News from Ted
I’m off to London tomorrow, to spend three days at the motorcycle show at ExCel. I’ve never been to one before, surprisingly, so I can’t tell you much about it, but I’m the guest of Nathan Millward who rode a postman’s bike from Australia to England a while back and is one of my favourite people in spite of himself.
I’m pretty much guaranteed to have a good time. I only have to talk for half an hour each day, and that’s answering questions, so I reckon I’ll hold out all right. I’ve got books to sell and this time, just as an experiment, some big posters that people seem to like putting up on their walls. This is one of them.
As Brexit looms over me like a dreadful curse, every visit to England seems more and more like the end of a golden era. Everyone’s fed up with it, but I can’t help thinking about it.
A few days ago I was asked to do a TEDx talk at Warwick and I chickened out – sort of – partly because it sounded like a lot of work, but mainly because I’ve never been any good at doing scripted speeches and I’m getting too old to fail.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering what I might have said. The theme was “Architects of Tomorrow”, and since I am not an architect (although I love designing and building my own stuff) I assume the larger meaning of those who might be designing a future world. Well, I wonder if it’s not a bit ridiculous asking an 87-year-old to divine the needs of a future generation. True, Buckminster Fuller was still at it when he was my age, although the resemblance ends there.
My first reaction to the title was that it was rather hubristic. If there is one thing we should have learned by now it is that you can’t create an environment for the next lot to occupy and expect them to appreciate it. Look at the record. Look at what happened to those brilliant, colourful tower blocks we put up in the fifties. Look at Chandighar, Le Corbusier’s famous celebration of concrete in India, which the inhabitants have done their absolute best to disguise as a tent city by covering it with fabrics, posters, and graffiti.
I am not saying that these endeavours were without merit. They certainly served a purpose, for a while at least, but they do show how impossible it is to anticipate what large numbers of people in the future will find amenable or inspiring.
However, assuming that the theme of these talks is meant more generally than in terms of bricks and mortar, the thought that we could today imagine and create a better future for the next generation seems quite foolish. We have only to observe, right now, in Europe and America, the extraordinary mess we are making for our own younger generation. The sad truth seems to be that the calibre of the people we have elected to prepare for the future is simply inadequate.
In our own case, in Britain, the imbalance between north and south (to put it at it’s crudest) has been obvious throughout my lifetime, and yet our politicians have never seriously tackled this dangerous instability until finally one of them, in an act of consummate folly, put a match to the powder keg. Much the same blind arrogance characterises affairs in the USA, and there are echoes of it everywhere, prompted by the very difficulties that require us to pull together rather than fly apart.
If we are to put our energy and creative talents into anything, it must be into improving ourselves. We need to be led and instructed by better people, better politicians, and of course by that I don’t mean people with better qualifications or more expensive educations. I mean people with a grasp of the diversity and complexity of the world we live in, who recognise the impossibility of separating ourselves off from its problems and the fact that we are all in it together.
The combination of population growth, drastic inequalities and the information revolution is already having lethal consequences, and in combination with climate change will quite possibly lead to our extinction unless somehow we fashion better people to show us how to resolve these tensions.
The British have always been great travellers and on all my big rides I’d say I encountered more Brits than people of other European nationalities. How can that be compatible with the sense of a creeping xenophobia we see in Britain today? I don’t think we’re generally afraid of foreigners, or find them distasteful. From what I’ve heard it might have more to do with large numbers of unskilled workers behaving badly because they are trafficked and exploited by criminal gangs. In which case policing the gangs might be better than closing our borders, but that is a quite uneducated opinion. What I want to see is a body of elected politicians and government officials with the will, the determination and the humility to sort these things out. Those are not the people I hear pontificating about Brexit.
All my emphasis in the second half of my life has been on the virtue of exploratory travel, as a means to finding some perspective on life and an appreciation of the beauty of the planet we inhabit.
It drastically tempers the desire to acquire stuff or to impose oneself on others. It greatly diminishes fear and anxiety, and powerfully reinforces the belief that people, for the most part, share common values and desires, and that it is generally safe and usually a pleasure to be amongst them.
If such an idea were not utterly absurd, I would wish everyone could travel as I did and discover in themselves their own natural compatibility with humanity. I have yet to meet travellers who do not report on the warmth and generosity they are offered by people everywhere, and always inversely proportional to their wealth.
