Monday 17th of October.
Our flight is in the evening, we don't leave until the early afternoon so what do we do. So the morning was taken up partly with Anthony trying to get some clarity on why the credit card he wants to take to pay for the holiday as we go along has been blocked. And the answer is to do with technology. When he set up his bank he did not speak to a live human being about whether he had a smart phone or not, or what sort machine he was making the application to be a member of the bank on. They assumed he would be mostly accessing his account from a smart phone, and he does not have a smart phone, and assumes at over eighty years of age he would never have to have one. I do have a a smart phone but I dislike the swiss army knife approach to technology that it embodies, where one bit of kit has so many uses and you have to know how each function works that I can't hold that much information without having to write it down for future reference. Anyway if his money might be stopped then mine might have to do. I messed around with food, and made potato bread using up old potatoes.
We left Caylus at gone 2pm and I expected that we would make a direct route for the motorway but Anthony goes the slow route and pops in at the free multi-lingual library where people donate books en-route and we find books to read on the plane. Arnold Bennett for me, Patrick McCabe for him. Getting onto the toll motorway was easy. The machine gave the driver Anthony a card, the gate rose and off we went. Getting off/out of the toll system was not so easy. These exit toll booths used to staffed by live human beings, who made sure that everything worked smoothly. They no longer are. Whatever card or money Anthony tried it did not register and there seemed to be no human being about. Anthony felt isolated, frustrated, and angry at the ticket machine and it seemed like we were not going to get out. I suggested that he put a five euro note in at the right slot and we were let out, to drive on. He dumped whatever cards and change had not worked on my lap and I was slow to see my own visa card that he had tried there. I had to check outside to make sure it had not been dropped, it had not dropped. After five minutes of faffing about I was assured that where ever the card was it was not outside. On we went, five minutes later searching the loos change pocket of my wallet-there was the card-it had been flung at me with the loose change, Off we went and we found the right directions for the airport. Again I thought 'are we going to park in the airport? Time is getting tighter.... '. But no, Anthony parked on the route he thought the tram would take us direct to the airport on, But the tram no longer does that. Now there is a replacement bus route, a no 31 which by asking about and a miracle of timing we caught, with our luggage intact. Into Toulouse airport, and again more delays-we were checking in whilst the flight was being boarded and Anthony had to ask about the boarding pass for his return flight which he had not been able to print. My heart was sinking the longer the conversation in French went on. Off we got through security, through to the correct gate and we were the last board, Anthony was furious as we were told to wait, as people with push chairs were in front of us. We should have been grateful for the delay that they generated but one particularly haughty air hostess was sworn at in French by Anthony, and I marvelled again at how good the French language is for swearing in, and at Anthony's command of French expletives, given the French idealisation of liberty the best insult was always going to be 'fascist', even when the sense of loss of liberty was 'I did not get my way on my own terms'.
We both got on the plane, not counting how close we were to missing the flight. Anthony at the front me at the back since when we agreed to this holiday together I got the flight details but I did not know which seat he was booked in, the better to book a seat near him. More aggression on the plane. Anthony took ten euros from me, to buy some tea with when the trolley came round, and as soon as he took the money I knew that they would want pre-paid credit with a credit card, Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins had nothing in the exchange that went on when he asked for a cup of tea. I was by that time enclosed in the glum but cosy world of 'Anna of Five Towns' by Arnold Bennett. The lead character, Anna lives with her miser and successful business man father, and is about to start life as an adult. I appreciated how the miser did not make his home attractive and inclusive and made his meals mean and meagre. I grew up in a family where home and comfort did not seem worth investing in, except for the mutual and collective lowering of everyone's esteem in themselves. Needless to say I found the book engrossing. The sense of relief when we got the flight, where we did not count how close we were to missing it, was strangely similar to my sense of escape from the life I once had a shared in, where as a household where we collectively disinvested and downgraded ourselves and each other.
The flight landed fifteen minutes earlier than expected. We were both soon off the plane and through security at Agadir Airport, where there were three or four policemen checking our passports, but only one stamping it. It was dark by now, I looked for Anthony, but he was well ahead of me. There was no security questioning me about my intended destination like there was on the first holiday. Into the night air just outside the airport itself and I think I saw the sign with Anthony's name on it first, but he was the one to arrange this taxi as part of the booking, including a late change of hotel since the hotel we liked, the Hotel Kamal in Agadir, had good rooms at lower prices. It was gone 9 pm by the time we were in the room and neither of us was very hungry, which was just well since the provisions I had made were tough rather than tasty. I did not mind the toughness. The one point that it would have been useful to ask, but we were too tired to think to ask about, was breakfast in the hotel.
The first day was over. After the difficulties getting out of France our journeys has to get better from here. I slept fitfully, because I could not find my sleeping tablet, to take before lights out. But was glad of the sleep I got...
Please left click here for Day Two of this diary.
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