Love….Love? …Do you have a minute? I mean, are you busy right now? It’s just that I was thinking…no don’t look at me like that…I was just thinking that…if you weren’t too busy right now…would you mind giving me a hand to move the glass cabinet? No, not right this second. In fact – now I come to think of it – it would probably be better if we did it in a bit because if we’re going to do that then it would probably be better if I took all the stuff out of it first and if I do that then I might as well give it all a quick wash so I’ll need to do the dishes. But if we could move it at some point today that would be so great because, you know, every time that someone sits at that side of the table I just have visions of them crashing backwards through the glass and that would be a nightmare - we’d never be able to find replacement doors. So. What I thought was…if we moved the glass cabinet into the sitting room then we could move Jgirls sideboard to where the cabinet is now – it will fit, I’ve measured it – and it would look so much better there, much kitchenier. So if you could give me a hand to move it later on today that would be wonderful; if I give you a shout in an hour or so - would that be ok?

What noise? Oh that. No, I’m fine and nothings broke. It was just that I’d moved everything out of the cabinet and washed it all and I was on a bit of a roll washing wise so I thought “might as well give the shelves a quick going over too.” So I went to get the shelves out and I was kneeling on the floor tugging at them and I just happened to glance across at the sink because I’d left the tap running with the plug still in… and the damn thing slipped out of my hand. I should have dried my hands first really I suppose, but at least it didn’t break and I’ve figured out how to get them out now. You have to lift the bottom shelf off first and lay it on the base of the cabinet and that gives you room to sort of angle the top shelf out lengthways and then you can take the bottom shelf out. The water on the floor? Well the sink did overflow a bit, but at least its clean water and I was kind of planning on washing the kitchen floor at some point today anyway. But love! Look how sparkly the shelves are now they’re clean. Don’t they look wonderful? You know I’ve never noticed before but they’ve got a faint turquoise tint at the edges when the light hits them, don’t they… actually F, seeing as how you’re in here now we might as well make a start on the cabinet mightend we?

No, you’re right. It does look bloody awful there. What about…if…and it’s just a thought …you don’t have to agree or anything… but what about if we swapped the sofas around? What do you think? If we put the blue sofa where this one is then we can put this one over there, there’ll be room now we’ve moved Jgirls sideboard – it does look fabulous in the kitchen doesn’t it? You know … I was just thinking…we could put the silver oil lamp on it and that big leopard print glass dish would look amazing against the wood - no it should fit. Hang on a second and I’ll measure it… well I had it just a minute ago; I’ll have put it down somewhere. Bugger where’s it gone? Did you move it? Are you sure? Well I know I had it and it can’t have moved on its own can it? Ah look, there it is. I knew I’d put it somewhere I wouldn’t lose it. So if I grab this end…oh sorry sweetheart, I’d completely forgotten I’d stashed those books there. Well if we just shove them on the sofa for now? Then when we’re done I’ll find somewhere to put them, I’m sure that I can fit them all on the bookcase, it’ll just need a bit of rejigging.

Oh! Wow! Look! I can’t believe how much space we’ve won just by doing that. The room looks twice the size. How come we never thought of doing it before? It looks so much better now doesn’t it? I mean normally I don’t like furniture being against the wall – well not sofa’s anyway, obviously things like sideboards are designed to stand against walls - but that daybed fits there so perfectly it’s almost as if the room was built for it. How’s your thumb by the way? Has it stopped bleeding yet? I am so sorry about that sweetheart, I honestly didn’t do it deliberately it’s just that I didn’t have a very good hold of the thing, you wouldn’t have thought it was so heavy looking at it would you? Although I suppose all those books and pictures and stuff we put on it added to the weight … actually love…about those pictures… I was just wondering, when you have a minute, I mean not now…obviously, but maybe when we’re done, you don’t fancy hanging them do you? It wouldn’t take you long, we’ve got the drill, and there are some nails in the tool cupboard. Speaking of which, are you sure you don’t want a plaster? We do have some somewhere; I remember seeing them the other week when I was looking for something. I could look for them now if you like; it might stop that nail from coming off completely…Oh well if you’re sure. You know love …looking at the daybed, I was just thinking –no don’t look at me like that, it’s nothing major – I was just thinking that maybe the next time we go to Ikea, oh ok then, the next time we’re in Newcastle and I can persuade mum to take me to Ikea, maybe we could get some cushion pads, but the proper feather ones this time because those foam filled ones are crap and I could make some covers for them. Because what it really needs now…just to finish it off properly… are masses of big cushions, about ten I reckon, all piled up on it – I’m thinking velvets and brocades in sumptuous colours - don’t you think that would look so fabulous?

