As an old lady I wonder if I can still pull?
I'm married and living with my husband so I'm not alone in the world. But the old urges never really die, I find. The quest, the desire to flirt, test.
My children kindly egg me on about this, and say I should see what happens.
Recently at the theatre, I went to look at the set during the interval. My children were sitting in the auditorium, eating ice-creams (they too hang on to old desires, even as young adults, so ice-cream is still high on their list of things to do in the interval).
I stood for no more than 2 minutes looking at the stage before a (handsome) man came and stood beside me. We talked about the set, all very mild.
Behind me I could hear guffaws from my offspring.
They thought it was fast work on my part, though I had not been thinking about flirting at all - I just wanted to look at the intricacies of the set (it was the Little Shop of Horrors).
They said later they were impressed with the speed with which I attracted a man to my side. Very flattering.
Now we have a house-guest, someone I've known since I was 20 and he urges me to come to bed with him while my husband is at the dentist. I say no, but feel flattered again. He keeps talking about it. Neither of us look all that glamorous, we are fatter and saggier than when we first knew each other.
I say 'Not yet', and he snorts. 'How long will I have to wait? Forty years?'
I say I don't know.
See - I can still pull.

Clear out

Something very odd has happened. In the last few months, while a lot of our stuff has been stashed away in a friend's barn, and while we were away travelling and using very little as we went, my attitude to all my 'belongings' has changed. I've come home, looked at all this stuff with a beady eye and decided I don't want it.
Things I have cherished and kept and hung on to and stored and lost and found and lost again - well, now, with a clear conscience, I find I can just throw them out.
Hallelujah!
My mother's stuff, my grandmother's stuff, my old school stuff, my kids' stuff, books, papers, clothes, furniture, paintings, antiques, ceramics, art, boots, gadgets, crocks, garden things - all of it - out it goes.
I put masses of this stuff out on the pavement in front of my house, with signs saying 'Help yourself', and within a few hours, it all disappeared. I didn't even have to take it to the charity shops. I could put up a notice to say 'Please make a donation to the charity of your choice' I suppose, but it seems to me that in giving all this stuff away, I am engaging in a primal act of charity - free donation.
Almost nothing has caused me a pang. One silly item I slightly regret losing, bought a few years ago at a French village 'vide grenier' for about five pence - a strange ceramic cowl to sit in a chimney to keep out the rain, with heart shapes cut out of its ironstone sides.
Otherwise I have given away blankets, curtains, antique chairs, shoes, plate racks, saucepans, tables, a TV, books, bike bits, fabric, dust sheets, piles of nice old plates, a telephone, a clothes airer, a jam saucepan, baskets, an iron, a shower unit, baby clothes, loads of stuff.....
To me, there are two great blessings which have come from this. I have a lot more SPACE and I am totally exhilarated by the new sense of freedom I have found from giving it all away.
In fact I have spent all my life using THINGS to help me work out who I am. If I had 'this' I would clearly be seen as 'this' kind of person. If I had 'that' I could be 'that' kind of person.
Now - due to a lot of work in therapy groups (Promis) and in Al-Anon, and on my own, I can be myself without reference to these external items. I no longer have the urge to buy every desirable object I see in shops, and I no longer need to hold on to these things just because I happen to have them, or they happened to be my mother's, or whatever.
I realise that before I could ever have physically disposed of all this stuff, I had to do it in my head. The result is painless.
There is too much stuff in the Western world. I am relinquishing my grasp on a houseful of it.

Investment

Today I went with an accountant friend to hear a presentation by someone looking for people to invest in his biotech company. He has a new medicine which he says can treat - relieve, not cure - a list of diseases which make your eyes water: HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, Hepatitis C, some forms of arthritis, open wounds. It can be used to treat race-horses too. He has spent the last several years battling the pharmaceutical giants who (according to him) really wanted to suppress this new drug, and are now trying to get into discussions with him so they can buy it from his company.

He was an interesting fellow - hating scientists and academics he said, ignoring regulations, with fantastic connections (Gordon Brown, Elton John), ready to argue with anyone.

One of the people in the room was a pharmacologist who had money to invest - he took a bit of the flak and then walked out early.

