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Chapter 1: ‘The Bucket List’ or ‘I don’t like Monday’

Let’s face it, most Mondays are a bit grim. For most of us, Monday means the carefree attitude of our Saturdays and Sundays coming crashing to a halt on the buffers of the new week. Freedoms curtailed, free will abolished and well worn routines re-established. Normally, coffee and a bleary eyed stumble into work are sufficient to crank the human engine into life.

It might be tough, launching into the new week, but it’s not every Monday that a trip to the Emergency Department is required to get the motor running. However, this was no ordinary Monday.

I blame the early morning email from a colleague demanding my attendance at some project meeting or other, of dire importance to her but of little interest or consequence to me. Such emails always gave me indigestion at the best of times. This was not the best of times. When the pain of indigestion both persists and marches down your left arm it’s probably best to miss the meeting. I decided to politely demur and instead make an alternative appointment with the medical profession.

I had no idea that this particular morning was to be the start of a journey. A journey that took me into the mountains of the Cathars; a journey that introduced me to the high Pyrenean panoramas; a journey that taught me the importance of good socks.

In my house we now have a big sheet of flip chart paper with objectives and targets written on it in felt tip pen: my ‘bucket list’. The flip chart came about after my discharge from the cardiac care unit when I sat and wrote down some of things I’d forgotten I liked. There is nothing like a close brush with the grim reaper to remind you of the importance of life, of living life and of experiencing life. Sure, some of the things on the flip chart relate to professional achievements – “how do you want to be remembered old boy?” But not all. Right there in the middle it says ‘Do some more long distance walking.’

I am now in my fifties. Since the age of 18 I have done four long distance walks (definition: long-distance walks means a walk that lasts more than a day and requires some form of overnight accommodation along the way, be it tent or luxury spa). So that’s one a decade then, hardly a personally defining activity. But I liked them when I did them. Why didn’t I do more? If my past behaviour and the relentless march of time were any guide, I’d probably manage to fit in one more before various bits of internal or skeletal tissue gave up completely. Something had to change.

Sitting there in front of the fire in mid winter like a five year old with a crayon, I determined that I’d pack in as many walks as I could before…well before what ever else happened. And that is where the journey began.

Chapter 2: ‘Stig Illuminati’

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We joined forces in a place called Marmande (or Marmalade, as Rose named it) after he arrived from Goa via Saudi Arabia and an overnight Paris stop and I drove down from Northern France having taken the overnight ferry. Rose amused himself on the way by hiding out in Riyadh airport for twelve hours, getting his dates wrong (thereby arriving in France 24 hours too early), and paying a call on the ghost of Django Reinhardt at his La Chope des Puce, café and jazz restaurant. It was closed. Django was chained. A night in a cheap Paris flop house, as is his wont, and Rose was on his way.

In contrast, I arrived at the ferry port with ample time to spare, got an early place at the restaurant and enjoyed some fine French dining and a superb bottle of Medoc. A tour around the deck, some bracing sea air and a final nightcap gave ample incentive to retire to bed.

After an excellent night’s sleep aboard ship and a less than adequate French attempt at an English breakfast, I put the pedal to the metal and drove the 750 kilometres to our rendezvous. Turning left just outside of town led me to the car park of one of those wonderful, cheap and entirely adequate French travel hotels. Upon negotiating my stay, the receptionist strangely expecting me and pairing me with Rose, out of the lift walked, or rather flopped, the man himself.

A few words about Rose. Rose is resolutely both male and masculine, displaying all the expected attributes of a fellow of his age. Ex-musclebound bodies in their fifties do tend to allow lipids to lie comfortably where previously there was only fibrous tissue. Rose is no exception and is a fine example of this universal law. A year of near equatorial living has also enhanced this rather marvellous effect. In his now typical flip flop, shorts and tee shirt garb he oozed himself into the hotel foyer, beaming broadly.

But why was he here? What would possess a seemingly sane and sensible man of his age to spend 36 hours in and between various tropical airports, several more hours making high speed progress on a TGV the length of France to appear like magic out of an Accor lift? The answer is another beginning.

Following those early crayon drawings referred to in the previous blog post, I had started to organise the 2015 wander – a six day trek along half of the Cathar Way in southern France. My dearly beloved had ‘suggested’ (a rather marvellous euphemism if ever there was one) that I should try a light weight first return attempt at long distance walking. This meant skipping the tent, cooker, sleeping bag, Karrimat, eating utensils, washing up bowl, gas bottle, toilet spade and kitchen sink, and organise accommodation en-route. This I duly did but her anxiety was still palpable at the thought of me going solo, despite the fact that I have been using my legs without benefit of an instructor for most of the previous 50 plus years.

Three weeks before the off, I received an email from Saudia Airlines headed ‘A friend wants to share his trip with you’. Very nice, I thought those days had long passed. On closer inspection it outlined a highly complex and tortuous journey from the Indian subcontinent to Paris and back again. Rose was on the move. His own dearly beloved had instigated the trip, or so we are led to believe; the mysterious connection between those of a different gender probably being the prime suspect for such an eventuality, given the rather improbable prospect of Rose shifting out of monsoon mode and into action via the world of Salafi Islam.

So there we were, to old and ancient friends staring across the lobby. It was quite an emotional meeting and of course led to a rather riotous evening in Marmalade’s only gay restaurant. It would have been rude not to. We drank some pretty average to vile beers in a local bar, via a brief stop to sample some stupendous red from a local wine merchant, and then had an excellent set meal at the restaurant. We sat outside in the square eating before a DJ came along; Rose danced with the waitress and then Top Gear’s Stig made an appearance in a multi-coloured illuminated racing suit. There was a point in the evening where Rose looked at the empty (and gorgeous) wine bottle, suggested ordering another, when I knew we were lost. It would not be the first time. I am surprised it took us so long.
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