No. I don’t know what moving the green table would entail. I just thought that if we moved the green table out of that corner then we could put the glass cabinet there instead. I mean there’s nowhere else it can go now really, not now we’ve moved the sofas, and it would look so brilliant in that corner and …no… Wait…just let me finish… I was going to say that we could put the green table in the computer room. Yes I do know that there’s no room for it in there at the moment but I was thinking – no, don’t look at me like that love - I was just thinking that, you know that bookcase that’s in there now? Well it’s hideous right? I mean it’s really hideous? Every time I go into that room I’m reminded of how hideous it is. Yes, I do know you didn’t pick it, I did. But in my defence love, can I just point out that at the time we had no furniture and we really needed a bookcase and I had planned on decoupaging it but you know what? Even if I did decoupage it, it would still be a hideous bookcase; it would just be a hideous bookcase but with stuff stuck on it. So what I thought…was…if we moved the bookcase out of your room…what do you mean where are we going to put the books? We can just stack them up along the landing for now …and then…when we’re done I’ll put them in the bookcase in the front room. I’m sure there’ll be room if I just rejig things a bit.

No… but…listen a minute… the really great thing about doing this is if we get rid of the bookcase and move the table in there, it would be so brilliant for you because you’d have heaps more space to work in and stuff and plus the Apple could live there permanently. Oh I thought you used the Apple all the time. Well it’s on all the time. Ah right. Ok I didn’t know that. But it’s not like you’d actually object to having the Apple in your room permanently is it?

So how long would it take you to completely recable everything? It wouldn’t take that long surely? I mean it’s not a big job really and I can help…well I can move the guitars out, we can just line them up along the landing for now; they’ll be safe enough there and then I can make a start clearing the books out of the bookcase. I was wondering about those CD towers as well you know – I mean they are pretty ghastly really aren’t they and don’t you think your room would look so much better without them in it? I do – and lets’ face it sweetheart, when was the last time we actually listened to a CD? I know you need the ones that you’ve recorded stuff on, but you don’t need them out do you? I mean you don’t use them every day? So what I was thinking instead was… you know how the cassettes in the drawers in the sitting room could do with a huge clear out ? You do…you were the one who was saying that we didn’t have a tape player the other day….well apart from that one in the hall cupboard, but does it even work? I don’t know. Anyway, if we sorted out the cassettes in the drawers in the sitting room then we could put the CD’s we wanted to keep in the drawers with them and then your work CD’s could go in one of those new storage boxes and that could go under the green table – once we get rid of the table and the CD towers and move it in that is – and it would just simplify things wouldn’t it? Because I want things simple now and you have to admit it would lighten up that whole corner of your room and that’s got to be a good thing for you doesn’t it? So what do you think? Shall we just make a start and see how it goes?

