Twenty years and twenty kilos ago Paris could be a little dangerous for a single woman like moi
‘Don’t make eye-contact,’ my French friends would warn. ‘Don’t smile’.
I’m invisible now.
It’s a great way to travel.
Lucky to get anyone’s attention, frankly.
It took a while for the old Paris magic to kick in.
On previous, more salubrious visits I’ve cabbed in from the airport or caught the train direct from Calais to the Gare du Nord.
The architecture never failed to score a direct hit, right between the eyes.
An exquisite, elegant, romantic city with turrets and slate roofs and real French windows with balconies.
Wide tree-lined boulevards, art-nouveaux Metro signs, rows of cane chairs outside café after café.
Wow.
Ca me fait a bout de souffle.
This time around, in the city of love, I feel like I came in through the servants’ entrance.
I caught the train in from Charles de Gaulle airport to the Gare de L’Est and waited for the show to begin.
I don’t need to be in Paris. I took three days here - between the rigours of Germany and the ongoing work in England - because I wanted to.
It’s a luxury I can’t afford but I was too close to forgo the pleasure.
Le Bourget, Drancy, the suburban stations rolled past the window of the RER.
No magic happening.
Droves of Naomi Campbells, Macy Grays, Fela Koutis and Kofi Anans got on board.
I seemed to be the only trailer-trash going to town.
I kept my eyes fixed on the window.
Waiting.
The world-wide association of bubble-writers, it seems, has wreaked its usual toneless, boring havoc on one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
The taggers (great concept in AFL: rubbish with a spray-can) hard at it, systematically erasing all traces of individuality in every town, city and hamlet.
From Broady to Clichy, Frankston to Frankfurt, Melbourne to Milan, every available wall, railway siding and rooftop is covered in bubble-writing.
AND IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME.
There is not one trace of individuality on display. No shred of protest.
No-one, it seems, imagines that perhaps copperplate might be an option. Or even hieroglyphics.
Nup.
Just tubular block caps in the dozen colours available at the local equivalent of Bunnings.
Just wanna look like the other bruvvers, init.
Big fan of Banksie , me. The graffiti genius. Love yer work.
But bubble-writers ?
Bor-ring !
I want to apply for an Arts Council grant to initiate a
GLOBAL DAY OF RAMPANT INDIVIDUALITY.
Everyone gets a tin of paint and a roller and is allowed to paint over all the bubble-writing around them.
A day on which we can restore the individuality of each city.
Erase the glum, prosaic, UNIFORMITY of the world-wide bubble-writing scourge.
Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t give a tinker’s that bubble-writers deface property or appear to be engaging in anti-social, anti-private ownership rights.
I care that it’s so TOTALLY LACKING IN IMAGINATION !!!!
Just writing your name ?
What’s THAT about ?
France led the world in freedom, liberty, egalite, democracy. They smashed the monarchy and stood up for the poor in a revolutionary fight to the death. They built monuments to their achievements.
So, the most revolutionary thing you can think of to do today is write your name/number/tag/signature on a wall ?
Sacre bleu, fair suck of the sav, bloody hell !
How DULL AND UNIMAGINATIVE.
Paris rolls past the window of the train and I could be anywhere.
It’s only when I finally lug my case (which just cost me 86 euros in excess to bring back from Germany even though I hadn’t put anything extra in it) unassisted, up three flights of Metro stairs and emerge onto the beautiful Boulevarde Richard Lenoir and gaze towards the Colonne de Juillet flying high above the centre of the Place de la Bastille that the magic finally happens.
I’m in Paris.
And it’s raining.
And it will keep on raining all the time I’m here.
Even after I finally succumb and buy a ‘Paris, Je t’aime’ souvenir umbrella, it keeps raining.
I don’t care.
I’m sitting here with a 2.50 euro bottle of 2006 Bordeaux and thinking about tomorrow, and how I will ride my ‘velib’ bike all over town and drink in the unique gorgeousness that is Paris.

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Germany is very punk.
Leather jackets, buzz-cuts and lank pony-tails … and that’s just the women.
Boom Boom. No, but seriously folks…
I scandalised the good French citizens of Toulouse last week by eating a croissant ON THE STREET, OUT OF A PAPER BAG and wearing my home-made, reversible, long-sleeved tee-shirt, fashionably INSIDE OUT !
True dinks.
A woman passed me on the street then double-backed for a second, gob-smacked squiz.
A young woman.
She brought friends with her for the 2nd circuit.
In Germany I might as well be someone’s nana.
Deutschland is very…sort of… how you say in your country ?… white supremacist.
Almost British. Circa 1978.
