FIDELMA COOK

INCREASINGLY, as my leg continues to heal, I feel the urge to get in the car and drive. Drive and drive and drive, ending up, ideally, by a wild Atlantic beach to be reinvigorated by winddriven waves smashing the sand. Drive to a city, book into a hotel with linen sheets, walls whispering luxury and deferential staff anticipating my wants.

Drive to all parts of France to see and sometimes meet, for the first time, all the people who have invited me over the years.

Drive further south and linger in the Camargue, seeking the wild horses, smelling the salt.

Technically there is nothing stopping me. Nothing.

Much as I would love to be accompanied by Cesar, I fear he will never have the sophistication of Portia, who would drape herself on a bed and practically place a breakfast order.

No, Cesar still has no boundaries and, unlike the rest of his breed, he is a needy, barking howler who would have us ejected on social grounds. But I could deposit him in The Dog Inn and walk away knowing that under Trudi’s care he will not miss me for a moment. Indeed his disappointment on my return simply reinforces how happy he is with the woman who minded him for the almost four months I was in hospital.

Of course money is always an issue, as it is for most of us, but selling a few extra stories would soon cover most trips.

In my first couple of years I felt no need to escape. After all, hadn’t I just pulled off the great escape merely by coming here?

Plus the house and this area were still a great novelty and I was pouring every last penny into making it more comfortable. Literally every last penny.

So between sunning myself and making new friends, I fretted if I didn’t conform to old work patterns and find a story a day.

It took a long, long while to accept there were no longer any stories a day to find and even longer to learn to live within my much-reduced circumstances without trusting fate as I always used to do.

(Mind you, it’s always easier to trust to fate when you have a fat salary, big expenses, a wad of credit cards, a company car and what seem to be years ahead of you.)

So I shrunk, along with my incomings, and limited my world year by year; finding reasons – mainly financial – as to why I wouldn’t hop a plane for a weekend in London or Glasgow.

There was truth though in my reasoning.

How could I go back to my scattercash days and friends; mentally cringing now as they casually ordered a bottle of champagne with my turn next?

My independence and pride, to start with, would never have allowed me to accept their generosity in paying for all. No, if I can’t pay my way then I don’t go. As simple as that.

So people stopped asking, or rather left it at: “You know you can come here any time. Any time.”

And they came to me instead, but of course that dwindles over the years too. It’s inevitable if one doesn’t put oneself similarly out.

Then the various breaks left me unsure, unsteady and, in truth, frightened of navigating the polished floors, escalators and crowds of airports and train stations.

So other excuses were trotted out, and when demolished, were met with my silence and blunt, obstinate, mulish refusal.

How I’ve despised the person I’ve become; sickened by my own perceived fragility and the loss of self, the old brave, careless self.

A couple of weeks ago I dropped Cesar off at his kennels, put a bag in the back of the car and headed to a chateau in the Dordogne to meet up with my son and his wife for two nights. They were on their way to a wedding but as she was three weeks from giving birth it was easier to meet sort of halfway.

I was touched, and shocked, that both were thrilled I’d turned up for, I realised, I have missed several little milestones in their short life together.

A couple, including their Provencal wedding, were not of my making. But others were.

Driving up, as France spread its beauty on either side of me and land changed from sunflower to grape, I felt a fresh appreciation of all around.

As in the old days I sang to myself: “On the road again …” And with each kilometre I felt the old me, the true me, return.

As we strolled in the cobbled streets of Perigueux towards its stunning cathedral heart, I was slower than them and sometimes unbalanced as the muscles kick-start themselves still. That is a fact I’m dealing with. That and my introspection by isolating myself and being isolated.

But more self-physio and less morbid acceptance will go a long way to overcoming it. And so, after much laughter and wine (of course) I drove back with many promises made.

A little bit of me still shrinks at facing that airport. But a bigger bit of me kicks and yawns: Get over it.

And later, well, I plan to drive, drive and drive.