Oh. God. Love. I am so sorry. I really am. I so didn’t mean to do that, here press this tea-towel on it that should mop up the blood a bit. I know you said not to move the door and I didn’t move the door, well not deliberately anyway, it’s just that you said to pull the cable tight so I did and I tried to get it in the gap behind the hinge and when I pulled, the door just sort of swung towards you. I had no idea there was that bit of metal attached to the bottom of it. It’s not the same finger as before, is it? It is isn’t it? Bugger. Are you still going to be able to play? Well can you not just sort of record around not having a thumbnail on that hand? Ah. Yes, I can see how that might be a bit difficult. Is there a lot left to do on it? Oh, right. Shit. That’s a bummer. What about superglue…if you painted that on it, that would keep the edges together and stop the strings from getting caught in the cut wouldn’t it? Look, run it under the cold tap for now, that should stop it swelling too much and you know love, there’s really no need to be like that. It’s not my fault – not really and at least I’m trying to think of ways round the problem…

F! F! Are you awake yet? You are now. Oh sorry love I didn’t mean to wake you. 6.30, why? Yes, in the morning. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to tell you to be a bit careful when you came out of the bedroom. Why? Well it’s just that after you went to bed last night I couldn’t get to sleep so I was surfing for a recipe for furniture polish because I discovered if you wrap a hiking sock round the whizzy brush bit on the turbo head of the vacuum then you can use it to polish furniture…just wait till you see how good the bookcase in the kitchen looks, and I just thought; if it looks this good with just the sock how amazing would it look if I actually used polish? Anyway, I found this website and…oh sorry love, of course, there’s fresh coffee in the kitchen. Just be a bit careful will you sweetheart because the landing’s a bit covered in stuff and I’ve already whacked my ankle on the skeleton a couple of times.

Look, just calm down a minute sweetheart; do you need another coffee? I know, we spent all day yesterday rearranging the apartment and yes, I do admit it looks a bit chaotic at the moment but its organised chaos…you bloody well can have such a thing. Well if you’d just listen a minute I was telling you…I was online looking for a recipe for furniture polish – no we don’t have any, we’ve never had any, why would we buy any? – and I came across this site and love do you realise that our hall cupboard is slap bang in the centre of our apartment? So? So? You need to ask? So it’s the worst possible place that a hall cupboard could be, like really seriously bad… Well it means complete stagnation for a start. It’s not funny love. That’s precisely the reason why the energy can’t move, because there’s so much stuff in the effing thing. Yes, I do remember L. No, I’m not going to Feng Shui the whole fucking apartment, just the cupboard. But you know love, there must be something in it because otherwise the Chinese wouldn’t have invented it would they? I mean they’ve always struck me as quite a practical people. Anyway, I just thought it might be worth a shot. I mean, the worst that can happen is that the cupboard gets cleared out and that’s hardly going to hurt us is it? That is so unfair. I said I was sorry about your finger… I mean thumb. Well, yes, it does need doing. There are three flight cases full of your cables in there for a start plus those archive boxes of papers. I mean do we really need to keep bank statements from ten years ago? I know we need to keep records but not for that long surely… I’m not asking you to go through them, I will. Now that’s not fair. All I did yesterday was ask if you’d mind giving me a hand to move the glass cabinet from the kitchen to the sitting room. I had no idea we’d have to reorganize the whole apartment….but love, don’t you feel so much better now it’s done. I mean isn’t your room so much easier to work in now …well it will be once I’ve moved all my paintings and books and stuff out of it…well look love, I don’t want to argue, but just have a think about it will you? For me?

Ah…yes, I wondered if you’d noticed that. I do have the windows open. It was just that once I’d found the recipe for the furniture polish… do you know, I’m seriously thinking of getting in touch with him about that. Him…you do know who I mean, not Steve Jobs … the other one…the hoover one…whatshisname… thingy Dyson. Yes I do know his surname isn’t Dyson but if you knew who I meant why didn’t you just say so? Why? Did you not notice how great the bookcase looks now? Go on. Look. How shiny is that? Doesn’t it look brilliant? And you know if it comes up that good with one of your socks over the… because I wear mine and you never do…don’t start getting possessive about something you never wear. Anyway … like I was saying…if it comes up that good with a sock over the turbo attachment how good would it be if there was a proper attachment over the thingy that was designed to polish wood. Exactly. Ah well, that was a drawback. Because I’d found the recipe but I didn’t actually have any lemons left - I’d used them to clean the oven with - so I used vinegar but we didn’t really have any of that either…not once I’d done the bookcase and the wood in the sitting room, so anyway …I remembered that we’d bought those pickled onions and I just thought…they’re in vinegar… I mean I did think of melting down some candles but I don’t think the ones we got from Morrison’s are real beeswax – not at that price.

