Summer breeze.......

Makes me feel fine.........

Top tip: go have fun in the sun but remember to wear your hat...........

Enough already......

Honestly, I've had enough of this.....

and I want some of this.....

Young at heart is away.......

Top tip:live in a warm climate.

Thank you and…….

When I lived in America the one holiday ..... the name given to any day of mass celebration...... I really embraced was Thanks Giving. It’s brilliant. Absolutely everybody goes to see family and if you’re a foreigner abroad they insist you join in …. all are welcome. Everything shuts down from Thursday through Sunday, tumbleweed blows through the empty streets. Even in Manhattan. They eat turkey and cranberry which sometimes comes in a can …… a can shaped lump of cranberry jelly sliced…… and stuffing and sweet potatoes. Sometimes they put sweet marshmallows in the sweet potatoes using recipes that their great grandmother’s used and it’s really sweet. And pies. Americans are mad for pies. They call pastry crust. Where as we might call a crust base with loads of apples or plums or pecans on top, a tart, they call it a pie. Where as we might call a tart with a pastry lid, a pie, they call it a double crust. They make pumpkin pies for Thanks Giving. They also make apple pie and cherry pie and cream-cheese pie and blueberry pie and…. I could go on. All the pies are good… just like mom used to make……and come with cream or ice-cream. Americans love their ice-cream too. When I was a teenager I briefly went out with a boy who lived with his parents in London. I went to visit him and he gave me walnut and maple syrup ice-cream, American ice-cream, kept in the freezer in a large silver tin, bought from a special shop that sold things like walnut and maple syrup ice-cream. This was food of the gods. And Americans. I had never tasted walnut and maple syrup ice-cream. Such things only existed in the movies along with blue-cheese dressing, sushi and Mexican food. The most exciting ice-cream event in my house was the arrival of the Arctic Roll, knocking the slab of Neapolitan off its exotic perch.

Back in Blighty I don’t usually celebrate Thanks Giving but this year, having been in touch with my Manhattan mates to make sure they’re all safe and sound, I got a taste for turkey. So, after much searching I found a small, ready-to-roast piece in M&S and we had our own little celebration. I did a kind of Ottolenghi version with red rice, puy lentils and butternut squash, crispy onions, chili and cranberry stuffing. I didn't make a pie, I made Nigella's Bakewell Tart which turned out remakably well  ……. and I gave thanks.

Top tip: respect flood water…..stay in!!

Some time to celebrate........

The birthday flowers are all dead, cake crumbed and gone, cards toppled and slid between books. Another year older but this time the wasp of age has lost its sting. It really doesn't matter. Instead I think more about what must be done than worry over what is undone. A job that lasted longer than it should has abruptly stopped. I shall not miss it but it kept me in good account and I shall miss that. The son that once I wondered may never manage to work the world is getting ready to go...... better late than never ...... and so all change. And still I feel OK. The Aegean sands of positivity may be slipping through my fingers but I have little time to mourn, there are doors opening all about me, some wide...... some just ajar. And people to see. And places to go. And there's always more cake......

Top tip: maintain that just-back-from-the-beach tan forever with Dove Summer Glow body moisturiser.....

Stepping over figs.......

I have news to report….out there is a place where the sun shines all day, the nights are balmy and the sea is warm. A land of yogurt and honey and squid and cheese pies and sweet coffee and cold beers. And when you squeeze the fat half of a cut lemon the juice gushes like water from a tap.

This land is Greece and honestly I think we should all go. Now. I’ve been on holiday and where better to go to escape the rigours of Olympic London than the home of the games. I haven’t been there for 30 years for no other reason than I’ve been elsewhere but it’s as lovely now as it was then.

White washed walls, peeling blue paint, pink Bougainvillea, red Geraniums, fat figs squashed under-foot and a one-eyed cat on every corner. And the wine is still as grim. No matter a cold Fix, the beer of choice, is all you need.

I took in the sights and delights of Athens first and then went to Skyros, the most southern of the Sporades Islands and a long way away ensuring a lower foreign tourist hit. It is very popular with the Greek holiday maker. I also heard a few French and the odd German but only one other UK family whilst lounging on my sun lounger.

