Giving feedback in Essaouria

A FISHY TALE

On the third day in Morocco, we left for Essaouria, a seaside town that I’ve visited a few times, always wanting to spend longer there.  The brick road outside our Marrakech Riad was complete, the egg pattie seller waved au revoir, the bag snatching kid was harassing someone else.We left a bag in the Riad loaded with winter clothes that we'd collect on our way back, and set off for the seaside, for great food and heap big silver purchases. Driss, the owner of the company from whom we'd hired a car, suggested we skip Rabat where we had two nights booked, and instead spend four in Meknes, part of Morocco's Imperial triangle of Rabat and Fez.  We took his advice.  All was set for a fab 14 days on the road: sun, scenery, silver and great food ...  

Brahim was our appointed driver: a smart, funny, approachable Moroccan. He loaded our bags into his 4x4 and we headed for the highway.  171km from the heat of Marrakech, via the argan oil orchards,  we stopped to photograph goats in the trees – and had to work out dirhams for the privilege to the goatkeeper's who appeared from nowhere at the sound of a purring car.   We stopped to buy some argon oil at a co-op where women sat on the floor in concrete bunkers. The work is highly labour intensive because it’s the way the women of the area are able to earn an income.  Our credit card wouldn’t work even after a woman stood in the middle of the road to try to get a signal.  It’s goat and maize country; where men still ride donkeys laden with huge grass baskets and men shelter against rocks from the blistering sun while their sheep graze.  The countryside is bleak and barren but spectacularly beautiful.

Reno sat back and enjoyed the ride and the countryside. I was thrilled we’d decided to have a driver instead of negotiating the left hand driving, and risking a brand new marriage to collapse in the heat and dust of a missed directions and diverse interests.

Having grown up in Africa, this is all normal for me.  The rickety cars that are normal here,  would be pulled off Australian roads. The belching fumes, the cattle on the road, the rocks and dust and rolling valleys are part of my early footprints.  We passed a few small frontier towns where market day was in progress: men sold just slaughtered meat that hung from huge hooks, a feast for flies ready to lay eggs if not sold quickly.  Women carrying bunches of carrots by their tops;  eggs in baskets, televisions on bicycles.   We elaborated on the “you set the world your way (the big picture), I see it in small pieces” discovery that had been going on since we began travelling together.  I told Reno I loved this way of life:  you can see the whole process of eating from start to finish;  the bare soil, the women planting and harvesting, the animals grazing, the animals to market, the live markets, the shopping, men harvesting reeds to weave baskets to carry the food.  There’s an order to this life, a respect for its hardships that I have osmosed into my system and that Reno is now allowing to percolate slowly into his. Mud bricks for mud houses; rubble walls and thousands of metres of prickly pear fences, tattered washing hanging on lines.  No television to interrupt the days:  life is work and work, life.   It's hard, and unending, but so far every person we’ve met has been utterly charming and sincere. No matter how rough their lot, they’re happy to oblige, give directions, have a chat, shake a hand.

We arrived late afternoon into the wild winds of Essaouria on Morocco's west coast, the little blue port where everyone earns their daily bread fishing or selling carpets in the clean, wide souk.  It’s long been a haven for dropouts and hippies, many of whom still hang around wearing Bob Marley t-shirts; where expat Brits bake scones and make chilli con carne for tourists tired of fish. Bongo drums, tie died fabrics, carpets, henna hands, brass pots, coloured lamps, scarves, leather pouffes, soft yellow slippers ... ah, what fun we'd have shopping.

We checked into the Riad Malaika, a mediocre place – compared to the web photos - in the middle of the souk, down a crumbly lane where cats stretched, men sold ironwork and wove carpets, but sold Chinese rubbish scarves, and women bore big baskets of steaming warm round breads on their heads.  Cats slept curled on the stones at the entrance; inside a small mosaic fountain burbled.  Our room was tiny - there wasn't even space to put our case. The bathroom was painted and tiled black,  and so small we couldn’t both fit in at the same time.  We opened the window expecting views of the vast sea, which I’d so wanted to impress Reno with, but closed it quickly after a big stink of fish assailed us.  We’d arranged for Brahim to collect us later to take us to a fish restaurant he’d suggested: I wanted to eat along the shore,  where I'd had fab fish on my two previous visit, but Brahim suggested the fish was better away from the beach, in a restaurant.