Oh, fresh coffee…how lovely, thank you sweetheart. Just while I think of it, you know how I said I’d have to rejig the books in the sitting room a bit to make room for the books we found stacked at the side of the sofa and the ones from the bookcase in your room? Well the thing is that I had to take all the books off the shelves in the kitchen to polish the bookcase and once I’d done that I thought “In for a penny in for a pound” and seeing as how I’d already taken them all off the shelves in here; I figured I might as well sort out the whole lot properly, because you know, the books I read all the time should really all be in the kitchen, not in the sitting room. So I’ve worked out a whole new way of organizing them and love it really shows I’m way more design orientated these days because I’m doing it by the colour of their spines. Yes. It will look amazing when I’m done. It’ s just that it might take me a bit longer to sort them all out and actually love you could help with that if you weren’t too busy. Would you mind? It would be the most massive help….oh thank you…you are a star. If you just come into the sitting room for a minute and …now don’t look at how it looks, I know it looked lovely yesterday when we’d finished and it will again trust me, I just had to move my paintings from under the bed in your room. Why? Because of the chi. I mean how are you supposed to create in a room with blocked chi… and you know…while I think of it…I just might start painting again because I went through all those pictures I did when we lived in London and they’re really rather good…Anyway, if you could just do one thing for me and then I promise I won’t ask you to do another thing today , apart from loading up the car and taking all the stuff to the tip but apart from that, I won’t ask you to do one thing else I promise.

I’ve decided to be ruthless you see. Well sometimes you just have to be don’t you…and I just thought…while I was going through them, it might be an idea to sort them out a bit. Because we can’t keep all of them…some of them I’m never going to read again no matter how bored I get. So…would you mind awfully putting that pile over there in the bin because I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t throw out a book. It’s wrong. Really wrong. I’ve tried to all morning. It doesn’t matter if it has no spine and half the pages are missing. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a crap book. I can’t throw it out. It’s as bad as burning them…well obviously, if it were a choice between dying of hypothermia and burning a book then I’d have…no, thinking about it…not even then. Ha! Would you burn your Gibson? Actually don’t even answer that considering what you did to her in Spain that time. Anyway love since I can’t do it, would you mind doing the honours. That pile there…NO! Not those ones, I’m not throwing them out! That pile. Yes, that’s the one. You can too have a pile with only one thing in it if there are piles around with more than one thing in them. Oh thank you love, I didn’t want it on my conscience – not even half a John Mortimer novel. It would like leave a black mark on my soul or something. You are good you know.

Love! Look! I’ve done them. Them…the books. All the books. Well … nearly all the books. There are a couple of archive boxes that will have to go in the hall cupboard once we’ve sorted it out. Which reminds me … do you fancy getting the Orange out…or the Marshall, whichever would be easier for you and just blasting through those boxes of cables? Yes, I do know you have work to do. No, I don’t expect you to drop everything … I just thought that maybe you’d be about ready to take a break for an hour or so. I know you have a deadline but surely an hour won’t make a difference. Well if you just empty them all on the floor in here then you can go through them one by one. No! Don’t throw them all out. Just the ones that don’t work. You don’t even need to do that if they just need new jacks, just coil them up so that they don’t take up as much space… it’s not my fault they’re all tangled up is it? I didn’t put them away did I? There’s no need to be like that. Have I asked you to do anything today? Apart from that? And that … in any case, it wouldn’t be easier if I just asked you to get rid of every aspect of you living in this apartment…because you do live here.