So far, the people who have invested in this company are the little people - individual doctors, firms of accountants, a judge, some solicitors, and grateful family members whose relatives have been included in the miraculous trials which this drug has already undergone. The speaker had wild ideas about the value of his company - 'millions' and 'billions' were words floating around.

We saw how one simple injection could transform the life, strength, vision, or mobility of many different patients. Families devastated by disease suddenly had hope again. Our presenter evidently takes shots of this stuff every few days and has never felt so well. He's in his 70s but feels hale and hearty. He says post-menopausal women have to start using contraception again if they take his medicine, as their youth is restored to them and they start ovulating.

Clearly, this drug would be a knock-out, if all he says is true. Who would not want to have shares in it? But, I am not sure. Maybe this was not the best person to make a financial presentation. He mostly wanted to talk about the various fights he's had over the years proving to people that his serum works. I have asked for some detailed accounts and will make my decision later.

Caravan

For my fiftieth birthday my husband bought me an old caravan. It's a Europa, built in about 1980, and equipped with five beds, a small compartment for a portaloo, a tiny kitchen, lockers, wardobe, carpet, and period lighting. I fell in love with its charming interior with bouclé curtains and styling designed in the seventies.

For the last seven years or so it has lived in France and for the last seven months in a 'new' campsite, Camping des Trolls, not far from Boulogne. Nicolas, the owner of the site, used to manage a different site further up the hill (where we'd been very happily based) but didn't manage to buy it so he moved to this one instead and as he is now the owner of it, he's renamed it and painted his favourite design of fairies, imps, pixies and trolls on the office wall.

The Accueil (Reception) and Café is all inside an old single-decker bus, which his girlfriend has done out in brilliant lime green inside. Actually it looks wonderful, typically French, as none of the rest of the colour-scheme matches. Nick is creating a catering kitchen and cooks simple meals for the evenings for late July and August. Outside, Nick and his friends have done an amazing job cutting back the undergrowth, creating 'emplacements' for each caravan or tent. The site is sloping so he used a tractor and digger during the winter to do some levelling. We weren't sure quite how well our old caravan would be placed - he did it for us during the spring - but we found it tucked up against a huge old ash tree and a field-maple, with plenty of space around it, and enough shade and sunlight to make it a very pleasant pitch.

We put the awning up, laid down a groundsheet, cleaned the windows with some sort of patent carwindow cleaner, hoovered out the spiders from the curtains, set it all up for the summer. Our daughter is going to stay there next week for a few days with her friends, and we have various people booked in to stay during the summer holidays. WE don't charge much as it isn't luxurious and lots of people don't have much of a budget anyway. But all the contributions help to pay the rent - which is €1250 a year.

It's possible to walk to a supermarket from this new site, along a quiet lane, past the local chateau, over the motorway on a bridge, then into Marquise. You can also walk to various fishing lakes, or (in the other direction) drive about 6km to the amazing beach at Wissant, with its miles of safe white sands. I am sure that is the origin of the name - white sand = wissant, perhaps in some sort of Anglo-Saxon. The church in the marketplace in Wissant has a formidably interesting statue of a local saint, Wilgeforth, a bearded lady. Born in Portugal, she declared herself a bride of Christ, and even sprouted a beard to show she could not marry a mortal man. Her father nonetheless insisted and had her martyred for refusing to obey his wishes. In this case, she was crucified by being tied to a cross and that is how her statue portrays her. The carving is probably early 19th century, with a pretty floral dress and under-petticoat, her dainty wrists and ankles tied to a cross. Her face is exactly like Noel Edmunds.

There is also a statue of St Nicholas (always found near the sea or by rivers, as he is patron saint of sailors as well as being Father Christmas). You can always recognise him as he is shown with a barrel containing some small boys - these he saved from being boiled and eaten alive during a seige. The many stories told about him make him one of my all-time favourites, even though I am not a Christian.

It is ancient old legends like these which give me hope - stories with such extravagant twists and turns kept going from pagan times, through the Roman period, into Christianity and the modern age, and tremendous pieces of art scattered round the churches and elsewhere to keep them alive. Northern France is rich with them and it makes even short holidays a real pleasure, as each village, town or hamlet seems to have something of the sort to discover.

