This was meant to be a very short post which I started to write because it started snowing again tonight. But I started to type and like the Lambton worm it grewed and grewed and grewed and this came out instead and all sorts of things which I thought I’d forgot ended up being typed. So it has nothing to do with the title but I can’t be bothered to think of a new one right now and as I haven’t slept for the past two nights I need to go to bed now. In any case if I keep going until we actually get to my Snow Place then we’re going to be here for a while. So here it is, a post that has nothing to do with the title written on no sleep and a glass of red wine (which is a bit of a lethal combination). Should you attempt to read this then I suggest you go get a cup of coffee first….

We had been homeless for nearly two years. The big house was gone, we’d owned it for a year, spent eight months gutting it, rebuilding it, redecorating it and then moved in. We lived there four months, throughout the summer as I seem to recall, until the evening that Dad came home, wandered into the garden, looked back at the house, and realized that this was it. He’d done it. Arrived. Here he could spend the rest of his days. The house hit the market the very next morning.

We knew the drill; we’d done it several, (eight times) before. Our furniture went into storage; our goldfish, (Goldie, Goldy, and Bert) went to stay at my Nan’s. We didn’t miss them much, their gold had started to tarnish by the time we’d knocked the coconuts off and what little was left had turned to gilt by the time we’d walked the damn things home, thin plastic handles straining holes with every step. They, Goldy, Goldie and Bert, didn’t miss us at all and proved it by, (within the month) allowing Grandpa T to teach them tricks.

Our cat Tiger, real name Snow Tiger Terror of the Steppes, proved a little more difficult to place. My Nan, usually a guaranteed soft touch where animals were concerned was convinced that he was the devil incarnate (she just hadn’t quite decided which one) and we, Mum, Herebe and I, had to agree – although privately – that his eyes did glow a strange shade of green whenever he saw her.

Grandma S; who could normally be relied upon to do her Christian duty in matters such as this, flatly refused to have him in her house. He was a lovely looking cat (she said) with those bright green eyes and tufts on his ears and she could quite understand why we were so proud of him. But speaking of ears (she said), Sasha (her dog) was meant to have two of them, not one and half and although the vet had managed to stitch most of it back on, it was just too much worry and expense to go through on a regular basis. In vain did Mum point out that Tiger was just a big softy really, even Herebe and I didn’t quite believe that. In vain did Herebe and I try to explain that as a greyhound/whippet cross with not a few wins under her collar, Sasha should have been quick enough to get out of his way. The fact that she hadn’t, proved that even for a greyhound/whippet cross, she was an incredibly stupid dog and as her ears were much floppier than any self-respecting dog should have anyway you could quite understand Tigers reaction when they were flopping around him. In vain did the three of us suggest that if Tiger was given the run of the garden no-one would ever dare climb over the wall to nobble GrandDad S’s leeks. That might be the case (Said Granddad S) but where in hell was he supposed to put the bodies? Herebe’s suggestion of the leek trench because after all that was where Granddad kept threatening to bury us – along with the rest of his grandchildren – fell on ears as deaf as Sasha’s left.

With nowhere left to turn and time until the move fast running out, Mum did what every child with siblings does in such a situation. She used emotional blackmail on the nearest ones (my godparents). She needn’t have wasted her breath. In the first flush of panic now that Jboy was on wheels (a natty red trike), they leapt at the chance of even temporarily homing our cat, their only reservation being that Mum couldn’t guarantee a more than ninety percent chance of their first born becoming its lunch.

Tiger never made it to my Godparents house. On the day we moved, before we were twenty miles down the road, he’d bitten through the wicker of his basket and escaped. For the next fifty miles, he alternated between crouching viciously behind the brake pedal (used rarely when Dad drove) and launching assaults – via the top of Dads head – on the goldfish, whose tank with its makeshift cardboard breakwaters, was wedged between Herebe and me on the back seat. When the car finally stopped at a junction near to my Godparents, Tiger took off out of the window and was gone. Like so many barbarian chiefs before him, he eschewed the soft belly of a three year old for the freedom of the Steppes, in this case the concrete steps of the outhouse of our ex-almost neighbours, three doors up and on the other side of the back garden to the house we’d lived in four months before.

There he spent the next two years, laying siege to the gates (a dark green back door) of the castle which imprisoned his Queen. That she was a very insipid Queen indeed, (called Susie most definitely without the Q) mattered not one jot to him. Occasionally he’d bring her gifts – half a dead fox, a feebly kicking rabbit or two, on one occasion the mutilated body of another Tom Cat- which he’d lay upon the garden path with a careless aplomb, but mostly he spent his days reclining Genghis like upon a sack, composing poetry in a foreign (and off-key) tongue.

