I’m in my happy place, literally the place I feel happiest, a house in the south of France that my father bought in the late sixties, and that by luck and chance now belongs to me. It sits on a crystal mountain on the edge of a national park, it’s a complicated series of hallways and stairs, rooms leading off rooms, roofs intersecting, the result of an ancient farmhouse being augmented over the years to become she, madam, this villa we refer to as the monastery where shadows cannot hide. She is alive. Over the years guests have come here and seen bits about themselves, about each other. In the long hot afternoons tempers have frayed and come together. It’s a revealing place where we cannot pretend for long anything about ourselves. I arrived last night tired from the slog of England, GCSEs, my own work, I woke this morning in a mood. It feels as if the snapping, growling frustrations of the year come pouring out and I wrestle with how lucky I am to be snapping and growling in such a place as this, but this is what it’s for. This thing about being lucky and not having the right to complain is a dog-eared book my mother read to me like a riot act throughout my childhood. I know, of course I know, where she was coming from, but it didn’t help. It made me further than I ever was from the shared base-line of human emotions. I spoke to her yesterday and she said you’re so lucky to be there and she meant it in a different way this time; lucky to be able to travel, to up and go while she is confined to her cottage in the countryside; bed to zimmer to stairlift to wheelchair - this place that she loved too is now completely out of reach. But still she doesn’t complain when she should, when she’s every right as a human being to say fuck I’m frustrated, tired, had enough. When we would welcome any other answer than fine said not cheerily but with all the Don’t Touch Me’s of a person used to their armour. I wish sometimes she would cry. But she won’t and I will. And then I’ll up and be washed of the emotions I brought with me, that I carried from a year-long slog of England since the last summer I was here. This place is my respite. I am lucky. I think I want to write about her more. I shall pick her as my subject tomorrow. I will get stuck in.
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You’re so lucky. Think of the starving children 🙄
Love this, Eleanor. I have a home in Provence, which I have the absolute good fortune to spend the summer in each year. It’s also seen generations of stories played out over the years. A great grandfather built it brick by brick and passed it down the family line until it landed with us. Even the Terracotta pots in the front garden have a story as does the Cypress tree. Looking forward to reading more (and writing about my place when we arrive in a couple of weeks). Enjoy.