Confessions of an unseasoned traveller.

I had all sorts of lofty plans to do more writing when I got to Montpellier, but I have been unable. I have forgotten how to speak English. I even forgot this isn’t new, whenever I go to a country where I don’t speak the language I somehow forget how to speak my own as well. It’s like a syndrome or something. I have stood at shop counters and in bars in countries other than my own waving my hands around and – this is deeply embarrassing, please don’t tell anyone – I have been known to utter the words…’ow you say..’ in a bad accent of questionable origins while searching for a word in a language I don’t know. Like a cartoon version of myself. As though mauling an accent makes me more likely to be understood. It is a testament to the enduring patience of the French people that they haven’t yet cancelled my visa.

It’s not just language, my brain doesn’t work quickly with anything when I’m travelling. I certainly don’t know how to function as a French person and I forget how to function as an Australian too. Small things. I walk on the wrong side of the road and faced with even the slightest hint of someone coming in my direction, I dart in front of them in a panic. I cry in public, as noted in previous musings, overwhelmed with beauty in the form of…. well anything really….small children saying ‘papa’ in French accents, dogs in handbags, anyone holding a baguette obviously, bridges set me off for some reason, old buildings, chefs in aprons standing in doorways smoking cigarettes and scowling. I’m apologetic for taking up space. I wear unattractive shoes.

I am slowly improving. This is after a harsh lesson on my honeymoon in Paris in 2012, learning after a month the mea culpa phrase I was saying to endear me to the locals, Je suis desole queue tu ne parles pas Francais, parles tu Angalis? was in fact informing native speakers of the language how sorry I was that they didn’t speak French and did they speak English? If I was looking for an easy way to make a tit out of myself, I may as well have taken to shouting ‘garcon’ and clapping my hands to get a waiter’s attention in restaurants.

In Montpellier where I have landed with my husband for the next ten weeks, the locals are a delight. People have been so friendly and kind. Not everyone speaks English, or they only speak a little, so I’m challenged a lot trying to bumble through basic life tasks I never have to think about at home. It’s a beautiful city, the Old District where we’re staying is a glorious rabbit warren of rambling, narrow streets that shoot off every which way, seemingly at random. It’s easier to get lost here than in any other city I have seen. After a few days, it makes its own kind of sense and it has a fascinating history that explains the layout of some of the original areas that were built in medieval times. I love it here.

I’m trying to use my best manners. I’m sorry to say it’s my fourth visit to France and it only just occurred to me this week that I might make an effort to find out what might actually qualify as good manners as opposed to assuming I know because, yunno, isn’t it obvious? I started by researching ‘etiquette in France,’ and by ‘research’ I mean I googled so I realise I won’t be getting a Legion d’Honneur medal anytime soon. I did read across many sources that it’s both normal and good manners to say hello and thank you and goodbye, have a nice day, in almost every public encounter, from asking directions to buying bread. I’m also sorry to tell you that in the past unless people were smiling broadly at me and sounding clearly friendly when they were saying bonjour, I assumed they had clocked me as a foreigner and were being sarcastic. But here, even people who look like they’re having a crap day and can’t be bothered with you, will still be polite. It’s shamefully revealing that using basic niceties when you approach a stranger has been a huge revelation. And even for someone who is terrible with language, it’s not so hard to learn hello and thank you.

I’m having a slight crisis of confidence where I’m suddenly remembering many, many instances of appalling manners I have displayed not just in the last week, but in the entire 56 years of my life. My brain may be mostly mush but oddly my memory of my own disgraceful behaviour is sharper than ever. So there’s that discomfort. But I’m also loving it. My life has become so much simpler, really fast. I feel like I’ve regressed to some kind of inner childlike state that hippies I grew up with in Fremantle would pay thousands to replicate. I’m moving slowly, I’m not collapsing on street corners howling into my hanky so much, but I am pausing to appreciate so many small moments of wonder I come across all the time. Things I’d overlook at home because of the familiarity or because I’m busy. I face the day with no loftier intention than wandering through beautiful Montpellier, going to the market, buying milk for coffee and not being an asshole about it. I considered it a highly successful series of events yesterday when I found the local swimming pool, bought a ticket and swam. I had a nap to recover. It was glorious.