Perhaps we should send our budding teachers and politicians out into the world with the modern equivalent of a begging bowl before we entrust them with our future and the future of our children.
They wouldn’t be so concerned with acquiring wealth, shoring up their self-importance and intriguing in the pursuit of power.
The architects of tomorrow need to do most of their work on themselves, to head off the catastrophes looming over us and ensure that there actually will be a tomorrow.
Considering how much I have always loved Christmas it amazes me how little I can remember of the eighty or more I must have enjoyed, the plethora of presents that have been showered on me, and the sumptuous feasts I have gorged on. Christmas for me is a license to indulge in all my worst characteristics, laziness, gluttony and greed. And therein, perhaps, lies the answer. After three days of unremitting consumption how could I be expected to keep track of all the handkerchiefs, socks, scarves, ties, Ronson lighters, cuff links and cigarette cases, that were shared out between us.
The first Christmas present I can actually remember getting was a banana, a rare and precious object in war-time Britain, when I was 12 years old. The next Christmas that left a trace was in Germany, probably in 1948, when my aunts and my grandmother lived in a hut outside Hamburg, having been bombed out of the city. My aunts were given to loud and joyful singing and there were many cakes and biscuits baked with honey.
The next one to leave an impression was my first Christmas in the RAF. There were no presents, but by tradition the Ossifers – sorry, Officers served us lowly AC Plonks with our roast beef, Yorkshire pud and two veg. After that there is a great chasm of forgetfulness until I set off on my bike in 1973. Heaven only knows how many people I am wounding with these careless words, how much careful thought was lavished on objects that I have dismissed from my memory. I no doubt deserve what’s coming to me, which is puzzling because so far what’s been coming has been pretty nice. But there was one awkward Christmas on my trip around the world, that I can remember pretty well.
In late December of 1974 the high road across the parched foot hills of the Argentine sierras was hotter than anything I could remember, hotter even than Sudan. The views were spectacular. Foxes and armadillos crossed my path. There were also police checkpoints everywhere , playing their part in the army’s dirty war against left-wing dissidents. My papers confused them but they gave me no trouble. Then I came down to the main road to Tucuman where the sky turned grey and it started to rain.
The road into town was slippery with mud from tractors hauling sugar cane to the refineries, and the drivers looked tired and drunk, and filthy from the mud sprayed by car tyres, which soon covered me too. A tourist office in the central plaza found me a cheap hotel. I parked the bike outside and wandered around in the night looking for somewhere to eat. An immense open hall beckoned – lurid lighting shone down on billiard tables ranged down the middle, men playing dominoes down the right and a short order bar on the left dishing out steaks. A clamour of voices and the slap of dominoes on plastic table-tops echoed down from the ceiling. To me it sounded mechanical and joyless, a reflection of my own spirits which had been deflated since leaving Santiago and Malú four days earlier. The parting was as traumatic as it was inevitable. She retreated into her upper-class refuge and pulled up the drawbridge, and that was that. After being in the thick of love and politics, I was adrift.
When I got back to the hotel in Tucuman they told me a car had knocked my bike over, and they had picked it up for me. The boxes were slightly disarranged – nothing serious, but it seemed to fit into a pattern – and I took the bike into the hotel lobby overnight. I was generally nervous about the bike. I was riding with a new cylinder block and pistons, installed in Santiago, and I was afraid I might have pushed them too hard climbing into the sierras.
Christmas was just two days off and I had promised myself some relief from my worries. A few months back in Villaguay an autocratic elderly lady of the Anglo-Argentine tribe had promised me respite with her daughter Judy who was married to a colonel in the Ejercito del Norte – the Army of the North. They were stationed in Salta, just a day’s ride further north on my way to Bolivia. I had only to present myself at the barracks, she said, to be warmly welcomed and plied with the good things of life. Surely I could look forward to a few days of pleasant, undemanding distraction.
In the morning as I rode north the rain gave way to sun and stifling heat. I got to Salta in early afternoon and found the barracks quite easily. Everyone in Salta, it seemed, was very aware of the army. However, as I inquired at the gates of the garrison about the colonel’s wife I saw faces assume that peculiar stiffness people put on to hide embarrassment, because it turned out that the colonel was now Judy’s ex-husband.