We walked along the old fort wall, watching the mist roll in from the windy Atlantic, to the fishing area, where sting rays, sardines, slimy egg yellow eels, moray eels, flat heads, calamari, prawns, sea bream lay in straw baskets, sold by veiled women. Innards were strewn on the ground where motorbikes and cars pushed past.  Reno had an attack of his Italian “air”, and needed to walk back to the Riad covering his chest because he thought he was coming down with something foreign, and an icy wind was blowing in, determined to prove him correct.  Then Brahim drove us a few hundred metres along the beach road, to Fanatik restaurant.   “I don’t want to go there,” said, clutching Reno’s arm.  “I don’t like the look of it. Let’s go back to the medina, and eat at the stalls where the food is fab and fresh.”  Reno said Brahim would be upset if we ignored his recommendation – so we ate fish and salad on the promenade, watching dogs and pedestrians.  Mine was awful – mushy and a ripe smell.  I fed most of my mush to the scrawny cat that rubbed itself against my legs under the table. We left after the first course.

Four am and all was definitely not well.  My dinner time fish was swimming around my oesophagus, gurgling and thrashing for a way out.  I started vomiting. I vomited in that black bathroom while holding onto the black towel rail and the black sink. I vomited everywhere, without stopping, until it came out of my nose. A rooster started crowing at dawn, and still I vomited.  Reno called the manager who took me shaking, damp and almost passing out, in a taxi to the local hospital mid morning. It was a new looking starkly clean building, with few patients that we could see,  everything painted blue to match the sea, the flag, the furniture, the curtains, the caftans, the doctor's uniform, the chairs, the lamps.

The doctor, a fabulous fellow with a laugh that woke the dead, was head of medicine and owner of the hospital.  He was lean and fit, dressed in a natty blue operating coat.  He spoke only French Arabic and one and a half words of English. We of course spoke only English.  I was wheeled into his white and blue clinic and placed on his examination table.  It didn’t take much translating for him to understand my ordeal. Hands can be very expressive.   He asked me if I had any “dairy” that morning.  Of course not, I replied, clutching my bucket, breakfast was not on my agenda.

I don’t even have an oesophageal or stomach lining, never mind having an inclination for breakfast, I replied indignantly.  “Breakfast?” He said in French. You ate breakfast ?  No, I’ve been vomiting – aaarghrrr, aaarrghrrrrrr …agr argr argr AAAAARGHRRRR. Ah!, ‘cest bon! He felt my clammy head and stroked my soaked hair.  In French, he asked if I had hot flushes.  No, I said, I had a hysterectomy years ago! No, no, no, he laughed like crazy, hugging his arms and miming shivering and sweating, shivering and sweating.   Instead of trying to interpret my dazed replies, he turned on the ultrasound, slopped my stomach with cold goo, and  began some hilarious story of unknown origin that made the theatre sister, the triage nurse, the admitting nurse and the woman bringing mint tea into the room, all of whom had come to witness the white woman having a near death experience, convulse with laughter. He pointed to the writhing anacondas, octopuses and minnows frolicking in my eviscerated cavern of a stomach on ultrasound and patted pale Reno on the back.

How old you? Monsieur le dottore asked.   (always in French/Arabic) Reno counted upwards in French, hovering between mid century and octogenarian.  No, No, how old?  Reno showed his fingers again.  Non, non, he protested, not how many times you aaaargh aagh agh aarggg, but how many years! Reno showed fingers for the third time. The doctor laughed like a crazy person, squeezed my withered arms, and pinched my skin that was so dehydrated it stood up like the soft peaks of a meringue before baking.  He wiped his cool hands over my clammy forehead, pulled my ears, and asked about my workout routine.

You windsurf, oui? He asked.  You run? You marathon, oui?  You very strong! In our country, when you 70 you dead. He squeezed my boobs and rubbed my shoulders, rolled my damp shirt up and my panties down to my hysterectomy scar.  Your neck is sore, oui?  I said my back and ribs were. He pulled the lobes of my ears, ran his finger along my appendix scar, and called the cleaning lady, standing on her broom with a floppy mop with a rag, and her water bucket with Jeyes Fluid,  to have a look. Oui, oui,  very much more sore dimanche from the aaargh aarhghgh arrrGHRRRRRR. He doubled up laughing again.