Nose-rings, bovver boots and black everywhere.
More black clothes per square metre than the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts Opening Night party.
Young German women seem to be seriously height-challenged.
The world-wide, battery-chicken-nurtured tendency to giant children and large breasts seems to have passed rural Germany by.
Drifts of short girls with faces caked in goth-style white pancake and industrial strength mascara, piercings, Fudge overkill on the blue, green or yellow streaked hair – stiffened and layered like Cilla Black on crack – torn stockings and Chucks.
Converse must be making a fortune in Rhineland.
Converse and steel-capped cothurni ROOL OKAY.
Maybe I’m getting this impression because I’m doing so much train travel ?
Maybe the autobahns are jammed with BMW’s and Fow Vays (that’s VW’s for those of you playing at home) full of fashionistas ?
But where do they go when they park and get out ?
The parts of Germany I’ve been seeing have been quiet.
The big towns seem, spookily… like Adelaide….. cue Twilight Zone theme.
Train travel in Germany, however, I have to say, gets the Big Tick.
I had so looked forward to train travel in Europe, but the French TGV(very-fast-train) left a lot to be desired.
The German ICE – Inter-City Express – on the other hand is sensational.
Those big trains whoosh, almost silently, into the stations like Great White Pointer sharks. The doors buzz open and you enter a world of very clean, beautifully catered, very fast and efficient, comfortable train travel.
In first class they serve you in your seat – meals, booze, the lot.
On one of my Hildesheim to Braunschweig runs there was a party of women who had taken the ICE hospitality a glass too far.
Lord knows how many cities they’d been through but by 11.30 on this particular morning they were pissed and raucous.
A lot of shouting and flirting with starled, sixty-year-olds was going down.
I WISH I knew what the occasion was.
My money was on a beauticians’ bonding weekend.
That’s one of the many drawbacks to a lack of fluency in the local language. You can make yourself understood at the rail counter or in the cake shop (thank God ! just point that fat finger again, Jane), but you can’t get the entire gist of something like these wild gals.
And you can’t engage in the random conversations which are the staple of travel.
Which is a pity.
The best I’ve managed has been the odd joke with a newsagent or waitress. But the laughter sprang from relief that we understood each other to the extent of seeing the mild humour in a situation.
It dissipated quickly.
At the bus-stop in the little town of Dinklar, outside Hildesheim, I seemed to always catch the bus to and from town with a sprightly looking woman of about sixty. (Yes, almost my age).
I couldn’t help noticing her because she was always immaculately fitted out in my favourite colours. Full length black leather coat, striking red scarf. Red and black bomber jacket, black stilettos and leather pants.
She was very slim, immaculately made up and had long, greying, blonde hair piled into a neat roll on her head.
She knew everyone.
People on motor-bikes and tractors waved ‘Halloo !’ to her.
She automatically tried to strike up a conversation with me, and her frustration was palpable when I, the only other passenger at the bus-stop, didn’t speak German. She loved a chat and I’d ruined her day.
I knew just how she felt.
On yet another train from Hildesheim to Hannover a young man in the seat across the aisle from me suddenly leaned over and let forth a stream of German too quickly for me to grasp.
I trotted out my usual, pathetic, ‘Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen – sorry’ (can NEVER remember the German word for ‘sorry’. Maybe John Howard was German…).
To which he immediately replied,
‘Oh, okay, but do you have a pen I can borrow ?’
Sure I did.
‘Ich bin eine shriftstellerin’ init.
(The German word for ‘writer’ is suitably long and sibilant).
He wrote for such a long time with my ‘Kugelschreiber’ that I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was a ‘shriftsteller’ too.
I also began to wonder if (a) he was ever going to give it back to me and (b) if there would be any ink left in it when he did.
He eventually did (a) and I felt more confident of (b).
He asked me where I was from and whether I was on holiday and I suddenly found myself having a lengthy conversation with a stranger. My first since the beginning of this trip.
He was a singer from Hannover, he told me. The choir he was in was off on a tour of Venezuela the following day.
I told him a bit about my book and answered his many questions about Australia – he plans to visit us soon.
We had such a lively conversation that I felt compelled to ask him how come he spoke such good English.
He grew up in Hannover, he said, but he was born in Afghanistan to an Afghani father and a German mother. There was a UN school where he lived and he opted to learn English.
We rabbited on until the train pulled into Hannover but when we parted I couldn’t help but regret the number of other interesting conversations I might have had in the three countries I’ve visited so far.
Sartre said ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’, but maybe he didn’t get out of Paris enough.
I’ll make enquiries when I lob at the ‘Deux Magots’ tomorrow.

