30th June 1999, Morningish, Weds. St. Andeol, kitchen. Hyperactively cloudy.

Yesterday was fun. We left at about 12, walked about 1km, got a lift all the way to Monestier. We sat in the park for an hour, playing on the swings, waiting for the bank to open, then went and had some Heineken until the shops opened.

We bought cereal, milk, biscuits, Gran Marnier, red wine and Kronenbourg, and pasta. We had lunch in the park (couscous again, but this time with raisins!) and after shopping started (what we thought would be) the arduous trek home. After passing our 'lucky corner', we succeeded in getting a lift off a serious candidate for 'Miss France' (1999, 2000 and the foreseeable future) who was about our age, a psychology student in Grenoble and told us, as we swung around the tenuous mountain bends, that she had just passed her driving test. Call me a transparent opportunist, but I was considerably more enthusiastic in my attempts at French conversation on the way up with her than I had been with the kind gentleman who gave us a lift into Monestier that morning.

She said she was on her way to meet a friend, so I didn't ask her in for a cup of tea or anything, despite the fact that I wanted to. Gemma burst out laughing at me as soon as the car disappeared around the next corner. Humph.
Anyway, Gemma came up with a chesnut:

"Where charm and good looks fail, a cup of tea and some cookies won't," or something to that effect. I’ll bear that in mind when I get to Warwick in October!

Hmmm.

So I'm not taking my Mum to Greece after all. A few issues and rearrangement of holiday times and voíla! We have an alternate summer plan, one which, unfortunately, does not entail me gaining a tan which beats Krissa's but is still hanging in there for me not to have exceeded my holiday allocation by the time I bugger off to the States.

Which is a good thing.

Honest.

In other news, Polish sausage is still the flavour of the month, my webmail is still porked, Victoria the Venus Flytrap seems not at all well, Khalil and I have been discussing the relative merits of becoming drug smugglers, Krissa and I have been drawing each other stuff, Dave has been so distracted by some floozy that his blog has decided to go blank in protest, and the next two weeks will go far too slowly.

29th June 1999. 0654hrs, Tuesday. St. Andeol, kitchen. Just past dawn.

‘The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer...’
It might be a Christmas hymn, but it sums up my day so far.
The rising of the sun was somewhat muted by the untimely arrival of some cloud, but I still feel good to have seen it. I spotted a reddish animal sprinting down one of the fields on the other side of the village – I took it for a fox, until my sense of perspective (and of location) kicked in and I realised it was a deer. It was too far away to have got anything but a photo of some trees, a field and a reddish-brown smudge or dot, but it didn’t matter- it was still a sight poetic enough to evoke a sharp intake of breath and a glow inside. How many people wake up and see that in the morning?


0710-The sun has outpaced the clouds for now, so I’ve taken up residence on the balcony with my (‘if I’m going to get up at this time where’s the coffee?’ screams my metabolism) coffee and journal.
One of the things about this trip so far is that it hasn’t involved enough early mornings. To me, early mornings and travel go together, an effect of those gut-wrenchingly exciting mornings before I was ten years old, when the family would pack our suitcases in the car and head for Gatwick, bound for somewhere in the Mediterranean – Mallorca, Ibiza or Crete. It seems a shame to have lost that gut-wrench, the extreme excitement that comes with an unfettered imagination and untainted enthusiasm. Being here now, I’m starting to get to feel it again, if only slightly; the effect of building up anticipation for Italy over this two weeks’ break.
‘Italy’ is laden with meaning.
Rome, The Romans, Pisa, Leonardo da Vinci, the renaissance, Sicily and Mount Etna, Pompeii, a football mad population, snazzy dressers, spaghetti bolognese (had to come in somewhere, I suppose), the Punic Wars (Romans again), lire, Latin, too much detail on the Mezzogiorno region from oh-so-many GCSE geography lessons, and crazy drivers in tiny cars. And that’s not all.
Greece is packed with so many associations that it’s hard to describe. I’ve always been interested in Greek mythology, I covered Crete’s ruined palace at Knossos on the theme ‘Labyrinth’ for my GCSE art exam, and the idea of doing a bit of island hopping in the Aegean grabs my sense of adventure by the lapels with both hands and screams, “COME ON THEN, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!” in it’s face. To put it one way...
We’re bound to have three or four early mornings yet- the overnight ferries from Brindisi in the south of Italy to Patras on the north western face of the Greek coast, and from Athens to Crete, will see to that, but there’s still something anticipatory about a really early morning that defies definition.
0850 – We’re going to Monestier de Clermont again today, to shop for our last few days here, to buy a present for the McCarthy’s but mostly to have a drink at the pub. A rather ominously grey looking cloud has just edged its way over the face of the sun above where I’m sitting in the garden, but I think I can see blue sky behind it, so hopefully it’ll just pass over.
One of my chief worries about coming away was that Gemma and I wouldn’t get on. Thankfully, we’re over six weeks into the trip and apart from one or two occasions when we’ve both been under stress ( possibility of a missed connection, sort of thing), and we’ve both got a bit snappy, it’s been great fun. One thing that does rankle is her indifference and/or lack of urgency. When we discuss what we want to do, (in a country, for the day...) Gemma’s contribution is always ‘I’m not bothered’ or ‘Whatever’. Fine by me – we do what I want to do, but that does make me feel a bit dictatorial and responsible for whatever happens. I came away to do stuff, see sights and meet people. When we only get around to doing one thing in a day because we slept in until 11, or because we didn’t plan what we wanted to do (usually me not wanting to enforce anything) so we end up mythering, it frustrates me. Although if I’m honest, I do like being able to sleep until 11! I wish she’d be a bit more passionate about the fact we’re travelling, we should be seizing each day and wringing the experiences out of every one them. Doing this would probably mean sleeping for about five hours a day though. When we set off from here on Thursday or Friday, we’ll be well rested and ready to paint Grenoble red, or whatever colour they have available and is relatively cheap...
So come dance the silence down through the morning...
The ling.

