Big Skies, and an imminent Glitter Explosion
A first attempt at a general sort of blog, seeing
as a lot of the people who interest me do this on a regular basis.
Big Skies. We are in South West France, in a tiny village
called Touille, where you can look out from the verandah in our Gite
and see the Pic du Midi at 54 miles away!! Today is our last day
before heading home, and it has been one of the best Gite holidays we
have ever had. Perhaps, because of that, the weather is spectacularly
fine today; a few tufts of cumulus earlier, lots of vapour trails and
sunshine.
Where we are is pretty well 60 miles
south-south-west of Toulouse, right on the border between Haute
Gironde and Ariege, and it has proved ideally placed for exploring.
We've had a day at the seaside in Biarritz and Bayonne, we have
climbed (in the car) the Col du Tourmalet, and several other passes,
and have visited several charming and interesting small towns and
markets. A lot of the buildings round here are sandstone-made, and some of the villages look remarkably like the Cotswolds, colour-wise
The local cheeses are outstanding – and there
are so many of them, and the Madiran wine is a gorgeous gutsy red –
we have enough to last us a good while, especially as this is likely
to be the last gite holiday we take, for financial and health
reasons. Next summer, its pension time, but for all my readers – I
recommend this area!!
On the Glitter front, its the new season of
Strictly, of course. The first for several years without Vincent and Flavia, but it still looks like a pretty good set of pros and slebs.
Bruce Forsyth is still there, unfortunately. I remember him when he
was good – oh, so long ago, in pantomime when I was about 12. They
say the best sort of guest to have at a party is the guest who knows
when to leave – something I try to be myself. It does seem to have
passed Brucie by though. I do find it bizarre that everyone says that
Strictly wouldn't be successful without him, yet its perfectly
successful without him in about 100 other countries!
Of course, its only a matter of a few short weeks
before we get deluged in the press with reports of romances,
showmances and bromances. Personally, I'll stick with the dancing.
I'll miss V&F though, who I've had the privilege of meeting, and
seeing several times. We already have our tickets for their next
production, Dance 'till Dawn, in its opening week in Bristol next
year.
Twittering over Strictly is where I bumped into
several of the lady writers I “know”. Fun, all of them. I've just
finished and really enjoyed Liz Harris's A Bargain Struck, and am
just getting into Talli Roland's Build A Man. I look forward to
meeting all of you actually in the flesh, as it were, at some time in
the not too distant future.
Various leg-related issues (lol) have kept me
sedentary as various times over the last few years, and for a while,
the Net was really the only way I could get “out of the house.”
While P and I have always been Strictly fans, a few years ago we
really got into it, and I started chatting to a few people in one of
the popular chat sites (Digital Spy). Not knowing the language and
codes for such things, I found myself roundly attacked and abused,
but then adopted by a group of what turned out to be extremely nice
females of all ages from 16 to 66. P and I have met up with several
of them a few times now, and I still chat regularly to them. They
keep me young!
More soon – hopefully reporting on a successful
house sale.
John
jjackson@btinternet.com
@jjackson42