Probably I should have sensed that the signs were not auspicious, but I was too invested in my dream of a Merry Christmas to turn tail and run. Calls were made and Judy eventually appeared. She was a tall, handsome woman with a friendly handshake but a distracted manner. It should have been obvious to me from the start that I did not fit easily into her plans but I couldn’t just let go.
“I’d better take you to my place,” she said, so I followed her car some way out into the country. The house was in a nice setting, but in a state of total disorder. I soon found out why.
“Tomorrow I have to move out to an apartment in town. We’ll have to find somewhere else for you. Will you be all right? I have to go back into town now.” And off she went.
I was beginning to get the message, but tomorrow could take care of itself. There was work I wanted to do on the bike so I took it into the garden and unpacked all my stuff.
We did our best that night to make friends. The maid cooked some good food, and I had rather too much Old Smuggler whisky which caused me to sleep late. I woke at eleven to find a note with a sketchy map telling me how to get to some people called Lloyd Davies for lunch by twelve.
There was no time to pack again. I rode the naked bike about half a mile along a dirt road when suddenly and implacably it stopped dead. At that moment Judy drove up wondering where I was. She did a good job hiding her irritation as I pushed the bike laboriously back to the house. Then in her car we went to lunch with an elderly couple of Welsh extraction, with a grown up son and daughter, Jeremy and Anne.
Eventually it was decided that I should stay with them that night. Jeremy drove me to Judy’s house where I started looking for the problem with the bike and after an inconclusive hour or two Judy drove up again to take me back to the Welsh house and in the car asked me what I thought of Anne because, she said, she and Anne were rival lovers of the same important newspaper proprietor in Salta.
When we got to the Welsh house it turned out that the Christmas Eve dinner was at another house belonging to a crusty old man called Tansley, so Anne drove me there and, on the way, asked me what I thought of Judy. I began to wonder what role I was expected to play in this amorous tangle.
Tansley’s house was big and splendid, but everything was running down. His most fascinating possession was an enormous billiard table, built around one huge and immensely heavy sheet of Welsh slate which he said had crossed the Atlantic three times. One time too many, apparently, because the slate was “sagging” and no longer served. I took it as a symbol of the way the whole Anglo-Argentine community, which had been so prosperous, was losing its grip. Conversation was stilted and archaic, and the young man, Jeremy, seemed particularly rooted in the world of P.G.Wodehouse.
On Christmas morning the Lloyd Davies invited a small group of Anglican missionaries to offer a service. Beaming relentlessly and evangelical to the core, they arrived with a little portable harmonium and performed a clockwork service in which the word of God was driven home with a sledge hammer. It did me no good. I was now completely without will or direction – no transport, no connection with my things, I just fell into a torpor.
Christmas lunch came and went. Then dinner. I assumed that sooner or later someone would either invite me to stay or drive me away. The parents were slated to leave for Australia the next day and the mother began to make it obvious that she expected me to leave the house too. I don’t think she thought me a proper influence. The daughter, however, insisted on the side that I take no notice. My uneasiness continued. The following day also passed in total inaction as the family saw itself off at the airport. That evening Anne drove me to Judy’s house to collect my things. It was too late to tow the bike but next morning a servant took me to Judy’s house to fetch it.
We had a long tow rope, and I fed the free end loosely round the forks to the handle bar where I could easily let it go. Just before we got back a woman in a small red car, obviously befuddled, drove straight over the tow rope. I told Jeremy the story, thinking it was funny.
“Of course, what you should do when being towed,” he said. “is to pass the line round some suitable central part and out to the bars . . . . “
I finally located the electrical fault – burnt out connections, as was often the case – and with the bike running again my spirits revived. We did eventually find ways to enjoy ourselves. I found other interesting people in Salta, including a geologist with a gold mine ,but I never met the newspaper proprietor.
It was good of them all to put up with me. Christmas is what you make of it.
Thanks to all of you who commiserated with me on the shipwreck of my mother’s crockery. After all’s said and done there seems not much I can do about it, being so far away from the action, but I still hold a slender hope of some small relief. However, I’m getting over it. Christmas is coming.
Speaking of which, those who care for me have been chastising me for wasting the opportunities of the season. They say, and I’m forced to agree, that my books make scrumptious Christmas presents but my shop is in disarray. Now that I live in France all the postage prices are different and so far it has been beyond me to make the shop work. I’m just going to lay it all out here in simple language. Of course I will sign and dedicate the books – that after all would be the main reason for getting them from me.
