Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

Last week I shared this  blast from my past  about a trip I took to the south of France in the 70’s. Here, at the risk of boring you, without further adieu, below is part deux. Or listen to The Walk & The Kiss, together, on the podcast. Le Kiss aka le petite baiser It wasn’t a big kiss, not a French kiss, not even a kiss on the lips. It was just a quick peck on the cheek, a squeeze of the hand but I felt like a twelve year old getting kissed for the first time behind the big tree out on the schoolyard. I kept my eyes on the road ahead, silvery in the dark night, and tried to keep my smile from bursting out of my body, as we kept walking along that long country lane in the south of France, heading to a dance.  Up ahead, a girl was sitting on a large rock by the side of the road. She’d taken her shoes off and was rubbing her feet while the guy she was with, peered at a map in the moonlight. He all but scratched his head. The girl waved a shoe at us as we approached.

Camille Pissarro, Les chataigniers a Osny (The Chestnut Trees at Osny), 1873 I'm changing up the look of my blog again. I knew my old design, which  wasn't really old at all as I'd switched up the format just  a few months ago, wouldn't last. I know myself. I get itchy, restless. Some women  change  their  hair color. Others go shopping for a new pair of shoes. Me, when I get twitchy like this, I usually think about moving. Over the past month I've found myself looking in the windows of a vacant property I pass on my morning walk. I love the layout, the light that puddles across the hardwood floor, the glimpse of the stairway that disappears to who knows where. I go round back, peer in through the slats of the blinds at the patio door. The pull is nearly irresistible. But that fantasy won't fly. We can't move again. We simply can't. We've moved so many times, mostly when I get that itch. My husband would almost certainly—and rightfully—divorce

It had been donkey's years since I'd seen my grandmother and my Uncle Robin. That's how my mother put it. Donkey's years. Still, she said, they'd love to put me up for a couple of weeks while I took a look round London. I was twenty, it was 1973, and I was itching to begin my grand and adventurous tour of Europe so I wasn't thrilled to be spending part of my summer visiting antique relatives. I had to admit though, my Uncle Rob's house in Chorleywood was just a half hour train ride away from the city, it was cheaper than a hotel, a B&B, or even a hostel, so it did make for a pretty decent base for my day trips.  Then I was going to take off for the continent and have a real adventure. Despite parental worries. And despite Derek.  Derek was my old boyfriend who I was supposed to go traveling through Europe with that summer. That had been the plan. The boyfriend I broke up with when he changed that plan. I can still see the look on his face, squin