In case you are wondering how we knew what he was saying, we had the united nations in the room, a conglomerate of languages, including Reno’s school French. Everyone had their fair share of translating.  He conversed with a bevy of nurses. One came in with a blue kidney dish and a hypodermic needle.  Another came in with a blood pressure cuff and a metre of plastic tubing.  The cleaning lady mopped.  The doctor shrieked and guffawed into his mobile phone. I thought I was going to faint or vomit, whichever came first, so I asked for a blood test.  The nurse who stabbed my finger (on a 6, when I do it at 1.5)  thought she was whittling argan wood, known since the beginning of time to be the hardest wood of all, impossible for even the best craftsmen to carved.  GROSSO! She shouted to the doctor. Sanguine GROSSO!  My finger bled piteously into the large swab she smacked onto it.

The doctor mimed vomiting and poo-ing, sweating and shivering, holding 3 fingers up. He pointed to the skies. I was going to be dead in three days?  Why didn’t I just die last night, curled up against that black toilet bowl?  Why did I have to endure the dawn, and the rooster that crowed his heart out, and the muezzin wailing about my abdominal fate?  Three days?  I hadn’t even bought any silver!

The wheelchair returned.  I was helped into it and wheeled to the lift, with the cleaning lady, the triage nurse, Reno, and a woman carrying a clipboard who kept smiling and patting my shoulder (was she a chaplain for the infidels?).

I’m being admitted! I hoarse whispered to Reno (I hadn’t had a voice since 6 am from the vocal trauma of vomiting. ) To a Moroccan hospital! I gasped in a godfather voice. With a riad booked in a souk for two days!  I was wheeled into the resuscitation room, as a drip was being hooked up. A new nurse arrived with a new blanket, still in its cellophane bag.  Crisp new sheets were placed on my bed, and soft white pillows fluffed up to rest my soaking head. A man in a grubby brown parka arrived, clasping his hands behind his back.  Conversations in Arabic and French. He watched as the nurse stabbed my hand and collapsed the vein. Found another place and stabbed again.  Taped me up, tied me down. The man scratched his groin and sniffed loudly … he was the anaesthetist, come to inspect the new recruit.  Saline was in.  Out came more needles: Stemetil, antispasmodic, painkillers.

No sooner had the drip started, lunch arrived on a tray: an apple, a banana, a kilo of mashed potato with melted cheese on top, and a pot of yoghurt.   Whoops!  again.  Who wouldn’t.  So out came the vomitorious cocktail and in it’s place a drip of antibiotics, which I watched drip by drip for the rest of the day, sweating and shivering under my new nylon blanket.  The lunch stayed where it was. The window cleaner came in to inspect me. So did the floor washer. The potscrubber. The lift maintenance man and his wife.  The woman who bakes the bread.  Nurses, a dirham a dozen. You get the point.  The drips ended as the day faded. I could finally endure the light through the blue curtains.  I could be discharged.  Reno and Brahim came to fetch me, Brahim white at the gills because he felt responsible. And guess what? Whoops again. Right into the bowl that Brahim was holding while he mopped my brow.   None of us dared tell the staff.

A driver acting way beyond his call of duty deserves a lot of respect.  So does a husband who didn’t bat an eyelid when we considered my level of care, and realised we would probably be the benefactors of a new hospital wing.

I was wheeled downstairs for another pantomime with the doctor and his comedy crew.  Another ultrasound and the mangled Arabic diagnosis that the anacondas had settled to crabs and butterflies in my stomach, and my insides were so bruised from the food poisoning, said the doctor, and turning to Reno, while winking at me and the nurses, instructed that that I was banned from sex for six months.   Reno had to be resuscitated with sugar water until he saw the others laughing.   Words that sounded like translations of apples, rice, fish, orange juice leapt from nurse to doctor and back again.  He told us the patient before him had just discovered she was pregnant (we passed her ashen face and pale husband on the way in) and he showed us her ultrasound. He unlocked his private room to show us a painting of him windsurfing.  We left with promises of the whole crew trying to come to the Marrakech wedding, a clutch of Facebook photos of some of my medical attendants, and not the faintest idea of what my post close-encounter-with-death diet consisted of.  When we returned to the Riad, we’d been moved to a much larger room, away from the rooster, who had been bought by the manager, for dinner.  The staff had baked a five layer pink and chocolate cake covered in sticky marzipan roses to herald my return.