So, here goes:
All the prices are in US dollars. If your currency is euros, divide the dollar price by 1.13. If your currency is pounds sterling, divide the dollar price by 1.3
Jupiter’s Travels costs $25
Riding High costs $20
Dreaming of Jupiter costs $25
Rolling through the Isles costs $20
Now for the shipping
If you live outside Europe (USA, Canada, Australia, etc):
The postage for one book is $30
The postage for two or three books is $40
The postage for all four books is $60
If you live in Europe but outside France:
The postage for one book is 15 euros
The postage for two or three books is 16.80 euros
The postage for all four books is 21.50 euros
The Camera book is a heavy picture book and costs $50. There aren’t many copies left and it is a beautiful book, though I say so myself (it wasn’t designed by me).
Outside Europe the postage is $40.
In Europe the postage is 16.8 euros
The CD, Jupiter Returns, which has the whole day-to-day record of my second journey round the world, is available for $15. Und die CD habe ich auch in Deutsch.
En plus, mon livre “Les Voyages de Jupiter” a été réédité en France, et si vous le voulez signé avec dédicace, ecrivez s.v.p.
Please email me with your orders and any questions you might have.
tsimon@mcn.org
The picture shows part of a table setting of china that got smashed on its way to Europe. The china was made by Spode, an old English company and the pattern is quite beautiful. It is also comparatively valuable, and was left to me by my mother. She never had much money but every now and then she would treat herself to something like this.
I was shipping it back to France in a large plywood crate, 4 X 4 X 3, which I built myself in Covelo, using screws everywhere. Everything in it was carefully packed in cartons with bubble wrap, and I drove the crate down to San Jose where the shippers, called LA-Dynamic, received it. That was in June.
The crate finally arrived at a car park near my house on October 3rd. The two drivers who brought it helped me unpack it. In fact, it was their job to do so. The crate had been taken off its pallet, and there was no way to get it off the truck without unpacking it first. Evidently it had been opened for inspection, because one side and the top had been taken off and nailed back on. I had put clear instructions to show which side of the crate should be removed first for inspection, but whoever did it ignored them.
When we took the top off the crate it was immediately obvious that something terrible had happened.The crate contained one very nice small piece of furniture, a glass cabinet, and the top of of the cabinet had been ripped off. The drivers took pictures and so did I. As we unloaded it, we could see that the back of the cabinet had also been ripped away, the legs were broken, and the whole thing was almost in pieces.
The cartons had been replaced in a disorderly fashion, and when I came to open them later at home, half the glass, china and pottery, was broken.
The shipper says the damage must have been done by the customs inspection which, they say, is not carried out by customs themselves, but by private sub-contractors. The contents were insured against total loss but the insurance company apparently refuses to consider it a total loss. After weeping crocodile tears the shipper evidently also refuses any responsibility, and all they have offered so far is an email address for US Customs and a promise to provide any documents I might need. Obviously what they hope is that I will just shut up and go away. What am I supposed to do with an email address?
So what I want to know is this: Is it actually possible that the shipper who took custody of my possessions and whom I paid to send them to France, can take no responsibility for what happens to them along the way? Is there a lawyer or a savvy businessman among you who can suggest a way for me to approach this? Isn’t there some basic principle which would over-ride any fine print I might have inadvertently signed?
I am in California for a few days but then I have to go to the OverlandExpo in Asheville and then to France. The total amount of damage is probably no more than three or four thousand dollars in market value, but the Spode is irreplaceable and of course it hurts to lose it.
Any ideas, anyone?
One of the people who once ate off my Spode and remarked how lovely he found it was a German professor of geography called Hans Bohle. We first met in India, in 1975, when I was riding my Triumph through Ootacamund.
He was a young scientist working with a volunteer organisation and trying, like so many young Germans, to wipe out the horrible recent history of his country. He said they were trying to show the Indians how to grow better vegetables and he was full of laughter at the contradictions that were always tripping them up. He said they had managed to increase the size of the cabbages they were growing by eight or nine times, but the whole crop of twenty pound cabbages were left to rot because the restaurant in Bombay that normally bought them refused to have anything to do with these giant brassicas.