So I beat on, a boat against the current of my own ignorance, to misquote F Scott Fitzgerald. The impact of my learning on the lovely people of Montpellier is not completely lost on me, so I’m trying to keep my footprint small and spend my money as liberally as I can afford and as locally as I can. I’m trying to learn as much of the language, even badly, as I can manage in ten weeks. I’m in a lot of uncomfortable situations. But also, I’m having so much fun. I haven’t been so effortlessly mindful in years. Decades. I feel happier, less shy, less fearful. And not in any way that means anything at all to anyone but me, I feel a tiny bit braver than I did a month ago. Although I did just that second have to check if I’d spelled ‘braver’ right because it looked weird on the page.

Merci, au revoir et passe une bonne journee.

I’m in storied country. Fort Augustus at the edge of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. The stones that line the shallows of the Loch, the trees dripping with lichen lace, the fir trees dressed green and warm for winter. Everything is steeped in myth and you can feel you’re walking ancient paths. It’s so beautiful.

We are staying at an old converted Monastery on the very southern shore of Loch Ness. Today we woke to see the mists rise off the water and settle around the crest of the hills that surround them. They’re not so tall as the mountains, we passed Ben Nevis on our way in, which was mountain country, snowy and rugged, with waterfalls at every turn and the high arched stone bridges you see in movies. Spectacular. There’s no snow yet on the hills around Loch Ness where we’re staying, they’re red with what I assume is heather and lined with the firs. The lichen is such a delicate pale green it’s nearly yellow, it frills everything that isn’t smothered in moss. We saw an apple tree dark with frost, it looked dead except for the russet apples still clinging to its branches. Like a spell had been cast. You wouldn’t be surprised to see a witch slink from the shadows nearby.

We haven’t ventured any further afield today than a short walk around the village. There are five locks on the canal that runs through town and a swing bridge that literally swings away from the road to let tall boats through. There was a ribbon of traffic winding through the whole town today waiting for the man working the bridge to signal for the closure to reconnect the bridge with the road. He did this, not via any technology though I’m sure there’s a lot involved, but with a clear shout that rang across the canals like a bell.

I stalked a robin near the boathouse. Hard to get a good shot, they move so fast. The birds look hardy. The deer stood still for me and the ‘hairy cows’ barely blinked in my direction.

I could stay here a while. I can feel it in my bones.

I read Peter Pan for the first time when I was about eight years old. I won a paperback copy in a German language class exam at North Cottesloe Primary School circa 1974. Aside from counting from one to ten and being able to offer the observation, das is ein hund in a questionable accent should the need arise, the book was the only substantial impact learning German had on my life. But I was utterly transformed through the gift of reading that book.

I was mesmerised by the boy who could fly and who never grew up. I would do anything to join him. It felt very possible. Maimie, his first friend who appears in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Wendy Darling, were long gone by now, I figured. Neverland was ripe for a Gillian. And if Peter wasn’t coming for me, I was prepared to go to him. Like most children of Irish Catholic heritage in my era would do, I began by praying to God to help me learn to fly.

I said prayers every night before I went to sleep. It was quite the convoluted process even without my aviation ambitions. I recited the Our Father, then the Hail Mary and followed that with a list of family and friends for God to bless if he happened to cast his Almighty eye their way in the night. You couldn’t be too careful. I did this mostly in order of personal preference, swapping mum and dad into first place on alternative nights to be fair, my sister in next and my cat, Tiddlywinks last because I wasn’t really sure how God felt about pets. At the end, I’d add a personal wish list that up until this moment consisted of anything from a pair of patent leather Mary-Janes in powder blue or Gloria and Dawn Paper Dolls exactly like the ones my friend Jenny Harvey got for her birthday.

Those minor desires were discarded forever once I discovered Peter Pan. I wanted to fly. To Neverland. To see fairies and lost boys, pirates and crocodiles and Indian princesses who wore fringed leather dresses and their hair in long black shiny plaits. Most of all to be friends with Peter. I knew the way there, from the helpful instructions supplied by Mr Barrie, first star on the right and straight on till morning. All I needed was a way to launch. Asking God to help out seemed a reasonable first step. I knew it was a big ask, so it came with a promise that if he would grant me this one wish, I would never bother him again. Mum, Dad and my sister and the cat could look after themselves.