The island is basically a hill, you’re either going up or down which allows you to eat ice-cream and re-claim your inner thigh. Rupert Brookes, the war poet, is buried there in a corner that will be forever England. We went and found the grave, alone in an olive grove high on a red soiled hill strewn with muddied chunks of marble, wild thyme and goats. It is easily missed and we drove past the first time before my friend spotted it.

“Are you sure it’s his?” I enquired.

“Who else’s would it be?” she replied.

Good point.

We stood as the sun was setting, beneath the weeping olive trees where Rupert’s friends had stood and remembered those that died in war and our own dead. Although like all good poets it was a mosie bite that did for Rupert. Then we left the hill as darkness fell, unchanged since it over-saw the ships sailing to Troy, and went to a bar in the port of Linaria, where you can drink cocktails and float on lilos. Greece ancient and modern and marvellous.

 Top tip:dinner at Tate Modern: two courses £20 or 3 courses £25......and a fabulous view of London Town all lit up.

When will it stop......

Quite frankly I've had enough. Prince Philip is not the only one to get taken down during the Jubilee celebrations by the howling gales. I went to Dorset for the long weekend, to take the sea air, celebrate my Goddaughter's 7th birthday and eat red, white and blue cake. Having enjoyed rude health for the whole winter, before, after and during Christmas..... for which I am traditionally cold-stuffed-and-coughing........ I now have a monumental cold that has resulted in bed rest.....in June. And so I am going to get away from it all for a short foreign break....... where at least the rain has an accent.

I leave you with a picture of what summer can look like.........

Top tip: Ginger Beer is much better than Barley Water or Lucozade as a sick-bed tipple.

Viva la difference........

The Autumn light in late September glows in south west France, picking out the orange, pink, red and plumb of flowers still in bloom. Fat figs hang heavy, striped and fit to burst. Amber coloured, quince-jellied drips blob the kitchen table, coffee-marked mugs and the French crumbs of broken bread finish breakfast. Outside, the hum and buzz of insects are warming to the late morning heat.

I read a book. I make more coffee. I read a magazine. I drink more coffee.

Red, white and chequered with quails eggs, cheeses ripe and firm, tomatoes rich and deep, bread from which a whole meal can be made, potted shrimps: pink-brown and buttery; lunch on the terrace is shaded by plump, black grapes that hang low over the view of fields freshly harvested. The silence broken only by the squawking of force-fed geese and rutting-bulls or the the whine of le facteur's moped, buzzing through the twisted lanes to deliver a fine new pair of Crocs with a fancy-Nubuck-finish, going-out Crocs.

Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose..........

Top tip: keep your mind agile and alert..... learn a new language.

Hamster jam......

I went to Amsterdam for a few days with friends, I haven't been to the Dam for about 25 years. During my misspent youth I spent a fair bit of time there, almost got myself in a bit of a pickle but the fates were kind, I was saved. Others were not so lucky. Anyway, we had a brilliant time strolling down memory canal, and we went to see Patti Smith play a blinding, acoustic gig in an old church. And I wrote a poem as an homage.....what might have happened later that night....

Patti in Amsterdam

I went to bed
We went to bed
But I went out.
I walked the streets of Amsterdam
I prowled the streets of my memories
Memories
Of Damrak
Of The Dutchman
Of bars and dope
Of bars and dope and people
That I could not remember.
I went to The American
I met an American
She said,"Hi"
I said," Hi".
Patti sat on a sofa.
So far
So good.
I said,"Hi, I saw your show."
She said, "So?"
I said, "You were very good."
"Good enough?"
Enough? Enough?
Enough of this bullshit.....I wanted to say
Enough of this
You were great Patti
I love you Patti
Like the guy said
We love you Patti.
A siren wined outside in the night
"You want a coffee?" Patti said.
We talked
Of Verlaine
And New York
And Van Gough
And people
And things
And all the time I'm thinking
Patti Patti Patti
And we're talking
And we're laughing
And we're talking
About stuff.
And we're talking about
R...I...M...B
Oh oh oh aud....
Rimbaud
Oh oh oh aud....
Rimbaud
And then Patti says
"I gotta go....."

Top tip: pop up holidays...... get out of town, little and often.

Don’t cry for me......

On extremely Good Friday I fly first to Madrid and then, 14 hours later, arrive in Buenos Aires. Over the next two weeks I will make four more internal flights, not so much a carbon footprint as a carbon Ugg boot. Hell, I don’t have a car or a dishwasher.....I must have some Brownie points? I so need a holiday and now I’m going to get one with my mad, bad but amusing to know travelling companion. We have puffy jackets and bikinis, woolly hats and sunglasses, the Rough Guide and Tamazepam.......Happy Easter, see you in a couple of weeks. Has anyone told Argentina?

