Maybe booking a Eurostar ticket first thing in the morning after my birthday wasn't such a good idea. Got home from the restaurant at 12.30 and was up again at 6.30. Yawned my way across Paris on the metro and then nodded off completely in the Chunnel. Woke up with a start and realised I was in England. Jumped up just in time to get off the train in Ebbsfleet. Not as glamorous as arriving in St Pancras, but on the other hand it's not every day I get picked up from the train.
Suspicious Minds
Oh, but first I had to get on the Eurostar. The part that always makes me nervous is UK Immigration. They have this way of looking at me like I'm a shifty customer, just dying to ditch my return ticket to Paris and crash illegally in Surbiton for months on end. Huh.
This time I negotiated the usual interrogation by a dull-eyed official - how long are you going to be in the UK? What is the purpose of your visit? What do you do in Paris? Do you have a residents card? I pulled out the card, and then before she could even spot the expiry date, I pulled out another official-looking bit of paper and said "I'm in the process of renewing it, and here's my recepisse." Her shoulders sagged. Catherine one, UK Immigration nil.
Walking along the empty platform in the misty English morning, I felt oddly like I was coming home. The train guard saw me passing and I smiled at him. He smiled back and gave me a friendly nod. Yep, you're not in France any more, Toto.
At the top of the escalator, a bulky gentleman stood behind a booth marked Kent Police. This is more security than they have when you get off in London, and I had a moment of paranoia. He inspected my passport and said "Whereabouts in New Zealand you from?". I said "Wellington" and he broke into a smile. "I'll be there in a month", he said.
I come over to London so often that arriving is not a matter of slow-motion running and tearful reunions, but a quick hug and "Awright love, how are you". It's really my home away from home, staying with the Kiwi Mafia. I don't come over to be a tourist, I come over to see some of my oldest and closest friends. So it was straight home to Tonbridge to inspect the new digs and have a cup of tea on the sofa.
Tsar's new place is huge, massive - quite disorientating after my tiny apartment. I wandered into what I thought was the kitchen, but is in fact just the Aga room. Through an archway is the actual kitchen, which, no kidding, could eat my apartment for breakfast and still have room for lunch. I popped my home-made banana muffins in the Aga to warm up and we sat around with a cup of tea.
We did the school run, through gorgeous English countryside, starkly beautiful in winter. The school is on one side of the village green, with the cricket club grounds at the far end and the medieval village church, complete with tower, at the other. These kids are growing up in a landscape straight out of the books I used to read when I was growing up.
Swimming lessons were in a private school just down the road, in a country house like a mini-Hogwarts, all glowing honey-coloured stone and battlements. The sun was a huge fiery disk on the horizon. When we came out, the sun had been replaced by the lemony moon. The kids were fizzing with excitement, because tonight was the school disco!
Murder on the Dance Floor
I know what you're thinking - I mean, I didn't go to my first disco until I was at least 10. But the school is frantically fund-raising for new classrooms - behind the idyllic rural facade, the Con-Dem cuts are biting deep. So some volunteer teachers and a wedding DJ had hired a disco light machine and bulk-bought the crisps. When we arrived, the party was already in full swing. There was possibly more running and sliding than your average nightclub, but the volume level and incidence of fisticuffs was about the same - except that they had their mummies to kiss it better.
I've never been to a disco that finished before tea time. The younger classes had their party first, and then the older kids were starting. I sat around watching 5 year olds get their freak on to Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, thinking "discos were better when I was a kid", but then the DJ made a daring retro move with Kylie Minogue - and Madonna! And I cheered up a bit.
Most of the dancing consisted of jumping up and down and flailing their arms wildly - a pure joy in movement that far too many adults have lost. But some kids had seen more than a few music videos and were pulling some pretty fancy moves - there were even a few floor spins and arm waves.
But at 6.30 the lights came back on and we had to drag the ravers away, aided by the inducement of lightsaber bubble-blowers.
First, Annoy Your Cheese
Back home, we fed the kids sausages and I unwrapped my master-stroke, the Vacherin Mont d'Or. Vacumn-packed on rue de Sevres, it had survived the trip under the Channel, to release its perfume in Tsar's kitchen. "Trust me", I said, "it'll taste better than it smells", hoping that this would be the case.
I found a tray, wrapped the box in foil, sprinkled a bit of Savoyard white wine on top, and popped it in the Aga, feeling like I was having some kind of colonial/mother country homecoming. Steamed a few veges, unwrapped the ham and salami, and voila, dinner. The cheese went down all too easily, as did the white wine and then we collapsed on the sofa with the DVD of 'Boy', by Taika Waititi.
It's a lovely movie. I'm not sure how much English Pete absorbed, but Tsar and I were in fits of giggles at recognising large chunks of our childhood. Michael Jackson! Poi E! Lollies from the local dairy! Daggy haircuts! But then we never had to deal with the heartbreak of absent parents or the despair of poverty. The story was bittersweet, but the acting was superb. I'm not sure that finishing the film with the Poi E / Thriller mashup was quite the right tone after the wrenching story had played out - but good on them for thinking of it.
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