Hans is dead now, but he visited me about ten years ago. He had the Chair of Geography at the University of Bonn, and of course climate played a vital part of his studies. He spent much of his time at conferences with other scientists around the globe. I asked him then how long it had been since his colleagues had known about climate change and he said for at least fifteen years it was broadly agreed that we were headed for the inferno if we didn’t do anything about it. So that’s twenty-five years ago from today.
There’s an election here in nine days time and it’s anybody’s guess which way it will go. Everybody knows how I feel about Trump and I am sure America will survive him, but only as long as the planet survives.
Thanks for listening.
These days every time I get on a bike it’s like a new lease of life. Always, before I hoist my leg over the saddle (and hoist is the right word) there is that small tremor of nervousness. Will it be OK? Will I still feel in command? And then the relief of finding that Yes, it feels good. I still belong here.
This time it happened in the streets of Bucharest, outside Mihai’s Pub. Who’s Mihai? It’s complicated. First there were Alex and his partner, Catalina, two incredibly nice young Romanians, who invited me and Elspeth Beard to a festival of adventure travel in the capital of Romania. I have been to Romania before when I was trying to find out where my grandfather once lived. That was a long story and you can read about it in The Gypsy in Me, but I never went to Bucharest. People said it’s not worth the trouble. There’s nothing left of the old city, they said. Ceausescu tore it all down. But here was an opportunity to see for myself, and when opportunity knocks I generally open the door. So here I am in Bucharest and it’s not true. There is still plenty of the old city left, and it’s easy to summon up the feeling of a city that was once compared with Paris, and was always at the crossroads of history, buffeted on all sides by Turks, Russians, Nazis, you name it.
Alex and Catalina – with fish on the Danube
We had a wonderful time at the festival. Alex and Catalina put a huge amount of time and energy into creating it. Elspeth gave them all a tremendous show, and I learned from her that it’s safer to ride as a woman than a man because, as she says, women can pretend to be men, but it’s hard for a man to pretend to be a woman. [I’M JOKING. RESTRAIN YOURSELVES].
So now I am in a big argument with Mihai who says old Bucharest has all gone. Mihai is a tall, very handsome, extremely likable man of Russian extraction who’s a friend of Alex and owns a pub. Actually Mihai is a press photographer and this used to be his office, but where there were once twenty newspapers in Bucharest there are now two, jobs were scarce and the man who owned the building wanted to sell it. So Mihai and his friend decided to buy it and turn it into a pub. I don’t know why. That’s how things happen. They were determined to make it as much like a London pub as possible, and Mihai was very anxious to get my opinion.
Mihai outside his pub. He rides a Ural with sidecar
“Do you have draft beer?” I asked, and went inside to look. Yes, he does, but it’s a newfangled steel tube affair foisted on him by Heinecken and you can’t look over the top of it. I frowned, and Mihai promised to get proper beer pumps on the counter as soon as possible. Otherwise I’d give it five stars. The counter looks very authentic, and has all the right gubbins above it. There’s a very pretty barmaid and, even better, there’s a London bus parked outside. Why, you may ask? Because, in a stroke of genius, they found one lurking in the streets of Bucharest. They brought it to the festival. and when the show was over a chosen few came back here in it. To get it here they had to hoist some power lines into the air, and the bus had to be driven in reverse. And so, after a lifetime with London buses, this is the first time I have ever been in one going backwards.
Here’s a bit of old Bucharest . . . .
We went back to the pub next day and across the street were parked two brand new BMWs, one for Elspeth and one for me Since age goes before beauty I got to choose first. There was a low boxer with a traditional tank, but it’s too cramped for me so I got on the keyless 700 GS with the fancy screen, and there was that little nervous twitch, but by the time I got to the end of the street I had that wonderful feeling again and was back on top of the world. We rode out to the country and I have to admit a lot of the city really is crap – monster Soviet style buildings with bits falling off them – but it’s all fascinating to a visitor. And once out of the city we’re on a lake in a great terraced restaurant with soup and fish and the lovely atmosphere of people enjoying themselves.
. . . and a fantastic sculpture in the centre
If there’s another festival next year I advise you to go. They have very good beer, and excellent wine of all sorts.The country offers quite amazing opportunities for riding and sight-seeing, from the Danube delta to the old haunts of Vlad the Impaler, the painted monasteries, and great mountain scenery. But the best thing about it is the people, and they all seem to speak English. If you’d like to know more send me an email and I’ll put you in touch with Alex.
