April: Homage to Catalonia

Just before our short Easter break, I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for an age in the Martel post office. We once worked together briefly at a local chateau on behalf of the inmates who'd been royally screwed by an Australian property developer. A crook by any other words. She asked me, 'Qu'est ce que t'es devenu?' or some such construction. It's not a phrase I've ever come across before, but the Good Wife who has experience of such things tells me it means roughly 'What have you been up to?' Being a literal sort of fellow, I translated it – literally – as 'What have you become?' I told her 'agé' – which is exactly what I've become. She laughed. When I told my wife, she laughed even harder – and promptly sent a message to our daughter, who replied 'that's classic', or words to that effect.

In the car during the long drive south to Cadaqués, a town of renown on the Costa Brava, not too far from the French frontier, Frank Zappa's 'Willie the Pimp' popped up on the USB random playlist. I realised with a short sharp shock to the system that I've been listening to the Hot Rats album for over 50 years. I have become truly old. When I was much younger, maybe 16 or so, my mum caught me playing along to Zappa's protracted guitar solo on my Slazenger tennis racquet. My Slazenger Les Paul was 'plugged in' to a little fan heater that served as an amplifier. It was all rather embarrassing.

Earlier that self-same morning, I had gone down to the Salle Polyvalente (the room of multiple uses) for a kind of open day for the commune to explain about all the local services on offer. As I went around the various stalls gathering up literature, it struck me that many of the services were geared towards the older members of the community. Assistance with your IT problems; an app for your mobile phone to enable you to check the state of your health; domestic help. That kind of thing. I nodded thoughtfully as each of the eager, charming women in turn went into more detail, then availed myself of a free cup of coffee and croissant, thanked his worship the mayor for such splendid enterprise and high-tailed it back home to finish packing for the trip to Catalonia.

It's a long way to Cadaqués, it's a long way to go for four nights and three days with our dog. While we had our music to entertain us, Daphne sat stoically on the back seat, watching south-west France evolve into north-east Spain. With the price of diesel here at nearly two euros a litre, I did my best to impress upon my wife the need to keep it steady at or just under 100kph. But she suffers from a complaint that could derive from an accident on a bicycle. It's called See lorry, chase lorry. I have suggested psychiatric help.

Cadaqués is a lovely place, its whitewashed houses, old but mainly now new, climbing up the rocky hills that wrap around the bay. It's a Spanish equivalent of Collioure on the French side of the frontier, where we've stayed on a couple of occasions, the first time back when you could have picked up a little apartment for little money and the thought crossed my mind... only to evaporate as is my custom when a shrewd notion enters one orifice to hang around for a day or two before leaking out of another. Still; the Easter crowds on the Catalan coast suggested that maybe my lack of practical action was a good thing.

Our break didn't start too promisingly. The woman at the agency gave my wife a series of printed photographs to find our Airbnb lodgings, but didn't make it clear just how difficult it is to find anywhere to stop and unload. In the end, we found a parking slot on the very edge of town, so had to haul our baggage – including Daphne's cumbersome mattress – half a kilometre or so through the human throng and up the cobbled alleyways to our billet right in the heart of the old town. The apartment, on the second floor at the top of a precipitous staircase, was much smaller and more rudimentary than it looked on the site. More like a studio flat. But hey, it was a prime location – wasn't it?

Well, yes and no. We were ideally situated for all the bars and restaurants, but both of us had forgotten how late the nightlife in Spain goes on. That first night in a bed, with no headboard for inveterate readers, was fairly disastrous. For a start, there was a strip of LED lights all the way along a shelf above the bed, like something that you'd find at Christmas time draped around a window or a door. We couldn't figure out how to turn them off and were tempted to rip the wires out of the transformer on the shelf, but didn't want to be liable for damages. In the end, I wrapped a T-shirt around my head in a vain attempt to create darkness. Secondly, Daphne isn't used to sharing a building with other residents, so she barked (loudly) every time someone came back in the middle of the night – whereupon one of us would have to leap out of bed to quieten her before she woke the dead. Thirdly, sounds resonate around the narrow passages of the old town. Nice as the Catalan people are, they seem to have little conception that people might be trying to sleep above them as they wend their noisy way back to their lodgings in the wee small hours.

