A small break, with consequences

I have to be careful. When I moan audibly about the difficulties of my present life those nearest to me try to cheer me up with solutions. Recently I stared mournfully at a half-empty glass of beer and reflected that I’d already visited France for the last time. And France (with its conversations) is an essential constituent of my life blood.

Days later I received an email from daughter, Occasional Speeder, saying she’d booked three days at Fécamp in northern France, on the Channel coast, for the two of us and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

Can you guess my response? 

So there we were, sitting in the Skoda, in a train presently stationary at Folkestone in Kent, waiting to travel – undersea for 35 minutes – to Calais. The hell with travelling by ferry which takes a couple of hours, what with all the driving on and driving off. Getting on to the train is like entering a continuous metal tube. Easy-peasy. Time for me shave in situ given I’ve never got on with beards.

Neither of us had ever visited Fécamp before and, I must confess, initially it was something of a downer. Elderly and industrial sums it up. And our small terrace (US: row) house was in a narrow back street. Cheap though. However, a quick walk changed my mind.

Fécamp is a working town, mainly trawler fishing, reminding me that what I hate are places that have become RESORTS, a term of abuse for me. Both residents and visitors behave less naturally in resorts. While Fécamp’s restaurants displayed themselves less tartishly.

Still Fécamp. What you see is my grilled sole, arguably the best flat fish in the world. Bloody marvellous and half the price it would have been in a resort. Served me by an utterly lustrous black waitress. Occasional Speeder eventually went inside to pay and when the till worker saw the note I’d specified as tip she beckoned the waitress over. And the waitress was embarrassingly grateful. But for me the emotions were even more pronounced. I was in France and now happier.

We drove up the coast and stopped to visit a war cemetery at St Valéry-en-Caux. This area is fairly near where it all happened on June 6 1944 and, inevitably, there are lots of war cemeteries. This one was Franco-British but it could easily have been Franco-US. And here it behoves me to make a point. The French have never forgotten to be grateful towards what we used to call the Allies and how they rescued France with the invasion. This was a smallish cemetery, enhanced by being on a slope. Flower beds recently trimmed, some tombstones which hadn’t stood the passage of time (France was very poor then) had been replaced. Beautiful and tranquil.

So we progressed up the coast towards a geological reminder. Once the isles of the UK were joined to what is now the French mainland. And there’s proof. You may have heard of the white cliffs of Dover (Vera Lynn sings the song); well here are their continuations in France and I stood to marvel.

Did I say the French still remember? There were flags waving over an area close to the shore and deliberately left bare. Over seventy years ago a US Flying Fortress crashed there and a huge plaque lists in detail everyone who died.

Too morbid? I can't apologise.

Heard of absinth? A near-toxic liqueur that killed the painter Toulouse-Lautrec and - the waiter assured me - wrecked Van Gogh. I have heard it's making a comeback. Had to be with the flood and courageously ordered two centilitres. Remarkably like Pernod. And, as far as I can tell, I'm still alive.

Something more personal. We went southish, crossing the wonderful Pont du Normandie.I wantyed to point out its glories and turned to the car's rear seat where VR usually sits, inviting discussion. But of course VR wasn't there and - being unable to travel - was, no doubt, reflecting unhappily in her Hereford nursing home. I visit her almost daily but, yesterday, I remained silent about the visit to France with OS. My needs having been granted but at a price.

Finally: A noticeboard lists the maximum purchases at a drinks emporium near, I think, Honfleur: 10 litres of alcoholic and “spirituous” drinks; 20 litres of “intermediate” drinks (port, vermouth, madeira, etc), 90 litres of wine, 100 litres beer.”

Yeah, about right for an average party of ten. That’s chaps, of course.

 

Time for persiflage

FAREWELL FAMOUS TYKE David Hockney, Britain's best-known painter, died yesterday. He and I simultaneously attended  Bradford Grammar School in Yorkshire  though he was was two years younger. I never spoke  to him but I observed his behaviour. As might be imagined, even then he marched to the beat of a different drummer and this attracted the school bullies.  As they punched him he giggled; this foxed these sporting oafs and they quickly walked away, disappointed.

Hockney, of course, travelled the world and is frequently remembered for the work he did in California. Despite this he retained much more of his West Riding accent than I did. The difference being he spoke charmingly whereas I always sounded as if I was complaining. Eventually the years spent in and around London, plus the six years in Pennsylvania, wore away most of these unwelcome linguistic roots and I can now pass as geographically anonymous.

WRITING STYLE Having - more or less - mastered English grammar and left spelling up to WfW's Checker I can afford to concentrate on writing style. By now - and I should bloody well hope so! - I know what I want but defining those two words is fiendishly difficult. There are certain identifiable factors. A war on superfluity, for instance, but without lapsing into terseness. Choosing exact verbs rather than opting, lazily, for generalities. Chasing after that which is vivid plus its corollary: the unexpected. 

But summarising  that in, say, less than thirty words is beyond me. For the moment. I'll return to this subject however tedious you may regard it.

I wonder if I may be trying to write as if from my belly button.

It rhymes with reach (+ out)

The fact that I feel so damned lonely must be proof that I married well. During sixty-six years there've been plenty of arguments but also plenty of agreements. Notably when VR - already a mother - agreed to share the adventure of uprooting ourselves from the suburb of Stoke Newington, from London, from England and from Europe and settle - for an unspecified length of time - in the USA. Where I knew nobody, would live unprotected by the NHS (National Health Service) in a sub-continent where more than two-thirds of the population had never owned a passport. A huge but parochial land mass.

