Au Revoir (16 page)

When I was working as a young journalist in Sydney, drinking at lunchtime was the norm. We did our interviews in the morning, drank two or three schooners of beer with a sandwich or a pie in the pub at lunchtime, then went back to the office and wrote up our articles for our daily or weekly deadlines. Looking back, I have no idea how we functioned at all, with our bellies full of beer and our brains thick with its numbing effects. Yet it was an accepted part of the journalistic lifestyle, and I can appreciate how my parents were both so easily sucked into regarding alcohol as a vital lubricant in the creative process. When I started working as a freelance writer from home my children were little and those bad lunchtime habits were quickly abandoned—although I did frequently continue to enjoy a cold beer at the end of the day, as a reward and as a way of winding down during that frantic time of evening when children are at their most fractious and the dinner needs to be cooked. For years, when we were strapped for cash, I made my own home-brewed beer, which was quite a lethal drop. One bottle was more than enough to get me through the evening.

Here in France I feel there's something a little bit wicked and self-indulgent about drinking wine with lunch, but because I am in the mood to let my hair down I am loving every minute of it. Deep in my heart I suspect that I could very easily go the same way as my mother, but somehow I seem to manage a greater level of self control. Mum always said that she drank to block out the sadness and trouble in her life, but I realise now that this rationale was just a convenient excuse for not facing the real issues. Alcoholism generally starts quite innocently as a daily
ritual then develops into a bad habit, then an addiction that escalates to major social, physical and mental health problems. I am acutely aware of this, having lived with it virtually every day of my life. I am determined it will never happen to me. I enjoy drinking and I intend to continue enjoying it for as long as I can, but I don't intend to allow it to rule my life.

I hope I'm not kidding myself.

A
S A JOURNALIST, FROM A
large journalist family, the daily business of keeping on top of the news and maintaining constant communication with people around me has always been a vital part of my existence. Back home, never a day passes that I don't read the newspaper from front to back, watch at least three or four television editions of the news and listen to several more news broadcasts on the radio. I talk to the members of my immediate family every day—often more than once—and we get together for meals or outings at least two or three times a week. I am also a keen reader, preferring to cuddle up in bed with the latest book on the top ten bestseller list than to watch a television drama or serial.

Travelling always poses problems in the area of communication, and to survive as an obsessive news junkie it's a matter of linking into whatever communication resources you can find, be they international news such as CNN or Sky News on a hotel television, or international editions of newspapers.

Travelling to India always means forgetting about news for a
week or two. Once we leave Delhi and the comfort of a large hotel, there is no further possibility of getting information about the rest of the world, especially after the trek actually begins. There is something rather interesting about being so far removed from all the troubles of the world, it's as though you are living in a state of suspended animation. Everything just stops for a while and nothing that's happening in the outside world seems to matter. And what you don't know doesn't hurt you. You can't be worried about plane crashes and cyclones and terrorism when you are walking along one of the most ancient goat tracks in the world, surrounded by glorious snow-capped mountain peaks.

Lying at night in my tent, when we have reached the highest point of the trek and are at least five long days walk from the nearest electric cable or telephone, I am always struck by an exhilarating sense of isolation and separation. I would hate to live like this on a permanent basis, but being elevated beyond the chaos of daily news for a few days is really quite invigorating. When I get back to Mussoorie after the long walk I always manage to track down an English-language newspaper with as much determination as I track down my first cold beer. I gradually get back into the ways of the world, and by Delhi I am up-to-date with international events. Australia is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the news unless it's in relation to sport, as it was during the Olympics, or when there's a cricket test match which is, of course, the national Indian obsession. Otherwise Australia is an invisible place. David and my daughter Miriam tell me snippets of local goings on when I call reverse charges from an Indian phone box, but that's about it.

Once I get to France I am confident I will be better informed,
and certainly Jock is well set up in the area of information technology. He has a newish computer with email, and a separate phone line, a radio with the BBC World Service and a television that gets both American and English international news channels. However I don't like to monopolise his equipment so for the first three or four weeks, before I move to Villefranche, I only have telephone conversations with home twice and I only catch brief snippets of the news, generally in the mornings before we start our busy day of socialising. Jock buys the
Sunday Times
every Monday morning, a good read except that half the magazine inserts have been left out for the long trip to France. And it's always a day late—in fact all the English papers arrive a day or so late and from a journalist's point of view, old news is stale news. But I am so desperate for the feel of newsprint between my fingers, that I will buy any English language newspaper and read every article, except the business and sport. The English newspapers are also very expensive here, costing up to 25 ff (more than $6) for a paper that would cost 45p ($1.80) in its own country. The number of English holidaymakers during the summer means most of the papers are represented—the
Times
, the
Guardian
, the
International Herald Tribune
, the
Telegraph
and the
Independent
. I have a go at all of them, but end up opting for the
Times
, despite its conservative political leanings, because the arts and news magazine supplements have more interesting articles.