And they are nice, the Catalans. They are the perennial good guys of Spanish history. Ever since reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as a teenager, I've seen them as a bastion of liberalism in the constant struggle against a country seemingly dominated by the church, bull torturers and fascists. It's Barcelona over Real Madrid in the El Classico every time. The hip logo seen around the town of Cadaqués is Transmontana Republik, in recognition of the famous frisky wind as well as the spirit of independence.

Since their language has certain similarities to French, everyone has either a smattering of French or English or both. They smile, too, when they serve you in a shop or pass you in the street. We found out just how nice they can be when we went to see the Dali house the day after our first unfortunate night – and our first fortunate morning, when Debs discovered a switch and a dimmer on the opposite wall that operated the LED strip. Well, really! Why would you locate a switch on the opposite wall?

We'd reserved our tickets for the house online in advance of our stay. Because we were reluctant to leave our dog alone in strange lodgings, we walked up and over and down the headland that separates the town from the surrealist showman's former lodgings. Half-expecting the kind of reception she'd receive in France at such a request, my amiable wife enquired at the ticket office whether we could split our allocated visit, so that one of us did a quick tour while the other hung around on the beach with Daphne before swapping over. Of course, no problem. Just remind me when you come back this afternoon.

In fact, we didn't have to remind her. The woman remembered us and did everything possible to make sure that we both had as much time we needed and more for our respective tours. When my turn came, I tagged along with a group of Spaniards and Catalans. Our guide, a darling man they might have called him in Ireland, with the air of an off-duty librarian or primary school teacher, gave his spiel in three different languages. Because I was the only English visitor, I had a personal dialogue with him, which made me feel like visiting royalty. The house was every bit as quirky and as fascinating as one might imagine a surrealist's domain to be, but we both agreed that the swimming pool was the pièce de résistance.

On leaving the house, our guide queried his opening gambit: 'It's not a guided visit, but an accompanied visit.' Was this good English? I said it was perfectly reasonable, but suggested that 'It's not a guided tour, but I will accompany you' might be a little better. He was touchingly grateful and, like a pair of well-mannered duellists, we traded thanks. The winner was he who outdid the other, but I think it was a draw.

After two leg-sapping return trips to Casa Dali and a fabulous lunch in the artist's favourite quirky Lebanese restaurant, we slept better that night. Daphne was more accustomed to the noise and the fairy lights served this time as a night-light, not a bright light. Nevertheless, we decided to go home early. We'd walk to the lighthouse and back on the Saturday, have our seafood paella in the restaurant tucked around the corner and travel home on the Sunday – when there were many fewer lorries to chase. That's the thing when you wind down and get stuck in your ways. Why be uncomfortable somewhere when you can be comfortable in your own home? Our bed has a headboard and the prospect of Easter Monday chez nous seemed the right thing to do.

It was a nice enough break and the Dali house was memorable, but we will bear the shame of the light switch for the rest of our days. Next time someone asks me what I have become, I'll tell them: old – and rather stupid.

March: A Gathering of Old Men

On Saturday, my friend Nick took me with him to The Mill – as it has become known over the years – for 'Le Crunch', as the annual Six Nations encounter between England and the old enemy France has become known in recent times. It's a half-hour drive from here, across the Dordogne to the Ouysse, which emerges from underground not too far from Rocamadour to race past our friends' Moulin de Latreille, joining the big river a few kilometres further downstream. The only way by car is to climb the tortuous road up to the pretty village of Calès and then down again, down, down seemingly to the centre of the earth courtesy of a track that each time has been a little more improved with tarmac by a reluctant commune.

We've been going to the watermill at least once and sometimes twice a year for the last 20+ years for some of the best parties or general 'occasions' south of Brive. Fi and Giles seem to know just about everyone in the area that it's possible to know. Because it's so far away from our neck of the rive droite, we get to see people there that we don't normally see around these parts.

Over the years, therefore, you notice how gradually, almost imperceptibly people have changed. It's rather like having children: you don't notice how old you're getting until you see how they've grown. Our hosts' son Felix has grown into a good-looking, charming and sociable young man. In most cases growth is something other than the vertical kind. Some, but not many, have grown paunches, but many have grown well-manicured and trim white beards to match their whitening hair. I've never attempted one myself, because I'm resigned to the fact that it would look as sparse as the grass on our 'lawn'. Having inherited my mother's follicle genes, my own hair has turned progressively more mousey over time, with little patches of grey-turning-white where it's cut closest to the scalp.