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So, I can ask where the toilet is in three different languages now and that’s got to be useful.
The ‘servicios, por favor ?’ in Spain, ‘ou est les toilettes ?’ in France and ‘vo ist die toilette ?’ in Germany.
When a girl’s gotta go, a girl’s gotta learn the lingo.
This morning on the TGV – le very fast train - from Lyon to the Charles De Gaulle airport and my flight to Germany, I didn’t need the lingo I just needed to find one of those drawings of a person in a skirt.
It was a two-storey train with the loos, buffet car and mobile phone area on the upper level.
Signs everywhere ask you, in the politest possible French terms, not to disturb your fellow train travellers with your mobile phone. There is a picture of a mobile and the words ‘Cabine Silence’ written next to it.
Your boring, shouted exchanges about stocks, bonds, soup recipes and what you really think of Auntie Jan must be carried out in the noisy space between carriages, where they belong.
The buffet car was packed and the loo occupied so I sat on the comfy couch provided on the upper level and watched fogbound France rush by the window.
An elderly man emerged from the Ladies some minutes later with a sheepish look on his face and ‘Sprung !’ blazoned across his forehead.
Entering the Ladies with proprietorial hauteur my foot felt something underfoot.
Paper towel perhaps ? Tissues ?
I looked down to see a black leather wallet stuffed with euros.
Had to be his.
There is always that moment of ‘finders keepers’ - which passes quickly when you place yourself in the loser’s position – Ladies loo defiler or not.
But where to find him on this huge train jammed with strangers ?
His flustered, beige-suited image was still fresh in my mind’s eye.
May as well start with the buffet car.
Spotted him straightaway and tapped him on the arm.
Instant recoil.
Made worse by my clumsy attempt at asking him in French if he’d just been in the toilet.
And ! Using the familiar ‘tu’ !
His face was a flurry of - ‘is it an offence to use the Ladies ?’
- ‘what does this weird creature want ?’
- ‘is she from the police ?’
- ‘what will I tell my wife ?’

But mostly, ‘Go away, infidel’.
I asked him again if perhaps he had lost something.
Relief. Patting of pockets.
I proffer the wallet and all the blood drains from his poor old French face as he clasps my hand in gratitude.
Didn’t stop him having just a tiny peek to see if all the dough was still there.
Then we do ‘merci’s and the ‘de rien’s and go our separate ways.
Full deposit in the karma bank please.
I may need it on the small plane I’m flying in through rain clouds to Germany…

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‘I am taking the train to Toulouse. Does it leave from this platform ?’ I ask the female guard at Narbonne.
‘Ah, oui,’ she replies. ‘D’ici. Quinze minutes.’
‘Do I have time to go and get a coffee ?’
‘Non, non. Restez ici,’ she says shaking her head emphatically.
We are both speaking French.
We understand each other perfectly.
Phew !
I’m out of Spain and able to communicate once more.
Such a relief !
Mine is the business of verbal communication. Being unable to converse is, for me, almost physically unbearable.
I managed in Spain, but in a very limited way. Here in France I may stumble and stutter but I’ll get there.
On the train from Narbonne I rock and roll my way to the dining car for a snack and make my first French mistake.
There is a list of available ‘sambweedges’. The chicken, lettuce and mayo one is called a ‘Fermier’.
When the snack bar man finally permits eye-contact I say,
‘Je voudrais un Fermier s’il vous plait ?’
All perfectly correct, except that I have asked for a ‘farmer’ - as opposed to the ‘farmer sandwich’.
With a huge grin he asks me if I would like a big one or a small one. His mate from the rail company who is leaning on the bar joins him in the joke as they look at me and crack up laughing.
I finally twig and tell him I would prefer a small one, thanks very much, and in a sandwich.
If this had happened in Spain I would not have had a clue what was going on.
All my romantic notions of train travel have finally been put to bed.
On board the train from Barcelona to Narbonne the first thing you notice is the overpowering stench of toilet disinfectant. It’s like travelling with your head in the men’s urinal.
The second thing you notice is that there is a guy in the seat across the aisle who is already snoring quite loudly even before the train has left the station.
He did not stop snoring all the way to Narbonne.
I believe he is still somewhere snoring.
All praise the i-pod !
Although you could still hear him between tracks.
The train is a marginally more relaxed mode of travel than flying and you do get to see a lot of very pretty scenery out the window. But you have to heft your luggage everywhere with you. Up and down stairs and escalators.
Bump, bump, bump down the steps goes the one, heavy suitcase I have restricted myself to on this 3 month trip.
