I’m back in my field, snuggled under the duvet, having a rest day after a hectic week of late nights, early mornings and emotional reunions, followed by a houseful of paying guests this weekend celebrating a 70^th birthday.  On Saturday night, as I listened to them laughing and joking as they sipped their coffee and Armagnac at the end of the meal I’d cooked for them, I gave myself a massive pat on the back and promised that as soon as I’d given them a hearty breakfast and an enthusiastic wave-off, I’d be in my PJs and back in bed before they’d got to the end of the drive.

As it was, a bit of euphoric activity of stripping beds whilst I gave them an extra half hour, just in case they’d forgotten something, turned into cleaned rooms, washed and ironed laundry and a feeling of pious virtue by the time I did actually collapse in front of the telly, a good while after the sun had gone down.  

It’s been a long time since I was back in England and arriving at Gatwick had me in the kind of confusion I expect someone feels when they’ve just been released from a long stretch in prison.  Everything seemed sort of familiar, but at the same time things had moved on.  How did I buy a ticket for a train up to London?  And what about the change I needed to do at Clapham Junction? 

Did trains leave from the same platforms they’d always done? Would I need to do my weak old-lady act, to get someone to lift my ten-ton, super-sized case up and down the stairs or would there be lifts? I always pride myself on travelling light, but Brexit’s put paid to that.  I might not be a drug mule, but I had a case full of stuff that can no longer be sent through the post without incurring import duty and a shopping list of stuff I wanted to take back.  

As it was, my biggest discovery as to how the UK’s changed in the last few years, is the nigh on impossibility it was to spend the bag of pound coins and fifty-pence pieces I have had in a drawer for several years.  Pounds sterling is almost as redundant in London as it is in France where cash – euros that is – remains King. Flipping heck over here, they’d laugh in your face if you tried to pay for a take-away coffee or a greetings card by waving your phone around. Lots of people still use their cheque-book in the supermarket.  In fact some places don’t take cards at all.  I wondered out-loud if Luncheon-Vouchers still existed. My 32 year-old son and his partner stared at me blankly.  I took that as a no.

But there’s nowhere – as least nowhere I’ve ever been – that does shops like London.  And for me it’s never about what I can afford, but what I definitely can’t.   The thrill is in just looking and the more unattainable something is, the more I covet it.  It’s wandering down Burlington Arcade and selecting a rainbow of cashmere sweaters from N Peal.  Yes I know I can get almost identical looking ones from Uniqlo and Marks and Spencer at a fraction of the price but they aren’t the same because I can afford them.  Who wants what they can have? And do I really need another jumper, let alone a brightly-coloured selection? And the upper floors of Fortnum’s; pre-loved vintage Hermes silk scarves, gorgeous engraved Florentine stationery, paper-thin china teacups, butter-soft leather travel goods and swanky crystal scent bottles.  I want them all.

Then there’s Hatchard’s; full of books I need, want and must have; even though until this point I never knew they existed.  Affordable, but too heavy to carry home, so unattainable.  Yes I know I can order them from Amazon, but without the Hatchard’s bookmark and bottle-green, rope handled carrier bag it’s not the same illicit booty.   And Liberty; again top floors, lots of vintage furniture and a haberdashery to die for.  Don’t remind me, I know, I can’t sew or knit.  And jigsaws.  Ah those; I am good at them.  And yes I did buy one, OK two.  Three would’ve been nice, but probably excessive. 

My sister Jo and I were in the West End for two days; although she probably thought she’d been there a fortnight, such was my greed to see and do everything.  We were recreating our first trip to London taken by our grandparents; a British Rail Stardust mini-break, as they used to be branded back in the late 1960s.  We stayed in the same hotel on Piccadilly.  

We had been upgraded to a suite as there wasn’t a twin room available.  I told Jo she could have the bedroom; I’d sleep in the sitting room and she was somewhat flummoxed when greeted by rose petals and balloons on her bed and ‘Happy Birthday’ written on the mirror.

‘It’s not my birthday,’ she informed me, as if her older, if not more mature, sister didn’t know this fact.

