under another sun

The ghastly ducks quacking on Lorraine's phone this morning, and I slumped down to make us tea before our epic journey back to Blighty. A last pack and clear out, and then to the car. Dropped our recycling off, then Lorraine drove us to Nîmes under a leaden sky. Made excellent time, and despite being a bit stressed by having to buy petrol (first find a petrol station, which was tricky) and ridiculous things like having to queue for ages for the men's loos at the station, and finding it hard to get onto the platform, we made our train in time, and headed off to Paris. France for the most part swathed in low cloud, skimming the hills and blocking the views. The train did not serve coffee today, so we had a breakfast of coke and small pieces of cake. Made Paris Gare de Lyon on time, and then caught the metro up to Gare du Nord. Eventually we found the left luggage place, dropped our cases off there fore a few hours and sauntered out into Paris.  Ended up on the Rue du Faub...

Nervously getting ready this morning, breaking off to chat to Betty. Hopped on a bus and into town, then a train up to St Pancras. Arrived early and hung about in St Pancras for a while looking at the sculpture of John Betjeman, and phoned Mum and Mas. Then onto the Eurostar, the closest thing to a Shinkansen in the UK, zoomed across Kent and even remained calm under the channel trying not to picture myself at an average depth of 48 metres below the seabed, with all the English Channel overhead. Distracted by seeing a Toby-lookalike and also an actor who was in the Spiral TV series we saw on TV (although it took me several minutes to work out who he was). Strangely once the train surfaced in France I felt as if I'd crossed a weird Rubicon. My apprehension was replaced by pleasure looking out at the flat greyish landscape of northern France punctuated by churches poking up from little villages. I glanced at the man sitting across the isle from me and he was reading Proust's Sw...