The ex-almost neighbours, it must be said, took it with a very good grace. A far better grace in fact than they’d ever taken to us living three doors down and on the other side of the back gardens from their house. The “Lady of the House” and I use the term in all its drop waisted crimpelened glory, Grandma S’s good friend, when we lived there, it had all been scandalized tones of “They have a drum kit in their dining room, don’t you know (my Grandmas name)?” and “Why was there a lamb in your daughters back garden last weekend?”. Like Grandma S would know. We weren’t that sure. It wasn’t ours. Thank God the night Dad had chased the next door neighbour’s son down the garden path with the samurai sword he’d just made; he’d run him down the front path and not the back. Deserved as it might have been (and it was), we’d never have heard the end of that. But somehow, Tigers lonely vigil had worn through the layers of foundation garments, masticated milk tray and mills and boon romances and found a place – a very small place but a place nonetheless – in her heart.

We knew this because when Mum arrived (three times a day) wielding tins of Whiskas and the odd bit of raw meat, she would open her dark green door, plant her feet firmly upon the white painted well scrubbed step, American tan tights straining over sausaged ankles, and watch him eat. “HE’s not gulping his food down” she would say with a satisfied air, as if the day that Tiger would wield a knife and fork was the day he would be allowed to date her cat. Ha! I’d watched her eat. A Mississippi steamer paddle had more grace.

Tiger paid her little heed. Three times a day he walked to the garden gate, welcomed Mum (who was his pet) with the air of a millionaire showing off his mansion, and then, when dinner was done and the remains of his ears had been scratched and Mum had rearranged his bed to his satisfaction, he walked her home – around the corner to my Grandma’s house – where he would wait at the gate until she was safely in and had waved from the window, before sauntering back to compose another stanza.

That was where we lived. Mum, Herebe and me – at my Grandmas house. When the big house had gone, Dad had moved back to his bed beneath the sea. Living here was a “temporary measure” until we found a home of our own. Our clothes went into bin bags, and we; Mum, Herebe and I moved into the front bedroom, the room with the rose coloured carpets and old-fashioned bunks, the bottom one I shared with mum. Narrow as a plank, hardly big enough for one small child – which I was not- we slept top to toe, me pushed up against the wall with an extra three inches for my head where the bed stood in front of the alcove was. The bunk above was so close that if I sat up straight my hair would catch in the weird patterns of wires and twists and have to be cut free before I could move. When Dad came back – one weekend in every six – Mum and he would sleep around the corner at my Nan’s and in the morning they would pick us up and we’d go off, hunting for a home.

The Met Office said that it would snow yesterday, snow today and snow tomorrow. Well I don’t know about tomorrow but if they think that the few paltry flakes that ambled their way to the ground at about 3am this morning constitute snow then they need to think again. I want whiteout. I want eleven foot drifts. I want to have to dig a tunnel from the front door to a car that’s completely buried and that I couldn’t use anyway partly because I can’t drive, mostly because it would be buried (and frozen). I want to have to scrape 2 inches of ice off the inside of the windows (although F and I do have a bit of a battle over this. I say that being able to see your breath inside the house is not only normal, it’s good for you. He says that it isn’t. Consequently I spent a lot of my day running up stairs, diving into the room where the boiler is and turning off the heating. F spends an equal amount of time dashing from his room - he works upstairs - and switching it back on again. The only time I get my own way on this is if he happens to be asleep and then the heating is switched off and the house becomes gloriously cold).

I want a proper winter. This is not a proper winter. This is Christmas card weather.

Proper winters are when the pipes freeze and you need to break the ice in the toilet bowl every morning. Proper winters are when you take a bath with your vest on because it’s just too bloody cold to bathe naked and even then you can’t stay in the bath too long in case you get hypothermia as the water cools. Proper winters freeze the toothpaste in the tube. Proper winters happen when the central heating packs up (although for a really proper winter to happen you shouldn’t have central heating at all) but that’s ok because you’ve got coal fires although you need to ration the coal because the roads are blocked and the coalman can’t get through. Proper winters are so cold that the coal fuses into one big mound and it takes you twenty minutes to carve out a lump that hisses and screams like a live thing when you put it on the fire.

During a proper winter you get dressed and undressed within the safety of the bedclothes. You drink a lot of tea and you eat a lot of broth. You cannot feel your fingers but your toes tingle with the red hot warmth of chilblains and your eyes are cold and starey. If this was a proper winter then I would not be able to see the green sticks of the fence from through my window and the branches would not criss-cross with candyfloss, but would snap beneath the white.

Proper winters stop all unnecessary questions.

Proper winters are masculine not feminine. They do not float around in white fur coats and have no truck with pointed crowns of ice. Proper winters hit you with a knuckled nosebreak crack then snap your ribs with one well-aimed kick.

Proper winters are so white that you are blinded. They’re soft and cruel. They’re beautiful to behold. Proper winters score stains of becks black bleeding through the land.

Proper winters are so silent that you can hear the world think. It hurts to breathe. The stars shiver from the cold. During a proper winter the sky is full and the ground is filled and the air is swirled with hira-shuriken snowflakes. There is no horizon and the taste of apricot metal in the air.

