IT ALL BEGAN on the beach at Sorrento. My feet were scrunching the hard sand near the water ... a marching rhythm that brought to mind Lewis Carroll’s walrus and carpenter.

The time has come
This writer said
To think of other things
Of castles in the south of France
Of  villages and towns

Of crusty loaves
And olives black
Of grapes just picked
And wine just poured
Of sitting on a terrace
And never being bored.

That was it. I must go to the south of France, to Provence. Hire a villa (if not a castle) and live there for a while. I imagined myself, with confident sweep of the arm, inviting friends to come and stay. ‘Do come and stay a while at my villa in Provence ... I’ll be having interesting house guests while I’m there.’
The reality was a modification of the dream of course. First I would see if I could earn my airfare by writing travel stories. I have two favourite airlines, Cathay Pacific and Swissair. I got in touch with Cathay Pacific and, joy, they would fly me in return for being included in my travel pieces.
It was pretty optimistic expecting someone to invite me to use his castle, let alone villa, but I was lucky enough to find Melbourne-based owners of villas in Provence. And since the weekly rate was seven-hundred-and-seventy dollars that was not bad at all if four of us were sharing. There could be no largesse towards visitors.
Again I was fortunate to find two others who were keen to join me at the villa and a married couple who would join us at the end of the first week.
I prefer to visit Europe around September and have always found it like our Indian summer, even in Switzerland. By this time the tourists have left and the locals become themselves again.
The decision on the beach was made in mid-Autumn, so there were about four months to make arrangements.
For me this meant preparing two issues of my local newspaper, Green Place, before leaving. Above all, I told myself, don’t leave things until the last minute.
Having said that, and being a born optimist, I saw it all falling into place.
I must add the rider that this is a rough account of events. I have an active imagination and don’t always allow facts to diminish a yarn.
Nola, Lola, Gwen and Denzil are not the names of my companions nor are they entirely like any of them. My characters are combinations of all of them and even comments attributed to the one male were not always made by him.
The only person true to form is me. And even I’m a bit beyond myself at times

