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Authors: Ruth Skrine
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was a tangled wreck by the next morning.
I remained dependent on a perm until my seventies when I found a hairdresser who could cut in such a way that she discovered a hidden wave. What bliss to be able to go out in the rain without the fear of becoming a corkscrew mess. However fashionable such a look might be today, it was an embarrassment in waiting forme, necessitating ugly waterproof hoods in the pockets of every coat.
My other important experience that year was a trip to France with Arthur. Apart from staying with relatives there had been no previous opportunity for me to travel anywhere without my parents. We put our bicycles on the train to Avignon and rode down the Rhone valley. After a few days we reached the Mediterranean at Sete but could find nowhere to stay for the night. Out of the town we found a flat spot at the edge of a vineyard. We were not equipped for camping but slept on our Macintosh coats. I was terrified by noises in the next field. . . clearly murderers, thieves or at the very least bad-tempered French onion men in flat caps, who floated in my memory from the days before the war. I clung to the long-suffering Arthur until, as daylight finally arrived, we discovered a herd of cows munching along the hedge.
We continued up into the Pyrenees by putting our bikes on the top of buses. I was no good at pedalling my bike uphill. Earlier I had gone to the Wye valley with three school friends, ending the trip on the back of a lorry because I could not keep up. I have never known if this was because I had a particularly heavy bike or whether my heart/lung capacity is not large enough for my body; or perhaps I am just a wimp.
Again, in the mountains we had trouble finding a room. By then there were piles of snow by the roadside and I was terrified of another night in the open. At the fifth hotel I burst into tears. Immediately the end of a corridor was curtained off, mattresses and bedding found and we sat down in front of large bowls of soup. To my shame I discovered then that tears could get me out of all sorts of scrapes, including those embarrassing times much later when I was caught exceeding the speed limit in my car.
The journey down to Carcassonne was wonderful. We freewheeled round hairpin bends, the wind in our faces as the verges sped by. Once we reached the attractive town, with its castle on the top of a hill, we again boarded the train. On the way home we bought two small cakes at a French station to take back for Biz. Idiscovered years later, when I tried to make them, that they were a kind of Vacherin, a mixture of meringue, hazelnuts, sweet chestnut puree and cream. This was 1947 and no one in England had tasted anything of the sort for years. The family could not believe that such luxuries were available in France, so soon after the country had been devastated and when we were still suffering severe food rationing. We all watched as my sister started to eat. Overcome by the need to be appreciative, she rushed away to finish them in private.
We had been encouraged by both our parents to make the trip. They had a passion for France and had taken various cars across the channel before the war. We had heard many tales and been shown the faded photo albums recording their meanderings, their adventures in tiny rural hotels and crossing high passes where the radiators of my father’s old-fashioned cars boiled. A small statuette of Phineas, a reproduction of the wooden mascot of their Alma Mater, University College Hospital, was mounted on the radiator cap of each car in turn. When the radiator was about to boil, the cap would work loose and the mascot turned to face them.
In retrospect I think it was generous of them to use their small allowance of foreign currency to send us abroad, rather than to seize the first opportunity to escape once more on a life-giving journey. For me, travelling around rural France with no definite plans, arriving at some unknown destination, up a farm track, in a
I remained dependent on a perm until my seventies when I found a hairdresser who could cut in such a way that she discovered a hidden wave. What bliss to be able to go out in the rain without the fear of becoming a corkscrew mess. However fashionable such a look might be today, it was an embarrassment in waiting forme, necessitating ugly waterproof hoods in the pockets of every coat.
My other important experience that year was a trip to France with Arthur. Apart from staying with relatives there had been no previous opportunity for me to travel anywhere without my parents. We put our bicycles on the train to Avignon and rode down the Rhone valley. After a few days we reached the Mediterranean at Sete but could find nowhere to stay for the night. Out of the town we found a flat spot at the edge of a vineyard. We were not equipped for camping but slept on our Macintosh coats. I was terrified by noises in the next field. . . clearly murderers, thieves or at the very least bad-tempered French onion men in flat caps, who floated in my memory from the days before the war. I clung to the long-suffering Arthur until, as daylight finally arrived, we discovered a herd of cows munching along the hedge.
We continued up into the Pyrenees by putting our bikes on the top of buses. I was no good at pedalling my bike uphill. Earlier I had gone to the Wye valley with three school friends, ending the trip on the back of a lorry because I could not keep up. I have never known if this was because I had a particularly heavy bike or whether my heart/lung capacity is not large enough for my body; or perhaps I am just a wimp.
Again, in the mountains we had trouble finding a room. By then there were piles of snow by the roadside and I was terrified of another night in the open. At the fifth hotel I burst into tears. Immediately the end of a corridor was curtained off, mattresses and bedding found and we sat down in front of large bowls of soup. To my shame I discovered then that tears could get me out of all sorts of scrapes, including those embarrassing times much later when I was caught exceeding the speed limit in my car.
The journey down to Carcassonne was wonderful. We freewheeled round hairpin bends, the wind in our faces as the verges sped by. Once we reached the attractive town, with its castle on the top of a hill, we again boarded the train. On the way home we bought two small cakes at a French station to take back for Biz. Idiscovered years later, when I tried to make them, that they were a kind of Vacherin, a mixture of meringue, hazelnuts, sweet chestnut puree and cream. This was 1947 and no one in England had tasted anything of the sort for years. The family could not believe that such luxuries were available in France, so soon after the country had been devastated and when we were still suffering severe food rationing. We all watched as my sister started to eat. Overcome by the need to be appreciative, she rushed away to finish them in private.
We had been encouraged by both our parents to make the trip. They had a passion for France and had taken various cars across the channel before the war. We had heard many tales and been shown the faded photo albums recording their meanderings, their adventures in tiny rural hotels and crossing high passes where the radiators of my father’s old-fashioned cars boiled. A small statuette of Phineas, a reproduction of the wooden mascot of their Alma Mater, University College Hospital, was mounted on the radiator cap of each car in turn. When the radiator was about to boil, the cap would work loose and the mascot turned to face them.
In retrospect I think it was generous of them to use their small allowance of foreign currency to send us abroad, rather than to seize the first opportunity to escape once more on a life-giving journey. For me, travelling around rural France with no definite plans, arriving at some unknown destination, up a farm track, in a
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