Alone again

A bit banal as a title, but I just wanted to capture what I have been feeling over the last few days. Some people are naturally fairly solitary, other would argue that it isn't natural to be solitary, we need other people. I think that we do need other people, but it can be important to learn to be alone, because we are destined to spend quite a bit of time on our own - parters die or leave, we can't always have friends and family around.

Honda says: I'm hère!

In my middle thirties, when others were busy having families or planning to find a way of having them, I finally learnt to live on my own. I had moved, for a job, to rural Northamptonshire, unfortunately the job fell through and I was left to survive somehow with freelance work. But I did learn to have a reasonable appreciation of my own company.

I'm not going to get into the philosophical debate of how much one needs other people, but it just seems to me practical to be able to be reasonably content on one's own, and have things that one likes doing, without needing company all the time, or even a good proportion of it. Apart from anything else, it gives one better choice for the company one chooses (I remember at one stage befriending someone who was clearly mentally disturbed not merely out of sympathie, but also out of loneliness).

Anyway, back to the present, my ability to tolerate time on my own seems to have diminished since being with Derek, and his death. So, the thought of time spent on my own here in St Germain (5 days, then a whole 3 weeks) did make me feel slightly alarmed. And I did have, on waking on Wednesday morning, a tinge of the old knots in the stomach.

Well, it's now Thursday afternoon, and I am feeling perfectly happy and normal. I seem to have got into a routine: in the morning, I take the dogs for a long walk (a delight and torture at the same time, and the subject of a separate post), do domestic things, then in the afternoon it's errands (preceded by a siesta, necessitated by the heat) and then free time in the evening, for reading, writing, and watching télévision.

The errands themselves lead me into an interesting world, the world of French hypermarkets. It's a world which to me is the total negation of what I consider to be the essence of French-ness: good food and style. Far from style, we seem to have a bland sameness: lots of different types of biscuits, and imitations of French delicacies which taste nothing like the original, as well as powders which you can mix up to imitate the delicacies which will also taste nothing like the original; rows and rows of tins; a lot of not very well dressed French who are frankly overweight.

I should say I speak as one whose eating habits are not totally healthy, who is over fond of a glass of wine (or three) and who is presently clad in a Super-U dress which unkind people would say looks like a table cloth. And anyway, having taken the plunge of asking my elderly neighbour for tea on Saturday, and given myself the challenge of baking English foods for tea. Which meant that I and my dictionary had great fun in Super U: I added to my vocabulaire the different words for various types of flour, and sugar.