Grand Tour (part 1)

It was a few Sundays ago. I went to a shopping centre that smelled of cheap perfume and then sat in a big tube for a couple of hours with lots of people. I emerged from that pipe and the shopping centre now smelt like more expensive perfume and coffee; it had also moved to the Cote D'Azur.

In this limited life of mine, a recurring pleasure is traveling along the Promenade Des Anglais from the airport into Nice. Few journeys deliver me such optimism, even on a bus. Turquoise sea and palm trees in a sunny city at the foot of the mountains. The hotel was about 2 or 3 hundred yards from the bus stop. Our case has two wheels (it hasn't lost any) at one corner and a handle at the opposite apex; this is problematic because one still has to carry a fair proportion of the baggage's weight and if your hand doesn't rest at the height of the handle, it is becomes an extremely inefficient system. We keep saying we will get new luggage.....next holiday; there are some nice bags about these days. I think there should be one with a fold down skateboard/scooter arrangement.

First stop (after the hotel) is the cleverly named La Pizza restaurant, first visited by me about thirty years ago as the guest of one Jose (father of Julian) Vilarrubi. They are good their pizzas.

We gadded about between shops, restaurants, beaches and cafes till Wednesday morning when I collected our hire car, I hope Postman Pat managed without it for a few days. It had had an appropriate azur re-spray and I laughed when it appeared on the forecourt. I lowered the driver seat to it's bottom setting which meant that there was about a foot and a half of headroom above me but the lowest possible centre of gravity. We inched out of that congested town and on to the Grand Corniche where we opened her up and blasted majestically into nearby Italy. More bright blue optimism, this time with added vertiginous drops. About 700km later we found ourselves wending our way up an unmade road to a village called Macerino in Umbria.

On Friday a friend of mine and I were sipping cappuccinos in the late afternoon sun outside a cafe in Brighton; nice. We used the opportunity to bang on to each other about our respective ails. He has had and operation recently on a knee and is still limping, I am recovering from the periodic vertigo thing I have from time to time.

One of the topics we touched on for light relief was that of the vehicle parked at the side of the road in front of us. A normal looking transit van except that it had "nice" wheels and appeared to have handlebars instead of a steering wheel. Indeed, leering across more closely at it, I saw it had no driver's seat.

Half an hour or so later, we had moved inside as it become chilly and were both facing the floor-to-ceiling window that stretched the length of the place. An electric wheel chair appeared from the right. On board was a guy who I would guess was in his forties, he looked like a younger Stephen Hawking, his head was supported by a headrest at the back and on the side. Also he seemed unable to keep his limbs still. He was alone. My companion and I said nothing to each other, we both guessed what was about to happen but at the same time couldn't quite believe it. The back doors of the van opened and our friend (at the second attempt) parked on the lift that had dropped down. Up and in he went, the van doors calmly closed. A couple of minutes later he appeared in the front and then spent another while wrestling with his safety belts. Eventually the vehicle started up and our mystery man powered away, (no easing hesitantly into the traffic for him) to his next appointment.

(Adrian and his mate nil, God one).