I would give anything to have another proper winter. To be caught in bleak and hot with cold and the world reduced to that tight bright lock of chill. The chances of us having it here are slim though. We need to be further out. Miles out. Not just near the moors but on them. In a place that has real weather.

But I would give anything to have just one more proper winter. Almost anything at all.

F’s mum (G) says that she is not a good cook. She says this, as she draws from the oven a large clear dish, shallow and oval and filled to the brim with potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and artichoke hearts, each item whole and stuffed with a mixture of forcemeat, herbs de Provence, egg, fresh basil and breadcrumbs. She cooks old fashioned things, she says, things her mother cooked, traditional things, quick things to make, not complicated. She cannot, she says as she sets the dish on the tiled kitchen table, think of what to make. She has, she says, as she tips fresh bread into a wicker basket, unwraps the cheeses on their blue glass plate, sets down two bottles of misty chilled water, unfurls napkins and moves the salt, lost the envy to cook.

We’ve been here nineteen days now. Take off seven days for the time we spent at N’s, discount breakfast and snacks. Count two meals a day, three courses each meal without cheese or dessert. That’s twelve times two times three, some seventy-two meals if my arithmetic is right, and not once have we eaten the same thing twice.

Soft haricot verts clad in mustard sauce. Palm hearts pale and sweet. Eggs mimosa, their hollowed whites filled with crumbed yolk and home made mayonnaise. Steak hache; icy pink inside, with soft poached eggs. Courgette gratin (the smallest are the best says G), buried under crispy cheese which pulls in strands when the knife goes in. Pan fried salmon; coral pink, unmussed by seasoning or oil. Aioli with each measured drop, painstaking ground with garlic and with salt. Spaghetti sauce, with olives (green) and chunks of veal, rosemary flecked, or a bolognaise of ground up beef, all lush with herbs and sweet tomato sauce. Goat’s cheese, warmed, over summer leaves. Rough chopped tomatoes mixed with equal parts of mozzarella, sun and basil leaves, drenched in oil and left to soak Broccoli pureed with more crème fraiche. Asparagus spears, white and fine as grass, with vinaigrette. Tabboleh mixed with melon, anchovies and ham. Egg custards baked with caramelised apples and fresh figs, marron glaces, chocolate coffee creams … the list goes on.

F’s favourite; which I have absolutely no idea at all how to spell, is a particularly finicky thing to put together. Thin steaks of veal are laid out flat, a thick slice of ham is placed on the top of each one and then a mozzarella placed on top of that. It’s then rolled up, sewn together so that it doesn’t fall apart and baked in a thick tomato sauce with gruyere cheese liberally grated over the top. For me; my stay would not be the same without this piled up dish of Farcie, the making of which G has kept a deadly secret, the kitchen door shut tight for the hour it takes to prepare.

Toulon has changed and yet remains the same. One thing I love about this town is its resolute refusal to become candy cote d’azured into a pale copy of Cannes or Nice. Despite the hanging baskets perilously strung between the lurching streets, the jasmine perfume poured into the narrow tunnels of Napoleons wall, or cloud white yachts tethered by thick ropes of cash, it remains a place where people live, not a town where people stay. Destroyers berth like exploded airfix kits in the walled off port, or hover on the horizon ice grey against the hot blue sky, their scale reduced to something we can understand.

The air raid sirens sing in the first Wednesday of every month, falling on the Arab quarters shuttered shops. From the balcony where I stand, burning my tongue on star anise, I can see the seven skyscrapers which hide the sea, the twinkling lights of speeding cars disappear into tunnels whisking traffic through the town. I’ve been through once. They are too long to play the game of hold your breath until you reappear, you dive and dive and bend and then, just at that point when you know you will never reascend, you see the light. Sun sleepy in the orange glare, I did not need my dreams disturbed by this mirrored concrete metaphor.

The port of the Mourillon still holds its faded boats of blue and grey, bobbing against the gentle waves just as they did in Dantes day. Though faded fifties flats crowd the narrow space between sea and land, a standing testament to the paper bags of bribes which caused their build, this place would not be strange to him today. Inside the port; weathered men throw silver boules across the yard, swap shouted spells to cause the fish to catch, leave the scattered runes of engines trailed across the ground, tell stories each one taller than the last, or sit in faded cafes with Tarot cards clutched tight beside their glass of little yellow.

* A little yellow= un petit jaune = 1 Pernod.

In the south of France…busy swimming and sunning and sleeping and eating (because everything here revolves around food) and thinking. Will write more later if I can bear to drag myself away from the beach, the bed and the dinner table.

it’s just to say I’m done. Yes. DONE. Finished.

Finally.

I never thought it would take this long.

Three weeks I reckoned. Three weeks.

It was all supposed to be so simple…and none of it was.

But now I’m done.

So I’m back.

Hello…