Back in his room at Brunel University he had this Buffy St Marie record and I taught myself to play the tune on my guitar, and I learned its words. They seemed so apt to us, in a relationship we could not sustain:
"Don't ask why"...
"and here you'll stay until it's time for you to go".
"Yes, we're different. Worlds apart. We're not the same..."
but we were the same, and only a sea apart, a slightly different faith apart.
Having written that, now I remember more about that holiday:
- visiting P & M, old family friends that I'd spent a previous summer with and who were holidaying in the Bordeaux region, knocking on the door and hearing an invitation, we stepped in to the family's surprised faces. P had said, not "Entrez" but "Qui est là? It must have been shock to have us visit in late evening and dark. Their son, F, quizzed me on our sleeping arrangements in our tent - cheeky nearly teenage boy!
- the torrential typical Mediterranean downpour, so DW had to wake me because i was sleeping in a newly created stream! We spent the rest of that night in the men's showers, and packed and left in the morning. But the sun came out and by midday, all our clothes were dry, including our sleeping bags sitting on the top of our ruck sacks, as we hitched in the heat. one night our hitch dropped us int middle of who-knows-where, but not near a campsite, so we pitched our tent surreptitiously and hopefully in a small wood by the side of the road, slept and got up early to be off before someone came saw us and complained we were trespassing.
- one lift took hours to get and DW was getting grumpier and grumpier, so I was attempting to balance him with cheerfulness. he complimented me after, but I felt I was forcing it, yet he never knew and my cheer took us through to the next lift.
After that summer, we started our first jobs, in London, hardly a city apart, only a few suburbs between East London and the west. We kept in touch for a few months, then, since our paths didn't cross again, we lost touch. It was time to go.
