I've had quite an adventure in the past few weeks, which accounts for an absence from here that you probably haven't noticed. I was offered the chance of a week in southern Spain with a friend, and jumped at the chance of blue skies, sea, palm trees and above all warm days. And I got all that, and enjoyable it was. But on the day we were due to leave - actually two weeks ago tomorrow - I had my bag stolen in the airport. In it were my passport, my money, my credit cards, my iPhone and other small but essential items. As a result, I couldn't leave. My dear friend left me her remaining euros and a card I could use, but it took four days to get an emergency travel document to get me out of there, and another week in London for a new passport before I could travel home to France.
The days in Spain were very odd. I was back in the hotel where we'd spent the week, but conserving my money so there were no trips out apart from visits to the consulate and hours spent in the internet cafe. How to pass the time? I'd actually been reading a book on my phone and felt quite desperate at the thought of nothing to read. So I read the only two books in English I could find in the hotel. One of them was Prey by Michael Crichton, and the other was Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy. I hadn't read anything by either of them before and I will not be doing so in future. Why not? These are best-selling authors, after all, and I'm not such a snob that I'd reject them on those grounds - I've very fond of John Grisham, for example. And these were not bad books. The Crichton is a sort of sci-fi thriller in which technology develops a vindictive intelligence of its own -as the blurb says:
A swarm of rogue microbots, designed to reproduce and learn, is developing with a frightening speed that has the scientists battling to contain it. Only when Jack is called in to help does he discover the shocking truth – the microbots have been programmed to behave as predators - and their prey is Man.
The Binchy, as the title hints at, is set in and around a heart clinic in Dublin, and explores the lives and loves of the staff and patients. Heartwarming, I suppose. But neither of these were up my street, whatever that is. Anyway I'm finally home, and trying to pick up the pieces of my scattered life. Applying for a replacement driving licence, waiting for new bank cards to arrive - it's amazing how much we reply on small rectangles of plastic to live a normal life.
