Provence
A few days before my middle daughter’s Oxfordshire wedding this summer, my youngest announced that she and her fiancé, who’ve been together for years, were getting married within weeks. They’re moving abroad and bringing their wedding forward would help, she said. Two daughters married in less than a month. Mrs Bennet would be proud or envious.
On hearing the news I panic-booked an easyJet flight to Edinburgh for the day before the youngest’s wedding, only to realise it got in at midnight, just 12 hours before the ceremony, and had to abandon that and rebook for the previous day. Usually the journey to Nice airport takes an hour and 20 minutes but there’d been heavy rain and flooding, and two hours in the satnav ETA advanced beyond the possibility of catching the flight. In stationary traffic I booked another with Lufthansa via Amsterdam. It cost £350 – money I couldn’t spare – but I had no choice.
From the A8 near Cagnes I saw the Edinburgh flight. It climbed into the sky near the beach which Cyril Connolly’s perpetually hungover character in The Rock Pool, Naylor, describes as where, ‘fetid waves of sunburn oil lapped tidelessly on the sand’. I don’t agree. With little money or leisure, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve visited the beach in the past five years and generally only see the Mediterranean from a distance where it glistens and shimmers with elusive promise.
Anger at bureaucratic mistakes is a luxury I don’t allow myself. But at check-in, after the woman told me (wrongly) that I would have to pay another £350 and possibly, because of delay, miss my new flights, I almost wept.
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