My two nights away over New Year's Eve

In my 18th December post Staying away for the New Year I described how I had dared myself to accept an invitation to go down to Lymington in Hampshire for two nights. I feared that, deprived of my regular routines and familiar surroundings - and indeed sufficient personal space - for this long, I risked wobbling a bit. I am never happy away from my familiar support regimes!

I've been like this most of my adult life. M--- would have told you, for instance, how I got very uncomfortable when staying away for three weeks at her brother's sunny Lot Valley gîte in France during June 1995. Here it is.

She put my discomfort - which surfaced soon after crossing the Channel - down to 'culture shock', but it wasn't that. Although definitely foreign territory, there was much about France that I found novel and stimulating, and absorbingly photogenic. I enjoyed visiting the interesting Bastide towns; seeing impressive rivers, forested hills, old castles, and giant prehistoric megaliths; watching the lovable lizards living in the stone walls of our charming old farm house; glimpsing wild boar in the surrounding meadows; savouring the romance of French railway stations; and - not least - eating the wonderful fresh food, simply prepared back at the gîte. Here's just a sample of what that part of France meant to me in 1995.

But undoubtedly I did miss my tidy home life, full of things to pass the time pleasantly with, and above all the ability to get behind the wheel of a car and drive myself about. An insurance hitch just before we went made it inadvisable for me to drive while in France, and so M--- did all of the driving and I just sat there watching the passing view, like a sack of potatoes - which is probably what I resembled at the time!

It was rather a concern, that M--- had to do all the motoring. She was fifty-one at the time (older than me, and although very vigorous in her ways, no longer a spring chicken), and she had to find the stamina for a very long, all-day, breakfast-to-late-evening drive from our first stop in Normandy to where we were staying down in south-central France (near Freyssinet-le-Gélat). France was a big country, and in 1995 there weren't any fast motorways that we could use. We had to make do with the ordinary routes nationales. It was a very long drive indeed. And the road signs were unclear and confusing. I recall a bad half-hour in the late afternoon, when we got lost in Limoges and had to make quick and generally erroneous decisions amid appalling traffic. In the end we navigated out of that city using a fix on the setting sun, and eventually got onto the right road that way.

Not the best travel experience. And nothing was open at the other end, not at Frayssinet nor any nearby village. So we had to go to bed that first night with only a snack meal inside us - soup and crackers I seem to recall. I wasn't happy. I get grumpy without a proper evening meal - and I still do!

And although the Lot and Dordogne rivers were wide and impressive, I missed the sea badly. I remember tears coming to my eyes back in Normandy, when travelling to Cherbourg: we came near Le Mont St Michel. The sea was suddenly in view - after three weeks without it! Salt breezes, tides, and waves! I almost cried at the thought of home in Sussex - dear Sussex by the sea - so badly-missed, so yearned for. I'd been too long away from all I needed to have.

M--- had a lot to put up with on that holiday. I was mostly OK, but often morose, despondent, bored, and not very good company. Nowadays there would be more to occupy me - photo-editing in the evening on the laptop, for instance (in so far as one might reasonably give time to it, on a shared holiday). Damp evenings were difficult. There was only endless reading of books, magazines and guides (which was great up to a point, but not beyond) and intermittent conversation. No radio or TV. And of course, no getting one's phone out for information and amusement, as would be possible today. I do wonder now how we actually got through that holiday, and - since it wasn't the only one on which I proved twitchy away from my own home routines and personal interests - other holidays during the next thirteen-odd years of our acquaintance!