Guy, for example, my carpenter friend who came to the rescue here when heavy rain would find its way into the mezzanine level, thus threatening the uppermost straw bales otherwise snug between their enclosing layers of render, has added just a little weight but turned startlingly white. As has Clive, the dependable plasterer who sealed in the bales and gave them the stippled texture that visitors unfailingly admire. David, too, the swimming-pool man, who arrived in an England rugby shirt and beret, much to the worry of Giles, who gave up wearing his own team shirt as a bringer of bad luck.

They drifted in one by one towards the end of the Italy/Wales match in Rome, which we were all hoping Italy would win as they've made so much progress this year, no longer the customary whipping boys. It surprises me that so many of my male friends here are rugby fans. Only Nick, Giles, David and Tim, the biggest (absent) fan of them all, went to posh schools. I'm just about the only one who loves rugby and football; certainly the only one who follows a football team. My love of rugby is more that of a (sometimes) dispassionate observer: someone who played a bit as a boy, who has never understood the rules relating to the pack and penalties and who, as an inveterate historian, loves the traditions and legacy of the past as much as the current game.

Before and after the match itself, we chatted about developments in our lives. Everyone has become increasingly aware of his mortality, drinking far less than we might have done as a group a few years back. It's noticeable that the most popular drink these days is zero-alcohol beer. We are all attempting to wind down and/or retire as a precursor to the final chapter of our lives, however long that will prove. David is cleaning fewer pools these days, and taking it easy during the winter. Guy is nearing the completion of his monumental second self-built house, nearly a decade after starting it and determined that it will be the last, though wondering what he will do with himself once he has finished and stopped working for a living. Already, he is thinking of moving – further south, to the foothills of the Pyrenees. Clive, one of the hardest working men in the business, has done his knee in and has been on crutches for some time, no longer plastering, but still working for others. Giles is still painting and decorating holiday homes and chateaux.

Only Nick has truly managed to retire. He can devote himself to his garden and his boat moored across the Spanish frontier and general management of the quotidian. They asked how I was getting on, what I was up to these days. I had to confess that I have been struggling with the responsibilities of taking over the music editorship of the Sounds and Colours website. Far from being retired and choosing how I spend my time, I've found myself spending far too long in front of a screen, writing and publishing reviews and round-ups and trying to keep up with new releases from around the Latin world. No one asked why, in that case, I was doing it, so I was spared the confession that it was probably for the sake of my ego: a feeling that I was no longer just a pretender, but more of a contender. A man with a role; a player.

I might also have revealed how easy it is, I'm finding, in a position of influence to be swayed by inducements. Since it's an unpaid role, there's a strong temptation to look favourably on a request for a review or some publicity if it's accompanied by an offer of an LP or at the very least a CD. Cross my palms with vinyl. For example, I found a way of including a new compilation of Paco De Lucia's appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival, even though he's not strictly speaking a Latin musician. The LP has arrived at my sister's to avoid any post-Brexit postal misunderstandings. I gave it five stars – not because of the vinyl inducement, but because I genuinely believed that it merited five. But how difficult it is to be spotlessly clean and totally true to your principles. How easy it must be as some petty official, say, in some unregulated nation to supplement his or her income with a back-hander or two.

And the Good Wife? Well, I explained, she is not a fan of rugby or many other sports for that matter. And much as she loves to spend time at The Mill, she needed some quiet time to unwind, having spent far too much energy during the week helping clients. So much for the time being for her attempt to cut down to two days per week in Brive at the cabinet. The best-laid plans of mice and therapists. Well, it meant that I could concentrate on the rugby rather than worrying about the dog being on her own for too long.

We all gathered before the big screen in eager anticipation. The volume was raised to drown out the chitter-chatter. The teams were presented and the anthems were sung. The bottle tops of the zero-alcohol beer bottles were snapped off with the aid of a cigarette lighter (not mine). Our fly half kicked off – and the chorus of groans grew louder within minutes of the start as the arrogant English, whom no one likes, not even fellow Brits and least of all the French, were put comprehensively to the sword. At which point, our redeeming self-deprecating sense of humour, nurtured by so many sporting defeats over the decades, kicked in and we all gave up caring how many points the French racked up to simply admire their brilliance.

