All trips have two lives__one when you wake up each morning and think, ah where should I go today? And the other when you are back and recounting the wheres you went. The trip then lives through the stories that change with the person you are telling them to. Some friends hear about the Monets and the Vermeers, others about the pubs, yet others about the types of cheese. But parents listen to everything, all the silly things from the shoe bites to the ‘my room was on the fourth floor and I had to lug up all my luggage’. And what mothers really want to know is what you ate__and whether you ate enough.
I did eat lots, considering it was France and had more than my share of drinks. If it was beer in London, it was wine in France. And so it continued into the flight back where when I asked for some white I was given two bottles. No, the steward was not flirting with me. Since my flight from Paris to London was delayed and I had had to run to catch my flight while my luggage decided to continue being on vacation and return the next day, AND my window seat had been allocated to someone else and there was no space in the overhead lockers, I had plenty to moan about as I walked into the plane breathless from all that running to gate 23. The steward, who had probably identified me as a ‘problem passenger’, said I could moan to my neighbour but showed his concern throughout with “How are you doing then?s” and “You ok?” And of course tons of wine to shut me up.