Rayonnante

I'm grateful to Mr Mags for his enquiries about updates, and I apologise here for failing to meet my own deadline. Thanks for asking Mr Mags, I really appreciate it.

Kirsty, our girls and I went to our usual place in Brittany for our hols. Two-and-a-half weeks, which rushed by, like a few days. The eldest had to fly to France from Japan, via Hanoi. She'd been there for ten months with her girlfriend, half-working, doing campsite work were they put you up in exchange for a few hours' work a day. She arrived earlier than any of us and walked into the village and back (none of us drive) to get us pasta, a sauce and some wine, after a three-day journey and several time zones, wearing all her clothes and lugging a huge rucksack and a case.

At the beginning we stayed in a sort of half-caravan, half-tent, called by the campsite, a "'tit home" a small home, yes I know, makes perfect sense, colloquial French, but still, the phrase is amusing to us; in fact it makes us titter.

We were watching the England game against Ghana and at 11pm the German man in the motorhome next door came over and asked us to be quiet. I didn't think we were being noisy but it was enough to upset him so we were like church mice after that.

Then on Saturday we moved into a proper "mobil-home", one we've stayed in several years, with its garden with the trees and the birds who come pecking hopefully on your table after meals. It was very hot, and one night my eldest took some cushions out and slept outdoors.

There's a Dutch-French couple who for several years have stayed on the site near us. This year, we finally started chatting. The woman is very attractive, circa 60 maybe, wears above-the-knee skirts showing her lovely legs, and simple, buttoned tops, and she has the most gorgeous hair, dark blonde in a rough growing-out bob. She is the belle of the campsite, chatty, friendly -- as is he. They always have a little vase of flowers on their table outside.

At the end of our holiday we had some bottles of beer left over, so I went round to their caravan saying would you mind if I snogged your wife like the rest of these beers and some olive oil? He insisted on saying that they would keep them until we turned up next year, same time, same place. She said that when we all walk up the the village, we look "rayonnante."

On the morning we left I left them a note in my best French, which isn't great but it'll do, saying that I'd perfectly understand if one night they wanted to drink them and how it was a pleasure getting to know them a little. I then put a kiss at the end of it which I regret a bit, too American, but never mind, we've made a happy holiday relationship there.

I live in a housing association flat and you can put in for a transfer if you like, to a flat elsewhere. I've been waiting eighteen months after I requested to go back home, to Lancaster, and on Friday I got a phone call offering me a flat there. I went to see it. It's tiny and in a bit of an arse-end of Lancaster; I haven't got a job there, and it's £778 a month -- more than I'm paying at the moment. "Social housing", yeah right.

I'd be giving up a good job here -- 37.5 hours but all in three days, so lots of free time -- a decent flat in central Bristol and above all, Mel, who is struggling with what amounts to her abandonment. I can't say much really, apart from reiterating that nothing trumps my desire to spend my last few years working, and my retirement, in my home town. Not her, not the job, not the flat. I'll be diving into the jobless void but I'm not fussy about what I do, as long as I can pay this exhorbiant rent. We're going to attempt to maintain the relationship at a distance, but four hours on the train is different to a half hour cycle ride, and she doesn't think it's sustainable.

It makes me sad too. But we've arranged to go to see a DJ that I like who's coming to Lancaster in September, when she gets back from the island in Greece where she spent most of her adult life. Kirsty's coming as well -- the girls' mum -- so a bit of Tolstoyan social easing will be called for, but we'll all be on the disco biscuits, which might make it easier, or turn it into a scene, one of the two.