Yesterday was my birthday, and not just any old birthday. It was a big one! Too big, really, to fully comprehend. I still find myself thinking this morning, despite [or perhaps because of?] some extremely fine vintage champagne, "How the hell did this happen?" Us baby boomers, who used to air guitar our way through 'My Generation' yelling in unison,' Hope I Die Before I Get Old!', are now having to reconsider what we so earnestly wished for. Sixty is the new forty, some say, and I was very touched when my family tried to cheer me up with a frieze saying '50 + 10 = 40'. My darling twenty year old [I can't quite believe that either!] then put reality firmly back in place by saying, "I can't believe I've got a mum who's sixty!"
So, I've got some serious thinking to do. I've just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's much hackneyed book, 'Eat, Pray, Love', which another friend of mine has re-titled, 'Eat, Pray, Vomit'. I have to say that I rather enjoyed it and found myself cursing the fact that I didn't put pen to paper myself after trips to Lucca and Mexico, and a spell in the ashram in Pondicherri in 1986! Like Gilbert, I was 35 at the time and looking for the answers to life, the universe and everything. But, as someone once said, the art to being a writer is the ability to keep your bum on the seat and not, like my miserable efforts, to wander off for coffee and cake or a bottle of chilled white wine with friends at every available opportunity. I feel the same about Caitlin Moran's 'How To Be A Woman' and Alison Pearson's, 'I Don't Know How She Does It?' I know I can't write as well as them but, hell's bells, I could at least have bloody tried!
This year is going to be different. For one thing, my son is moving into a flat in London. I shall miss him terribly but can't help thinking goodbye to all the washing and thanks for all the fish! My daughter, the more independent of the two, is pretty well self sufficient already, needing little more than the odd word of encouragement and the occasional cheque. That just leaves me, hubby and the dog. Hubby can hop on the 6.40 pm Easyjet flight from Gatwick after a hard week at the office just as easily as the 6.50 pm from Waterloo to Salisbury. They each take exactly the same amount of time. Toulouse has always been a weekend commute city, as I know from Virgin Atlantic pilots who live in Pibrac, thirty six, I was told, at the last count. And then there are the Airbus guys who hop backwards and forwards from Bristol every weekend. I know because I often sit next to one of their number. And the dog, well, he can have his own passport too! As of January 2012, the ludicrous necessity to have one's dog checked over by a vet within twenty four hours of travel will be abolished, an impossibility from Bardies unless you drive through the night and risk killing yourself and your dog from total exhaustion! On y va! We have just taken the final plunge and put our Salisbury house on the market.
Spending a relaxing time with good friends this summer, who have taken the big leap across La Manche, has made me take stock of many things. Not one of them regrets such a move, despite it being much tougher than the idealised accounts that proliferate on Amazon. Winters are tough, bureaucracy is a nightmare and visitors are like fish [after three days....etc!]. The worst thing, I suspect, is the visceral pain of living away from one's children. I'm not very good without mine, although I am getting better at accepting that I need them rather more than they need me. My mother once telephoned my university, some 250 miles away, and asked them to send me home. I've never forgotten the embarrassment! No, I say to myself, I cannot be a helicopter mum. They have to fly. And so do I.
Life chez nous at Bardies is so very different. For one thing, opera is only on CD. For another, the only plays I can indulge in will be on television, or Radio Four. I will no longer be able to go to Intelligence Squared debates, Fabian Society events or Party Conference. I will need to cancel my RA and Tate memberships, along with the RHS, the Royal Opera and Welsh National. Glyndebourne would, of course, be a bridge too far. I couldn't possibly not come back for the excitement and anticipation of new productions [sorry about the double negative - I'm getting into French mode already!]. I will seldom hold a hard copy of the Observer, the Guardian or the Daily Telegraph in my grubby palm again. I shan't be able to lose myself in the glorious sound that is the Salisbury Cathedral Choir at Eucharist or Evensong. And I won't be able to drop in to a Monday night jam session at the Blues Bar in Kingley Street either. Girlie lunches at trendy London restaurants will be off the menu, as will raucous bi-partisan supper parties with friends of all political persuasions shouting irreverently at each other for the duration of the evening. The gym will be out the window, but to tell you the truth, it/ I was well past its sell by date anyway. In short, my life is about to be radically overhauled.