Why? The immediate assumption, on both sides of the Atlantic, was that I intended to make my fortune. Not so, and I fear you'll just have to take my word for that. I was influenced, of course, but not so much by movies or by TV. Rather by Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, James Thurber, E. B. White, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Henry James, Anne Tyler, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Gore Vidal, P. J. O'Rourke, Ross McDonald, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Lorenz Hart, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, James Jones... Many more. Many re-read. Yup, folks, it was the writers who wove the web.

Two things kept me there. One I fear will sound like boasting but don't complain; aged ninety, I won't be boasting for much longer. Fact is I'm good at what I do and this was recognised. For which, many thanks.

Second: life as it is lived in the suburbs.This came as a surprise especially when VR gave birth. Suburbanites are, I suppose, in the majority and it's my opinion that this is where the USA's true heart lies. Take it or leave it.

And now we - the USA and I - are suffering; VR is in a nursing home and US suburbanites are being maltreated by a starkly mad salesman. I felt  it was time to show that I cared.

Hence the tee-shirt bearing a single word. It's not a word that's as well-known in the UK as it is in the USA. And I haven't done it any favours by mirror-reversing it. But it's the eventuality we should all be hoping for. And, if that's your habit, praying for. 

Loss... from another angle

Not many people would have read the post - A Different Type of Loss - which I wrote, published and then quixotically destroyed a day or two later. Not because it was defective or the subject ill-chosen; I think the transformation marriages can bring about is under-explored. Ceasing to think purely as an individual and absorbing - in parallel - aspects of another person's life can be beneficial. The trouble is I had created an elephant in the room. In some respects I had - as the cliché goes - swallowed the camel while straining at the gnat.

I had taken a vow not to write about the medical condition that had overtaken VR even though there had been powerful discoveries I'd made along the way. And misunderstandings that needed clearing up. But I knew in my heart of hearts VR would not have approved of such a project. Silence, however inadequate, would be my paltry gift.

But quite by chance I came upon a reference by Stephen Fry in his arguments against the possible existence of an all-powerful God. One who had thought everything through and then brought about all aspects of life as we know it. Why, Fry asked, had God thought it necessary to create a form of bone cancer that is more or less fatal and only attacks children? How could that fit into the principles of overwhelming  love said to form the basis of Christianity?

As it happens, in one of my short walks to pick up the newspaper, I had fallen into conversation with a woman who'd recently been widowed - in mere middle age - and was struggling to re-establish herself. The chat lasted quite a long time and I was drawn in by her articulacy and the way she was able to control her emotions. Inevitably I compared her situation with my own. Was a partner's death preferable to the awfully inflicted cruelties I found myself sharing with my wife of 65 years?

There is of course no agreed answer to this question. Unless, of course, the all-powerful God exists and he'd seen my situation as worthy of the most exquisitely devised punishment for coming to the wrong conclusion about his all-abiding love? And believe me the torture is very finely wrought since it relies on those benefits that marriage has conferred on me.

I may find it necessary to destroy this substitute post too. Who knows? Like the weather I find myself changeable. Very English, that.

A different type of loss

Sorry Lucy, I've had second thoughts about this one. Hence I'm exercising editor's privilege.

But the email would be greatly welcome.

Cheers,

Robbie

Navel inspection

 

These days I get out more, meet new people and – as with the unchanging spots on a leopard – I ask them questions. Initially to help me get work done; latterly, when I’m impressed by the quality of the answers.

I’ll call S a charity worker even though that’s inexact. What’s true is her work demands a sense of vocation, certain aspects would put off someone less sympathetic, she immediately gets on with people and she’s well-informed. Her husband is also “not exactly” a charity worker but is much closer to being one.

The obfuscation is intentional.

S’s answers to my questions were not only factual but reassuring. I didn’t want to waste her time but the atmosphere suggested a couple of minutes’ chat wouldn’t go amiss. “Just suppose,” I said, “you and your husband were faced with an unexpected day off; how would you ideally spend it?”

“Reading,” she said.

Break for stage directions. Journalistic questions are not plucked from the ether; many are intended to provoke a foreseen (possibly revelatory) answer. But not in this case. I had no real idea beforehand. If I say I was surprised by the answer it might imply I’d seen S as a non-reader. Perish the thought! I was, in fact, delighted. End of break.

I do a lot of reading, myself  (less so in old age, I fear). Mainly when the mood takes me. But am I such a devoted print-lover as to allocate a whole day to a book? The answer must be no. Am I missing out, then? Might there be bigger rewards if I were?

A situation that had me – agreeably – questioning myself.

Pure gold.

Gather ye comfort where ye may

This post does not break the vow I made under "Which?" It concerns me, not VR.

I visit her regularly and find myself comparing my current way of life (Lonely but free to do whatever I wish) with hers (Seated and surrounded by inarticulacy and/or other forms of suffering associated with this terrible illness). 

Leaving me feeling guilty. The manageress of the nursing home says: "You are not alone".

Both my daughters are distant and I am regularly in touch by phone. Both are immensely supportive. I mention this feeling of guilt but point out the word is inexact: guilt implies self-blame and I am not responsible for VR's illness. Wouldn't "grief" be a better word, one suggests.

It would. And, strangely, this greater precision helps me. The joy of getting language right.

**** And, with almost unbelievable timing, an email arrives from a local computer repair service which used TeamViewer Host software (ie, temporarily taking over the running of my PC from an office three miiles away) to cure a connection problem. At the time I was impressed by this very civilised way of doing business, and said so. Would I therefore write them a review? I would, but, I told them, it would not take the form of most reviews - apparently composed by the company owner's sycophant. 

Quite, quite different. I was surprised they posted it. But they did and they say it attracted over fifty viewings. Lessons learned: Stay clear of clichés, think before pressing the first key, revel in language's ultimate potential.