Well, we had just the fabbest Tuesday on the WSG Delivery Tour Of Languedoc, even though it wasn’t even Her Most Wonderfulness and I doing the touring!
When we were plotting the route of the tour, we had planned to meet Sally in Carcassonne to the west of Our Little Tin Shed, and Sylvie in Uzes to the east, but in Retirement World plans can be changed, swiftly adapted.
And so it was that, at 11:30am, I was walking from the marché in Marseillan (where we go every Tuesday so that HMW can visit her favourite dress stall) to Le Marius in the Marseillan’s pretty port (where we end up every Tuesday so that HMW can celebrate her purchases with a kir or a cheeky cocktail). The important difference was that, this Tuesday, I was looking for a woman I’d never met with the key clue being that she would have, not a red carnation, but a little white dog.
I now know that little white dogs are even more common in Languedoc than I first thought. While HMW had been dress shopping and then stall hopping for impulse buys, I whiled away my waiting-to-nod-approvingly time surveying the market throng for LWDs and then gauged their owners against the partial image of my never-before-met blogfriend, Sylvie, wondering whether she might be having an explore of the market before our rendezvous.
By the time I approached Le Marius, my 30 minute LWD count was in the 40s or 50s. As soon as Le Marius came into view I searched its port facing frontage, but couldn’t see a LWD waiting outside the bar helpfully sitting next to a woman who might be Sylvie.
Fortunately, there was a much more easily spotable clue in the three smiling people waving from a table at the back of the outside.
And that is how a truly pleasurable afternoon began. What might have been just a quick coffee and a ‘Hi’ turned into six of us connecting and lunching and hours of flowing conversation in which I inadequately marvelled at the fact that amongst the six speakers there were five different mother tongues. We fluidly shared life histories and travel stories and whale watching tales (and whale not seeing) and the life choices that found us in neighbouring departments in Occitanie. We talked about WSG and loss and grief and the gift of time. We puzzled over nationality and national identity. We unpicked the differences between writing for reading and writing for speaking. We railed against dog abandoners while passing tidbits to the very loved, happily rescued LWD, who sat patiently allowing us all to natter.
I think we may have still been sitting there now, still chatting and steadily working our way through the menu of cocktails and glaces, if HMW and I didn’t rather delightfully have a second WSG get together in one day.
As we were enjoying that rush of new connection in Marseillan, Sally was heading our way with her husband and a campervan full of fur. Importantly, Sally was one of the first people to be willing to suggest corrections as she read WSG in its Facebook form, despite never having met me. I am enormously grateful to her for that.
Between Sally and I, taking into account the needs of tired canines, we decided on a get together at the Tin Shed, with a hastily pulled together table of pizza and salad and nibbles and wine.
For the second time in less than half a day, HMW and I were enjoying meeting completely new people and their dogs.
Once again the conversation flowed – from the iniquities of dog breeding (they are fostering a traumatised chihuahua bitch, who has spent 6 years captive in a cage forced to have litter after litter but never been allowed to walk); to the joys of dog breeding (they have reared a litter of Griffon Bruxellois); to the plight of dogs simply discarded by owners.
And then we talked life stories and campervans and explorations and love of the sea and where in Occitanie would be the perfect place to live; and then about friendship and loss and grief; and then writing and capturing stories; and then the joy of port at the end of an evening. And ours was a lovely evening.
When I say to friends at home that Her Most Wonderfulness and I had this notion of meeting up with my never-before-met blogfriends, I’m sure that some of them think we are crackers, but just as our travels have brought us many new friendships some of which have massively affected our lives, so too the sharing of ‘Who Stole Grandma?’ has brought wonderful connections, some of which might only be fleeting fun, while others may blossom into new friendships.
There is a type of bravery in reaching out and saying, ‘Do you fancy meeting up?’ HMW and I share a willingness to do so and it is continually enriching our lives.
As I sit here writing, a part of me feels that these special moments and new connections are Moosh’s last gifts to me – I’m very grateful to her for them.
The Joy Of Connection 💜
Gratitude 🙏🏽
Santé 🍷
Mark Lanyon Storyteller 