'Be sure to cut the luggage down to the least possible,' I advised my travelling companions. 'Pack what you think you'll need and then cut it down. There's nothing worse than lugging cases around.'
     I travel with a case the size you are allowed to take on the aircraft (but send it through luggage) plus a small leather sausage bag and a handbag, which I take on. This gives a reasonably even weight in either hand.
     Nola had a very large sausage bag and Lola a large case with wheels (plus separate wheels). They were to prove difficult at stages of our travels
     The 'plane journey was heavenly in all senses, up above the clouds in the sunshine. Cathay Pacific pamper you with fruit juice and meals and wine and films and comfortable seats and you have that great feeling of having responsibilities behind and adventure ahead.
     We left Melbourne on Friday and touched down in Paris on Saturday morning about six-thirty. From there on it was parlez Francais and we were all eager to show we could understand.
With some difficulty, we found the right stop for a shuttle bus to nearby Roissy, where we knew we could get the Metro to Gare de Lyon for our fast train to Avignon.
At the ticket window it was 'C'est possible a ... Eurail Pass pour le Métro?' Oui, ce'st bien. That was lucky because the pass was validated and we might have forgotten to do that.
So, down the stairs, luggage and all, not easy for Lola with that large case. We slid our tickets into the slots in the gates, picked them up as they popped out and hurried down more stairs to the platform.
'Here's our train ... where's Lola?' I said. Nola went back upstairs to look for her. The train departed.
Down they came, struggling with that big case.
'My ticket didn't come out of the slot,' said Lola. 'I've been looking for it on the floor.'
Never mind, we'll solve it at the other end. Let's get on this train. We changed stations at Les Halles, fortunately from one platform to the next, no stairs, and one stop had us at Gare de Lyon.
Lola's missing ticket didn't matter after all. Our tickets didn't work in the exit machine and the three of us had to shuffle our luggage along the dividing panel and crawl under the bars. Not a dignified entrée to France.
More struggles with luggage to check notice boards; the Marseille train didn't yet have a platform listed.
'I'll dash up and see where the big trains leave from,' I said and came back with the good news.
'The snout-nosed fast trains are all up those stairs. We can take our luggage up and have coffee in a little café there.'
We did all that and then checked the platform listing, which now showed our line.
Dommage and damn. Sorry girls, it's not going from here after all. There's another big train area and it's down those stairs again and quite a hike.
We made it to the train, first class carriage, stowed our bags and fell in to seats with relief. Wasn't it good to have these Eurail passes and know that you had seats.
Suddenly there were four French women asking us to vacate ... we didn't need French to know they were telling us to check our tickets for seat numbers as we were in their seats.
Lola read the tickets carefully and said, oh we were in carriage two and we did after all have numbers.
It was getting close to departure time, so I suggested we take our luggage through the train to the next carriage. Nola and I had settled in but where was Lola? She had taken her luggage back on to the platform and was struggling down to the carriage and just made it before we pulled out.
We were off with a whisper, speeding at three hundred kilometres an hour, soon out of Paris and in to the soft, sunny countryside.
The soil was caramel and milky chocolate, the greens a delicate lime; blackberries had ripened on the bushes, there were fields of sunflowers drying on their stalks, bushes and brambles ran free, small towns clustered around churches.
Fields were separated with hedges of gorse and other small bushes to about two feet high and avenues of poplars led to farms and villages, shorn sheep looked up as we sped by. As we approached the northern reaches of Provence the vineyards took over, especially on the southern slopes of the hills above Rhone. Vegetables and fruit trees covered the rich river flats and the giant brick kilns near Valence puffed smoke ... not far from the limestone quarry behind them.
We heaved our luggage down and stepped out on Avignon Station, outside the ancient city walls. Up the stairs and out to the front of the station, where we looked straight down the main street of Avignon.
The Avis agency was just a short distance from the station so I went off, free of luggage to sign up and locate the car. It was a late model four door Fiat Tempura and I was pretty pleased about that because we'd heard stories of large people and tiny cars and nowhere to put the luggage.
The Avis chap asked me something at such a pace I asked him to say it again. Couldn't catch it; could he say it in English?
He looked at me sharply and clicked his tongue. 'I aeem speeakink Eengleesh,' he said and added slowly 'You weel leaf the car een Neece?'
'Oh, oui, oui en Nice,' I said as though French were my second tongue.
We put our gear in the boot of the car and headed for main street where we had some very good beer and Salad Nicoise at La Duomo, cool under the chestnut tree that roofed the restaurant's pavement tables.
Back to the car and with instructions to follow the outside of the wall and keep on the road to Carpentras, I took the wheel and drove in to the traffic.
I was comfortable on the left-hand side of the car because you still drive from near the centre of the road; the gears were easy, though I was used to automatic.
Hoh, hoh, it felt fine as we drove at a steady sixty kilometres through the countryside. Right to our village Pernes-les-Fontaines and to the main gate, Porte Villeneuve.
This was something. I would drive through the gate, turn right in to Rue de la Republique and to the door of our villa. Alas, fair in the middle of the gate was a large van, parked. Nothing for it but to make and turn and go back to the road and down to the river where we would find the lower end of our street.
So we drove up the narrow street to the door of our village and, what luck, opposite was an ancient gate in a recess large enough to take the car.
A bit like schoolgirls keen to see the new dorm, we opened the two locks on the villa and dashed inside, noting two rooms on the ground floor before going up the steep stairs to the main living area, a large room with windows to the south and glassed-in kitchen area at one end.
Another flight of stairs to the two balcony bedrooms and a bathroom.
     Who would have the choice bedroom with the double sofa bed, French windows to the balcony? It fell to Lola, who already showed signs of liking her privacy, of being methodical, less flexible.
The second bedroom opening to the balcony had two beds; Nola and I also like our own space and since there was a light over only one bed, I took the double bedroom on the street level, planning to share the twin room when our married pair arrived.
Once our luggage was out of the car and in the villa I drove the car off to park it somewhere ... where indeed? The village was a confusion of narrow one-way streets.
Since we had come up Rue de la Republique I followed that up and took a turn to the left. I was going the wrong way up a steep street and when I faced a blind corner I was too uncertain to go on in case I met a car coming fast ... the streets are barely a car-width. Turning took half a dozen locks, back and forth, and I took another street towards the river.
Ah, there was the clock tower in our street; I was in the right direction, but in the middle of the street leading to ours was scaffolding several storeys high. I drove in reverse gear to the previous corner to head down the next street but found a plasterer's truck parked right on the corner. I edged the car towards the tiny space between the truck and the villa opposite. Backed off, tried again. Impossible. Amposs-eebe! I gave a few blasts with the horn and a sturdy fellow ran out.
He stood in front of my car and urged me to come forward, come forward. We folded back the side mirrors and I willed the car to shrink.
     He would have me push ahead, and waved his arms like one of those air traffic fellows with a bat in each hand. He smiled and shouted encouragement and leapt in the air as it 'came through' like a squeezed pip.