We did return to France - in 2000 and 2002 - because it was a place M--- loved. I coped much better on those later occasions. And after 2002, in our years of joint caravanning, we went all over the place, despite the close confines of a two-berth caravan. There was no privacy, no escape from each other, no personal space; but increasingly tech was coming to my rescue and giving me an adequate way of punctuating (and structuring) my days with regular electronic tasks and routines to see to. (I'm sure tech has helped millions just like me)

By 2007 I could cope with a trip to New Zealand, which involved two months of campervanning all over both islands, and a whole lot of scary flying! Perhaps the constant sense of adventure, and all the exotic sights (there were days in Los Angeles and Hong Kong as well) overcame everything else, despite once more being constantly in M---'s company, and, while near Auckland, the company of my step-daughter Adrienne and her family. I was able to do most of the driving, which kept me very happy. So I took that trip in my stride.

And I must mention my one and only cruise, in 2009, with Dad, during which I wandered around Rome and Florence on my own for seven hours on end, armed with no more than six words of Italian. Did I care? Was I afraid of trouble, or such difficulties as getting lost? Of course not. By myself, I am self-assured and ready for anything. Just so long as I am free to plan my own day, have a map, and can do spontaneous things without having to consult anybody.

The examples just mentioned - New Zealand and the Mediterranean cruise - do suggest that in the last fifteen or so years I've got a lot better at managing time spent away from home and out of my familiar personal element. But that old feeling - which has always came on rapidly whenever away from home - that I must keep hold of my freedom in order to stave off a kind of claustrophobia, has persisted.

I've wondered why. Perhaps the intense personal upheaval in and after 2008, which swept away much of my old life and left me emotionally battered - indeed, whirled naked - had made me very reluctant to risk the potential stresses of a shared holiday, even a short break.

So despite wanting to see the New Year in with friends, I was concerned about how I would get through it. I shouldn't have worried. It went really well. Aided by rather a lot of prosecco, it's true; but hey, for once I wasn't driving, and an extra glass or two didn't matter.

So I'd got my travelling case down from the attic, the one with castors, unused for several years, and had packed it carefully.

Packing a case is something I never have to do when caravanning. One of the beauties of a caravan holiday is that you have a wardrobe to hang your best clothes up in, plus drawers and cupboards. You can literally take things out of your bedroom on their hangars and pop them into the same kind of storage inside the caravan. Except for the simpler tops, which I do take off their hangers and fold up. 

But there isn't any need to do the type of packing necessary for a bag. So I was well out of practice! And of course, I couldn't pack anywhere near the usual amount of stuff I take on a caravan holiday. There just wasn't the space in the bag. So no laptop. No speaker. No radio. No Rosie (my china cat). I hoped to survive two nights away with just my phone and whatever social skills I could sustain.

I also packed my wicker basket with a box of chocs and a magnum of prosecco - I never arrive empty-handed.

Jo and Clive called for me at 2.15pm sharp. Then we were off westwards, using the A27, Sussex's main east-west road, which becomes a motorway (the M27) after Havant. There are notorious pinch-points along the way, at Worthing, Arundel and Chichester, where the A27 is unimproved and local traffic densities lead to peak-time gridlock, but Google Maps showed that these were clear (that was my contribution to the trip, to check for traffic hold-ups as we went along). And there were no problems. We kept moving nicely, apart from my having to ask Clive to pull in at Rownhams Services on the M27, so that I could go to the loo. So here we are, bowling along at 70mph:

Strange to be so uninvolved with the travel process! I'm fidgety if I have to sit around with nothing to do. But there was at least a good view from the back seat. Sunset was already approaching as we went through Amberley (we'd cunningly diverted through Storrington via the A283, and were whizzing along the B2139) and for once I was able to get a couple of nice sideways shots, of clouds over the South Downs and the River Arun.

By the time we were past Southampton, it was getting really dark. Clive approached Lymington via the A326 Hythe bypass, and then the B3054 across the New Forest proper. We didn't encounter any errant wild deer or ponies! Then it was just the local roads to where Jean and Geoff lived in Pennington.

Their elderly dog Basil was happy to see us, in so far as a dog who is deaf and getting blind can recognise who it is. (I suppose he did it by consulting the smell profiles lodged in his memory) Here he is, helping out with unwrapping some late Christmas presents that Jo and Clive had brought down.

