Confessions of an Author

Girl Trip to Valencia Part Three 3 It was Sunday, so we wanted to go to church. Cousin N’s husband is a vicar, so we asked if we could go to a service. She looked nervous, and made us sign to say we wouldn’t tell embarrassing stories or make jokes or generally misbehave. After showering in the cupboard, and coffee in the sunshine (I still haven’t found my old man smoking a cigar at an outside cafe – I drank Nescafe in the air bnb) we set off. Cousin L seems to be rather good at directions, so we followed her, through streets decorated with flags and lights ready for Las Fallas, and a lot of shut shops. Valencia wakes up slowly. The church, an Anglican Church, was not especially pretty (only the Catholic churches are pretty) but people were smiley, which is always nice. There were lots of children, and we arrived in time for coffee, and met people, and remembered that Cousin N might kill us if we tried to be funny. Vicar Husband then preached an excellent sermon, tea...

Arrival in Lisbon 3 Left the Sheraton Porto after breakfast, and drove down to Lisbon. Husband had helpfully brought a supply of CDs to entertain us during the journey. There was no obvious CD player in the car. We stopped en route at a service station. This was later to have great significance. It looked clean, so we decided the food hygiene would be okay, despite the rather disgusting toilets. Portugal has a lot of disgusting public toilets. In my travels, most countries have cleaner washrooms than England, but not Portugal—wear shoes and take your own paper, and try not to breathe in. Arrived in Lisbon and booked into another Sheraton (Husband gets different perks with his  travels too often with work  card, so we like them). One perk is the use of the hotel lounge, so we dumped our bags and I sat in the lounge with the boys, drinking free beers (them, not me) whilst looking across the city. David and Rebecca went swimming. We caught the metro into the city,...

A Quick Pop to Cowdray Cowdray Ruins Well, I have had a nice few days – always good when a few positive things happen. We had a lovely weekend, meeting with different friends. One couple (the ones we went to Brazil with) live near Cowdray, so we met them there. Have you been? It’s one of those little English villages that you drive through and say, “Ooh, that looks interesting, we must come back one day.” And then you never do. We, however, did. We did a quick Google search first, and found that the ruins are closed for repair. Husband made a few sarcy comments about the owner should be careful about repairing ruins, as their brokenness is sort of the point, but we ignored him. We could in fact, walk very near to the ruins, so had a good look around despite the fences and ‘keep out’ signs. There is a board which gives you some information, so we learned that the ruins were built in 1542, and the original house would have resembled Hampton Court. It was a place whe...

Ashinoko Lake 1 Hakone Tozan I fancied being away from a city, plus I saw a picture in a guide book of a pirate ship, so we went to Hakone Tozan. The guide book listed all sorts of activities, like hot springs and cable cars and temples (Japan has lots and lots of temples) but all I wanted was a little countryside with a view of Mount Fuji…and maybe a pirate ship. (If I’m honest, I might not have mentioned the pirate bit to Husband.) Now, although I mainly married my husband because he makes me laugh, an added bonus is that he is exceptionally good at planning trips. So by the time I woke up the following day, he had sorted a rather complicated series of steps, ending at Lake Ashi in Hakone. We got a train into Tokyo, then the  shinkansen  (a bullet train) to Odawar. There we were able to buy a two-day pass to the Hakone area. We took the local tourist train (Hakone Tozan Railway) to Hakone Yumoto. Here, we caught a bus, which went up the mountain, to Lake Ashi...

Tokyo Underground Trains 1 Using the Tokyo Underground Using the underground system in Tokyo is easy – even I managed to do it, and it’s much cheaper and faster than using taxis. It is the cleanest underground system I’ve ever encountered, and although it’s sensible to keep valuables hidden, I saw local people with phones shoved into back pockets and purses at the top of bags, so I’m guessing there is very little crime. It’s much easier if there are two of you, as stations have lots of signs, and it takes time to read them all. One of you can check for arrows, showing which side you are meant to walk/queue/wait, and the other can read the less important ones about which platform and trains you need. First of all, find a map, and work out which station you want to visit. I can’t read Japanese, but all the signs were also in English, so it wasn’t a problem. The map is topological, like the London underground (so the stations are shown in the right order, but the distances...

Startled by Beauty 4 I turn a corner, and happen upon a small pond, filled with water irises all in bloom, their sword-shaped leaves reaching towards the sky. The pond is edged with azalea and has a backdrop of shaped fir trees. It is beautiful, a tiny spot of perfection. Husband took a sneaky photo of me while I was writing this. All around me, people are taking photographs. There are kneeling professionals, aiming long lenses for the best angle, tourists with iphones, teenagers taking selfies. Everyone pauses, surprised by the beauty, snaps a shot. Then they move on. Very few make use of the wooden benches, stop a while, take time to absorb the scene. We have become a species that rushes to record, to collect, to own. But we rarely live in the moment. How many of these photographs, I wonder, will be examined, enjoyed. Or will they too be quickly glanced at before put away, the next event always being more pressing, more important. This was art. The sculptured trees,...