Dear friends
I am sitting on the terrace of a gorgeous villa in Speloncato, a hilltop village poised between the mountains and the coastal plain in the Balagne, northern Corsica. In front of me the hill falls away to an area dotted with olive trees surrounding a huge lake. Beyond that is a range of small pointy hills topped with dramatic fortified villages, and beyond them lies the blue Mediterranean. Above my head is a rather rickety wrought iron framework that must have once supported a canvas awning or something, which was probably destroyed by the fierce winds they sometimes have here. This structure is used as a perching place by a gaggle of swallows who chatter and chirp all day long, interspersed with sudden dives to the surface of the pool to snap up the flying insects which congregate there. Only yesterday we realised that many of these swallows are in fact adolescents who lack still the long tail feathers of the adult. These lazy teenagers hang around with their beaks open wide, waiting for their hard working parents to drop by with a tasty morsel.
Above them all floats the red kite. We remember the kites here from two years ago, when we used to feed them, and we are attempting to do the same this time. I put some scraps of raw chicken on the end of a wall, and John spends hours with his camera trained on the spot, hoping to get that perfect shot of the kite grabbing his prey. But he is shy and careful, and circles the house for a long, long time before swooping down so fast you barely see it happening. John hasn't got a shot of him yet...
As for me, I am in paradise. Tears came to my eyes as soon as we landed in Bastia on Sunday, and have been doing so on and off ever since. I love this place - it's a bit wild and undiscovered. There are no other English tourists in this village, it's quite low-key. We are above the village, with only a few cows for company, and the sound of their cow-bells - and the birds, of course. Up the hill, on our first afternoon, came a small herd of skinny cattle, all with those lovely mellow-sounding bells round their necks, many with small calves at foot. The old farmer driving them explained that this was the traditional practice of transhumance, in which the cows are taken to graze on the mountain for the summer.
It's unbelievably peaceful here. I don't want to do anything much, just stay here and vegetate. I can't sleep thanks to the horrid steroids, but have started tapering them off. I know you have to be careful about this, but I'm doing it gradually and no side-effects so far. I even slept 4 whole hours last night! Anyway, I get up at dawn and do half an hour of meditation, wrapped in a blanket, out on the deck beside the pool, followed by my Tai Ji practice. This is doing me the world of good.
There is a cafe in the village square, shaded by mulberry trees, and on our first night we ate there. I just broke down and wept into my 'omelette au brocciu'. Couldn't stop, tears all over my face, snivelling into my napkin. "I'm not surprised," says hubby, " You've been so brave and cheerful through all this, it was bound to catch up with you. I've been expecting this to happen sooner or later." "No, no, no!" I replied, "It's not that. I'm not having a breakdown. I'm crying because I'm so happy. I never thought we'd come back here, and recently I didn't think I'd be well enough to enjoy it. But I'm still here, and here we are!" (Snivel, snivel, weep, weep).
When we got my encouraging scan results two weeks ago, I declared our house and our daily life a cancer-free zone ( until the next scan). I'm sure lots of people feel this way - you just want to get away from that d*** 'C' word! So I thought I'd stop obsessively visiting the Mac site, give my blog a rest for the summer, not bring cancer up in conversation, just behave like a normal person. But that's easier said than done. It's everywhere! You can't visit the supermarket, turn on the TV, check your email inbox, pick up a newspaper, without having it shoved in your face. And we all know how, when people you meet ask you how you are, and you reply, like a normal person, "I'm fine, thank you", they respond by saying, "But how are you really?" What they mean is "How is your cancer?"
I brought the Saturday Times magazine to read beside the pool, got it out today, and found a heart-wrenching article by an American oncologist whose wife develops incurable cancer. There had been another cancer story in the previous Saturday magazine too. Then there is all the publicity surrounding that young adult film, 'The fault in our stars', about teenage cancer sufferers. So even here, in paradise, there is a worm in the bud.
Hey ho, I'm off for a swim. I hope I haven't made people too envious with my description of this beautiful place.