Lug, lug, lug, up we thump again.
‘C’est ma maison entiere,’ I say to the one or two kind people who have helped me.( ‘It’s my whole house’).
‘Comme an escargot,’ one replied. (‘Like a snail.)’
Then you have to stuff your case into the luggage rack and watch it like a hawk for the rest of the trip.
If you’re lucky your seat will face the way the train is going, if not you travel backwards.
My three days in Toulouse were great fun.
I stayed with my Australian friend Tory McBride.
Her Frenchman (Tory hates the word ‘partner’ with good reason), Lionel (pronounced Lee-oh-nel - which is so much nicer than the way we say it), speaks about as much English as I do French but we did really well.
Toulouse is a charming town with a great history, a beautiful basilica, several universities plus hordes of students, a wide river and a canal which is a great marvel of construction.
Tory and Lionel treated me royally. Taking me out to dinner to a Morrocan restaurant for cous-cous on the first night, and a Catalonian-style restaurant on the second. On my final night we ate in, feasting on foie-gras and divine cheeses from the local market.
However.
I learned that it is a very Australian thing to go overboard and exaggerate in praise of things.
Only God is ‘divine’ maintained Lionel, as he endeavoured to teach me the art of French understatement.
If you think something is really-o, trully-o, fabuloso it is sufficient to say that it was ‘pas mal’ - ‘not bad’ - and this must be articulated with the minimum of passion and a flat inflection.
This was hard to put into practise in Toulouse where everything is pretty special.
Strolling through the market gazing at displays of fish, cheeses, wheels of sausages, skewers of frogs’ legs, mountains of weird and wonderful crustaceans, was like strolling through an art gallery !
My camera was going off !
In a glass case display opposite ‘La Maison d’Agneau’ – the House of Lamb – my eye was caught by a dish of thick, dark red, slices of liver.
I won’t eat calamari or tuna mornay but I love liver….
But this was horse liver.
This was an entire stand of horse meat.
You know that expression ‘I could eat a horse’ ? Well, in Toulouse, you can.
Jars of the local speciality, ‘cassoulet’, tubs of duck-fat, mounds of ‘rillet’ (duck pâte) and then the mustard-coloured vacuum packs of the famously controversial foie-gras itself.
‘Betty’s Creamerie’ displayed case after case of different kinds of cheeses - big wheels and small mounds.
Hard for me to resist a heart-shaped Neufchatel the size of the palm of your hand.
Hard to resist any food at all in France.
I kept saying, ‘There is no bad food in France. Even the fast-food is exquisite’. French folks beg to differ, but they haven’t eaten in a truck-stop on the Hume lately.
I didn’t use the computer much in Toulouse. Partly because the ‘wee-fee’ on my laptop wouldn’t work, but mainly because the keyboard on French computers has the letters in a completely different configuration !!!
It was like learning to speak Russian !
The numbers and the full-stop require the shift-key. The @ sign requires a science degree to execute.
I’m in the little town of Fitilieu today, just outside Lyon. Staying with my cousin Caroline Vignard and her French husband Michel.
Once again poor Michel, like Lionel in Toulouse, will be forced to sit politely while two women gasbag in English for hours on end.
Their rambling farmhouse is in a beautiful part of the countryside, surrounded by the snow-capped French Alps.
Tomorrow I go in to Grenoble where Caroline works occasionally.
The speed limit is 130 kph on French freeways.
This could be my Last Post….

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I wish I knew how to pronounce ’Rioja’ – Spain’s most common red wine.
Is it ‘Ree-oh-hah’ ? ‘Rye-oh-jar’ ? or ‘Roy-ah’ ?
Hopeless, me.
I wish I’d done the Berlitz Spano as well as the Frog and Hun.
Anyway, when you hear lines like:
‘Girls, before you tuck into your next glass of Rioja’,
you realise it must be the Englishwoman’s version of ye olde Aussoise cab sav merlot, so, I guess it doesn’t really matter how you pronounce it.
I have somehow managed to eat eggs 3 times today.
I really thought about toast and marmalade at breakfast this morning until I saw the platter of poached and thought, well, you are going to be walking a lot again today (Fatso) why not have a good breakfast.
Then, round midday, when I lost my ($A450) reading glasses and went into a manic-depressive-spiral I, notwithstanding the fact I couldn’t read anything on the menu, ordered the only thing I recognised: quiche.
All of which was acceptable.
Not losing the reading-glasses, of course.
That was devastating.
I know where I lost them.
In a magic shop.