Praying was only the start. I also practised on swings, which was the closest I could get to the feel of flying as I imagined it might be. I’m not really sure what I was aiming for, some kind of transcendental crossing of sorts, I guess. I’d swing as high as I could and while I was whizzing back and forth with no small amount of determination, I’d sing the words to the Peter Pan song from the Disney cartoon of the same name which, I took for some kind of incantation. I cringe so much to remember it now because I really put my heart into it. It went as follows…

Fly, fly to Never Neverland

You and I

To Never Neverland

No worries, no cares

Just fly everywhere

And you can live happily

I was oblivious to any audience I may have had on the ground, so focused was I on attracting the attention of a passing Peter or Tinkerbell. Who knows what the other kids waiting for their turn on the swing thought about it, but safe to say it’s a surprise I wasn’t beaten up more often.

I saved up my pocket money and spent it on small tubes of glitter available at the local shop for around 5 cents a vial. To my child’s eye, it looked like genuine fairy dust and even though it took all of my popsicle cash, I thought it was a fair bargain. I would arrange myself on the edge of our veranda, balancing precariously on the railing, scatter the contents over my head and leap off, the very picture of optimism. When I crashed to the ground, I was undeterred. I tried over and over in the hope that one of these pots of glittery gold would come through and I’d finally be borne aloft into the clouds and spirited away. I felt a twinge of guilt about poor mum and dad who would no doubt wonder where I’d gone, but children disappear in fairy tales all the time and adults get over it pretty fast so I wasn’t too concerned.

None of it worked. Eventually, I gave up and accepted my fate as a groundling. Most people would consider my efforts a failure because I never learned to fly. If that’s how you measure such aspirations, then yes, all I got was a reputation as an oddball, a twisted ankle, glitter that would never completely come out of my hair and a shortened sleep cycle because it took such a long time to get through my prayers. But I learned how to dream. And believe in magic. And once that belief is embedded deep, it sticks fast. It may be lost for a time, but it’s never all that far away.

I found it again only yesterday in fact. My husband and I arrived in London for the start of six-month-long trip we have waited for, for a long time. There was a thick snowfall right across the city. Our hotel is on the doorstep of Hyde Park and the first thing we did was walk through to Kensington Gardens to find my holy grail. The statue of Peter Pan commissioned by J M Barrie in 1912. Kensington Gardens in the snow. It was magical. It was as beautiful as I imagined it would be.

There’s a moment in Peter Pan where he tells Wendy that fairies are born when a new baby laughs and every time a child says they don’t believe in fairies, somewhere a fairy dies. Near the end of the story when Tinkerbell herself lies dead, Peter in his grief brings her back to life with his longing and his conviction that she is real. It’s a beautiful literary moment when we are reminded of the power of belief.

If you are worried about the state of the world, or you stopped believing in fairies too many years ago to remember, you can be assured of this. There is power in magic and wonder, however you choose to find it. For me, it was waiting here in Kensington Gardens, just behind the big lake where the white swans glide. And the stories and dreams that have given me wings all of my life, saw a statue for the very first time and remembered.

I’m a well-known vampire. In my youth, I had a shot at fitting in with the cool crowd. This involved donning the smallest bikini I could squeeze my triple-a cup “breasts” into, slathering myself in reef oil, unfurling an alfoil reflector to aim at my face to increase the uv rays from blistering to radioactive and then laying out under a high white Australian sun until nicely browned. Except I didn’t brown. I turned a mottled purple, peeled like desiccated coconut and eventually reverted to a blinding shade of white that would rival the late Shane Warne’s smile.

I accepted my fate early on and went Goth instead. It was so much better for my complexion and I didn’t have to try to smile at boys. Even in the most sweltering of heat, I’d clad myself head to toe in black, including my well-soaped sticky hair which was teased into a Sideshow-Bobesque spiky cloud that doubled as a sunshade. I walked in shadows like the night all through my teens and subsequent decades thus avoiding for many years even a coy flutter of sun on the palest parts of my person.

Then my dog died.

I don’t know what you do when your dog dies. What are you supposed to do? Coping with death has happened before and it is not a case of practice making anything more than its own perfect kind of hell, frankly. I miss him so much. My husband is heartbroken. In the last two years, both of our beautiful dogs have left us and we are not ok. We have become a household without dogs, a soulless, grim, too-quiet affair without smelly beds and barking for no reason at odd hours, without grime marks on the wall or hair all over the sofa. Without the weight of a purposeful steady gaze at precisely five to four every day just before dinner. Without a wet nose pushing under our hands to artfully guide us into a pat, without the clatter of claws on the floorboards at night, without the scrape of a paw at the door to come in, seconds after we had let him out.