So it's a run of the mill Tuesday morning.

*yawn*

My Mum was talking to me yesterday about how she doesn't think she's going to be able to have a holiday this year (again), because of her illness and Dad's work commitments. Jokingly, as she does, she asked me if I wanted to go to Greece. I joked that I could call into work one morning and pretend I'd gotten there after a night at the pub, with no recollections. We laughed, and moved on.

I was chatting to Krissa last night and mentioned it.
"You should," she said.
Have I mentioned that I love this woman?

Now I've been saving hard for the move to the US. Once there, things with family will be different. Not less in touch, because this here internet thing works wonders, but more...distant. So I thought...yeah, hell.
Why not?

So I'm sorting it out, and this time next week, I could be nursing an ouzo on the patio of a seafront café while my Mum sunbathes by the sea, absorbing five times more solar radiation than a normal human being should be able to.

Because.

I'm not being derogatory, but Mother Mary may have been wrong. Who knows?The Beatles may have misheard. Knowing the Fab Four, as Mary walked or floated in, music was playing, it was smoky, the boys were having a laugh...she could have been forced to raise her voice over the hubbub and who knows what chinese whispers we've had sung to us.

Poor Mary. It' had been all right for the angels so far. It's one thing to deliver pearls of beauteous divine wisdom to prophets in the desert or to the chap at the head of a procession of nomadic families, or to whisper them in a sleeping ear in the cricket-riven silence of a Cairo night. After being added to the divine wisdom-delivering-posse, she probably wasn't expecting John, Paul, George and Ringo. Poor lass.

So I feel the lady is due some leeway.

'Let it be' is the great pacifier. It is the maxim which leads us to accept that the world is full of difficulty and strife, that nothing is perfect, and that things will come to pass which we cannot control. It helps us to accept these things, and, whilst all this trouble and imperfection and evil is going on, it brings a level of personal peace.

I think it is a cop out. The easy route.
The acceptance of change is wrapped up in 'Let it be', but not the confronting of that which should change, not the objection to evil, not the understanding that the only constant is change and that only in controlling it or directing it or having the courage and awareness of all that change brings in every spinning growing day of this world can we improve things...that isn't there for me.

'Let it change' can be prescriptive, or it can be accepting. If you can look at everything in your world, in your life, in your power, and say, fully and honestly, 'Let it change,' then you accept everything, you acknowledge the driving force of time, but in that you can also come to understand what control you have over what changes happen, and how.

Only the syllable is slightly too long for the rhythm section and it doesn't rhyme with, 'Mother Mary came to me.'

27th June, '99. Sunday 1930hrs. St. Andeol, kitchen. Stormy.
The day before yesterday, Friday (get brain in gear, Stuart) I walked to Gresse-en-Vercors. Partly for the walk, partly for supplies. We had begun to run low in the essentials – bread, milk, cereal and BISCUITS.
2025hrs. Less than an hour after I started writing this entry, and our valley is totally transformed. Wraith-like tortured clouds scud up the valley and the dolomites are lost to view. Rain thunders down and our familiar surroundings are reduced to grey shadows of their former selves. The fierce winds lash the rain onto the roof, mimicking the thunder. We are in the heart of the storm. I’m counting the houses that are struck by lightning – two, three...
Gemma is out in it, under the eaves of the house. I was with her, but decided to go out from under the roof into the garden to look around, (make that four houses) got wet and came in. Gemma has just followed suit! Tea’s up, radio’s on, and the kitchen is toasty warm. I’ve changed out of my jeans, and my khaki trousers remind my of the pub in Marrakech – they’re stained with red wine where Madalin knocked the table. They also have a square rip in the crotch, sewn roughly up. I think I’m going to have a scar from the manhole drop incident. Not exactly one I can get out for the family to coo at, though. I’m not entirely sure I’m ever going to see it, considering where it is...

