Getting on with things

This morning I was up early, tidied the house and myself, and prepared for the arrival of Madame.  My landlord, Madame Choux that is, who turned out to be an utterly delightful lady.  I made her coffee, and we sat and chatted about her travels, my plans, her grandchildren and the intricacies of the apartment.  She had many recommendations for me, and gifted me a packet of fresh vanilla beans from Réunion Island where she lives much of the year, and a 10 trip card for the little electric bus that weaves around the streets of the Centre Ville.  And in return I handed over the 2000 Euros in cash (instalment only) that had been burning a hole in the bottom drawer ever since I arrived.  In short, we were pleased with each other.

Then the rest of the day was mine to make the most of, and so I set out on my chores.  Uncharacteristically it was grey out, but still warm, so I set off intending to cover a fair bit of ground.  First stop, La Poste, to mail a little birthday present to the wee girl next door to me at home, who is turning one this week.  Mais, non.  It was 12.20 pm, and La Poste was au déjeuner until 2 pm.  No matter, I wanted to check out the knitting shop I had discovered in Rue de la République anyway, and I could catch the post on the way home.  Around the corner into Cours Mirabeau, where I got happily caught up in the market for a while, and bought two brightly coloured table cloths for home for a song.  By the time I got to La Rotonde at the other end they were all packing up for the day.

You really don’t want to get in the way when this is happening.  One moment you are wandering around a pedestrianised zone,  the next you are surrounded by a host of vans and little lift back cars, all jostling to get as close as possible to the loading zone.  Then every single stall item is carefully packed into the boxes it came out of a few hours earlier, and painstakingly repacked in the van or car in precise and perfect order.  There is not an inch of room to spare, and no opportunity for anything other than perfect order.  Then they slam the doors, zoom off to wherever they came from, and by 1.30 pm there is not the least sign that they were ever there.  But no worries, they will be back again on Saturday if there was a bargain you are regretting turning down.

So having been distracted by the market, I continued on to my destination with a sinking heart.  It occurred to me, as I approached the store, that I might have read on-line that it closed from 12 noon till 2 pm.  And of course, that proved to be exactly the case.  Another 45 minutes to fill in, which I did by wandering in and out of a variety of stores, till it came to 2 pm by which time I had had enough and decided to head for home.  This time I took a short cut, which meant that I by-passed the butchers, and – oh darn, I really did need something for dinner.  But I did manage to catch La Poste open, and settled for inferior produce from the little superette next door to it, before staggering home for a little lie down studying my French grammar.

Neither a productive nor an exciting day, but not unpleasant.  The cloud cover has increased, and rain is forecast in Aix.  That in itself will be an event if it occurs, because there has not been a hint of moistness since I arrived.  I will report in due course.

In the meantime, a little more on ma grand-mère.

My grandmother taught me to play Patience (now we call it Solitaire), do the Lambeth Walk, and to adore Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate.  She took me shopping and to the Zoo and Easter Show, and spoilt me rotten.  I would sit on the bench while she baked, and could make a cake without assistance by the time I was seven.  The recipe for her Rock Cakes is still in my head.  She taught me how to knit, even though my left-handedness made this an exercise in frustration.  I took over the old Singer treadle sewing machine from her, and later made my own clothes.

To me, she was wonderful, but others had different experiences.  I knew a warm and loving woman still full of vitality, who took me as her companion.  Her presence in our household was a wonderful boon to me, but even to a pre-schooler the cracks showed occasionally.

Whenever I misbehaved and seriously irritated my mother, a battle would ensue.  Grandma would stand up for me, and I would duck for cover.  If my mother was annoyed at me to begin with, my grandmother’s defence was like a red rag to a bull.   Shouting would follow and matters would rapidly escalate.  I could see it going wrong before my eyes even as a tiny child, and inevitably my punishment increased exponentially as the result of the conflict between the two women.  Of course I did not understand why at the time, but now it seems clear enough that my mother was wounded that not only had she suffered unfair punishment as a child, but that her relationship with her own child was being interfered with.  Unfairness is hard to forgive or forget.

By the time my grandmother died, when I was ten, there were two more children, but neither of them became part of this tug of war.  My grandmother’s intentions towards me had been good, but the love and affection she showed me came, as a child, at the expense of my relationship with my mother.  There is a sense in which it never recovered.  It is clear she left her mark not just on my mother, and through her on me, but on others too.  

Which is partly the reason I needed, as an adult, to figure out who this woman, from this far away place, really was.  That, and the fact that I feel so cheated that she died before I was old enough to quiz her about her life, family and origins, or to hear her side of the story.  Certainly I have heard my mother’s side of the story ad infinitum, although that makes it no less disturbing.  Oh, and it would help to know who was my real grandfather.

I thought it might be a good idea to take my mother, about to turn 80, to the Channel Islands.  We were both widowed at that stage, so a distraction was in order.

There will be more, probably …