How to Be

I don't know about you, but no matter where I am, I always want to be somewhere else. Many people have experienced this feeling, most typically when they are at work, but for me it is an affliction that can strike anywhere. I could be sipping champagne in St Barts with Russell Crowe, and there I would be, suntanned and tipsy, wondering what Hugh Jackman was up to.


If I am at home reading a book, I wish I was in a cafe writing a book. When I am in a cafe writing a book, I wish I was in Provence writing a book. And now that I am in Provence writing a book, I wish I was in Las Vegas playing low-limits poker and knocking back rum and coke with my $20 buffet breakfast. 


No-one understands better than I, the Freudian explanation as to why I am haunted with an inability to simply 'be', rather than to 'be somewhere', but this understanding has done little to lesson the problem and so there you have it. Or more to the point, there I have it, 'it' being a life sentence of discontent. 


Take this week for instance. No, really. Take it. 


Here I am, in a lovely farmhouse, with a heated pool, overlooking the hills of the Luberon Valley, with the most gorgeous cocker-spaniel that ever lived as my companion, and all I can do is wonder what everyone is getting up to an hour down the road in St Tropez.  It's all I can do not to jump in the car and go and find out.


I came here alone to write. I thought that the only thing standing between me and becoming the next Agatha Christie was a week of peace and quiet. Instead, I've learned an invaluable lesson. In fact, I've learned a couple. And one of them is that if you want to write, you have to have something to write about.  


Here in the French countryside, I am struggling to find anything noteworthy. Or perhaps I am just struggling to find anything funny. I get up every morning, I buy a croissant, I eat the croissant, I lie by the pool all afternoon, I have a glass of the local Chateauneuf-du-pape, and then I go to bed with a book. (The book is not to read, you understand, but to swat things with. The bugs here are amongst the biggest I have ever seen and that includes my stint living in Australia which has the scariest creatures anywhere on earth, and I don't just mean the men. Last night I killed two bugs in one go by swatting a moth, which was being carried across the floor by something resembling a tiger prawn. That's how big the bugs are in this place).


The only activity in my week thus far has been a trip to the vets today, to book a Friday afternoon appointment for Dorothy's tick and tapeworm treatment, which is a requirement for re-entry back into the UK 48 hours before we travel.  The receptionist at the Veterinary clinic spoke not one word of English, and whilst my french enabled me to secure an appointment for 5:15pm tomorrow, I needed to rely on charades to explain what the appointment was for. I don't know if you've ever tried miming "Tick and Tapeworm Treatment" but let me tell you, it's very difficult to do while still maintaining an air of sophistication.  

I have come to the conclusion that, despite convincingly proclaiming the exact opposite in every job interview I have ever had, I'm not a self-starter. Unless someone is telling me to do something, I just can't see the point of doing it. So vacations alone lead me to mope around all day, unable to simply 'be', but likewise having no idea what to 'do'. 


A friend of mine, Tony, is a wonderful, arty, creative type who makes new friends more easily and more often than I make tea. At this very moment he is on vacation himself in India, no doubt stumbling on a previously-undiscovered Punjab tribe, wow'ing the locals with his Flip camera, and getting them all to pose for his next award-winning photography book. His advice to me is that what I lack on these trips alone is a project. Something not only to keep me busy (my cocker-spaniel has that covered) but also to give me a purpose for being here. 


I'm sure he's right. He does yoga, after all, and don't all people who do yoga know a thing or two about life that will forever elude those of us who forgo Sunday morning Ashtanga for a bacon sandwich in bed? (Or is it the other way around?)


But right now, what I really feel I need is not a project. What I would really love at this very moment in time, despite being forty years of age, is my Mom. 


Each year, my Mom and I used to take an annual vacation together. Nowhere too exotic, unless  you think Puerto Banus is exotic, which actually we did.  Just somewhere in Europe like Spain or Mallorca or Sardinia. The main criteria for the destination was that it had to be fun and it had to be sunny, our measures of a successful holiday being 'number of nights we got home after 5am' and 'strength of suntan gained'. There were two inventions of the 20th century that were of no consequence to us, one was Ovaltine and the other was SPF. 


Every single day of every single one of those holidays followed the same routine. Each morning my mom would make us get up and go somewhere, usually a shop but if we ran out of shops then an ancient ruin, before we were 'allowed' to spend the rest of the day relaxing. I would resent not being left to lie around the pool all morning but she would insist that I would enjoy my afternoon rest much more if we busied ourself with some activity first. We would then return to the pool just in time to get the best suntanning hours between 11am and 3pm (the ones all dermatologists tell you to avoid) and while I went for a swim, my Mom would make lunch. Every day she would ask me what I wanted on my sandwich and every day I would say Ham and Cheese and every day she would give me Tuna and Cucumber. 


And now here I am on vacation alone, eating a ham and cheese sandwich and free to do nothing all morning, hell,  all day if I like, and all I can think is how I wish my mom was here to drag me to see some old village tomorrow morning, then come home and make me a tuna baguette. 


So, having thrown more money at this little experiment in self-discovery than Marie Curie spent discovering penicillin, I've basically learned that a) there are more important things in life than sandwich filling; b) never again should I live in the middle of a major metropolitan city wishing I lived in a log cabin in Alaska, and c) neither will I sit in a busy office kidding myself that it's a lack of peace and tranquillity that is preventing me from becoming number one on the New York Times bestseller list. 


In the meantime I will spend one last day twiddling my thumbs in the middle of nowhere before I leave the french countryside to drive to Paris on Saturday. 


And no doubt, as I move through the hustle and bustle of the city on Saturday night, fighting with four million other people for a seat in Cafe de Flore and paying ten euros an hour for a parking space, I'll wish I was back here.