I was attracted to the window display of myriad versions of tarot packs you could buy – Klimpt, Harry Potter, Fairy, Gummy Bear, erotic, evil etc.. - but settled for a pack of Jazz Legend playing cards. When I paid for them with my credit card it was the last time my glasses graced the end of my nose.
I went back to the shop immediately – less than ten minutes later – but they had clearly already sold them on and couldn’t remember me or my small jazz-like purchase.
Lesson: never mess with the tarot – even on a straight commercial basis.
But ordering eggs a third time tonight was just a mistake.
I cased a pizza joint across the Placa de Palau earlier today and thought, ‘You’ve pigged, you’re over-budget, I know it’s Barcelona but have something light tonight.’
Intrepid me, I trudged across the platha at 8.30 and entered the pizza parlour.
Fully staffed by Chinese.
So. I’m in Gothic Barcelona eating Italian-via-America food, served by orientals.
Multicultural ? Betcha life.
How hard can a pizza menu be to read, even with limited espagnol ?
‘Tomate’, ‘jambon’, ‘mozzarelle’,’olivio’ – I know this stuff. My kids would have no trouble.
My waiter says I can’t have wine by the glass, I have to have a half bottle at least.
Can I take the leftovers away ? Sure, he says, in Chinese Spanish.
Leftovers.
It’s a 300ml bottle.
I order the Monterosa and sit back to enjoy the sound of my Chinese waiter singing along with Rick Astley.
No, really. This parlour has been ‘Rick-rolled’.
You can tell they’re hip. They’re all wearing those stupid, low-slung, I’ve-shat-my-pants style jeans as if they were designed for them.
When a new waiter appears in a tee-shirt with the words:
‘Ain’t no cure for the rock ‘n roll’ written white on black on it - with two crossed band-aids after the word ‘cure’ - you are feeling cooler than El Jay Cool.
Two glasses down and the Monterosa arrives.
Is that a fried egg in the middle ? I ask.
Yes, is Monterosa, he replies.
I am looking at a pizza with ham, mushroom, Spanish olives and a fried egg on it.
I feel so…..Australian. A bit ….yish !…American.
Who orders fried egg pizza ? It’s an abomination.
Particularly as the dough is so crisp and delicious and would have been exquisite with some capsicum and anchovies and hot salami.
I carve my way around the yoke and wish I was dead.
A man selling long-stemmed scarlet roses comes into the parlour.
(What ? No cellophane ? No Baby’s-Breath ?)
I know he will ignore me – single, old, woman – and I am almost determined to insist on a purchase.
I pour the last glass of Rioja.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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‘Malaga ?’ I ask.
The ticket seller gives a sharp flick of her hand towards her left.
No words – Spanish or English – not even a facial expression.
It 6.45 a.m. on the Spanish side of the Gibraltar-Spain frontier at La Linea.
The Spanish have no love for Gibraltar. The road signs on La Linea have paint-ball splotches on the very name of the Rock. You are on your own once across the border.
You don’t speak Spanish ? Tough titty.
There is no-one at the window to her left.
I roll my cases around to where the coaches are waiting.
The dismissive ticket-seller is out the back having a cigarette and a chat with another woman. The coaches are lined up, warming their engines.
No. They don’t sell tickets there.
Nothing for it but to roll the cases back inside, sit down and wait.
It’s half an hour before the bus leaves.
On a whim I turn around and the left-hand window is open for business with the ticket-seller’s buddy at the till.
Ten euros and small change later and I’m legal.
Estapona, Marbella, Torremolino, Fuengirola and finally Malaga.
At some time in the recent past Malaga must have undergone some kind of blitz.
The entire city is under reconstruction. Whole streets have been torn up. Traffic is restricted to one lane and crawls at snail’s pace.
Have they won the Olympics franchise or what ?
What is going on ?
The whole Costa del Sol is in a frenzy of construction.
Cranes block out the skyline. Everybody’s buying in.
Malaga is a city in progress.
Malaga Airport is CHAOS.
It’s like Beirut. Or the Gaza Strip.
When they re-directed our Gibraltar flight the other day they must have forced us to land at some distant outpost runway of Malaga Airport. That terminal had no shops or cafes or duty-free. It was like Coffs Harbour or Mount Gambier.
Malaga Airport proper – Pablo Ruis Picasso Airport – is bigger than Houston, Texas.
I’m flying Spanair to Barcelona today.
Why do I keep thinking Spamalot ?
Spanair has four classes: Business, Avant, economy +, and economy.
I’m in ‘economy’ where in-flight refreshments consist of:
‘Would you care for some water ?’
and
a mint.
A Smint, in fact.