And after the post-match supper of sweet potato soup, bread and cheese, and dessert tarts made by the rugby-avoiding women folk, we all gradually drifted off into the night for another year. One by one, or two by two in Nick's and my case. He dropped me at the top of our track and I found my way down to our house without the aid of a torch. Daphne leapt out of her basket and barked at me as a potential intruder when I appeared on the front porch. My wife was waiting for me in bed, reading the James Salter novel I've just finished and recovering from another busy week at the coal face. Did you have a nice time? I had a very nice time, thank you.

 

February: Multiple Identities

My sister reads The Mail On Sunday and the Daily Mail. She's my sister, so I love her all the same. Last weekend she sent me a photo she'd taken of a travel article by a Mark Sampson. It was a bit of a shock to the system – not only to realise that there was another me (I'd already come to terms with that after the sacking of Mark Sampson, the coach of the women's England football team, the 'Lionesses'), but also that this other me was writing travel articles. My career in that respect is over, ever since the folding of France Magazine. I hate the Mail with a vengeance, but they pay top dollar for this kind of article. The best I ever managed was one for The Times.

I suppose we all like to think that we're unique, different from the crowd. That must be hard if you're called John Smith or David Philips or Mike Brown, but there aren't too many Mark Sampsons to the acre, certainly not travel journalists. So the surprise was a little akin to that of Alain Delon in the title role of Joseph Losey's marvellous film, Mr. Klein, when the truth gradually dawns on him that he has a doppelganger. An impostor of sorts. Mr. Klein, the art dealer who sells his works to Jewish clients finds himself caught up in the round-up of Paris Jews in 1942.

I know nothing about my doppelganger other than that he must be finding more success in his chosen field than I did. I don't resent him that. Good luck to the scribe, I say. Like everything else I have tried in life, I never gave 'all of me' to it. I never followed through. Even now, in my dotage, I dabble here and I dabble there and my days add up to the sum total of bits and pieces. I still scribble down ideas for screenplays, short stories, children's novels and so on that realistically I know I'll never get round to developing. I even harboured the idea of being a columnist for a while, which is probably why I keep up this monthly blog: just to prove to myself that I can do it should the call from an editor ever come. It's getting a little late in the day now.

How I envy both of my grandfathers, who were able ostensibly to give up all desire to achieve something, anything, and concentrate on mixing a potent gin and tonic or completing the Daily Telegraph every day or keeping their garden trim. Both of them knew how to potter. It came easily to my father's father, who passed on the pottering gene to his son. I'd love to potter more – if only I could allow myself to do so. My maternal grandfather was not a natural potterer, but then he wasn't as driven as my mother or me.

My lifetime friend Winston understands. We were talking about this the other day on Signal, looking back on careers that could barely be termed 'professional'. Neither of us took work seriously enough and therefore failed to rise to the level that maybe we should have done, given our education. It all seemed so... so silly and pointless in the final analysis. Maybe it was our education that was to blame: we were taught the importance of acquiring good grades in rarefied academic subjects, and nothing about the realities of adult life. E.M. Forster and others of his kidney ultimately meant far more than the business of winning friends and influencing people at work. We both ended up as dilettantes. Wasters by any other name.

'What did your father do in the 21^st century?'
'Oh, he was a dilettante.'
'That's interesting. What is a dilettante?'

Exactly. I'd be happy enough to settle on that identity, but it suggests a bit of this and a bit of that, and nothing in particular. The Concise OED (note that I don't go in for the complete version) defines it as 'Lover of the fine arts; one who toys with subject or studies it without seriousness.' And if that weren't damning enough, it goes on to brand my kind as 'trifling, not thorough.' In recent years, I have earned the opportunity to follow my passion for music as a music critic, journalist and occasional DJ. But even that's not enough. I fail to devote myself 100% to it, because I can't renounce the desire to create literature with a certain substance. However, would I swap my happy life for the literary prizes that F. Scott Fitzgerald, for one, gained effectively in exchange for a longer life?

Hey ho. Such existential concerns seem so trifling when there are people in the world trying to dig their way out of rubble in the Middle East, or flee with their family from Russian missiles. Or just plain trying to get through each day in turn without knowing where their next meal is coming from.