. . . in luxury I dined.
My night at the Bike Shed was a revelation. It just goes to show what a cool, cosmopolitan lot we are. They’ve turned these railway arches into a very attractive place to meet and eat and relax. I would say, quite honestly, that it was one of the most pleasant and interesting conversions I’ve seen in a long time. There’s a lot of stuff about motorcycles, of course, and some very nice bikes on show in one of the arches, but it’s not shoved down your throat, and you can ignore it if you want.
They had us up a few steps in a sort of gallery, and there were ten of us at the Captain’s Table, which was laid with a black table cloth and dressed for a very nice dinner. Lively intelligent faces all around me asking interesting questions. I’m not saying that bikers aren’t intelligent but you really would never have guessed I was at a biker club. If there was a clue it would have been from Anton who sat on my right, an extremely civilised man of Russian origin with a remarkable display of steel rings on each finger of one hand – I think they were steel. Maybe they were platinum. I should have asked, but I’m almost certain they were purely decorative.
I’m no good with names so I can’t tell you who else was there, but some came from quite a way away. I was flattered, well fed and nicely lubricated.
If I’m in that area again I will certainly drop in. And there are other reasons to be around Hackney and Shoreditch. This is obviously an area that’s going through tumultuous changes. I once lived there, sixty years ago, when I got my first job on the Daily Express. That’s when I stumbled on a wonderful museum called the Geffrye. It’s on Kingsland road, quite close to the Shed, and it occupies a long row of old almshouses, each converted into a living space from a different time in British history – right back to the Dark Ages. I was fascinated by it. The atmosphere was tremendous. I went there again this time, but it was closed for renewal. Instead, laid out on the lovely enclosed grounds in front of it, was a pop-up garden of veggies and flowers, on straw bales, with little bars and tables.
I’m worried about the museum though. I’ve been back several times, and each time there were more signs, more graphic exhibits, more jazz, and it seemed to me they were losing the atmosphere. I hope very much, when I go again, that it hasn’t become sterile.
In an hour I will be driving to the airport at Montpellier, and by six this evening I should arrive at the Bike Shed in London’s Shoreditch. I’ve never been there before. Apparently it’s a super cool biker club, and every now and again they invite worthy people like me to sit at the Captain’s table and be interrogated – in a friendly way, I hope – by the members.
They’ve gone out of their way to make it a stress-free experience, so I hope to be on good form. I’ll tell you more about it afterwards, but I’m looking forward to a great visit.
I only recently learned that Peter Mayle has died, much too young, at 78. David Ogilvy, the advertising wizard, used to call him the Mayle Man but you may know of him as the man who wrote a hugely successful book, A Year in Provence, followed by many others. I knew him long before all that.
It was just after I’d come back from my four-year ride around the world, in 1977. My life – I should say my mind – was in considerable turmoil. I hadn’t yet started to write Jupiter’s Travels and couldn’t get to grips with it. Nothing that I had experienced in those four years seemed real. Although I remembered everything clearly it was only as an observer, as though I were reading a cold government report. To write about it I had to be able to feel again the emotions that those experiences had aroused in me but it all seemed clinical, lifeless. I was close to desperation, because writing the book was all-important.
At the same timeI I was torn between two people that I loved and made a terrible hash of it, bouncing back and forth between the two. All the celebrations of my return were behind me. I’d ridden the Triumph back to London, enjoyed the champagne and a cuddle from Miss Great Britain, delivered the bike back to the Triumph factory which was still at Meriden, and come back to France on the new Triumph 750 they’d given me in exchange.
I was back in my 13th century semi-ruined home trying to find some way to reconnect with my memories when I got a message from a friend, Ernest Chapman, to say that he was over on the other side of France, about two hours away, and would I like to visit.
Ernie was a solicitor with an old, very staid firm called Russell, Cooke, Potter & Chapman at Grays Inn, but he had liberated himself from doing the estates of deceased duchesses and had taken on more colourful clients. He became Jeff Beck’s manager, and also on his list was Peter Mayle. He was visiting Peter at Gordes, in Provence, and that’s where I went on my Triumph, looking for some relief.
I stayed with them for a few days and I have very happy memories of that time with Peter, his wife Jennie, and Ernie. They were warm and wonderful company. “You are such good value,” Jennie said to me once, and I never forget a compliment. We ate and drank and laughed a lot together. Then, reluctantly, I got back on my bike, rode down the hill and straight into the path of an oncoming van. It was an inexplicable accident. After four years of riding safely through every imaginable situation I had failed to see a vehicle in front of my eyes.