During my hour or so in the departure lounge I had a chance to observe some of my fellow travellers. My favourites were a very cosmopolitan, middle-aged couple of indeterminate nationality.
He was busily flicking through a porn magazine while his wife read a novel.
No, really, they were sitting directly opposite me and I couldn’t help notice that he was looking at a full frontal nude woman. Then at some cars.
I had to look away in case he thought I might like to share. When I looked back he was deep in contemplation of a double-page spread of a male nude with the hands clasped over the interesting bits.
He spent a lot longer looking at him.
What a wonderful relationship, I thought. He with his porn, she with her novel. And off to Malaga. With me.
Spanair’s in-flight magazine is, of course, called Spanorama.

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I did love my stay at The Rock Hotel but all is not well there.
It is the perfect setting for an Agatha Christie style murder and I’d love to come back and write it but I’m not so sure the hotel will still be here in its present form when I return.
During my stay I have been wandering around in my home-made clothes and trainers, feeling a little like Olivia de Havilland’s character in Rebecca – a little out of place, a little down-market.
After three days, however, I’m beginning to realise that the hotel itself is not all it’s cracked up to be.
I was treated to lunch in the grand dining-room today.
The maitre de seemed decidedly more flaky in the full light of midday than he appears at breakfast.
More obsequious too, toward those who could afford the menu fixe to the accompaniment of a medley of the blandest pop-tunes in history tarnishing the keys of the grand piano.
A Spanish Ian Dury minus the club foot, his enormous collar sat up like the Mad Hatter’s, refusing to lie flat under his jacket or, at least, button up beneath his tie.
The grey striped morning pants were much shinier and there were soup stains on the sleeves of his navy jacket.
The owner was pointed out to me gliding to his table in a flurry of guests and being fawned upon by all and sundry.
A cross between Orson Welles and Robert Morley, he was a large man who walks with the aid of a stick. Faded olive skin with age-spots, double-breasted suit. He seemed quite the genial host.
I saw him later that day tossing a ball of paper at a member of the reception staff and both of them laughing at his little joke.
The staff know the place is on the slide.
Rumours are rife that it will soon be sold.
During a recent, major make-over every effort was made to emphasise The Rock Hotel’s gentility and cultural history but most people don’t give a rats.
Particularly the English, it would seem.
They want what you get as standard in any other hotel in the world.
David Beckham’s just bought one of the fancy new apartments down on the waterfront. The ‘new Gibraltar’, like the rest of the Costa del Sol, is prime, absolute-waterfont real estate.
People don’t care that Ernest Hemmingway once lived at The Rock Hotel.
Ernest who ?
Fact is, the pool’s not working, some of the plumbing is dodgy, the croissants are dry and hard and the prices are steep.
I am, in fact, their ideal guest. Gagging for the past, for a taste of the gin and tonic sophistication of its colonial heyday.
I don’t give a rats about David-bloody-Beckham and his skeletal moll !
I stroll through the Barbary Bar feeling all Deborah Kerr and David Niven. I gaze out from my balcony and try to imagine how it was for my mother and father on this crazy rock.
I am up to the neck in nostalgia and willing to pay for it.
Even so, I can see the writing on the wall.
The farce at the airport on the day I arrived is as nothing to the chaos which took place this morning.
My very helpful Welsh receptionist - with the curiously un-Welsh name of Crystal – was alone at her post with all the phones ringing and a queue of stroppy guests.
The airport was experiencing some kind of a breakdown which had nothing to do with the weather. It was a perfect day outside with no wind, but all the check-in desks had closed and no-one had an explanation.
Crystal was saying fifty different kinds of sorry to an elderly couple but they falling on both kinds of deaf ears.
Pacing like a bull at the rear of the queue an ugly Englishman in a yellow cashmere sweater only a wife who hated him would allow him to wear, was very close to blowing a gasket.
His taxi was waiting, his four-year-old daughter was giving him the shits by being sunny and sweet to everyone. In his fist he was clutching the soft monkey toy The Rock attaches to all room keys.
He could barely control his rage while Crystal put three ringing phones on hold.
No pressure from me.
I was happy to wait. All I wanted was a laundromatte.
Crystal lets out an exasperated sound and began to explain the situation at the airport and the lack of hotel staff to the next woman in the queue who was making sympathetic noises when Mr Yellow Cashmere slammed his monkey on the counter and demanded a print-out of his bill.
The woman demurred and Crystal began to fold it and hand it to him with more apologies.
‘Don’t worry,’ he hissed. ‘We won’t be back.’
Never backward in coming forward, I asked him if he had a bad time during his stay.
He flashed furious eyes at me as if it was my fault.
