here we are

We're back in France.

Some people travel light: we don't, or at least I don't. I blame it on a gene inherited from my paternal grandmother. And you can't argue with genes. The phrase 'everything but the kitchen sink', blatantly devised with me in mind, has attained new meaning. It's contagious, what chance have the other family members?

This weakness has been indulged by the fact that we're housesitting. There will be somewhere to empty out the contents of our Renault Trafic van: four weeks' worth of clothes (variety of colour, style and warmth/coolness potential mandatory), bikes, plastic dinghy, tennis rackets, skateboard, trampoline and walking boots. Even my exercise bike. And in the unlikely event I forget I have a large piece of work to submit to university mid-August, laptop and a caseful of 'how to' write books, lecture notes and inspirational novels. Of course I couldn't forget.

The bathroom scales stayed put.

We hurtled down the motorways to Dover, whizzed over to Calais in the ferry, stopped to sleep, then shimmied down the péages to Grenoble. Courtesy of an inverter in the van, I was able to do a considerable amount of work on my laptop, en route.

Our accommodation is a four bedroomed house with decent-sized garden. There already is an exercise machine but that's great. Once my exercise bike is installed beside it, I'll have a mini-gym, a logical antidote to serious writing. We really have a good deal: free lodging in return for looking after a cat and several stick insects. Hardly onerous tasks, even if I am slightly twitchy about having to remove a dead stick bug. I will do more. We've been encouraged to eat the strawberries and raspberries, any vegetables that might be ready. I've noticed the houseplants are perilously dehydrated. So today I will be zooming round - ambling, more like, it is hot - with watering can and garden hose, making valiant efforts to revive the unrevivable.

And, what has to be mentioned, the pièce de résistance ( I sigh with pleasure at my resurgent French; okay, I know that expression is embedded in the English language) - the best part was our welcome back. Forget wine chilling in the fridge, a vase of roses, pleasant as these are. No, what awaited us, what appeared several hours after we'd made a respectable start at unpacking, was something with special meaning from our three years living here: a thunderstorm. Our temporary home is situated between the Belledonne and Chartreuse mountains. Ideal. After an exceptionally late dinner on the patio, when we might reasonably have decided to call it a night, we watched sheet lightning flash across the Chartreuse, illuminating the sky in pinks and whites. It was amazing, it was emotional: the perfect 'bienvenue'.



Emotionally yours


Jane