Or people trying to come to terms with an innate impulse to dress up in women's clothes. Now that would provoke an identity crisis. Fortunately, I've always been happy enough with variations on male garb. The idea of wearing a nightie in bed doesn't appeal to me. The Good Wife, a very tolerant creature at the best of times, told me that she'd find it challenging to sleep with her man in a night dress. Before taking one of the few trains heading for Paris the other morning on yet another day of national strikes, she and I watched a wonderful documentary the night before in the estimable Storyville series on what remains of BBC Four.

The film was called Casa Susanna after the camp in the Catskills in upstate New York owned and run by a woman who ran a wig shop in Manhattan and her husband Tito, who assumed the name of Susanna when he dressed up. At a time in the late '50s and early '60s when such liberties were not tolerated, it offered 'cross-dressers' – as they tended to call themselves and be called at the time – the incredible opportunity to stay there and dress as they wished and commune with others of their persuasion. If the cabins have fallen into disrepair now, it's hopefully symbolic of more tolerant times, when secret summer camps for 'queers' are no longer necessary.

The documentary focused in particular on two octogenarians, both of whom tried but failed to lead a 'normal life' as married men – one of whom had three children from a 20+-years marriage – and ended up opting for 'the surgery'. The mere thought of the drastic final solution makes me come out in hives, but Katherine and Diana both seemed to end up happy enough with their new identities. It was a beautiful, tender film and one of the most moving documentaries I've ever had the pleasure to sit through. It didn't, however, tempt me to slip into a nightie.

Watching it served to underline what a fortunate and uncomplicated life I lead, and how silly I am to trifle over ontological matters of identity. Nevertheless, now that I'm alone for a fortnight and resolved to catch up on some of the obscure films I tend to record, I think I'll opt for Robert Mulligan's The Other from 1972; see if it casts any more light on the business of doppelgangers. I can do that sort of thing now that I'm retired. Ah! Now there's a good solid identity I could assume: Monsieur Sampson, retraité. Retired. Anything else is a luxury.

January: The Gulf Between Us

With dotage looming larger by the week, talk in this house has inevitably turned to the future. Do we want to stay in this country for the rest of our days? Should we consider moving back to the UK? And if so, where?

With summers here getting hotter and hotter, we’ve discussed cooler climes. I would move back to some rural enclave of Norn Iron like a shot (despite strong reservations about the lunatic fringe, who wave their red-hand-of-Ulster flags with no hint of irony nor the lessons of history), but the Good Wife is not so keen. Understandably: she’s never lived there nor had any direct dealings with the people of the province, other than a few delightful friends. So we’ve talked about a return to Yorkshire, where they refreshingly call a spade a spade. Or maybe further afield, like Scotland. The Dame was born near the border and spent her first years in the Lowlands, so she feels about Scotland as I do about Norn Iron. I’m not quite so sure; the Scots hate the English after all, and when all’s said and done I am an Englishman at heart, for all my dual nationality and Northern Irish posturing.

The trouble is, neither of us wants to leave this house. We built it and shaped it with our own hands and it’s the most comfortable accommodation we could imagine. If we could lift it up by helicopter and drop it somewhere in the UK and preferably near the sea, then maybe we would. A couple of things during and after the Christmas hullabaloo have underlined the gulf between our native land and our adoptive country.

Every year at around the end of February – ever since the tsunami in fact, way back in 2004 or whenever it was – a bunch of us, expatriates and natives, have put on a cabaret to raise money for a nominated worthy cause. So I wrote a short piece for three people: a very dark satire on the way people abandon their pets come holiday time, mixed with a dig at the way that old women can treat their husbands when they’ve outlived their usefulness (if ever, that is, they were useful in the first place).

I called it SPH, Société pour la Protection des Hommes, a play on the SPA, Société pour la Protection des Animaux. A woman, perhaps played by my radiant wife, brings her husband to a refuge that’s bursting at the seams with abandoned husbands. He’s an old Corrézian type and she’s up to here with his endless talk about the weather, his kitchen garden or his DIY tools. After failing to persuade her at least to swap him for a long-term resident who’s a little quirky but very handy, the SPH official leads the abandoned husband off stage to introduce him to all the other inmates and to try to make him as comfortable as possible until the right taker comes along.