The upside will be that I shall be able to read the mountains of books that I have bought over the years because of all the time that I have spent doing all the things in the previous paragraph! I shall be able to see my bulbs in full bloom in springtime, something I always seem to miss. I will be there to ensure that my borders are properly watered in May and June so that they are at their very best in early summer and not, as is usually the case, desperately dehydrated and craving my arrival in July to revive them. I can finally have a proper 'potager', instead of my improvised wine boxes and hastily assembled 'bricolage'. I shall feast greedily on the fruits of my labours. Visits to art galleries may be few in the future, but I shall be able to paint and draw to my heart's content. I plan to visit painter and sculptor friends obsessively instead. I can/ will play the piano, albeitly to date very badly, again. And all those Beethoven and Mahler boxed sets of symphonies can finally justify their price. And Wagner, well, there's no stopping me now! No more excuses. I always said that I was saving golf and Wagner for my 60's, and the golf course is close by, at la Bastide de Serou. Peter could do with the practice too.
But, best of all, I can finally write with an uncluttered head. The three books [!] that I have on the go can be revised, re-edited, even rewritten, and my screenplay from 1996 can be removed from the filing cabinet for reappraisal. Some of my work is so outdated it is beginning to look like a period piece! It is all spread across three laptops and two filing cabinets, which tells you just how much technology and the world has moved on since 1986! Dare I even confess that I have a new idea for a novel set around Bardies? I am such a dilettante. My problem, as ever, is seeing anything through. It's about time I pulled myself, and my work, together and stopped playing around with it all like a kiddie in a sweetshop. My bum must stay on my seat, at least for three hours a day, for the foreseeable future.......and not on Facebook or Twitter, either! I'll take time out when the kids come, of course, and friends too, but in between times 'je vais travailler sans relache'.
So, watch this space! Alongside all this personal development stuff, I plan to run a few courses too. Food will, as ever, feature prominently. I may do posh B & B for selective guests via our Sawday's listing. Plans for the cookery book are taking shape, the text is already done and the photographer is booked for November. We just need to plough through a mountain of food after photographing it, which will, 'bien sur', be a real drag for all concerned! Cookery courses, with yoga or art/music, are a definite possibility, as is a hiking course to take in all our beautiful Romanesque churches with picnics along the way. We may even organise a trek over 'Le Chemin de la Liberte', the WW2 route for RAF aircrew and escapees, from St Girons, our local town, over the Pyrenees into neutral Spain. All things are possible in the best of all possible worlds.
We are therefore looking to restore the barn for larger numbers, subject to funds, which will be a project and a half. Kevin McCloud, eat your heart out! We really hope that Blues at Bardies in August 2012 will prove viable and flyers will be sent out in November to test the water. It would be so good to have a dry indoor space where we can have concerts, small gigs and the occasional 'vernissage'. And, lastly, the garden will remain a priority. The main garden is looking beautiful, thanks to much hard work by Lawrence and Pascal, but I now want to focus on building my Italian garden and my 'potager'. Inevitably, we will have to knock the little barn down first, so the mess will have to be cleared to create the space.
Perhaps writing all this down creates the focus, the resolution? It's good to plan, to visualise where you're going in life, especially as future decades are limited. Whatever people say about sixty being the new forty [tell my bones that!], it is a crossroads. We can't go back. We can only go forwards. Different people will take different paths and some people will think that I am mad for upping sticks at this stage of my life. As I have said before, the intention was to do it when the children were young and able to benefit from excellent local schooling and the French IB system, but the gods decided otherwise. Then, it was not destined to be. Now, however, I know that I have always wanted to do it, for a while at least. 'Live the dream', as they say.
And, as I look around me at the economic catastrophe that is unfolding here in the UK, I am glad that France's social model is a collective one. It may be slow, and bureaucratic, and heavily taxed, but it is undoubtedly a fairer way of life. It takes account of people who are not so lucky, or privileged, or well educated, or fit, or healthy. You are unlikely to get MRSA in a French hospital and you will probably get a choice between a glass of red, white or rose with your well prepared and nourishing meal. It still cares about the important things in life. Le 'pays' is sacrosanct. Community, family, friends, health, good food and wine, remain the stuff of life here and the wealthy do not spit in the faces of those less fortunate than themselves. In short, it is a very good place to be right now. So, as my seventh decade begins, it's a whole new world for me. Je vais profiter de ma nouvelle vie! And, if things get really tough here, you are always welcome to join me!
