Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Pretending I'm In France

Travel abroad is off the cards for anyone who hasn't got double the money they'd normally have in order to pay for Coronavirus tests. Add to that the stress of wondering whether the country you have travelled to is suddenly going to become off-limits, and what should be a relaxing experience becomes an exercise in risk management, a rollercoaster of adrenaline (I'm not going to list a third thing in case I begin to sound like a Government three-phrase slogan factory).

On my morning perambulations, I hit on a solution. For the last half mile, I pretended that I was in France. The south of France, because it was sunny and quiet and everything was bleached out and dry. Over there beyond those houses, perhaps, could be the sea: and further inland, there could be those tree-lined routes to exciting villages with shaded squares and elders playing boules at lunchtime.

It worked!

Tomorrow, I'm going to North Carolina, and on Friday, I'll be in Berlin. And from those fantastic locations, I'm going to send you all hundreds of imaginary postcards.

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