fin

for mum and dad. x

OK, I'm not really an arty French film-maker, nor is this by any means the last blog post.

However, this is my last blog from Avignon, as in a matter of hours I shall be travelling the 1000km back to Brussels at a speed 50 years ago would have been said to be impossible on land: and I'm saying this now as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

Having been forced to speak French for the last fortnight has taught me three important lessons:
1. That I still can't use/understand the 'direct and indirect object' in any language; that now goes for English, German and French;
2. There are many people in the world who speak worse French than I do; but more importantly there are also many who speak better French than I do, and;
3. Why when a qwerty keyboard is perfectly fine, did the French decide the letters needed moving about, thus creating the azerty keyboard, a most incredibly annoying and the most useless thing in the world!

However, what the two weeks have taught me most is who I am and what different people of the world think of me. (OK, maybe the arty film director bit at the start was quite astute)

Two things stick out most; Steen, a lovely chap (world bank man; last blog) was astounded when I told him I was autistic. 'You? Asperges Syndrome? My god, you must have been working on your condition for years as no one here has guessed!' I just shrugged and said 'I got a B in GCSE Drama if that helps to explain it.' In hindsight that's a typical autistic response but it worked at the time!

Secondly and quite scary actually; someone asked me who was the youngest here:
'Dario is twenty-one and I'm younger than him: j'ai vignt ans'
pause. 'f**k' as someone realised what I'd said.
'I'm twenty,' I repeated
'F**k. F**K!' came the reply; 'I thought you were thirty! God, you must have had a hard life!'

And that was the real wakeup call for me. Albeit I haven't had a shave for two weeks, but me! Me, hard life?! I have one of the easiest lives of anyone I know. I am insanely privellaged with the best mum and dad in the world and secretly we all love each other to bits! Yes there's the ups and downs, but everything has those. Think of a rollercoaster with its ups and downs...thats what makes it exciting and at the end you get off smiling! So I wouldn't say that's a hard life. Not in the slightest. Not at all.

So there we go dad, if you're reading this. And mum too. And anyone else who is as well, all across the globe; 'Hello to you!'
When I first came here; mum and dad said I'd love it. I said I'd hate it.

After two weeks here I think we were all right. Now where's my razor.....