Sliding Portes

The late evening sun bounced off the ancient ramparts of the old town of Antibes and once again I felt like I belonged. I’d first come to the Côte d’Azur when I was 11 and knew even then that this was where I wanted to be, my spiritual home.
That first holiday was memorable for so many things, the drive through France, my first trip ‘abroad’, the beaches, the clear blue water of the Mediterranean and the women. I had my first ‘sexual’ experience on that holiday so I was always likely to be marked by the place. I was snorkelling off the beach in Nice and dived down to the bottom to investigate some movement, though to be honest there wasn’t much movement as there is little to be seen that close to the beach in Nice. Feeling proud that I’d made it to the ‘depths’ I rested briefly and looked up at the sun filtering through the sea and that’s when it happened. A tanned, slender woman front crawled right above my head and it wasn’t just that she was topless – though she was, to my 11 year old eyes, magnificently topless – or that she wore skimpy, leopard print briefs; to be honest I don’t know what it was exactly, probably just ‘the moment’ but I suddenly became aware that I was running out of breath and so made a dart for the surface and got there coughing and spluttering like I had the bends. I felt fantastic.
I went back to the south of France when I was 21, an unhappier person, troubled and lacking confidence. I’d just graduated, and I mean just, the last six months of my degree course a blur as I failed to make any lectures that coincided with pub opening hours. I had no idea what to do with myself. I wanted to work in Film and Television starting off as a runner, but no-one would give me the chance because I didn’t have ‘experience’. “Really?” I asked, increasingly frustrated at what I saw as a closed world, “but I’ve made tea before?”
We were staying in La Turbie, which is in the hills just behind Monte Carlo and which I’ve been told is now Monaco’s premier dogging site, but we went to Antibes ostensibly so that my step mother, one of thousands ripped off by the late Robert Maxwell’s laissez-faire attitude to other people’s pensions, could abuse his huge yacht which was still moored there. I’ve said before that I love a port. The sense of possibility, of another world, anonymity, of even running away always gets me but on that holiday especially it seemed to offer a solution, a way out of my then depressing world and into a newer, more exciting one. I trawled the yachting job centres, answered adverts pinned on café walls, even walked gang planks brazenly asking for a job. Nothing. Again, I ‘didn’t have the experience.’
All of this came flooding back to me this week as I was gigging in Antibes. The audience was largely made up of exactly the young, yachting type that I’d so desperately wanted to be and whereas I think once I may have resented their bronzed, smiling faces, I didn’t have a sense of that at all. Maybe I’m mellowing, but I felt almost paternalistic towards them, envying them their lifestyle yes but genuinely hoping that they were enjoying it too and inevitably wondering what kind of life I’d be leading now if I had had that opportunity. Of course there’s always the possibility that I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes, that the first time someone had tried to insist on me wearing a ‘fleece’ I’d have been off, back to the world of sartorial enlightenment. I don’t know though.
As I sat at the bar and watched the boat people of Antibes I really tried to imagine what my life would have been like and I couldn’t. And the simple reason for that is that it always ended up the same way, my life now would be exactly like my life now. Surely that’s a sign of happiness, of contentment? I wouldn’t swap what I (we) have now for anything, I wish the ‘journey’ (sorry, horrible phrase) had been different at times, don’t we all (?) but I genuinely surprised myself that possibly for the first time in my life I wasn’t hankering for what’s just over the horizon.  I don’t want anything other than what we’ve got. Maybe I’ve stopped fighting? Maybe I’ve given up? Maybe I’ve grown up.
I never even envisaged having the life I have now and in a week like this one where I have to take time off work so that we can, as a family team, loosen the belt of winter and let spring spill forth around the place, it’s very full on. The well pump has to be re-attached; the stable had to be re-built again (thanks Junior); the dead wood literally chopped away to allow new growth. These are full-on, tiring days; physical and long. But as I enjoyed a well-earned Ricard on the terrace late one evening, I thought back to the night before and the entirely different life I’d watched, and tried to be part of, in Antibes. Not with envy, but with warmth.
I moan often about the life I have here – partly that’s my job – but I wouldn’t change a thing and I know that sounds horribly smug, but sometimes I just need to remind myself.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Maurice shouted, still up despite the late hour and looking even more feral than usual, “One of the goats has escaped again!”
Well, there are some things I’d change obviously.

If you want me to recapture that bloody goat, pre order the book here. No pressure.