Anyway, I was writing about walking to Gresse-en-Vercors. It’s nearer than Monestier de Clermont, at about ten and a half kilometres, compared with Monestier’s 12½km. Friday was very hot in the sun. I set out at around 12ish, and after following a road which existed solely for house access, rather than the more sensible option of the road out of the village, I found myself following a track which was supposed to be the piste, or path for Gresse-en-Vercors, but wildly varying in the directions it chose to take. After about quarter of an hour’s beating through heavy brush, trees, brambles and scree, all on dangerously steep slopes, I cut my losses and headed for the road, emerging onto it about two minutes’ walk from the house. I arrived at about two fifteen, to be confronted by, as it is in most French villages and small towns, a hugely prominent graveyard. Past that, and Gresse was a lovely little town. I think a good indicator of the size of a town or the size of the area it serves is the height, girth and ornamentation of its church tower. Even without walking through the town, it was apparent that Gresse was much larger and in better repair when the church was built. The life blood of Monestier is its road. It runs from Avignon to Grenoble, and the inhabitants may complain about the amount of heavy traffic pounding through the town, and campaign for their ‘La Grande Deviation (Vite!)’, but if the lorries take it, then it’s likely the tourists will take ‘La Grande Deviation’ as well. There are ‘gîtes’ in all the small towns, but Monestier and Gresse-en-Vercors have the only hotels in the area. Gresse doesn’t have the major road, and the difference is startling. I was in the shop (note ‘the’) for ten minutes, hopping up and down and making loud noises before the chap came out to take my money. He didn’t look too bothered, either. ‘Laissez-faire’ is French, after all.

It’s something I’m beginning to notice as we travel around. From the happy tourist facade of Alicante which deteriorated inside of a block into a building site the length of the esplanade, to the mixed blessings of tourism in a place like this area of France. There is the way the area is on its own, the way the area is portrayed and the tourists expect it to be, and the way the area is after the tourism. These are all drastically different...

Geography, it would appear, is a hard habit to break. The rain has abated, the wind ceased to be quite so forceful. There is one, completely flat layer of cloud in the valley, which is at the height where the grass dies out and the bare rock begins. It’s strange looking out of the window, and knowing that there’s more valley and cloud above this base. It’s so flat, it’s like the whole valley is underwater, and the cloud base is the surface of the water, the mountains just blurry shadows above.

I’ve finished another book; Paul Theroux’s ‘Jungle Lovers’, and started a business revolution book – one man’s De Bono-ised view of the way business have to be in the 90s. It’s quite interesting, if a tad repetitive: Crazy times call for crazy organisations. If (Rudyard Kipling here we come) I get out of Warwick with a degree of some description, if I don’t have any sponsorship obligations to fulfil, if I do, that I fulfil them, if I’m not too laden with student debt, if the opportunity exists and I’m capable (strange thought), I’d like to start a business – preferably in renewable energy, or whatever area I grow into over the run of the course. If (just to reiterate) I do, then this book will be a great help. Hmm. Bit contrived. Saint Andeol has so far proved to be a great move. It has provided a bit of stability after a hectic month, without removing us from the travelling mentality completely – we still have to speak French if we’re to be understood. As for understanding – no chance! The local accent not only changes the way the words are said, it seems almost incomprehensible to us. If only everyone were as clear as Radio ‘Energie’ (the jingles and adverts, and even their playlist has becoming annoyingly familiar!) or the Moroccans with their French! The Moroccans seemed to apply that quality of careful pronunciation that most people do to their second languages. The Moroccans thought WE sounded French – how much more of a linguistic compliment do we need?

After tonight’s dramatic storm, we plan to have another lazy (ish) day tomorrow and then go for a little shop on Tuesday, just to tide us over till Thursday, and to get a bottle of something for Philip and his above-drinking-age family.
Today I’ve read ‘Tom Peters’ Seminar’ and Gemma and I went for a walk across the village and up the seemingly little hill where the local karate club trains. From the village side, it is little. Behind the trees on the other side, it drops.
And then some.
It has a really spectacular view. It’s possible to sit on the edge and dangle you legs over (so I did) which makes you feel like you’re hovering above the landscape. There were some large insects flying around sipping nectar from the wild flowers up there. We mistook them for hummingbirds until we got a closer look at them – they were really strange.
If the weather is fine, I shall go up there tomorrow to write – a letter, or whatever.