Whoops!

Somehow, I had to get body and soul together to buy silver.   I'd waited three years to return to Essaouria.  And now I had half a day to search, rescue and evacuate.   I mean shop.

And on to Morocco

Life is a daring adventure, 

or nothing at all, said my new husband when I asked him why I should marry him.  That was enough to convince me that he was the one.  

Now this honeymoon of ours has had its fair share of thrills, and too few spills even to mention.  That we are still talking to each other, never mind sleeping in the same bed and sharing our toothpaste, is a miracle. 

We've braved long airport queues, short fuses, high water and low spirits, and seem more bonded at the hip than on our wedding day.  I tried to stomp out once into a Venetian night over some trivial nonsense but the sub zero temperature stopped me. And the fact that he had my passport when I contemplated kicking him into the Canal of the Assassins, was another reason for me to stay.

Marrakech airport

This new husband of mine just gritted his teeth a few times over some major unravelling on my part.  He smiled when I lost the plot, and I smiled when he insisted on using a map in Venice, which, as any tourist to this mysterious city knows, is a waste of time.  We're finding a balance.  We passed the half way mark of our honeymoon adventure, which coincided with our four months anniversary as we flew from Paris to Marrakesh.  Life couldn't be sweeter.

And then we landed in Marrakech, Morocco.  We descended the steps from our Paris plane, with a stolen a bottle of savage red wine to hide under our mattress for a meal that needed it. We left behind the calm, cool Parisienne streets and elegant cafes, and walked smack into 38 degrees of Moroccan madness.  We spent a decent half hour shuffling in the "other passports" queue, which was processed by a bored, unfriendly official, and finally freed into the waiting area where our driver for Riad Khol waited.  Then out into blinding sunshine, boiling heat and ... Marrakech.  Palm trees. Donkeys. Lunatic motorcyclists. Dry yellow dust and prickly pears, yellow Mercedes taxis. High dusty walls of the medina.  The wail of the muezzin.

Arrived at Riad Khol

Reno was silent as he looked around the muddy dwellings, robed people and four legged traffic walking slowly under the weight of a field of long grass. He had that look on his face he gets when he has to process something that is way beyond his comfort zone.  Paris, this is not.  Tight lips, frowned forehead. You ok? I asked. Yep, he replied.  The lips tightened.  You ok? I asked again. Yep, he replied again through a mouth as narrow as the eye of a needle.  We bounced through darting pedestrians, over potholes and between donkey carts. We avoided mangy dogs and wagons bearing cauliflower and oranges.  You ok? I asked a third time.  "I'm European!" he managed with a strangled voice.  "I'm not African!"  I am, I knew what he meant. I was in my element, he was completely out of it.

The taxi lurched to a stop alongside a man dressed in a Djellaba who was making egg patties from his tiny blue stall on wheels, between which two tabby cats snoozed in a slice of shade. Immediately a one-eyed grubby man put his hand through the partially open window, clawing for money.  Another man, passing,  asked if we wanted to buy some sweet cakes from his trolley. A woman in full black robes, carrying a bunch of fresh mint, covered her face as she passed. 

The driver unpacked our suitcases in the road and before you could wipe a fly from your mouth, a teenage kid latched onto Reno's case and tried to carry it.  Our driver shouted at the kid in Arabic, the kid fixed him with a fatwa stare and put five poxes on all his houses, including his ugly sister and bedridden mother, and tried to snatch Reno's case again.  Reno - totally new to the business of touts and touting -  was about to allow the kid to help, when the driver threw all the curses back at the source, and we both shouted to Reno to carry the case himself.  The distance we'd covered during this altercation was about five metres from the car.  The "road" to the Riad was a narrow dust pile of bricks and rubble and broken stones, filled with eleven cats, a rusty tractor, and five men laying bricks at the speed of light. The kid kept whining to help with the cases, but Reno lifted the 24kgs to elbow height and ploughed his way through the mess of sand and dust to the Riad, lips still tight as a peanut jar.

