January 22nd
Yesterday was surreal. Strangely eventful, when I have got used to weeks going by here in which nothing more exciting happens than me cooking a particularly nice meal, or the sunset being unusually pretty. Emotionally draining, as well.
I woke up miserable. Late the night before, my landlady had texted to say that her internet access had been cut off as a result of mine being switched on, after a painful nine week saga involving comical levels of incompetence by Orange. Then I was woken at 3am by some drunken French people with a wrong number. And I woke at 6am to the sound of torrential rain. So I went to school with my umbrella, steeling myself for six lessons, and my three worst classes.
I taught two lessons, which went unusually well, with the kids laughing and asking questions. One of the little girls was staring into space instead of doing the dictée they write each morning, and to chivvy her along the teacher said, ‘Qu’est-ce que tu attends, Lélia, le déluge?’ I don’t believe in this sort of thing, but it was curious, in retrospect. In the staffroom at break, the secretary pressed her home grown oranges into my hands, saying that her trees were covered in them. The rain had stopped and my mood was already improving when I was told that all my other teachers were on strike all day. I was too jubilant to be annoyed that they hadn’t bothered to tell me, and walked home in the bright sunshine, with the town washed clean.
Back in my flat I found that the internet had stopped working, although the landlady had seemed to think that they wouldn’t cut it off for ten days. This sent me into a slight panic because I’m in the process of applying for an MA, and internet access at home makes it a lot easier. My black mood was returning, and when I decided to make lunch, I found that the water didn’t work. After trying all the taps in the flat and, fatally, the shower, I asked my neighbour what was happening. She is an old Portuguese woman, and she just shrugged and said that they had cut off the water to do some work. I asked if they had told her, because I feel as if it’s my own fault that I’m outside every loop here, not making enough effort to talk to everyone, but she said they had given no warning. So, back in a miserable mood again, I invited myself over to lunch at Lija’s and press-ganged Zoe, the lovely English au-pair with a CAR, into taking us out for an adventure.
Lija had no water either. It does seem curious that they cut off supply to half the town with no warning, because if you left a washing machine on unwittingly, it would surely end up beyond repair. After a few minutes of our sustained scorn, Lija admitted that it was freakish to have reached the age of 20 without ever having skived, and agreed to miss her two lessons that afternoon in order to take part in some vagabondage. We drove up into the hills in Zoe’s little yellow car, listening to Irish fiddle music, through Monticello, Santa Reparata, Occhiglioni, Corbara and Pigna, little villages with low-pitched terracotta roofs. The sun was shining, the sea was blue and the mountains were white with snow. We stopped off to take photos or just admire the view out to sea as the road curves around the hillsides and Calvi came into view in the distance. Me and Lija got into the Corsican spirit with a vendetta over the front seat which resulted in her accidentally slamming the door on her own eyebrow while sitting on my knee. We found a Dominican monastery with peeling plaster, a tiny terracotta virgin in a niche and a beautiful view down to Pigna. Zoe covered her brazen miniskirt with piratical pantaloons and we went to explore the church, but the place was shut up. Maybe they saw us coming.
In Sant’Antonino, inhabited since the ninth century and supposedly the oldest surviving village in Corsica, we parked by the church and went for a walk. The village centre is a maze of steep cobbled tracks, covered in dog shit and shaded by tunnels that spiral up the granite outcrop to a belvedere. You can see in all directions, from the sea to the plains of Aregno and Reginu, and the locals used to take shelter there from invading Moors. Chilled by the wind whipping through the alleyways, we drove down to the plage de l’Arinella, just below Zoe’s village, Lumio. There was a woman and child with a metal detector, and a couple picking the scented immortelle with its grey-green leaves and yellow flowers that grows along the shore, but other than that we had the beach to ourselves. You look out to Calvi’s citadel across the bay, hazy and silhouetted that day, and up to snowy mountains inland. We wandered down the beach, past huge dimpled rock formations, white as chalk, and little streams and riverlets running everywhere. Out on a point is a ruined building, which we climbed up, and posed for shadow portraits on the ground below. It is ridiculously beautiful there, but we were hungry, and drove back along the coast to Algajola where we had macaroons, crêpes and hot chocolates.
Unsurprisingly, I was in an extremely good mood when we got back to Ile Rousse, planning a lasagne supper and wine consumption. I got back to my flat to find a crowd of stricken looking people in the hairdressers below, who greeted me with, ‘Are you the English teacher? There’s been a flood.’ They were all very nice about it, considering that water was dripping through their ceiling. I had left the shower on above the bath during the water cut, but tilted sideways just enough that with the shower curtain open, the reinstated water escaped. That is what they call it: ‘une fuite d’eau’. I like to think of it mischievously fleeing, pooling in my bathroom and dripping through the floor to make its escape. Anyway, it was no laughing matter, I obviously felt terrible and had compounded my idiocy by leaving my phone on silent so that despite the hairdresser phoning my landlady and every school in Ile Rousse, I had been oblivious. What really made my heart sink was that the landlady’s representative had suggested that I get insurance, specifically for this problem, and I hadn’t bothered. She hadn’t seemed particularly insistent or mentioned how I might go about getting it, so in the face of all the other red tape hoops which I had to jump, laziness, stinginess and eventually forgetfulness took hold.
After apologising profusely to everyone and thanking the tiny, indomitable old woman next door for using her spare key to get into my flat and turn the water off so that the firemen didn’t have to be called to break down the door, I mopped up and went off to Lija’s for lasagne. I’m sorry, but it has to be said: our spirits were dampened.
I spent the next day trekking up to Leclerc and buying plates, ribbon, cellophane and four types of biscuits to make prettily wrapped biscuit towers for the hairdresser and my neighbour, and trying to compose an apology card with the help of the internet. I love French letter writing conventions – they are so formalised and arcane that people apparently pay to download model letters with suitably flowery phrases for all occasions. The hairdresser and my landlady are being incredibly forgiving, and the lights were working again today, with no damage visible except some water marks on the ceiling. I think they are perpetrating a minor insurance fraud by saying that the landlady’s daughter was living in the flat at the time, but I am taking refuge in my poor French comprehension and letting them get on with it.
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