It was a surprise when I learnt there was a problem with the plumbing in my part of the building.
I had come, at major expense, to a highly recommended clinic for a week’s ‘respite’: that is to say a week in a safe environment in which I would have no responsibilities and I would have nothing whatever to do.
Here I would leave behind all the worries of life – lost door keys, drain flies, tax returns, all dealt with by endlessly patient friends – be no bother to anyone and have a welcome change from my diet of soups made from vegetables on the turn and Charlie Bigham’s Fish Pies.
I had not expected on two occasions to have to wash from a bowl of hot water and for the rest of my stay (apart from immediately after a visit from the maintenance men, which enabled two showers) to have to manage with only a trickle of tepid water from the basin tap.
This was not how we had fared the only time R and I had gone up-market on our travels . That had been when tourism ground to a halt in Egypt after some dreadful event and Bales – the firm that specialised in Egyptian travel – was offering everything at rock-bottom prices. And so it was that we came to stay in the Old Winter Palace in Luxor, where we enjoyed luxury such as never before or since.
Accustomed as I had been in the past to roughing it when travelling – happily washing out of buckets and eating out of pails – I was NOT happy to find myself roughing it at several hundred pounds a night in England’s home counties. But at least – and I took great comfort from this – it was not my problem to solve, as it would have been at home.
My outrage evaporated and, having taken my cue from Johnny Mercer:
“You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative“
I was soon out in the magnificent grounds which my room overlooked. Here the wisteria and apple blossom had come out overnight, and a red kite circling overhead sent me soaring down memory lane to the little school in Ilkley where this beautiful bird had become my second identity, for we six-year-olds were divided into ‘houses’ named after birds of prey: Eagle, Falcon, Kestrel . . . KITE!
As for the plumbing, that was someone else’s problem.