I drew back the curtains. Yet another absolutely still, sunny day. Early-morning mist lying in the valleys. An echoing report of a distant hunter’s rifle. Another day in bloody paradise. But I was leaving it. After breakfast I was driven to the bus station. ‘Would you like to do me?’ said the young woman behind the desk in the ticket office. (My single word of French greeting had been enough for her to nail me as an English speaker.) Realising her error, she and her colleague at the next window corpsed. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got much time,’ I said. The bus ticket to Nice cost hardly anything.
The airport coach pulled in dead on time. Ligne Bleue employs only reigning beauty queens to drive their vehicles, it seems. This driver was no exception. As she clipped my ticket she asked me how was I doing. ‘All the better for seeing you,’ is what I would have liked to have said, but my French grammar wasn’t up to it without a bit of notice.
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