A wise man once advised me to never leave the house without a book and apple and how right he was. We had been looking forward to the Dorset wedding of two dear friends for weeks, nay, months and on Friday afternoon I loaded up the car with glad-rags, left enough food for the weekend out for the cat, put out the bins and sped off towards the Normandy coast where we were due to take an overnight ferry to Portsmouth.It is just as well that I remembered the book and the apple as our car broke down on a motorway on the outskirts of Paris and we were, to be honest, totally buggered. This was a car that was probably not a wise investment in the first place. It was 14 years old and had 250,000 km on the clock when we bought it. When I described it to my Nan, she asked “who gave it to you darling?” and our best friends commonly referred it to as “the shit box”. I tried to mitigate its obvious awfulness by giving it a name. In tribute to its Frenchness and age I called it “Edith”.
So on Friday night, I was jolly pleased that I had packed A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book. I sat on the smelly, stuffy, hard shoulder of the A86, surrounded by nettles, n
ibbling my apple, and read. The book is proving to be a most interesting companion, of which, more later.This has been one of the few moments in France when I have felt the pangs of an exile. Another was when I learned of Paul Willett’s Noho Noir evening in Fitzrovia, which is to take place on 1 July. I wrote about Paul’s excellent Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia here and thoroughly recommend him as a guide to the dark passages and hidden histories of one of London’s most fascinating areas. There will be readings, there will be discussion so if you are in or about London on Thursday and might like to attend you can read more details here. All interested parties should book online and see where Fitzrovian history leads them!
