NO PLACE FOR OLD WOMEN ......

French pensioner



English pensioner

I've been rethinking my retirement plans.

I know it's 10 years away, but retirement is a big thing and requires careful preparation.

I always thought I'd retire to the South of France, but I've just been to the South of France and was seriously underwhelmed.

It was cold, there were very aggressive mosquitoes, it was full of Brits and the food wasn't up to much.

Hobnobs at 3 times the price of Tesco? I don't think so.

A number of my friends have moved, or are about to move, to the South Coast of England.

I've just looked at property prices in UK, and am flabbergasted. France and Belgium have caught up, and even with the unfavourable exchange rate, UK prices are suddenly looking more attractive. For example, for the current value of my apartment here in Brussels, I could buy a 3-bedroom house with garden in somewhere like ... er ... Eastbourne.

There are no mosquitoes in Eastbourne, that I'm aware of.

And you can't get a pensioner's special Sunday roast for £3 in Provence.

A WEEK IN PROVENCE

Saignon, just outside Apt

Yes Provence was very nice thank you. Apart from it being freezing cold most of the week, and the lousy hotel in Avignon (avoid the Hotel de Blauvac, unless you're an insomniac) and pranging the hire car, and being eaten alive by mosquitoes, and the food being not all that (the best meal of the week was in the NH hotel at Lyon St Exupéry airport waiting for the flight home), and getting altitude headaches from driving up mountain roads, and .... to be honest, I'm not very good at being On Holiday.

Ménerbes, erstwhile home of P.Mayle

The cemetery at Lourmarin, current home of P.Mayle*: the lengths
some people will go to, to end up in exalted company

L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue

My site meter count is approaching 100,000. That seems like an appropriate time to stop. To be honest I'm a bit fed up with output, and feel like concentrating on input for a while. Reading. Books. Meanwhile, you know where to find me on Facebook and I will make the occasional pithy comment on your blogs if I feel moved.

I'm not gone yet, but soon, soon, my friends, I sense my time is nigh ......



* the village, not the cemetery

DAPHNE WAYNE-BOUGH IS UNWELL

.... and will be out of town next weekend. Drop by in three weeks and see if I have thrown in the towel yet. This blog, like a very tatty pair of jeans, is on its last legs.


Of all the weekends to be ill, this is NOT the one. It is Brussels no-car day today, and pretty soon nice middle-class family groups will be freewheeling past my window on their bikes, en route to the Big Brunch at the Atomium, then on to the mock French village, the open-air retro dancefloor, to finish up at the free concert in the park down the road. And I'm laid low with a very nasty bug that entailed wasting four hours in Emergency on Friday night. Oh, the unfairness of life!


Never mind. I am laying abed in my boudoir, pale and wan, sipping water and re-reading Lawrence Durrell's Avignon quintet, and listening to this sort of thing. If I don't see you again, it's been emotional.

TATTOO YOU

I knew it would happen. I have long held a belief that the ageing process results in a deterioration of one's musical taste. I have arrived at this conclusion by observing people who were 30 in 1955 and who nevertheless prefer listening to military bands to Elvis Presley.

Notwithstanding the longevity of the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper et. al., there is a inexorable gravitation towards Max Bygraves as one approaches the end. And now it's happening to me. I suspected as much a number of years ago when I was driving down the M1 listening to the car radio and found myself thinking "Jim Reeves had a lovely voice didn't he .... "

I was watching highlights from the Edinburgh Tattoo on TV, and found with horror that my fingers were beating time to Colonel Bogey. I cooed at the Royal Jordanian Circassion Guards, I aaaahed at the Gurkhas, I WEPT when Our Boys marched out in their desert camo, fresh from the sandpit, beating their drums with a buddy marching shotgun behind them. King Abdallah of Jordan taking the salute undid me completely. I remember his dad - lovely little king. By the time the Lone Piper closed the proceedings I was a wreck, and barely got the mascara out of my eyes in time for EastEnders.

Talking of which, I'm still overcome with emotion after the last two episodes. Barbara Windsor's final performance was a masterclass in how to take a final bow. The pain! The anguish! The held-back tears! You could tell this was really The End by the piano version of the closing theme, which is code for This Storyline Has Run Its Course. And Peggy was wearing sensible heels. Just check out her brave face, her determination not to cry, and the mystery of how the upstairs of the Queen Vic hasn't got a trace of fire damage.

NIEUWPOORT STATE OF MIND

When I was a baby, a gypsy said I would be very musical. At school my music teacher told me I had the hands of a concert pianist. I took piano lessons for a while when I was about 12, but couldn't get along with it. In Poland, to relieve the boredom, Harold bought me an electric keyboard which I used for a few weeks and then packed away, never to see the light of day again until a few weeks ago.


The sheet music has been lost, so I am making vain attempts to produce something resembling a tune from a combination of internet crib sheets and trial-and-error. After hours of painstaking and pain-inducing plunking, plinking and shouting of "bugger", I can at last bash out a halting version of "Ode to joy" with two hands. Well I could last week. I'm afraid it's gone again.



But it's not all classics with me, oh no. I have learned the chords to "Empire State of Mind". All four of them. All I need now is a pair of leather trousers, and Puff Diddly Dogg to rap along with me. For some reason Alicia Keys has taken offence to this Belgian tribute to the town of Nieuwpoort and EMI keep trying to take it down, but I'm a rebel, see, I just don't care. I'll take you all down with me ....