Sometimes I forget to live in real life, as I'm so busy on the highways and cloud paths of the world wide web.
Or should I say the internet, Twitter and all the other names I'm not quite au fait with but am trying hard to be.
I get up horrifically early now every morning because of the pup, and the day stretches on interminably. Frankly by 11am I am thinking of apero time and maybe a little nap. By mid-afternoon I'm ready for dinner, a nightclub and a little Armagnac. (You need fantasies in La France Profonde, but I think you get the gist.)
It's shameful because there is so much I could do with this new awakening. Top of the list: Clean the bits - whole rooms, actually - that the cleaner who can't clean hasn't touched.(Actually, that's not quite fair to R. She has flicked them every week while saying "impeccable" with every feathered stroke. I now seriously believe she may have an eye problem.)
Being up in the big main kitchen/dining room/library/pup's domain, when the sun rises, I now see every cobweb, every nicotine-stained bit of ceiling, every dust-edged bookshelf.
When the golden sun strikes the glass doors I wince at the smears of her over-application of "produit". She loves every type of produit and uses industrial amounts, to no avail. I can no longer bear to look at the glass of the paintings and photographs and just hope all guests lie long in bed until the sun moves on to other, softly lit, night rooms.
But I do nothing about it and pick up neither cloth nor sponge.
Anyway, by 10am I've read all the papers online, French and English, responded to Twitter and emails, clicked on various blogs and should be ready for a shower and the day to come. But no. I then start all over again even if the trapped nerve in my left arm from overuse of my Mac is zinging and hot and really hurting.
Perhaps I'll move to collect mail at the postbox. I won't open it - I'll stick it somewhere and discover a bill after a month or more.
Perhaps I'll think of really sorting out all the envelopes I stick in a carrier bag in a wardrobe in the guest room, or even sort out all the clothes I have stuffed in overflowing drawers.
Perhaps, as it's now only 10.30am, I'll get to grips with the fact I have hours and hours in front of me - ample time to do everything I should be doing. I could visit a friend for coffee. Oh wait - I only have a handful here ... All of them in couples and all doing things. They'll be at the market or the expat dog walk or they'll have family over.
So I can't do that, unless they ask me, because I'm always free. Of course I am. And again, that's not fair either. They're pretty good friends and I could phone and say: "You know something? I'm feeling a touch hellish.
"No particular reason. Just rather adrift and a bit lost at getting older and not feeling particularly well some of the time.
"And I get worried because of that and get a touch fearful of what's to come. Then, there's Cesar. I should never have got him, but I did and ..."
So I could do that and sometimes I do but I make it a joke. And even if I don't, they have their own fears and can only smile in semi-understanding. They have their own demons to deal with, I'm sure, and don't need mine. They need to bite back, too, that in all cases I have only myself to blame.
My French neighbours, so I've heard, have only one version of me. The me I love to project: journalist, independent woman, no need of the Anglos, a touch difficult but interesting.
If they ever ponder my life, then, they don't share their thoughts with me, although Roslyn lets slip a few things now and then. From her words they find me rather fascinating but are completely baffled as to why or how I ended up here. Me too.
In short, they just accept me on face value while repeating they are only a field away. Should I need them. Pierrot does that every time we meet. So I think he has an inkling of my true solitude and the cost of that. A field away. A life away. A culture away. It's still rather comforting.
Meanwhile, instead of stubbing the fag out, getting off my backside and just bloody moving, I ... Click on, tune in and get my responses from people who sometimes don't even reveal their real names.
I send a photo of the pup and a sentence. Perhaps I add a jokey line.
Within seconds I get a reply or a favourite. Or a private message asks: "Are you OK?" And that's rather comforting too.
Perhaps we need to extend our definition of real life to encompass the internet. And then I can kid myself I'm not wasting time; rather, I'm spending it wisely.
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