So, Nick's Camping des Trolls will be full of children again this year, and families of all nationalities who seek out his slightly hippy way of doing things - not at all like the severe municipal campsites which are the norm in France. There will be music and wine and sunshine and trips to the beach, and boules and table tennis and so much more. Vive la France!

Travelling

Having been limited to family holidays for the last several years, taking the children to wherever we could afford, usually not very far from home, we have been lucky in going on two extended trips in the last couple of months.

When we came home from our 3 weeks in America, we had 3 days at home and then set out again, this time by car, down through Europe. Our destination was a marina at Split in Croatia, where friends of my husband keep their yacht and we were invited to sail with them for a week.

Leaving Dunquerke (or rather, the wonderfully named Loon Plage) we idled through the stinking and spectacular coastal industry of Northern Belgium, then headed down into Germany.

We had thought about going to see Beethoven's ear-trumpet in his museum in Bonn, but traffic and suburbia drove us away. Henceforward we tried to avoid large cities and stayed in the byways.

We saw many varieties of Christmas Tree, or May Tree, in the neat villages as we passed. These were immensely tall, mostly still alive, but with only a very few green living branches at the top. The bark of each tree was scoured away in spirals or stripes and all the branches removed, so the tree was like a bare totem pole, or maypole, set in the centre of each village. Some had ribbons or tinsel still attached. Others looked completely dead. But each village had one.

We drove alongside the Rhine, fast flowing, with those crazy castles perched along the sides, and the vineyards running on precipitous slopes all the way along. Weirs control the levels of water, huge barges swing round in the dangerous currents, and locals go boating in ridiculously small skiffs and canoes. Eventually we reached the amazing walled city of Rothenburg-am-Tauber. It was bombed to smithereens in the war, and was rebuilt as a much-loved replica, so you can walk round its parapet defences, and marvel at the medieval carving in the churches. It has so many stories, and an inviting scale. It also has an ever-so self-conscious memorial called the Jewish Dance House, proving that for a while at least, Jews lived harmoniously in the midst of them all, in the Middle Ages.

At last we spotted the Alps - the Austrian Alps - and we camped in a small sloping field at the foot of the first mountains. No sooner were we pitched and cooking than a thunderstorm blew up, and we spent the night in a ferocious flood of rainwater and crashes of thunder, echoing round the mountains. Splendid.

Then, on and to the south, up through the passes, nearly into the snow fields, through settlements which clearly only existed during the skiing season: smart modern hotels and cafés all completely closed. At one point the road was temporarily closed while a mountaineering team scaled up a sheer cliff above the road, in order to blast some loose boulders down. The team was from the local council. Among our companions in the patient traffic jam on the road was a vanload of very overhung German football fans, who wanted us to take their photographs and thought it was fantastically amusing that there were English tourists so far from home.

This was a long drive - down to Ljubljana and on through Slovenia, down to the Mediterranean, or rather, the Adriatic.

There are so many subtle changes as you go along, the architecture changing gradually from district to district, the horticulture and the rough plants changing in character according to the climate and the soil. As we got down to the warmer sea, the plantings were looking almost English, with elderflower still in blossom, and no olive groves in sight till considerably further south. Things look very poor here, you can see the effects of all the years of Communism and of war.

The coast road hugs the cliffs as you drive south towards Split. It is impossible to go much faster than 40 mph. There is little to cheer you up. There are tiny campsite clinging to the beaches, and ugly concrete houses offering rooms, but truly little to tempt you, at the beginning.

We reached Senj, a shining wide port with cafés and style and trees and a white marble harbour. There we found a hotel overlooking the sea, and went out to find a meal. We turned back from the places on the front and went into the old town, and there had a resplendent and yet simple meal of fish. Maimed cats slunk about, not daring to look at us. A male blackbird, keeping fierce watch over his baby girl blackbird, screamed incessantly to her to 'Watch out!!!!' every time one of the cats moved. No-one spoke any English. The sun shone, the air was warm, we were very happy. Back at the little hotel, scrupulously clean, we crashed out - and then woke up as another massive thunderstorm created havoc in the air above us. We felt glad to be inside and not still under canvas.