The heavy wooden door of the Riad squared open, and we fell into the cool and grace of mosaic and fountains. The kid, who had followed us, had put his foot in the huge medieval wooden door and refused to leave until we'd given him a tip for helping with the cases.  The confused housekeeper tried to close it against him but her frail weight wasn't a match for his injustice. Reno leapt up and was about to give the kid a frightening rendition of Go Away, until I told him all the previous curses would turn around and come back to bite him. Instead he gave the kid 40cents which the kid looked at in disgust and almost threw on the floor, but he pocketed it and stomped off muttering.

We sipped our mint tea, checked into our cool black and white floored room, admired the copper lights and the lemon trees, and realised it was 7pm.  Time to head into the souk ... first to find Faouzy, then to find the Jmaa el Fnaa, the square of evening eating.   Turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left, turn left, turn right, it's so easy,  said LaLie, our beautiful fluent Madagascan manager, when we asked her to how to get there. By the time we left the riad, most of the new road had been laid.  We turned left, we turned right, we turned ... which one were we up to?  We passed the man selling the egg cakes who greeted us as if we were his best friend, we passed a man whom we promised (mistake) we'd see - later - could take us on a tour to Ouzazoute.   And we passed bikes. Or they passed us.  They weaved and zigzagged and spurted and hopped and dived between pedestrians, belching carbon monoxide, churning up the dust and making more potholes.  We asked several people which way into the souk and got more answers than questions.

Reno was mute.  You ok? was my standard question.  Yep.   Reno's mouth had disappeared and his frown was deeper than the Rift Valley.  You ok?  Yep.  But I could see him calculating if he'd still have a wife - with all it's perks - if he just kept going back to the airport and onto Paris.  Just follow me, I said, trust me ... as long as you don't buy a carpet, you'll be ok.  Reno is a mild mannered man with a soft temperament until  .... well, until now.  What followed was not directed at me, but at life in this part of the world in general.   I'm European! I'm not made for this! I'm a Capricorn! Insert adjectives of any description.  His mouth had vanished into the back of his head.  Come, I said, follow me, (in my best carpet seller voice)  ...  food is near.

We followed  a side entrance into the souk, where the motorbikes followed us between piles of soft yellow leather slippers, brass lanterns, trolleys of dates and sugared nuts, dusty jewellery and  pottery bowls, beaten handbags with motifs of camels, lanterns, mirrors, woodwork.  And bushels, oceans and truckloads of silver.

Dinner at Djma el Fnaa Marrakech

I asked a shopkeeper wearing jeans and T shirt where the Djme el Fnaa square was. Come, follow, he said through practised narrow eyes, and on the way I will show you the wool dyers. It is the festival of the wool dyers today. Only today. 

We followed him deeper into the souk, deeper into where the hanks of wet wool hung from slats of bamboo roofing, dripping onto the dark mud floor of the souk.  We followed him to where his uncle was sitting cross legged in a mud square, wringing out bales of wool, stamping wet wool on a rock to pat and slap into a shape that resembled fabric.  Up a rickety wood ladder to the rooftop for "views" of the souk ... satellite bowls, washing, plastic bottles, mangy dogs and lots and lots of preening cats.  Back down the rickety stairs. We must go, we said, to the souk, to meet our (imaginary) friends ... we're late.  An "uncle" appeared from the woodwork and before we could say "oops caught in a tourist trap" Reno had had his head bandaged in a blue Berber scarf, and I was on my way to being mummified in a very cheap synthetic Indian "silk" scarf.

The "uncle" started begging and pleading and whinging for us to buy these bits of ballast, but I managed to rescue Reno and I, and for a few dirhams into a disgruntled hand, we finally were spat out in the main square of Djma el Fnaa, place of tooth pullers, fortune telling vultures, water bearers in wooly hats, male belly dancers, boil lancers, tarot readers and henna painters, toenail cutters, and lamb chops.  Plenty and plenty of lamb chops, sheesh kebabs, tangines and Moroccan salads, sold at long tables covered in butcher's paper and plastic.  We ate olives, tomato and chill puree, chunky breads, crispy lamp chops, kebabs, couscous, rice, chips ... for $20.   And denying ourselves the ordeal of finding our way back in the scary dark through an unknown souk, after giving a policeman a biscuit if he pointed us in the right direction, took a cab home to the front door, mainly so that I could keep Reno intact for one more day.

