In old age, life is a holiday

"Hopes, dreams, your favourite cuisine?" Siri

The title and the quote are two interrelated nudges to write about something vague - I think it's hope.

The quote. Every now and then David accidentally calls up Siri - Apple's voice and problem solver, who is occasionally quite poetic. Now who made her that way? On this occasion I think she began "How can I help you?", which you would kind of expect, and then continued with the quote above - "Hopes, dreams, your favourite cuisine?". The first two are unusual enough, something to make you pause and reflect as you carry out mundane tasks. But then to add 'your favourite cuisine' ! - the exclamation mark is mine. As you can imagine I sat up in my chair and rushed to write it down.

The title comes vaguely from Yotam Ottolenghi (or maybe his ghost writer - Tara Wigley?) in yesterday's Ottolenghi Newsletter in which he is anticipating summer - a standard response of all food publications at this time of year - in the UK that is:

"Despite all evidence to the contrary, I cook as if this year - this very year - will deliver the summer that exists in my imagination: dinner in the garden every single night, shopping basket overflowing with ingredients to be eaten outdoors - corn for grilling, melons, the first of the season's stone fruit, whole fish destined for the barbecue.

Is it responsible? Not always. Is it sometimes disappointing? Definitely. But there's something beautiful about the hope of it."

This also resonated with me, and so today, a day with a cold beginning, but ultimately sunshine and feeble warmth - not enough to eat outside however - I also could almost dream of summer and holidays. Even though summer is a long time away in the future and no holiday is going to happen - probably never again - just the odd short trip to somewhere beautiful but local. For we are old and diffident about travel.

Fundamentally the problem is that we are too lucky. We live in a beautiful spot, in a beautiful home with family and friends nearby. We are actually living the dream, so why battle with hotel and travel bookings, long flights in aeroplanes with all that that involves, the stress of it all in pursuit of the dream of the perfect holiday. After all we can barbecue in beautiful parks with our family or sit around a table in the garden with friends in a relatively balmy climate. Sometimes you can even pretend it's summer in the middle of winter.

And there's nothing like an outside meal, even if it's just with your husband to help you pretend you are on holiday.

So yes, old age is a holiday. We don't have to get up and go off to work, before returning, exhausted in the evening. There are no children to organise and ferry around and generally worry about - them and whether you are doing the right thing by them. Time is our own to do with what we will - for us anyway - for as I said, we are too lucky. We have the money to not worry about money, and our frugal youth has given us the benefit of managing it as well, appreciate it. In essence we can do what we like, although currently that does not seem to include holidays. They are a thing of the past. Well our entire life in these twilight years is a holiday, so there is no reason to dream of more conventional holidays. And yet. I think it's yet another potentially unrecognised human quality - to dream.

All of those thoughts however, made me nostalgic of holidays gone by and so I began browsing my photograph libraries for those perfect moments on holidays elsewhere. Below a couple from a holiday in Narbonne - well just outside Narboone in 2017. Joyous, yet sad, for those two men with David, and in the foreground of the second photo, are sadly no longer with us.

But to return to Siri and her 'favourite cuisine' comment, for food plays a huge role in holidays does it not? Which is sort of why I began with that picture of one of the most perfect holiday meals I have tasted - sardines bought from the source in a fishing village near Narbonne, and just cooked simply on the barbecue, and eaten with a baguette, lemon and a bottle of Pouilly Fumé - a French sauvignon blanc. One of my most memorable meals. So food on holiday means a lot to me, even if I'm not cooking it. The delights of the two options - eating out or eating in using local ingredients, sometimes cooked by a friend, sometimes by me - are different but never just the same old, same old of home, where even 'special' meals, exciting new dishes, and the company of family and/or friends are not the same as those taken in a Narbonne garden, even if it is just bread and cheese.

My son, the inveterate traveller of the family has just sent pictures of the view from his luxury hotel on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Stunning and so I started dreaming again, a touch enviously, that perhaps maybe a holiday closer to home than Europe is still possible. When you have lived in Australia for as long as we have, a flight of a mere 7 hours or so is really nothing is it? And looking at this photo of myself in Narbonne when a mere 74 years old - although I look extremely relaxed and happy, there might also be a touch of dreaming about it. And yes there was food very close by - that building behind houses Narbonne's main market. A treasure trove of the best in French food, with more modest, but still amazing produce, in the open-air market which begins on the left and stretches along the canal bank for a long way. See I'm dreaming again.

Hope springs eternal they say. And I think that indeed one should keep hope alive. Without it - well that way lies despair, and even worse. So at the very least I shall dream of the occasional meal outside, even in winter, and definitely in autumn. Sometimes just we two, sometimes with family, sometimes with friends. Winter isn't quite with us yet, and if I look out the window at the brilliant blue sky and the sun shines through the window onto my desk, hope is easy to summon. A barbecue in the park perhaps?