The rest of that story is in Jupiter’s Travels, including the prophesy that remains a mystery. Like all my accidents so far I was very lucky. The front end of the bike was destroyed, but all that happened to me was that I sat down rather hard on the road. My friends rescued me, we did what we had to do with the wrecked Triumph, and very generously Peter Mayle lent me a small Citroen Mehari with a canvas top.
I kept it through that cold and miserable winter, still struggling to find a way into the book. After a while I took refuge with friends who lived over the hill in a small chateau they had reclaimed from dereliction. Then in early Spring one of my loves, Carol, came to visit me to tell me that she was going to marry someone else. I knew that if I put my mind to it I could persuade her to change hers but I simply couldn’t find the energy to do it. She stayed with me in the chateau for a week and one windy day we drove to my house to fetch some things, including a beautiful Kashmiri carpet I had brought back on the bike. At the top of the hill, as we returned to the chateau, I stopped at a junction where we met a bigger road. On my right was a big enamelled road sign on posts, four feet high at least. Behind the sign the mountain side dropped away steeply among loose rocks and gorse. Suddenly a gust of wind powering up the mountainside behind us lifted the car up over the road sign and dumped it down the mountainside. The car did a complete roll and landed across a boulder which prevented it from rolling any further. Astonishingly we suffered only minor injuries. The car was totalled. The carpet disappeared and was never found.
Peter Mayle was very forgiving. The car was insured and he asked for nothing, but I don’t think he or Ernie ever really believed my story.
Soon after that I found my way into the book, and it took over my life. I lost touch with Peter Mayle after he moved to that village in Provence, and I never saw him again. A pity. I see him still very clearly, full of life and fun. He had exercise machines and was waging war against potatoes, “those little brown buggers,” for fear of putting on weight. I am so sorry he’s gone.
PS: I am writing an autobiography, mostly for my son’s sake and for his son too. My publisher likes it but thinks not enough people would buy it. Would you? If so, please let me know, at tsimon@mcn.org Thanks.
Spring is sprung, as Mr Durante used to say, and I’ve been out on my MP3 to taste it. Unfortunately my yellow BMW still cowers in the corner of my garage, because a rare but violent disagreement with an erstwhile friend has left me with a bureaucratic nightmare, but Hey, shit happens and one day it will be resolved. Meanwhile there’s always the bar around the corner for solace.
I was there at the Cafe de la Poste last week listening to some super Brazilian songs, and again on Saturday hoping for more music. This time I was unlucky, the singer was ill, but instead I saw something that is very French and all too rare in other countries – four children sitting at a table, eating their dinner and talking to each other like ordinary, civilised human beings. Thought you’d like to see it.
Remember this? Three weeks ago I was on my way to see the Mayor about getting murals up on the wall. Plenty of you thought it was a fine idea. some of you even offered to paint them. And then you probably thought I’d forgotten all about it.
Not at all. The Mayor, Monsieur Bernardi, was in Paris at a congress of mayors from all across France – there are thousands of them – and when he got back he was very busy catching up, but this morning he asked me to come along. And of course he likes the idea. Nothing would please him more, but . . .
The house that burned and was demolished by the commune, even though it is a non-existent virtual house, still belongs to the previous owners. That is to say the ground on which it stood, and the walls where I want to see those murals, still belong to someone. And because that someone was uninsured, and has understandably paid no fees or taxes for years, the actual ownership is rather complex and probably resides with a bank. And so, regrettably, the Mayor is unable to authorise the project until the village eventually acquires the property, which it hopes to do some day . . .
However, it occurs to me now that since he did have authority to paint the walls a lovely cream colour, why could he not authorise another coat of paint that might just happen to be multi-coloured? I shall send him a note. Don’t hold your breath . . .
I did also, as an afterthought, raise the matter of the vanished “epicerie” – or grocer – and once again he was as dismayed as we all are but, once again, there were legal consequences to it’s disappearance which must be dealt with before an effort can be made to encourage someone else to take it on. But there is hope. It is not uncommon for communes to provide help to bring commerce into the village. Alas, I am no grocer. But I’ve got my fingers all knotted up.
