© Zsolt Zátrok
There are some holidays that you always remember – childhood defining trips of idyllic sun-strewn days. Mine took place when I was six years old and my parents took my older sister and me to France for the first time.
We were staying in an old stone gîte on a farm in the Dordogne, and oh my god, the living was good. It was so warm that we ate breakfast outside each day, and every morning Dad burnt the croissants that he was supposed to be toasting beneath the grill. We ate them anyway, layered with unsalted butter and thick, sticky apricot jam, while my parents drank gallons of coffee.
Lizards crept out of crevices in the wall beyond the picnic table, tempted out to lie in the dappled sunlight. I’d never seen such beautiful creatures before. I thought they might be tiny dragons, yet to grow their bat-like wings – perhaps they needed the heat to stoke their inner flames. One day I surprised myself by reaching out quickly enough to catch one by the tail, and was so shocked that I instantly let it go. It disappeared into a crack between the stones, but I could still feel the sensation of its tail between my finger and thumb, silky and cold.
As soon as we were released from the breakfast ritual, my sister and I escaped to play colourful games inspired by books and TV shows. We had so many adventures to re-enact. I vividly remember my imaginary friend falling down the well and having to be rescued. It was a time when fantasy and reality merged – more often than not I wasn’t really sure which was which.
We’d return each day to find tiny kittens roaming across our kitchen tiles, mewling for milk and pestering the ancient farm dogs for attention. There were ducks, goats and chickens too, beautiful ones with russet-coloured gleaming feathers.
One day the grizzled old farmer grimaced at me with what may have been intended as a kindly smile, and handed me an egg; a glorious curved thing still warm from the chicken’s bum, and so large I needed both hands to hold it. Feeling honoured, I began to carry it carefully back across the cobbled yard to the gîte, but as my shadow fell across the billy goat he decided to chase me. He was an immense creature with glowing eyes and flowing locks like the Vikings in one of my stories. No troll would have dared emerge from beneath a bridge to eat him.
As I fled for my life the egg fell from my hands and hit the ground in an explosion of starry shattered shell and bright yellow yoke. I cried bitterly – to me that egg had been as magical as the golden one laid by a goose in my book of fairy tales.
We visited a market where stalls sold decorative arrays of glossy fruit and doughnuts stuffed with every flavour of jam imaginable. I decided to stick to the traditional raspberry – this holiday was crammed with enough new experiences already. Alongside the stalls of fat, oozing cheeses and mottled sausages there were incongruous displays of exotic lingerie trailing lace and feathers. I was fascinated to find that even on a toy stall there was an array of tiny racy garments, and I used my pocket money to buy a pair of pink satin knickers for my Sindy doll – a purchase that made Mum raise her eyebrows.
After nightfall we drove to a chateau hidden deep down a rural lane, surrounded by a moat and illuminated with huge lamps that coloured everything golden. We laid out a rug on the grass beside the water, surrounded by French families awaiting the beginning of the performance. As the singing began, it echoed around us, and Mum whispered translations to me as the story unfolded. I watched with awe at the couple fleeing from the castle, rowing away across the moat in a tiny boat. It was a moment of magic. But on the way back to the farm, a bright green frog leapt in front of our headlamps, and when Mum asked what I’d liked best about the evening I said the frog, and she shook her head in exasperation
When the time came for us to leave, we set off for the ferry – another adventure. We had a cabin to sleep in and two narrow bunk beds. As the waves picked up outside, the huge boat began to buck and I slid up and down my bunk, grinning with glee.
I pored over my book of fairytales, whispering the words to myself and gazing at the images of princesses and trolls, dragons and fairies that had fuelled so many wonderful moments in the Dordogne. Then I went to sleep with the book’s hard rectangle under my pillow. The next day in the rush to leave, the book got left behind, lost at sea, never to be seen again.