“Where are you?” he said as she heard the clack of his Cuban heel behind her.

She turned and saw him approach, his phone pressed to his ear, eyes scanning the commuters scurrying about Kings Cross station. Would it be wrong, she wondered, to just leave now? If she stepped back into WH Smith he’d never know, she could move fast in her Converse, she could double back and nip out the front and be on the No.30 before he’d even realised she’d hung up.

“Hi,” she said, pocketing her mobile and smiling the thin smile of disappointment. His joy was palpable.

“You have been waiting?”

“No.”

“For long?”

“No.”

“We go.....”

“Yes...”

“No?”

“Yes, fine....”

“I know a Spanish bar, you know...”

“No. Yes.”

“You have been...?”

“A long time ago.”

He may have been 6’1” but he was definitely not 41. Why use a picture of yourself that has got to be at least ten years out of date, she wondered? His Carhartt jeans, faded and tight to his narrow hips, were ironed; his white t-shirt fitted and high-necked, the dark-denim jacket stretched across his broad shoulders and round his neck a large, beaten-silver cross hung on a leather thong. He moved ahead of her, leading the way, and there it was: yes he did have a full-head of thick, short hair but at the back, the tiniest of pert pony-tales...........Already, she was out of conversation.

Top tip: a bit of spontaneity can do wonders for blowing away the cobwebs.

Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin'...........

There are few greater pleasures in life than sitting upstairs, at the front of the bus on a beautiful sun-beaming-down-bright-blue-day; St. Pancras illuminated in a golden Gothic glow, budding trees skimming past, blossom blowing a blur in the breeze.....well perhaps a few.....but not so many when your head, too, is filled with thoughts of holiday, as mine is.

A couple of weeks ago I began to complain bitterly that I would never again go on holiday because I didn’t have a boyfriend. And I didn’t want to go away on my own to walk up a mountain, or learn salsa, or do yoga, or go kayaking with other enthusiastically single-Billy—no-mates, or billet myself with good-friends-who-live-abroad and have to sing for my free-supper by bouncing their children on my knee while balancing my glass of rose on the corner of the table-full-of-couples.......and that boyfriends really only are for Christmas and holidays and that what I wanted to do was go to Argentina because I’d always wanted to go to South America and soon I’d be too old to travel anywhere and I’d never see Patagonia and I’d always wanted to go to Patagonia because it’s one of my favourite words and Buenos Aires always sounded so romantic and......then someone I was working with randomly mentioned she was going to Argentina for a week over Easter to visit a friend....

“How wonderful”, I said, “I wish I was going to Argentina.”

“Why don’t you come,” she said, “I’ll change my flight, stay for two weeks, we can go to Patagonia.”

“Because..... how much is it?”

“Here’s the number, call them and just book it, it’ll be great....”

So I did.

My travelling companion, an energetic 35 year old, built like Barbie but eats like a horse, with a possible thyroid-condition, is the bi-polar opposite of me in pretty much everyway: petite, blond and not so much glass-half-full as cup-runneth-over, everything is extended: hair, eye-lashes and heels......she was once engaged to a Tottenham Hotspur’s player and so is a qualified, if non-practising, WAG. But she has too, backpacked across India and knows her way around any bargain-basement-budget- flight website. She parties hard but is always first in work and has informed me, in her fluent Yorkshire, that she has scored a rake of Temazepam for the flight.... In short, a perfect travelling companion.

And so we’re off to tango; the snap of Gaucho in the air, the tang of pampas on the tongue. We fly to BA...as I believe it is known...on Good Friday, renamed Spectacular Friday for the purposes of the trip. When, many years ago, I went to Mexico I married my ex-husband, after a similar rant: ‘we shall find our husbands, I want to marry a writer, an American....’ And I did. However, I married the wrong American. There are loads of them, it was an easy mistake. This time, I’d like to marry the right American. I shall eat steak...the travelling companion’s and mine, she’s also a vegetarian....and drink Malbec and Mate and watch the world tango by......and see what happens.....

Top tip: be careful what you wish.......but if you do want it then think it, say it and don’t give up on it.