It’s like driving a car at night
You never see further than your headlights,
but you can make the whole trip that way
E. L. Doctorow
Here winter crash landed, and it has been cold and wet and very very windy. We had at least three cold fronts land one after the other, weather warnings galore, orange and yellow for rain and wind and being urged to stay home if we could at all. So it has been a time of sitting with a blanket and a hottie, very conducive to thinking way way back.
Something reminded me of a time when my husband and I were driving in France. Oh yes, I had watched an old Rick Stein series, I do find tv series about cooking very soothing. So, this episode was set in the Auvergne region and I remembered how beautiful and dramatic the scenery was. Recalled how we were driving through the region and at some point that day we were hungry, we were in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere and saw a small bar, so we stopped. I went in to ask if we might have food, the proprietor seemed quite offended, I realised later it was outside the accepted hours for mealtimes, I just stood there, not knowing what I had done wrong or what I should do now… he suddenly turned on his heel, gestured to me to follow him into the back. I went and he grabbed a loaf of bread, some cheese. This is Cantal he said. Look, I had about five words of French back then, but he made himself understood. This was Cantal cheese, this was the Cantal region, the Cantal Massif. He made two big cheese sandwiches, talking all the time. I was so grateful.
Now earlier in that same holiday, we were driving in Italy. I had somewhere I was aiming for, but we were getting lost a lot. This was way before google maps. I kept misreading the road signs, I had a much better grasp of Italian than I did of French but even so. And it got dark. And my husband had run out of patience and energy. “I am taking the next turn off” he said, “and we will stay in the very first place that offers accommodation”. Ok so it turned out to be a bar, very unprepossessing, not what I had in mind at all. We slept, went down for a coffee breakfast and as we paid the manager asked if we were leaving. We said yes, he said: Don’t! He made us understand that there was an old town just down the road. You have to imagine it, because all this was with gesture, and lots of Italian and three words of English. But we listened. It wasn’t my plan but we listened and so we wound up staying for just on a week in Spello.
It was an absolute delight. A small little walled town, up on a hill. We found accommodation in the Albergo del Teatro. Back then it was quiet, wooden floors and old furniture. In the mornings we would open the shutters, olive groves below. When the concierge heard us on the stairs she would call out: Colazione! And we would go down to a little nook and she would bring a steaming jug of foamy coffee, there were fruit tarts and cake. My husband thought that finally he had found the perfect breakfast! In the evenings we would sit on the terrazza with coffee and listen to the bells ringing across the valleys.
Some years after that I went to San Remo to visit my son. I stayed in a little apartment and most days I would go to a small supermarket. It had its moments anyway; I did not understand I had to take a little ticket thing from a small machine to gain a place in the queue for buying my mortadella…so after glances and whispering someone took me in hand and made it plain. But one day I was in there getting a banana and an elderly man came in, talked very fast and very loudly, went round the shop and hugged all of us! I found someone to tell me what was going on and turns out he was leaving Sanremo and this had been his go to store, he was saying goodbye. I found it moving in itself, but it is always strange and lovely when out of the blue you are drawn into the community you are just passing through.
Travelling, like life, is weird and wonderful and full of surprises. And always, always better if you take it as it comes.
When you want what life wants (….)
you are always in the right place at the right time.
Guy Finley