We were eating out that evening. Jean had given me a lovely bedroom - I could hardly be more comfortable - with a large inviting bathroom within easy reach. My packing hadn't creased my dresses one bit. Which to wear? I chose this one.

The meal, at The Crown Inn at nearby Everton, was a good one, although I was unwise enough to have a Dorset Blue Vinney cheese sauce with my steak. But my digestion wasn't used to such rich stuff. Next morning I turned down Jean's special scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, and made do with buttered toast instead. 

This minor detox worked. By late morning I was ready for something more substantial. While Geoff and Clive went off to Walhampton for a round of golf, Jean, Jo and myself went to Milford on Sea for lunch and some shopping. First, the Old Smithy, an upmarket gift shop. (Actually, most shops on the green at Milford on Sea are upmarket!) Jo was spending a lot of time there, picking up bargains for Christmas 2020, so Jean and I waited on a seat on the green, which had been nicely decorated with Christmas-themed things. For example, somebody had pasted a wodge of white cotton wool atop a red postbox, to simulate snow, complete with robins:

I was fully recovered, and ready for something to eat! Jo was still buying, so Jean and I crossed the green to The Cave, an upmarket bar-bistro we've enjoyed before. It was nice to be out of the cold!

Hmm! Too much prosecco? Honestly, we hadn't yet touched a drop. Note the grey cardigan - I'd just bought it at a shop called Time and Tide. Jean took this next shot:

Then Jo arrived, with bags full of her purchases, and we ordered food and three 200ml bottles of prosecco, with glasses.

Whitebait with smoked paprika mayonnaise, warm Swedish meatballs in a tomato and mascarpone sauce, and mackerel and cream cheese, with two kinds of bread. We polished all that off very quickly! 

Then it was another shop, this time Moss on the Green nearby. The two other girls struck gold, but I had less luck, nothing catching my eye on the sale rails except this, which I tried on:

A bold design, but no, definitely not! Too much like a high-vis life jacket! In any case, I already had my £24 grey cardigan, my sale bargain for the day. 

Back at Jean and Geoff's, it was time to choose my New Year's Eve outfit. There would be a dinner with four other guests, making a party of nine. I was minded to do posh. I had just the dress, a silvery affair that emphasised my curves rather too much, but hey.

Note that if I was suffering from my usual away-from-home wobbles, there was no sign of it! Very pleasing.

The other guests were Janice and Peter, whom I met only a few weeks before, and Ian (Jean's brother, whom I met two years earlier) and his new partner, another Janice. They all arrived as 7.00pm approached. Meanwhile the evening's food and drink were got ready. I kept out of it, apart from enjoying a nibble of this or that, if permitted. Jean poured out aperitifs; Geoff carved the turkey and ham; and Clive examined, opened and poured my magnum of prosecco.

Meanwhile, Jo prepared a second batch of salmon-on-toast. Yum! I could scarcely restrain myself.

Finally it was time to sit down. The food was ready. The prosecco had gone. We were now on rosé. Cheers! (Geoff is unfortunately a blur at the back)

My own plate was piled high. I took too much, of course! And there was this very nice cheesecake to fit in too. But I left room for a slice of that!

By now it was 10.30pm, and Ian and Janice left to see the New Year in at home. The rest of us adjourned to the lounge. As ever on any New Year's Eve, Jools Holland was having his Hootenanny. At midnight, a band of pipers marched into the studio while we raised our glasses for a champagne toast and a rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

Well, 2020 had arrived, and that was that. At home next day, after a smooth trip back, I hoped that 2020 would be a kind year to everyone. Probably way off the mark! But you can hope, anyway.

And my trepidations over staying away? Apparently cured! Mind you, I still prefer my own bed, and being able to get on with my daily routines as soon as I wake up. And I can't stop overnight when caravanning. Still, an advance.