The next day we reached Split - it was raining, but our friends welcomed us aboard and when things brightened up, we motored round to the main harbour. Going ashore in the tiny inflatable dinghy was alarming for one so scared as I, but we managed ok and walked up to the old Jewish cemetery which overlooks the whole bay. There is a Hebrew inscription above the door of what is now a cafe. We could see the outline of Diocletian's Palace, which was our next port of call. If you have not been there, you should pencil it in to your diary. What a story! [To be continued].

Roots

We have just come home from an extended journey across the United States, looking for our roots. That must be fairly unusual - mostly we hear of Americans trawling the so-called old world to find their origins. In this case, we have uncles or aunts living - all immigrants to the States since World War II - who know about the old family stories and that is what we went to find.

It was such a strange adventure, so poignant and full of discoveries I think it ought to be made into a book. There were themes which arose unexpectedly - of dementia, loss, memory, anger, old grievances, mothers, politics, anecdotes and coincidences - which knitted our various points of stay together quite bizarrely.

The American election was of course in full swing during our visit. Hillary Clinton was still bashing away trying to win the Democratic nomination. The attitudes of our various hosts to her predicament, and even more extremely their reactions to the prospect of a black candidate ranged from one pole to the other. For some of our hosts, Barrack Obama is the only person who could kindle hope for the young. For others he was more-or-less Satan incarnate.

In many of the households we stayed, there had been recent and actual bereavement.. In others our friends and relations were living with a frightening and anticipatory form of death - dementia in a loved-one, maybe Alzheimer's Disease. None of them had much if any medical insurance. They were using their own resources, and the tension was palpable. We were asked to watch, observe, reassure.

There was one really bizarre discovery, a coincidence whose odds I cannot calculate. Soon after our arrival in the States, we stayed for 3 days with friends in Maine. They used to live near us in England, in a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere - a lane called South Street.

Two weeks and thousands of miles later, we were in California and I was browsing through the old family papers of my uncle, who died a few years ago. His widow, my kindly auntie Pat, let me rummage to my heart's content and I opened up all his files. He had been interested in plotting the family ancestry, always searching for some extra-grand connections, something royal or distinctive, and he had gone to the trouble of employing an English genealogist for a year or two, at some considerable expense, to try to prove something or other. I read the letters he had received from the researcher. The correspondence started normally enough - details of names and dates and places of birth evidently sent by my uncle, and reports back from the historian trying to track down the various family lines. Gradually a tone of bewilderment crept into the letters from the genealogist - he was evidently answering letters from uncle L which were verging on the crazy, things of fantasy. By the end of 28 months, the correspondence finished, the professional signing off with relief.

To me, what was fascinating was this strange little fact: the genealogist lived (lives for all I know) in a cottage right next door - actually attached - to the one once lived in by our friends now in Maine. They were neighbours for many years. Out of all the houses in England, all the millions of places where our friends might have dwelled, or where this genealogist might have lived, it turns out they were immediate next-door neighbours. There was absolutely no connection whatever between my uncle and my friends. I had not met these friends at the time my uncle stopped paying the genealogist. It was a complete coincidence. I was the connecting factor and did not know it till I looked through that box of papers.

I was in such a supercharged state of consciousness by the time I found this out, I almost fainted. We had had nearly three weeks of intense interviewing and discovery, and travel too of course, and the full emotional load of a large family scattered across the world.

Maybe writing this here will spoil the chance of writing it out properly. I hope not.

Rant

This evening on television I saw Rick Stein bewailing the end of the swordfish catches in the fishing ports of North Africa. We saw the carcases of huge fish, with their huge dead eyes, worth perhaps £1,000 each to the fishermen, stacked up ready for freighting out to the restaurants of Europe. Stein said how worried he is by the imminent decline of these marvellous fish, which are so tasty. His whole premise is to look for edible fish in the Mediterranean.

Five minutes later, in a programme about early (1920s) film footage shot in North Africa, we saw clips of young prostitutes in the same North African towns and ports. Wobbling their tiny breasts in the air and grinning, these girls (presumably long dead now) pranced and plied their rotten stinking trade, hoping to earn enough to keep body and soul together in a corrupted society, where females were and are trash, and capital destroys lives.

It was hard not to draw parallels between the doomed and beautiful swordfish and the doomed and crazy young women on the dockside of Tangier. Both were hopelessly netted and had no chance. Stein warbled on about the hearty meals of fishermen the world over. He didn't mention the price, or the smells down there on the dockside.