You know love; just while you’re in there…would you mind lifting down those boxes for me? Those ones… on the top shelf…well I managed to pull the other ones out but they were just too heavy for me to…oh god love, are you ok? I can’t get in to get it out….the bloody stepladders are in the way. Hang on a minute while I try to move…ouch…ouch…ouch…love can you just help me here a minute…well use your head to shove it back on the shelf or something… I’ve got my finger jammed here… shit…I’ve broke a nail…I’m going to have to cut them all down now and they’d just grown to a decent length…you know there’s no need to be like that…Like that that’s like what…cross… it was a complete accident. Well why didn’t you move the stepladders first? … I didn’t move them because they weren’t in my way that’s why. I managed to move stuff out around them. No. It’s fine. Just leave it. Go back and do your work, I can manage. Well I’ll have to won’t I? After all I’d hate you to think that I was trying to distract you or something. Oh, and it’s my fault you’ve got a deadline is it? I didn’t set it. Christ do these people not realise you have a life?

I better post something. Anything. If I don’t then I might as well decommission this blog. The problem is that when you’ve taken such a long break from blogging you do feel as if you should have some earth shattering reason for not having posted for a while and I don’t.
So I’m posting something. This. It’s not much but it’ll do for a start.

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is a perfect me. I know that she’s in a parallel universe because our paths have never crossed and I know that she exists because she keeps her clothes in my wardrobe. But I know she isn’t me every time I see my reflection.

It’s not about beauty or body shape. The perfect me doesn’t have a better body than I do - or at least most of the time she does not - and her face is exactly the same. We could be twins. This wasn’t always the case. For a long time the perfect me didn’t look a bit like I did. She was shorter, taller, thinner, blonder, cut, pre-Raphaelite, Edwardian, edgy, post-punk, hippy, grungy, groomed, glamorous, manga, rock-chick, fifties pin-up poster girl, you name it - she looked it. Probably the only trend she ignored was Britpop but given the prerequisites necessary for any female attempting to join that particular gang – Radiohead, clumpy shoes, no make-up, short hair, acrylic jumpers, cold heart and air of insufferable superiority – you can’t really blame her for having too much sense for that. But over the years we’ve grown closer together until now if you stood us side by side, we’d look exactly the same. Except for one important detail. The perfect me is…well…perfect.

I don’t know how she does it but her hair is always shiny and her mascara never clumps. Her foundation never has that bit on the side of her nose which doesn’t rub in properly and her eyeliner is always straight.

The perfect me does not need to spend the day before she goes on holiday desperately trying to make up for the past eleven months of neglect by sitting with her feet submerged in a bucket of water, hair slathered in a vat of intensive conditioner, face buried beneath three different types of face mask and the rest of her basting in a foul smelling combination of hair removal cream and a moisturiser guaranteed to turn the clock back ten years. If she did these things - which she would not – then you can bet the bloody stuff would not react adversely against itself, the atmosphere and her skin, burning her legs to the blood and meaning that she hits the beach looking like a textbook picture of a skin disease. Neither would she get so sunburnt on the very first day of her holiday that for the next two weeks she looks like the caped crusader every time she takes her fucking sunglasses off. The perfect me packs her suitcase perfectly too. She doesn’t try to stuff her case with every item of clothing that she owns and then break the catch by jumping up and down on top of it in a fruitless and bad tempered attempt to get the damn lid to shut. Instead the perfect me has a capsule wardrobe which perfectly encapsulates every eventuality she may encounter and, what is more, it all fits into her hand luggage.

The perfect me is perfectly organised. When she takes off her green shoes, she polishes them, puts them back into their shoebox, puts the shoebox back onto the right hand side of the second shelf of the shoe cupboard and there they bloody well stay until the next time she wears them. She doesn’t look in the shoe cupboard, can’t find them, pull out and look in every box of the shoe cupboard and still can’t find them, get hit on the head by a shower of shoeboxes as she balances on a chair in order to peer into the boxes of the shoes she doesn’t often wear – a task made more difficult by the fact that even standing on a chair leaves her two foot below the tallest stack on the shelf – decide that she must have put them somewhere which is neither the shoe cupboard or the stack of shoes she doesn’t often wear and start the sort of search only usually carried out by forensics after a particularly puzzling crime.

