Were it not for the trams, the roadworks and the pile-up of angry drivers behind me, I could now be a Bordelaise, an inhabitant of Bordeaux - brimming over with BCBG (bon chic bon genre), the French equivalent of a Sloaney pony, the title still given to the blonde upper-class fashionistas of Mayfair.
Oh yes: I could now be striding across the Place de la Comedie, needle-thin, hair multi-shaded strands of blonde tied in a tight bun, enormous retro sunglasses failing to disguise my snooty superiority. Perhaps I'd be living in one of the new warehouse conversions by the Garonne, but I rather think it would be a fine 18th-century apartment in the Old Town.
Nudging C, to show "me" as I would have been, as an achingly smart woman of a certain age strode by on amazing heels, I launched into how fate and timing had denied me my right to be that woman. God love her. Having made me take a tram and walk miles on our day out, C knew she had no option but to smile and encourage my reverie.
In the first weeks of my search for a house in France I ended up, without a plan, on the outskirts of Bordeaux. I was still encountering spatial problems with driving. It's always been a problem but made manifestly worse by being on the wrong side of the road. So I drove around the country, hands in a rictus clutch to the wheel, incapable of overtaking even on three-lane autoroutes, convinced I would scrape, or worse, the sides of other vehicles.
Lorries were my particular betes noire and so I would often be found, the lone car in a caravan of trundling beasts in the slow lane. (The drivers were obviously kindly aware of my difficulties as they hooted and flashed me encouragement for miles. Sweet. I always waved back and they hooted even more.) Anyway, after such a drive I headed into Bordeaux across a very wide bridge - fortunately not too high, as that can also be a problem with my vertigo.
Having detailed this before I don't really want to revisit the pain. It's enough to say that a combination of major road works on the quayside; strange French diversions; kamikaze tram drivers and very rude, impatient drivers behind me (who were not hooting encouragingly) meant I crossed and recrossed the bridge many times.
It was like Groundhog Day as I continued to be flung out of the same excruciatingly narrow streets back on to the bridge. My wing mirrors were flattened after the first hits; my jumper riddled with holes from the dropping fag ash (I had no free hand to eject it); my already fragile mental state in utter freefall. You may now understand why it has taken several years for me to even consider approaching Bordeaux again. Although it's only two hours away we went by train. Kindly, C did not want me to have the "trouble" of driving.
Every time I drag myself from the depths of Las Molieres, I experience once again the pull of the France I fell in love with as a child. It is sad that I no longer really feel it in the medieval villages and towns that surround me, but I think that's inevitable because familiarity always erodes our initial wonder eventually.
No, for me it's the cities, redolent of once enormous power; exquisite in the detailing of their architecture as in Bordeaux; the church spires with intricate wedding-cake stone icing; the sweep of the squares dominated by opera house and palaces.
Twenty years ago this ancient port was a blackened, grimy, almost forgotten place until a massive regeneration uncovered its hidden original beauty. Now all is open right down to the old powerhouse, the Garonne. The detailed execution of the city plan can be finally appreciated in the light thrown from the cleansed stones, the vast pedestrianised expanses from which overhanging colombaged buildings are glimpsed.
But it is history enhanced and forged by the present. The streets and the frontages are old, but the shops and restaurants are new and buzzing with modern global ideas. The ancient houses are filled with young, appreciative, but not hide-bound, owners.
It is the ideal mix and one which has not yet found an easy relationship in La France Profonde. In the country all is quietly dying. Change is for others, not "for us". Bordeaux, Toulouse and their likes are still looked upon with suspicion even as the young leave their farms without a second look.
I see and hear this even in the middle-aged, not just the very old, who are understandably stone-faced and fearful once more of the future. I'm sure it is a common feature in all rural communities, but it must change. There is nothing romantic in a hamlet of broken stones and sagging barns, nothing glorious in decay unless you're a retired expat with more cash than sense. That's not fair either. Without the expats there would be no tangible memory left in some places.
I don't want to be part of these problems. I could have been a Bordelaise … a contender.
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