‘This place is a disgrace,’ he snapped, then thundered down the steps to his cab.
The woman whose place he had taken, Crystal and I looked at each other and made noises of disgust.
‘He’s obviously never had to work with people.’
‘There’s no need for rudeness.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ we reassured Crystal, who, in turn reassured us that this was her second-last day in the place and she was just cursing herself for not phoning in sick like everyone else.
The rats are leaping from the poop deck of this sinking ship.
Maybe I’ll be able to say that I was there during the last days of The Rock.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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Life without a mobile phone.
Unthinkable.
Every granny is taking calls.
Ringtones clog the air.
Everybody’s talking atcha or doing the Dance of Thumbs.
No conversation can wait.
‘Hi, what’s happening ?’
‘Hey, hi ! Chillin’ dude, you ?’
Can’t be seen to be out of the loop.
Lucky I’m overseas. Where it doesn’t count.
Where my mobile doesn’t work.
Mobile cold turkey. No-call narcan.
It’s not my fault. I just can’t get charge for my Virgin.
All my natural responses - random calls, information updates, commentary, footy scores - stymied.
I’m in a No-Share Zone.
Forced to store information, to horde responses, take notes, postpone gratification.
ALMOST DRIVEN TO LANDLINE.
Like, with coins ? Or a phonecard ? Like, so last century.
Not only that, I haven’t read a paper in 3 days !
Or switched on the tv. Well, not much point in the last one -
I am in the northern hemi.
SO out of the loop. Forced inwards, towards the soul.
This way creativity lies.
Init.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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The best laid plans of birthday girls oft get blown off course by much hotter air.
Thursday April 10th, my birthday and I’m heading to the very spot where I first drew breath.
Our British Airways flight to Gibraltar is captained by Hugh Laurie.
The voice is a dead giveaway.
While it is reassuring to know that there is someone on board who can diagnose and cure any disease in just under fifty minutes I’d really rather the plane was under the command of someone with a bit of flying experience. William Shattner, say.
My worries increase when the safety spiel, delivered by Princess Hostie Pants, is in a brogue so chumpy you could carve it.
As luck would have it I am familiar with the wee drill, hen.
At least, I thought I was…. Wait a minute…
Did she just say that British Airways issue life jackets are ‘tied with a double bow at the side’ ?
Cute. Very Vivienne Westwood.
Not long into the flight Captain Hugh informs us that there’s ‘a spot of weather on The Rock’ and that we might just have to jolly well land at Malaga instead.
Now, the Rock is very small – just over 6 square kilometres doesn’t allow much margin for error.
Also the landing strip is part of the main street.
They close the barriers just like we do at level crossings and ring a little bell and everyone waits for the plane to land before crossing the road to continue shopping at Sainsbury’s.
Anything over 20 mph winds from the southwest and even the brilliant Dr. House is in trouble.
Today’s winds are gusting 35 mph plus and show no signs of abating.
Don’t you go trying any heroics just because it’s my birthday and I’ve got a book to write, Hugh.
I’m happy to go to Malaga. I love Spain. I choose life !
I clung to life by a thin thread during the descent into Malaga.
So many sharp, craggy looking mountains below.
So much rocking and rolling and bumping and grinding in the heavy cross-winds.
Symmetry, I thought, we will have symmetry: you will live and die on your birthday.
I lived to tell the tale but worse was yet to come.
At the Malaga passport check-in anyone with dark skin, slanty eyes or an eastern block accent was asked to sit on plastic chairs while the rest of us overweight, pasty-faced anglos with obnoxious toddlers named Jessssica (!) or horsey-faced wives with bleached teeth and sun-lounge damage, were waved through.
To wait.
For the baggage.
To arrive.
To wish.
We had bought some water.
Or.
A snack.
To hope.
That Jesssssica (!) would fall off the baggage carousel and have to stay at the Malaga Children’s Hospital indefinitely.
Just to give her parents and her brother a break !
Two hours and 49 golf courses later we had made it down the Costa del Sol to the border between Spanish Spain and British Gibraltar.
Same geography, different nationality.
Starving and dehydrated, our wagon-train of 5 coachloads of passengers crawled across La Linea to The Rock.
I was in such a state of excitement and emotion to see my home-rock again that it took me a while to realise that the coach had ground to a halt but nothing was happening.
The doors weren’t opening. People had stood up and collected their belongings but after ten minutes or so had sat back down again.
We sat.
In the coach.
For twenty-five minutes.
No-one.
Asked any questions.
We could see the driver of the coach in front making a lot of wild gestures to the traffic policeman who continued shaking his head.