I sent it to a chap I know who’d talked about doing something with me – to highlight the contrast between his French-ness and my English-ness. I thought he’d make a good abandoned husband: someone whose slightly lugubrious, shambling physical presence would surely win the sympathy of an audience. I reckoned he’d be game enough for a laugh to enter into the spirit of the piece. So I sent him the script. I heard nothing in reply. Then, maybe a fortnight later, which suggested that he had thought carefully about his reply, I heard from him by e-mail. He was shocked and insulted and didn’t find it at all funny. I wrote back apologetically, explaining as best I could in my written French about the dark British sense of humour and so forth, while making a mental note: Why continue to bang my head against a brick wall when it could be swaddled by a soft pillow? Just let it lie. I should have known better of course; my quips and asides have regularly gone down in native company like deflated balloons. Admittedly it’s still hard to express myself clearly in a foreign language, but when it comes to humour never the twain shall meet.

Someone, perhaps my wife, suggested that my intended abandoned husband might have been less insulted had the idea come from a Frenchman. A fair point, although the idea of a French man or woman conceiving of such a scenario in the first place is as unlikely as snow is now in winter here.

I’ve also proposed, fruitlessly, that an animal charity might benefit from our annual cabaret. Fat chance. Another case of banging my head against an immovable object. There's a cultural chasm in this respect, too. The other Sunday, for example, we were invited out to eat with friends from Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Bring Daphne along, our hostess gaily suggested. We did, thinking it would be a sit-down affair with a handful of people – only to discover that it was a full-blown party. Amy had done her bit for the entente cordiale by inviting all her French neighbours, who promptly turned up an hour early. She invited them all in for a drink and sent SOS texts to expatriate friends who could speak at least a little French.

Anyway, it wasn’t the best context for a greedy dog, with low-lying snacks dotted around the house. But she wandered around sniffing legs and things and didn't disgrace herself. My personable wife and I chatted to the French neighbours in our customary diplomatic fashion. It helps to boost the score of Brits in France if the natives perceive that some expatriates can actually speak their language. A couple asked the name of our dog. ‘Daphne,’ I replied. ‘Gafny?’ ‘No, Daphne.’ ‘Kafny?’ ‘Daphne.’ ‘Baphne?’ ‘No, Daphne. With a D.’ Eventually, they got it. I don’t think they were hard of hearing or my pronunciation was at fault, but simply that the French don’t grasp our propensity to call pets by regular first names. It’s more common to give a dog the name of a fruit or a nut. Provided it begins with the decreed letter for that particular year (which is actually a useful way of remembering your pet's age).

They tend to think of animals differently to us. Not that I believe entirely that the British are a nation of animal lovers. Nevertheless, there is some truth in the old cliché. It hurts me to walk our dog past the compound where a local farmer incarcerates his hunting dogs on concrete inside wire fencing. Prune, their border collie, is allowed out on good behaviour to help with the chores. She’s a lovely dog, who likes to run up to us both and say hello – only to be commanded to heel by her masters. I try to suggest that she and Daphne like to have a little play, but it’s another case of head-banging. What I really want to say is something like, ‘Wise up, you ignorant tossers!’

The other day, Daphne and I encountered the hermit-daughter of the old be-whiskered hermit-woman, who live together in a sad, dark bungalow piled with an incredible miscellany of clobber outside on their porch. The shutters stay shut night and day. God knows what goes on within. They seem to care for their cats and dog, however. Said daughter was out walking the miniature Sasha, who’s no bigger than a fluffy pyjama case. We walked together in the direction of their house of anything-but-mirth, exchanging pleasantries and inanities. While Daphne trotted on ahead, at liberty to sniff and generally dilly-dally, poor benighted Sasha was tugged back by her mistress every time she wanted to wander off the bitumen for a bit of olfactory exploration. This was accompanied by a petulant complaint and an insistence that the miniature beast should obey the two-legged beast holding the leash. I bit my tongue, but what I wanted to say was, ‘Wise up, you ignorant tosserina. Why don’t you let that poor creature off the lead and let it do what the Spirit in the Sky intended? Get a life, woman, and in the process give your poor dog a life, too.’

I didn’t. But living among heathens sometimes triggers these home thoughts from abroad. The thought of enriching our lives with a bit of culture – and a culture that’s not alien to us – is very tempting. We’re not getting any younger and feeling more acutely the need for a more sociable existence. But where to go? Yorkshire? Scotland? Morecambe Bay? North Devon? West Cork! Now there’s an idea. That seemed like a surprisingly international place. But the boffins still haven't invented the kind of heavy-duty, military-style heli-porter capable of picking up and deposing a large straw-bale house. Until that day...