OK boys and girls, here's a true story that happened to me and Mrs Smug that may say something. I'm the kind of person to whom things happen, Please ignore this if you're easily bored or think it's made up shyte.
I don't go out of my way, like some kind of weirdo Rob Brydon and his idiotic cruises when he plays football with the local kids and is accepted into a nomads tent in the desert.
It's just that, wherever we go, extraordinary people seem to cross our paths. Like the Sicilian bandit who hoisted Mrs Smug onto a horse in the hills above Palermo, but that's another story. This story was in the wild interior of Corsica in a place called Casamaccioli during an 8 month drive around the Mediterranean islands. We arrived in our battered old Transit van and had lunch in the only 'restaurant' we could find.
We felt a little uneasy but walked around the crumbling old streets while the locals stared at us. We passed an ancient crone sitting on a home made bench and averted our eyes. She called us back and asked us to sit with her. We assumed this was some kind of 'cross my wrinkly palm with silver' routine but what the hell. She took us into her front room, that was right off the street and a hovel, and brought out home made cakes and lemonade. She was speaking half in French and half in Corsu, the local language, but I could understand well enough.
She had no interest in us so we just sipped our lemonade, delicious, and gnawed at the cinnamon flavoured rock cakes, horrendous. She rambled on about her childhood, her marriage at 14 and her deceased husband who was a charbonnier. Each spring they'd leave their home and go into the mountains to make charcoal. The first thing they'd do was build a cabin, latrines, larder, etc. He would cut wood and she would tend the children, trap rabbits, pick berries and nuts, hunt, feed the chickens they'd brought and make bread from chestnuts. She would make medicines if the children were ill and find honey from wild bees.
Her husband would cut the right wood and stack it in the right way. Then he would set it alight and cover it with a huge mound of earth which would smoulder for weeks. This would go on all summer.
Anyway, I could go on for hours as we were there all afternoon. The crux of all this was that these people ended up with 8 children, 3 of whom were born in the cabins, and they had no electricity, running water or contact with the outside world for months on end.
I've no idea if the kids felt isolated, if she missed the company of the village women or if the husband dreamt of a time when football would be invented.
But I think about these people as I sit here in lockdown with my mobile phone, Internet, satellite TV and beer fridge ....
... I really can't say who's the most fortunate.
When she'd had enough and tired she told us it was time to go. I was about to offer her money, for her hospitality, but she handed Mrs Smug a piece of lace she'd made in the mountains and said she was going to lie down.
I'm not sure why I've posted all this tbh, I've never told anyone this story ...
... just seems the right time
