Irma and self had decided to go to france for a short holiday, and then she would go back to Scotland with me. At this stage she was still fancy free, and she and Ally, whom she met on a previous holiday, kept up their friendship, or maybe courtship, and she was looking forward very much to see him again.
So started our quest to get our visas, and to get into France as out first entrance to the Shengen states, we had to have our hotels booked, and it was a bit of a nuisance, as we wanted to hire a car and drive as and where our fancy took us.
But we got all done, and the middle of March saw us happily on the plane, first to Heathrow, and then on air France to Charles du Gaulle airport. All went well, until, after we had a luke warm coffee to try and get our bearings around the nerve testing streets of Paris, and to try and find the underground, Irma announced that she had lost the paper with the instructions as to how to get to our hotel. We had to get a train to a station called Something  sur Seine, but she couldn't remember the first word. So, not knowing that Paris was littered with all kinds of sur Seines, we found a tube that would take us to Neuilly sur Seine.
 Once there, we had to turn left after leaving the tube station, then pass a small tobacco shop, and voila, we would see our hotel! We turned left, and walked and walked, but there was no sign of any hotel with the name we had.
We then went the other way, and it was hot, hot hot, and my bags were heavy, and after another bally two kilometers, I told Irma that I was going to just plonk down under a tree, and while I watch the bags, she could find the hotel. I waited for ages, and the funny characters that came from nowhere, some of them peeping very suspiciously at the bags, scared the blue devil out of me, and by the time Irma came back, I was thirsty, scared, and angry!
She had not found the hotel, and as an old lady, looking quite friendly passed at that moment, I asked her for directions, and by the most remarkable luck, she understood English, and told us that if we get onto the tube for another few stops, we would get to Asnieres sur Seine, where she knew there was a tobacco shop.
So we dragged ourselves and the luggage back to the tube station that was miles away, and after a few stops, voila, Asnieres sur Seine!
We turned left, and there was the tobacco shop, and scarce two hundred meters further our hotel stood big and looking like the best place ever, although it was only a two star! It was now after six, and we had been in Paris at twelve, so we were lugging around our luggage for more than six hours! I could easily have killed my child, but luckily I was too tired!

Driving into Haarlem after six and a half hours on the road, and such a long, lonely, boringly straight road at that, I was met with a view absolutely breath takingly beautiful, and I remembered why I preffered to stay in such a strange place instead of in my flat in town. It was quite overcast, and some heavy, white clouds were hanging like soft woolly blankets over the mountains, seemingly protecting the small village from the outside world.
My heart did sink a bitty when I saw how overgrown my garden was, as the kikuju grass is not at all stemmed by the cold winters they apparently have in Haarlem. Of course I never had a winter there, but my neigbors and kids told me every time I come back how lucky I was to skip the winters!
I should have been quite used to all the animals that move into my house the moment I move out, but it is still quite startling to open the front door, to be met with cob webs hanging from the rafters, and spiders, about five different species of them, scuttling like crazy to get to the safety of the thatch, their seven month long sojourn in my house rudely interrupted by the sudden flooding of the rooms with outside light.
As it was already late, I immediately started on my bedroom, vacuuming, dusting, and putting on clean bedding, so that I could at least sleep peacefully. Then i tackled the kitchen, as I was hungry, and it was quite impossible to get to the cooker or the pots, as the cobwebs were just everywhere, and they were unbelieveably thick and sticky.
It was Jan's birthday, but as he was still working and staying in George during the week, it would not be till the Friday before I would see him.
The next few days I was kept busy first with cleaning out the house, then trying to make sense of the neglected garden.
I think a batch of spiders had hatched, as that first night I couldn't sleep, small things crawling all over me, and the bally little mites could bite and all. I sprayed insectecide, but then had such a fit of sneezing that I sat up half the night, waiting for the smell to go away.
But I made it to the morning, and from then on it was just work, work, work, as I had to prepare the veggy beds, plant out the strawberries, prune the roses, and just generally try and fix the place to some kind of liveable habitat again.
But the summer sped by, and before I knew it I was on my way back to Scotland, ready and rested to pick up the threads of my job, and also my other life.

I woke up to a cloudy, miserable morning on the day I was to leave for home, with the rain pelting down, and a strong wind trying to unroof the whole village. As it was so easy for me to get to Glasgow airport, I had waved away both Liz and the Boys's offers to take me to the airport. They were all busy, and by taking the schoolbus to Stirling, then a bus to Glasgow, and from there the airport bus, was child's play, and they did not have to waste  their valuable time. Must admit, with my huge black suitcase loaded to it's limits, and a bitty above my  allowed weight on the plane, it was heavy going, but the bus drivers were very helpful, and the schoolbus driver even got out to help me get it on the bus, and all this to great amusement for the kids, as he was quite slight, and had a hard time getting it loaded.
But, a wee bit drenched, and arms feeling like they had gone through a mill they were so tired, I made it to the airport, safe and sound. It was the first time I had gone from the hotel to the airport, but for the last couple of years I had gone by bus when leaving the plane from South Africa. What I had forgotten of course was that I always came with an almost empty suitcase, as I left all my working clothes ans a lot of other stuff that I don't use at home.
The flight to Dubai was long and tedious, as I had the most sour old lady next to me, who sighed and grunted all the way, making the hope of taking a nap quite impossible! She might have been a bitty dementious, as she also kept talking to herself, and giving short laughs that was more bark than laugh, but it made me jerk back from my slumbers just when I started to drop off!
I had a nine hour wait at Dubai, and to while away the time, I roamed the duty free shops, trying out every conceivable perfume you could think of, and of course ending up smelling like a walking bunch of flowers and other stuff, and even offending my own nose!
After visiting with My sister Lida and brother in law Dries for a week, I flew to cape Town, there to visit my daughter Trienkie and family before driving back to Haarlem.
 I was a bitty apprehensive about Haarlem, as the previous year I had to fight my way through spider webs that hung like silk curtains from the rafters, and the spiders that grows to the size of a saucer scared the blue devils out of me, not to talk of the huge frogs that would be living very comfortably behind every cupboard, sofa and other furniture, and the snakes that got so tame, they sunbathe in my backyard!
But on my drive back the karoo that is a semi desert, was showing signs of waking up from it's long winter sleep, and here and there I could see  new growths on the hard, grey brush, and my love for my country welled up in me, and I started singing: 'Al die veld is vrolik, al die voeltjies sing! (All of the fields are happy, and all the birds are singing). It was nice to be home, even thinking about all the critters in my house that I had to get rid of!