‘I didn’t say it was,’ I said, ‘I told them we were celebrating your birthday. Which we are.  Unless you want to celebrate mine.’

Just then there was a knock at the door.  Champagne and birthday cake, compliments of the hotel.

‘Happy Birthday sister dearest,’ I said uncorking the bottle.

She rolled her eyes, ‘Fantasist.’

‘I’m creative,’ I replied.  

On the original trip, we went to see Oliver! at the cinema and I developed a feverish crush on Jack Wild that lasted until David Cassidy appeared in my life a couple of years later.  We also saw a Brian Rix Whitehall farce which had a naked man covering his bits with a bobby’s helmet, though I can’t remember why.    Neither options were available to us over 50 years later, so we substituted our evening’s entertainment with the Mousetrap; that having been a possible alternative on the original trip. 

Jo is an Agatha Christie anorak, so I can’t think why she’s never seen it before. ‘Agatha was never that impressed with it,’ she reliably informed me ‘never thought it was one of her best and couldn’t understand why it was such a success.’ 

‘Shush,’ I said as the lights went down and the curtain went up.  The setting is an old house that an inexperienced couple have set up as a guest house in order to make ends meet. 

‘Ooh, that could be you,’ she said as she elbowed me and pointed to the flustered proprietor.

A play about me.  How perfect.  I settled down, hoping that I was the murderer.

And was I?  I can’t say.  I am, of course, like everyone who has ever seen it, sworn to secrecy. 

It was a lovely way to spend the evening.  Not the greatest play I’ve ever seen, but everything is as perfectly 1950s as it was when it opened, the stage set only having been altered once, and then only slightly, in the 1960s.  It, like the rest of my trip back to the UK, was like time-travel.  Millions of memories from my childhood and adulthood; some happy, others funny, some sad and some mundane but now precious.  It’s funny how the dull ordinary things can mean the most when they’re gone forever.

Snuggling down in bed at Marco’s sister Fran’s house is better than any five star hotel, better than any bed anywhere; except my grandad’s sister, my Aunty Em’s.  No-one’s beds were as good as Aunty Em’s even though Fran comes closest.  And take note Aunty Em, wherever you are, Fran leaves me presents on the bed – pyjamas, slippers, chocolate, bubble bath, perfume.  Yes I am still a small child at heart.  I love presents.  But the most poignant thing is Fran’s house echoes with the ghosts and memories of family parties; a kaleidoscope of dancing, shouting, laughter, singing, kids running around everyone’s ankles, family dramas and her husband Carlo on the accordion, the perfect soundtrack to the rolling images in my head.  

‘That’s how to travel, Francesca,’ said Carlo, as I opened my super-sized almost empty suitcase now devoid of all the stuff I’d brought over for other people. 

‘I’d need double that to go anywhere for the night,’ she said in disgust, ‘let alone a week.’

A few days later I called her from the airport just before I returned to France, she asked if I’d managed to buy enough stuff to fill my suitcase.

‘I’ve had to pay for an extra cabin bag,’ I said proudly.

She was impressed.  So what had I managed to buy that was coveted and affordable?  Jars and jars of spices that are both expensive and difficult to get here; especially my current obsessions Belazu rose harissa paste and Ottolenghi urfa chilli flakes.  And the Portuguese tuna and anchovies in posh tins, that I had admired at my friend Tess’s house which she promptly gave me. Then there were the jigsaws.  And greetings cards.  And a Fortnum’s mug to remind me to daydream my way round the shop on a regular basis.  And a Hockney poster from the fab installation we saw.  And a couple of books; one of which was a wonderful present from my son; drawings of East Sheen, Mortlake and Barnes.  More memories evoked on every page.

But the most priceless items were courtesy of Fran herself; two sets of jugs that I have coveted for more than thirty years, maybe art-deco but maybe 1950s; and for most of those years I’ve been begging her to leave them to me in her Will.  She finally gave in and presented them to me and they now look wonderfully at home on my art-deco buffet in the hall.  A constant reminder of happy times and that everything comes to she who waits.