ADIEU LA FRANCE, HOLA ESPANA

I have been an unrepentant  Francophile for many years, almost since the day, aged 7 or so, that I discovered old uncle Algernon's dusty pre-war Hugo's French Primer in the bookcase at home and started teaching myself phrases such as "Pardi! Otez votre haute-forme, Monsieur, avant de descendre de la calèche" *   By my teens I was nuts about all things French - Sacha Distel particularly.  At 15 I won two tickets to his concert at the London Palladium in a Daily Mirror competition, where a terrified Sacha was mauled by me and Aunt Lucy, and 48 other middle-aged women.

I am in here somewhere

I visited France at every opportunity until the age of 23, when I set off to seek my fortune as a danseuse exotique at the Folies Bergère.  I had no idea how long I would stay, but it turned out to be the equivalent of two seven-year itches.  However, in recent years I have become increasingly disillusioned with the Hexagon.  For the past eight years I have been on a catch-up exercise visiting all the bits of France I didn't have time to see when I lived in Paris.  I have been to Brittany North, Brittany South, La Rochelle, the Vaucluse, Corsica, the Loire Valley, Cathar country, Alsace AND Lorraine, Champagne country, the Nord-Pas de Calais and of course countless visits to Paris.  I have been searching for that corner of France that beckoned winsomely, the place where I could hang my béret, take off my Christian Louboutins and pour myself a glass of Chablis.    Unfortunately, eight years later, I find French towns looking more like Slough than Shangri-La.   Sometimes you wonder if there's not a case to be made to Angela Merkel to send the Luftwaffe back on an architectural mercy mission.

 

Cergy-Pontoise

In addition, I am coming to the conclusion that France isn't all it used to be.  I notice a growing trend for Starbucks and Claire's Accessories.  The food isn't so good any more.  It is generally accepted everywhere - everywhere except France, that is - that you'll eat better in London than in Paris these days.    The French have lost that je ne sais quoi.  400,000 of them have buggered off to London.  Most café-tabacs in Paris are run by the Chinese.  And there are roundabouts everywhere.  You might as well be in Milton Keynes. And now it looks as though the dreadful Le Pen woman and her odious cohorts may be running the place before long.   The last bastion of the Fronde is about to fall.  I am throwing in the torchon.   It's time to find a new hunting ground. 

                                 The old Spanish mission ... no bullet holes in this one

Gorbals and I made an expeditionary trip to Andalusia last November.  It's no country for old women down there - it's where Sergio Leone filmed his "Dollars" series of spaghetti westerns, and every petrol pump attendant looks like the illegitimate son of Lee Van Cleef.  Added to that, we were staying 600m up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and it was freezing cold.

I had been to Spain seven times before, since 1986, and therefore am not a total virgen in matters Iberian.  I had picked up a little Spanish on my travels.  I am a great fan of Spanish food, although I do wish they would eat at a reasonable hour.    The Spanish breakfast comes a very close second to the Full English in my book.  You can keep your cappuccino, a Spanish cafe con leche accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice is the best way to start the day.


Many years ago I had a plan to visit the three great Moorish cities of Andalusia. On previous visits I had been to the Alcazar in Seville and the Mezquita in Cordoba.   I finally completed my triathlon in November, with the breathtaking Alhambra in Granada. 

I stood on one of the verandahs of the Generalife and gazed out over the palaces, transported back to a previous life as the Sultan's flame-haired favourite, floating about in fuchsia chiffon harem pants bearing silver platters of Fry's Turkish Delight, or occasionally treating him to my old routine from the Folies Bergere.

"Come to me, my little loukoum" he called, looking a bit like Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia.  "You must show me that thing you do again with the ping pong balls."  I fluttered my eyelashes over my yashmak and shook my head demurely.  "Sire, you are confusing me with that bint from Bangkok," I protested.  "I only do it with Maltesers."    Only I could get away with contradicting the mighty Sheikh Ahmed Bin Liner, anyone else would have been beheaded for such lèse-majesté.  But he could refuse me nothing.  My lustrous curly locks - the colour of tangerines, he wrote in his poetry - and my alabaster skin fascinated him.   He called me Rebekah, which in his dialect means "She who listens in the shadows".   I sat at his feet in rapt attention while he recited his love poetry.  Unfortunately his voice was so mellifluous that I fell asleep, and when I awoke I had missed the guided tour of the palaces and nearly missed the charabanc back to our hotel.

Of course there is the problem of the 1 million Brits already in Spain, and it would seem that no corner of Iberia is untouched by British hand.  Still, I'm not as purist as I used to be about being an emigrant.  I would of course learn Spanish should I decide to live there, but I would not turn my nose up at having a British supermarket within walking distance, Tetley's tea bags and tapas are not mutually exclusive.


And then there's the music.  I am, as you know, a great fan of flamenco.  I have seen Manitas de Plata in concert twice - and actually met him once - as well as Antonio Gades' dance troupe and Paco de Lucia in concert, not to mention a good few tablaos in Madrid and Seville, and almost became engaged to an accidental member of the Gipsy Kings once in the South of France.  The flamenco is a dance which is designed for a woman of my calibre, shoe size and temperament.  Stamping my feet is something which comes very easy to me.

An early addition to my musical education

 The formidable and elastic-stocking-defying Blanca del Rey, about whose 
live performance I reported in 2011

On the whole, there's a lot about Spain I like.  I shall be taking my investigations further in future years, and to France I say "zut alors".   Spain has much to recommend it.  I am sure you will agree, ladies.

*  I say!  Remove your top hat, Sir, before getting down from the carriage.