When I finally move to Villefranche I find myself completely cut off from the outside world, without television or international radio or phone. I have an aversion to mobile phones and have never succumbed to having one at home, in spite of the fact that there is a lot of pressure to carry one in my line of work. I rather enjoy being the odd one out, especially when other
people's phones ring at inopportune moments. It makes me feel quite smug. So despite various friends suggesting that I simply buy a mobile to use while in France, I resist the temptation. I realise it would be easy and convenient, but the idea of being able to be contacted wherever I might be, whatever I might be doing, certainly does not appeal. I am enjoying the escape from being ‘on call' too much to allow a mobile phone to come between me and independence.

I have exhausted Jock's supply of novels and for the first time I feel adrift in the world. It's a strange and rather unsettling feeling. I am anxious to keep in touch with home as my daughter-in-law Lorna's pregnancy progresses and as David is now filming in Queensland. There is no phone line into the little apartment, so even if I felt inclined to have a connection put in it would be very costly. Without a phone connection, of course, I can't get hooked up to the Internet and therefore I can't communicate via email. In any event, the five-year-old laptop which I carted from Australia with a view to writing letters and sending messages home is now obsolete, unable to cope with the software provided by the Internet service providers in France. The problem is that the laptop only takes floppy discs while the software needed to set up an email link is installed with CD roms, so I am unable to get it working even on someone else's phone line. Every day I drive over to Jock's at St Caprais and check my email messages on his computer, then quickly take in some international news on the television. Before leaving Australia I thought I had finished with the manuscript of my huge gardening book, but now the publishers are wanting me to add some lines of text to several entries. Jock's computer can't read the attachments they are sending me, so I have to ask them to send it by snail mail. It is all
very frustrating.

With no new books to read I have become totally dependent on my English-language newspapers. Normally I can read a newspaper in half an hour or so, but now I am making them last for hours, poring over every word right down to the television programs that I won't be watching. Jock's old radio gets only fuzzy reception of France Music if I balance it on the windowsill with the aerial poking into the street. It is a marvellous radio station, playing fantastic concerts and music ranging from classics to opera and jazz. But it is also the most intensely irritating station because the announcers love the sound of their own voices and there is more talking about music than actually playing it. I try and concentrate on what they're saying, to help improve my French, but at the end of the day I am hungry for music, for familiar sounds of arias and symphonies and concertos. Even more infuriatingly, they have a tendency to actually stop a piece of music, often mid-climax, and start discussing it in depth. Some of the announcers even sing along with the music or the lyrics, warbling just slightly off mike, producing an effect that has me almost screaming in frustration. Several times I desperately want to throw the radio out on to the street, such is my fury. But it's Jock's radio, and without it I will be living in a world of silence.

Eventually I manage to scrounge some novels from the libraries of various friends, nothing up-to-date but some familiar authors and some I've even read before. But I don't care, I just need words to massage my lonely moments. I take care to write a list of who has lent me what book, knowing that otherwise I will be tearing my hair out when the time comes to send everything back to its rightful owner.

During this period I also stumble across an infuriating English-language newspaper designed for non-French residents. Called the
News
, the line under the masthead says, ‘For lovers of France', but the contents totally contradict this point of view. It's little more than a whinge sheet, with articles emphasising all the negative aspects of living in France, from an English perspective. There are columns and features on how to beat the system, to play the French at their own game, make the most of pensions and retirement funds coming into the country from offshore, and overcome all sorts of bureaucratic problems that must drive the English potty. There are several pompous columns from middle-aged men who, from the photos accompanying their byline, obviously love one thing in particular about France: their bright faces and rheumy eyes indicate they like to imbibe, in true journalistic fashion. The newspaper is a waste of time and I totally avoid it after thumbing through one or two editions.

By now my inability to understand or speak French very well is becoming frustrating. People said before I left, ‘You'll pick it up in no time,' but that simply isn't how things have panned out. Mixing with so many English-speaking people has meant that I don't really get much practice listening to or speaking French, except when I am shopping or strolling around Villefranche. I can get by quite adequately at the presse (newsagency); station service (garage); bureau de poste (post office); supermarché (supermarket) and certainly I have no problems communicating clearly in restaurants and cafés. I can talk weather and in very simple terms about general events—the hunting season or the
mushroom season or the walnut season. However, anything more complex and I'm totally stumped. I have done all the right things—listened to French radio stations, especially the news; read the front page of French newspapers; translated posters and flyers sent out to publicise community events, and listened and listened and listened to conversations. My vocabulary has certainly expanded dramatically, and if I were to sit down and make a list of words that I now comprehend and can pronounce, it would run into the hundreds. But stringing them together is another matter altogether. I really need some formal French lessons, but language classes simply don't exist in this area. I find that I can understand the very basics of French conversation when spoken by an English person, because they tend to speak slowly and their accent is probably more attuned to my own ear. However when a French person responds in the course of the conversation, I am completely out of my depth.