'Bravo ... Buono,' he beamed
An Italian! They're good at plastering but not much on lateral thinking.
How much simpler for him to have moved his truck.
I found a parking spot near the river and walked up Rue de la Republique feeling pretty pleased with myself. I mean, I'd got in to the car, driven along French roads, right to the door of our villa. 
While that might have been good for my ego, and convenient for my travelling companions, it did nothing for my reputation. To the other born leaders in our pack I was beginning to look like a know-all hussy who would have to be kept down to size.
I feel sure this opinion was confirmed later in the week when Gwen and Denzil had joined us. We were strolling up our Rue to the car (now in the car park we'd discovered) when Denzil made a 360 degree turn, arms outstretched and said, 'I wonder which way north is?'
You can guess who hopped in and declared: 'In the northern hemisphere you face the path of the sun and north is behind you, the sun rises on your left shoulder and sets on your right; in the south we look north to the sun's path and south is behind us, it rises on your right and sets on your left.'
'What rubbish'. 'Nonsense.' 'The sun rises in the same place wherever you are.' And finally 'The sun is just an aspect.'
'But it is so. Don't we always prefer houses facing north for the sun.' I was fool enough to pursue.
'The sun is just an aspect,' Gwen repeated. And that was final.
I should have known better. Why didn't I shut up and stop digging my reputation in to the mud.
They wandered off up the street, groupie-like, tsch-ing and mumbling and I knew that from then on my reputation as a know-all was set as firm as a Provencale liquorice block.
There came a time when the squad decided it was time to pull me down to size, literally.
We were sitting around after an evening meal and someone was talking about the height of her children.
There was a pause. Then four pairs of eyes looked in my direction.
'How tall are you?' They spoke together, with a hint of triumph.
'Mm. Five feet four,' I said steadily.
They exploded. 'You're not.'
'Go on I'm only five feet five,' said Nola. 'And you're much shorter than I am.' Yes, I thought, that's if you count your bouffant hair.
'Come on. Stand back to back with Nola,' they demanded.
'I will not stand up and be measured,' I said with a gusto that sliced the matter off right there.

Millions of people travel all over the world carrying with them their medications: aspirins, laxatives and stoppers, blood pressure tablets, arthritis tablets, spare glasses, spare wooden legs. It doesn't stop them.
Every traveller has a tale of some mishap from running out of vital tablets to landing in a foreign hospital.
'I had an attack of appendicitis in Europe several years ago and spent the rest of my holiday in hospital,' Gwen said.
Teeth were my problem. My crowned front upper tooth had cracked beneath the gum line in a car accident not long ago when my small car was squashed between five big cars. I had no choice but to have the teeth each side crowned to take a bridge; the work was not finished at the time of my departure and the crowns were held with temporary glue.
'I think they'll last out,' said my dentist Gus Glavici.
'I'm not leaving the surgery without spare glue,' I declared. At which he gave me two near-empty tubes of glue to mix, a small pad, and a steel spatula which I promised faithfully to return.
Uncertainty hung over me during the trip. I couldn't crunch those baguettes or bite on the olives, had to chew with care.
One is intimate with one's teeth and I knew something was not as it should be just after we arrived in Entreveaux. Lying on my bed reading, I decided to test the crowns. They came away in my hand.
My heart pounded so hard it seemed to propel me forward. On the mantelshelf I laid a white washer and set up a mirror behind it. To the bathroom to rinse mouth and crowns in warm water. Back to the bedroom to dry the pegs with the hairdryer. Ouch, those pegs were painful.
What if the pegs are broken, what if the crowns don't fit back properly? I was in a mediaeval village with two fine boulangeries and a respected boucher and a reasonable restaurant, but no dentist. One crown is bad enough, but three centre front teeth!
I mixed the glue on the tiny yellow pad, trying to control the pounding heart. My hand was shaking as I smeared the glue on to the double crown fitting and pushed it home. Sudden fear that it was at the wrong angle ... no, seemed OK.
I pressed my thumb firmly under the crowns and lay on my bed simmering down and had a quick word with God. It was firm. I rose feeling confident it would see me home and relieved that I'd solved it. If it did come off again I could fix it.