Her search for an item will never turn into a philosophical exercise into the nature of reality. Not for her sitting on the bed in a trashed bedroom – all cupboard doors open, all drawers ransacked, shoeboxes and coat hangers spewing out their contents until the room resembles an art installation – wondering whether she ever actually bought a pair of green shoes, whether she just thought she bought a pair of green shoes and why it was she was so convinced of the fact that she’d not only bought a pair of green shoes but could distinctly remember that after the last time she wore them, she polished them, put them back into their shoebox and put the shoebox on the right hand side of the second shelf of the shoe cupboard.

She will never need to abandon her search, completely change her outfit, realise that her belief that she bought a pair of green shoes was nothing more than a false memory symptomatic of her diminishing mental capacity and go to pull her brown boots of the cupboard only to discover, when she opens the cupboard door, that there on the right hand side of the second shelf down are her bloody green shoes and that her brown boots have now disappeared into the ether.

Even though we wear the same clothes she doesn’t seem to have the same problems with them that I do. She never finds herself sitting at the dinner table wondering at exactly which point in the past hour she suddenly lost the three stone in weight which made her trousers not just hipsters but kneesters and thanking God that the chair she’s sitting on has a solid back to it because that’s all that’s between her and a full moon. Nor would she ever need to question by which magic (at the same dinner table) her cardigan miraculously shrank two sizes leaving a gap of flesh which no amount of surreptitious hitching and stretching (even if she was able to move her arms which would be difficult given the shrinkage of her cardigan) was going to cover. No, the perfect me has a perfect outfit for every occasion and more to the point they stay perfect throughout the whole occasion. I probably wouldn’t mind so much if they weren’t my clothes she wears.

She borrows my brain without asking too and never gives it back when she is done, leaving me to struggle on with an echoing space between my ears and only a vague remembrance of thoughts I might have had. Because of her, I am left to fill in the blanks with the desperation of someone being asked to complete - against the clock and if my life was dependant upon the outcome – a crossword in a foreign language, with no clues and only black spaces making up the grid. To make it worse, the perfect me is able to articulate my opinions and ideas with an eloquence and flair and does so whenever I have left the room.

Hostess or guest, in social situations the perfect me is always in control. She does not sit and shake, hands trembling so hard it takes both of them to raise her glass. The distance between plate and mouth does not seem so insurmountable to her, her spatial awareness does not disappear. Her fork is not transformed into some complicated machine with an instruction book she has not read, she can remember the basic mechanics of how to chew and swallow. She does not sit with ashes in her mouth, terrified that all have noticed how she froze. She does not need to repeat a million times within her head, “These people are my friends, now breathe”.

The perfect me has a knack of letting people like and her doesn’t give a damn if they don’t. She has a stream of small talk guaranteed to put the most nervous at their ease, her jokes are not strung along the gibbet of a silent room; there are no awkward moments, no silences dropping upon the carpet with a crash. The perfect me can converse intelligently and with charm upon any given subject, the right questions fall readily from her lips. The right answers too, the perfect me does not wake in cold sweats with curling toes, rerunning a lifetimes worth of words and situations long since past.

The perfect me believed her godmother when she said, “This pumpkin is your coach”. She does not anticipate the fraud of her existence being revealed; she can love and be loved, laugh and exist without the fear of midnight chiming the joke on her because she knows that when the slipper breaks, she will not fall upon her ass but fly.

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is a perfect me. I know that she’s in a parallel universe because at no point have our paths ever crossed and I know that she exists because she keeps her clothes in my wardrobe. But I know she isn’t me every time I see my reflection.

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.