The next generation

My host, M-C, and I started writing to each other as penfriends when we were 13. She came to stay with my parents in London when she was 15. I went to stay on her parents' fruit farm in Provence when I was 16 (where I was allowed to eat as many peaches and apricots as I liked as long as they were mis-shapen so, because of idiotic food rules, unsellable). I got to know her sister and three brothers and was invited to her cousin's wedding (where I discovered meals of eight courses with a wine for each and by 2am was under a bush). She came to stay with my parents again, I stayed with hers again. I visited her as a student in Marseille (where I was asked by her English teacher to read a long extract from an American novel then was told off for reading it in the wrong accent). Her brother came to stay with my parents. I always stopped at her parents' house on my student-travels in Europe (at least for a shower and sometimes to work in the fruit-packing shed). I went to her wedding, met each of her children when they were young, was a godparent at her second son's baptism, took her sister on holiday with my step-daughter, had her teenagers to stay, stayed with her when I took my children to Disneyland, had her young adults to stay again.

Today, International Workers Day, is the one day in the year that all French people apart from essential workers must be given the day off. Many go to celebratory marches; for others it is the chance to see family. So today I have eaten, drunk and chatted with members of this family who I've known for decades and have been greeted for the first time by spouses, nephews, nieces who were brought up with stories of me. There's even a grandchild to swing over puddles and start to teach English.

This is an emergency blip - snatched between puddles.