Our Huey sunk into a deep depression when his brother Jo went first a couple of years ago at 17. Huey aged quickly then, he slept a lot and struggled to walk any distance. But he still loved the beach, he still visibly perked when he saw us get into our bathers, he still erupted into the water like an arrow from a bow, he still swam in circles around my husband then rested in his arms in deep water, staring calmly into the blue as he had done every single swim since he was a puppy. He still dug for his ball or carried it into the shallows to drop it in water only to snatch it up, drop it and snatch it up again, over and over in a game only he understood. He still waited in studied nonchalance on the shore with his ball in his mouth, ever hopeful another dog might try to steal it away so he could thwart them with a clever feint and dodge. He still loved us. He still sat at my husband’s feet, gazing up at him, chin resting heavy on his knee or his foot in an enviable satisfaction with his lot in life.

When Huey got sick, it was fast. A terminal cancer. We made the terrible decision quickly, without too much doubt. We are both of the opinion if your dog has an incurable disease, is facing any prospect of suffering and you try to keep them alive then you really have to ask yourself who you’re trying to protect. But certainty doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help the guilt, and it doesn’t stem the grief.

Both of our boys died in their later years, and I know we should be thankful. I know to nod or try to smile in agreement when someone well-meaning tells me he reached a good age or even sounds surprised he lived as long as he did. I feel so savage when I hear it. There is no good age. There is only his age. There is only his absence. There is only our grief.

We did not cope. First, we took ourselves across the country to inflict our sorry selves on friends celebrating significant events. A 50th birthday, a belated 50th birthday, a wedding. So much joy and our hearts were full for them. And these were real friends, who take you even, especially, when you’re broken. I’m glad we went, even if we weren’t great company. But you always have to come home, and that’s where the shadows lay in wait. We have been like dogs in pain ourselves since, turning in useless circles, pacing, restless, bewildered, snappy and impatient with each other and ourselves.

We have a lovely love though, even or especially when adrift. However wretched we might feel we can always fall back on this truth. It’s a love that allows for imperfection, it offers room for sorrow and all the various uncomfortable and ugly ways it can manifest. We tread softly when we need to. And we have needed to a lot. Often we have to stop and remind each other, but it’s been the spine of our love for such a long time now, once we remember, we find our way back to what matters pretty quickly. I am very grateful for that.

So, after a stretch of uncomfortable manifestations and no small amount of imperfections, one recent Saturday coincided with the first sunny day Perth had seen for some time. We’d had a long winter, bleak, grey, relentless rain. We had a couple of days with no commitments and the sun emerged, shyly and with perfect timing through cloud like a friend.

Gosh it felt like a long time since we’d had any fun. (Though in reality, we had a very good time at the aforementioned parties even if we did frighten the horses now and then.) We felt renewed, hopeful, like the light could wash us clean. Obviously, this called for champagne. And a lot of it.

Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was the company, maybe it was the three (or was it four) bottles of champagne. Who can say? But suddenly it seemed like the greatest idea in the world to whip off our dacks and sit there in our respective glory, listening to music, soaking up the rays. How we drank, how we laughed, how we cried, how we sang, how we barely ate a thing to soak up the booze, how we didn’t consider the precarious state of our grandchildren’s mental health should they arrive unexpectedly and come round the back. It was, insomuch as I remember, a wonderful, wonderful day.

It was not until the next morning when we woke with piercing headaches, my love arose to make me a coffee and I repaid this gesture of merciful devotion with a wild shriek of mirth. “You’re burnt,” I said, charged with the righteous confidence of one who is so sun-conscious and self-conscious, they never take off their neck-to-knee swimming costume or their wide-brimmed hat even in the dead of winter. “So are you,” he said in return, oily with the glee of one who is handed immediate and welcome revenge. Was I ever. The only parts of my skin spared the sear of the sun were the underside of the rolls of fat on my menopausal belly. I looked like a previously undiscovered species of striped sea slug.

A week or so later the blinding glare of the tomato hue has faded to an unattractive dull magenta and the stripes remain. But worth it. I am reminded there is joy in the ridiculous, peace to be found in speaking your heart aloud to someone who loves you, and that given that I am female, over 50 and invisible, I can wear what I like. Including nothing.

I still miss our dog. I miss our dog. I miss our dog. I love you my boy.