Category: Part 1 – Exploring France

When I was a small boy my family often spent our summer holidays staying with Uncle Doug and Aunt Kath at their house in Birchington, in Kent on the South East coast of England. My uncle insisted that Birchington was on the Isle of Thanet, but I could never quite determine which particular ditch gave Read More »

One morning at the crack of dawn or ‘sparrow fart’ as my father called it, Dick and I were woken up, told to dress quickly and kiss Mother and Aunt Kath goodbye. Then we were bundled into the back seat of Uncle Doug’s old black Wolesley (formerly a police car, we were told) and driven Read More »

My first French lessons started when I was about eight years old at a preparatory school in the county of Sussex, England. The school was pretty strict and it was hard to enjoy learning, when failure could result in the application of a cane or some other instrument of punishment. I remember the canes best Read More »

During my teenage years, for our summer holidays we made two family trips to Grasse on the French Riviera, where we stayed at the villa of one of my father’s cousins. I will only recount the first of these trips since our itinerary was similar on both occasions. About a week before this holiday we Read More »

When I woke the next morning, I showered, dressed and went out onto the veranda. Soon I was tucking into fresh baguette, butter, marmalade, coffee and fresh orange juice. When I say fresh orange juice, it was actually diluted frozen concentrate from Florida, which was about as close to fresh as you could get in Read More »

In my early twenties I had moved to live in Swindon, Wiltshire. I had a girlfriend Tracy. We had previously shared one holiday in Torquay, Devon, with Tracy’s parents, her sister Lilly and Lily’s boyfriend Teddy. Tracy was a pretty petite redhead, who closely resembled the girl in the art nouveau painting the “Moon” by Read More »

We passed the Italian border, which by now was a lot less formal than on my previous outing to Ventimiglia. We travelled just a few more miles before stopping at a hotel in San Remo. It soon became apparent that trying to explain our accommodation requirements in English, French or with wild arm gesticulations was Read More »

As anticipated my relationship with Tracy did not survive. I needed a change, so I moved to London. Initially I stayed with my brother Dick in his rented flat in Battersea. The gay owner of the property occupied the ground floor, Sam a newspaper photographer lived on the middle floor, while Dick and I shared Read More »

As we headed South, Jane managed to include three incredible words in just about every other sentence she uttered. The three words did not necessarily appear in the same sentence together, though occasionally they would. The words each represented areas of France and they were, Dordogne, Bourgogne and Languedoc. To my two ears these names Read More »