Then everyone started looking behind the coaches and we could see a plane taxi-ing to the runway.
The gates closed, the bells were rung, and, very close to our coaches, the plane took off.
Seems you can take off with 20 mph plus winds, you just can’t land.
The sea was churning, massive winds rocking the boats in the harbour.
And still.
We hadn’t moved.
Finally a police escort of one in a big car arrived to lead us all the way back to the airport on the other side of the landing strip.
Seems we had to pretend that we had just flown in.
Would they make us climb up and down the stairs ?
Round we drove, towards the terminal, where a group of men were waving their arms at us and telling us to drive around in a big circle again because we’d come in the wrong way…..
The wind was howling, I was close to howling, but ended up laughing hysterically.
It was SO comic, so sort of Spanish – and yet, British.
At 4.20pm I kicked back in the famous bar of The Rock hotel with a glass of champagne and a triple-dekker club sandwich, and toasted the precise time, date and location of my 59th birthday.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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You know you’re ‘home’ in England when Full Breakfast includes fried bread. Fried in delicious lard – bring it on !
I haven’t seen or tasted fried bread like that since the last time my mother cooked it for me, God rest her long-departed soul.
The scent of hot pink bacon wafted through the corridors of my quaint hotel in Gatwick at 6.30 this morning.
The siren squeal of so many of Circe’s victims calling me to breakfast. I tucked into bacon so thick and mottled it looked like old human skin, poached eggs glistening with oil, baked beans, mushrooms, fried bread – of course ! – and a breakfast sausage. What we used to call a ‘cowboy’s breakfast’.
The tea was about as perfect as tea can get – the only bag involved was me.
I hoovered the lot, then unfolded my complimentary copy of The Independent to read that:
‘A sausage a day increases the risk of bowel cancer by a fifth’.
Oops !
Won’t have one tomorrow. Promise.
On the same page, by the way, accompanied with lurid photo:
‘Toothless menopausal women are three times as prone to hypertension as those with teeth.’
English papers, what’s not to like ?
My hotel is a kind of mock-tudor/Spanish mission style affair with endless, narrow, low-ceilinged, carpeted corridors and solid oak-ish doors.
I can’t help feeling like Maxwell Smart as I stride towards my room flinging open door after door and humming ‘dum da D-A-H dah !’
Fridges, it seems, do not come as standard in English hotels. Even the humblest ho-ey/mo-ey on the side of the Hume has a fridge in every cabin.
Clearly, it’s cold enough here to cool beer to local standards simply by leaving it outside but I need to freeze an ice-pack for my international-flight-induced knee injury.
24 hours’ maintenance of personal-space rights with an oversized Welshman’s thighs has had a derogatory effect on my ligaments.
The national airline carrier should dip its wings in shame at the conditions they force economy passengers to travel in.
Surely they are transgressing some kind of international code of cruelty.
The nice lady at Boots told me, no, they didn’t carry ice-packs but I might find them at the hardware store…
Boots, for those of you playing at home, is the MyChemist of Britain.
Then again W.J.Smith – the national newspaper chain – sells Neurofen.
Novels, apparently, can be purchased at the national gardening supply chain - trees – paper – books - there is a link.
I was going to stay in my hotel-by-the-flightpath and rest my knee all day today in preparation for my flight to Gibraltar tomorrow, but I noticed there was an exhibition of Dan Dare memorabilia on at the Science Museum in sunny South Kensington (cue Donovan song) which closed on April 30th. I was returning to Britain on May 1st, so, there was nothing for it but to wash down a couple of newsagent-special, anti-inflammatories and think of England.
Dan Dare was the science-fiction superhero of Eagle magazine and I was addicted to his adventures as a kid.
His arch-enemy was the Mekon – a lurid green, fetus-like creature who floated about on his own cushion dispensing evil to the universe.
I had nightmares about the Mekon. I wanted to go and look him in the eye and tell him he didn’t scare me anymore.
They told me the quickest way uptown was via the Gatwick express direct to Victoria. And it was. And it was clean efficient and fabulous. And all the announcements were done in 7 languages. And there were toilets on the train. And it cost TWENTY POUNDS !!!!
I was thinking maybe five, ten perhaps……
At the Gatwick train access a very nice policewomen told me NOT to use the travelator, to keep to the right, in single file, because they were training the dogs.
Then I heard something you don’t hear a lot in Australia – an announcement over the P.A. that there was a service in the Gatwick chapel at 11 this morning for anyone wishing to participate.
You’ve got your dogs, you’ve got your God – it’s all part of the service.
Turned out the Dan Dare exhibition wasn’t on.
It opens on April 30th.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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