A long lazy breakfast on the sun-mottled terrace of Riad Khol, fresh squeezed orange juice, omelette, several breads, teas and coffees, cakes ... a consultation with our driving team and a rearrangement of our schedule, started our day.  Then a quick helping hand back into the souk - Reno marginally more fortified to some aspects of Moroccan life ... and hunting and pecking in the souks to find Faouzy, who lives (owns/works/creates) in his tiny fabulous shop ... when Reno is set upon...

"I recognise you!" Shouts Faouzy, clamping his wonderful creative spirit on Reno's shoulder.  "From Facebook!"  He's found us!  We've found him.  Joy and bliss.  Let the bead adventure begin!  Let the silver inhabit my soul!

Faouzy stands back and watches as his stock dwindles, and his fortune increases.  My fingers turn black.  Reno's hair turns white.  Faouzy's face lights up like a beacon.  We are all happy. He puts my bundles aside, and by a miracle we find our way back to the Riad where we ate on the rooftop, a splendid meal of tanginess, soups, brads and vegetables served by the delightful women who never seem to go home.  The night was hot, the cats, dogs and devout were out.  Reno's lips had reappeared as he adjustied to Africa in rapidly improving good spirits.

Life in Morocco is promising to be as sweet as the sugar in a mug of mint.

A daring adventure indeed .... and so it continues.  Onto Essouria and the sea, fish, blue skies ... and great eating!!

Rooftop dinner with our hosts.

Down by the Seine with me ...

And so to Paris.

Fabulous fast smooth ride from Ashford to Gar du Nor, first class upgrade, a big breakfast, a chatty train assistant, and voila! We were in Paris. Super fast ride from the airport to our tiny tiny tiny hotel in the St Germain area of Paris, close to Gaspare Manos, whom we'd come to see at his invitation.  Super chic shops lined the streets on either side. Our balcony overlooked a magnificent old church, whose bells shook the walls when it rang.

Did I say the room was tiny?  Two skinny beds, on wheels  ... no room for suitcases. However in true French style the bathroom was generous, tiled to the ceiling in blue.  And the lift?  Merde.  The lift was built into a cavity between the two walls. It allowed for three people but I refused to go in it with Reno ... we were wedged nostril to chest with no breathing space, no air conditioning.  The luggage had to go up on its own.  I rode it, alone, up five flights the first time, hyperventilating. The doors opened and caught the bag on my arm, jammed me in. Bag lover or not, I was prepared to lose a bag rather than an arm. The next two days, I ran down the steps.

But this was Paris. We wandered out in chic spring bliss, along the poodle populated streets, along to the Seine, there to watch lovers and more lovers, the painterly light, the wrought iron and art deco, the palatial buildings, the palaces and people parade.  Soft shadows and cobbled streets, clothes so expensive they didn't dare show tags.  I was desperate for a red coat: if it's not available in Paris, it doesn't exist on the face of this earth.  We ate at a restaurant we stumbled into, dark and cavernous and in the olden days, smoky: playing cool jazz: feasted on fish and salads and almost fainted at the bill. But this is Paris.Whatever we wore, we felt like peasants. Even the peasants would have looked more chic than we did!

In the morning, looking chilly and promising rain, we walked a few hundred metres to our assignation with Gaspare in an appropriately named cafe:  Le palette ... place for painters then and now and in the future ... anyone who could be anyone were pandered to by the sycophantic waiters, who, Gaspare told us later, reserved a table and petit dejuner for him each day. And then charged us Euro 30 for two coffees and two croissants.   Merde. Gaspare sauntered in, looking more French than Italian, greeted us with baci e bacione from across the cobbles, and drove us to where he works from his chateau, at the back of a chateau that belongs to the director of a swanky bank in Switzerland, who come to Paris when they feel like it, on the outskirts of Paris.  It's a wonderful old chateau and he's lucky to have it - for the price of a painting a year. The owners are renovating it as he wishes - he uses the space as he wishes ... leaves his Paris pad every day and comes here to paint. Lucky man. Fabulous break.

