Because I’ve been accepted onto a course to do French Language in London. I don’t know London and found it intimidating when I went for the interview but I know I want to study French.
I have never seen a Cézanne oil painting in real life but my boyfriend gave me a little book of his paintings: it fits into a pocket and I am in love with Cézanne’s blue, his gentle card players and his cubic rocks. I want to go to Provence: about as far away as you can get from this river flowing red with dye from dark Satanic mills.
And I will go to Paris and I will read Proust. I will learn about De Gaulle. With my French friends, I will be dizzy with colour after visiting the Musée d’Art Moderne. Guided by Elizabeth David, I will make tomato sauce.
I will hear a different melody and rejoice in the sound of the accordion. I shall be entranced by Françoise Hardy. Perhaps I too will become chic.
It’s not that I didn’t like working on Maggie’s farm, it’s just it isn’t in the Auvergne or Brittany. Maggie doesn’t wear a coiffe. I shall eat fresh fish, caught by a Breton fisherman and yellow mushrooms picked in a forest. There will be the smell of lavender.
I shall miss them all at Maggie’s. I love cows’ eyes and the smell of hay, even if it does bring me out in a rash, but I shall meet new people: students and French people.
And the poetry? Is there anyone like Baudelaire who is inviting me on a journey? I am that child in love with maps and prints.
My head is full of ideas. I cannot wait to become who I truly am.
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