The weekend retreat of Gaspare's friends! Imagine coming here when you felt like it ... all that space and greenery.   Afterwards, we went to his home in St Germaine, where the walls were painted black, there were ancient old oil paintings and old chairs covered in beautiful tapestries, interesting light fittings, aged pictures of his family in silver frames. We felt very privileged to be shown his inner sanctum and treated like family.

Later that evening we wandered the little streets again, but the weather had closed in  ... again ... I was fluey  ... again, and we retired to our twin sliding beds.   Paris was magnificent - much too short ... but we did see a young man propose to his girlfriend by putting a lock on a bridge over the Seine, then get down on his knees to propose to her.  Ah. Paris.  City of Lurve.  

Gaspare Manos

Gaspare's painting shack

Some of Gaspare's work

Love on the Seine!

View from our hotel balconette

Happy to be in England

And so to England.  It’s been 3 years since I saw my brother and his family, who live in a marvellous old house on the edge of a field in Wye, Kent. Rape fields carpeted in yellow roll down the hills to the distant train lines.  Mists fog up the chilly mornings and ice melts on the neighbours’ rooftops.  Rabbits run amok in the clumps of wild daffodils, cyclamen and bluebells, under the gnarled century old mulberry tree.  It is good to be with family.  We’d brought them two bottles of Bohemian champagne from Prague, wrapped in our thermal socks, which the customs officials at Prague airport tried to confiscate, concerned it could be explosives.  We'd tried the rose at the Beethoven, and it didn't taste that bad.  I made a bit of a fuss about them taking our wedding champagne, so fortunately the officials took pity on me and gave them back to us at Gatwick. We opened them the first night at Steve and Kathy ... and Reno started to know his in-laws.  With the problematic family that we had, it's no surprise that we had to get through both bottles. Good in a way because Reno finally had his astonishing, unbelievable stories substantiated.  And so did Steve.

Traditionally I'm taken to Folkstone for a day of typically English fish and chips. As usual, it was cold and windy, and as usual the fish was fantastic. Steve drove us to Dover, to the white cliffs, overlooking the busy channel tunnel and ferry boats. As usual it was cold and windy ... colder than I remembered even Prague. But it was beautiful to be in the lush green countryside again, just at the beginning of spring.

Happy clams in Folkstone

Our hair had grown - inches ... we went to Canterbury where Steve and I had lived when our father had lived there, to a hairdresser of unknown repute.  I froze on the doorstep when I saw the blue rinse women coming out on their walking frames, hairstyles like Margaret Thatchedroof and Bronwyn Bisskop.  The salon still used those huge radioactive cones as hairdryers over their clients heads, and those not in curlers were having perms, or their hair in rollers.  Suffice to say that all the growing out of layers I'd been persevering over a year for was snipped off ... and Reno had a grandpa haircut.  We've been adding fertiliser ever since.

From Wye to Rye, we passed Wherethefokarwi ... an ethereal, end of the world, what's happened here place:  windy like the back of beyond, stoney like some post apocalyptic, holocaust sort of place - Dungeen, which sells property for $500,000 for a wooden shack. Walking distance to the beach along stones, small cafe, miniature train line, haunt of recluses and artists ... and right underneath a nuclear reactor.  The whole area hums and sparks and people come here to pull up beach chairs, sit on the stones, and face the road.  And get radioactive. The stones seem to suck you into them ... astonishing that this is touted as great real estate.

Dover

I'm way way behind in my blogging, so instead will just post some photos .... and a quick mention that we went to London to see Sir Neville Mariner having his 90th birthday celebration concert, to the West End to see a fabulous Billy Elliott show, for a frighteningly expensive Indian meal and a day at the National Gallery.   Time in Canterbury, time talking, time being with family. Fabulous.

Off to Paris.

Dungeen

Mr & Mrs @ Dungeen looking scared

Dungeen

Dungeen

Dungeen

Dungeen

RENO pre cut

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Photo taken by roving photographer on banks of Thames.