The Final Adios

I had known for some time that if I ever left Marbella it would be to leave Spain altogether, and yet I didn’t know when or why or how that would come about until it actually happened…

It was a hot day at the end of summer 2003; I was feeling listless and miserable in the grip of some sort of flu bug that had been dogging my steps for a number of weeks. So with nothing much to do but sit quietly until whatever it was loosened its grip, I found my thoughts starting to wander along hitherto unexplored pathways.

I was twenty-six years old by this stage. Most of my school peers had long finished university and gap years spent in various exotic corners of the world, and were starting to become embroiled in their chosen careers; I, on the other hand, was still living a rather embarrassing hand-to-mouth existence, and with no clearer idea as to a potential direction in life than when I had left Northamptonshire eight years previously.

I couldn’t face the thought of re-joining the unspeakable rat race of full-time Costa del Sol employment, but as much as I had enjoyed the previous two years of language teaching and translation, it had sadly transpired to be an unreliable way of earning a living.

Students came but students also went, so although there were months in which I was earning a very reasonable sum of money, other months found me experiencing the same financial insecurity I had hoped were behind me when I left Granada four years previously.

Also wearing thin was the sheer banality of the Costa del Sol: the posing and posturing, the artificiality and insincerity of so many aspects of everyday life along the coast grated on my nerves like one of the yapping handbag dogs so popular amongst the local nipped and tucked.

Completing the general feelings of discontent was my not so secrete sadness at the absence of someone compassionate enough to see beyond my flaws, fall madly in love with me (in order to maintain this fantasy, it is important not to dwell on how poorly I handle loved-up swains, nor on my history of preferring the challenge of men who weren’t remotely interested...) and offer me some sort of fairy-tale type romance scenario that would centre me enough to permit the formulation of a career plan.

Those thoughts and many others seeped around the corners of my mind, until they suddenly coagulated congealed coalesced into a rather good idea: the time had come to move on.

But where?

I was definitely not ready to return to England, and my longing for Argentina had been rendered impractical by the presence of a small mongrel and a dearth of serious funds.

Grabbing my miniature atlas, I thumbed through until I reached the page showing South Western Europe.

Italy! I had always longed to move to Italy, ever since being mesmerised by Florence at the age of twelve… but I thought it unlikely that my ancient Ford Fiesta would cope with such a long journey, and anyway, I didn’t speak a word of Italian.

Which left France. Admittedly I’d never had the slightest inclination to visit, but at least I could still recall a vague smattering of schoolgirl French, and geographically it was at least part way to the country of my dreams.

With that conclusion in mind, I took out a pencil and doodled my way along the coastline… hmmm… Montpellier had a nice ring to it. The location was also ideal: far enough from Spain not to be reminiscent and yet not so far as to necessitate a driving odyssey of epic proportions.

I immediately rang my bewildered family to inform them of my decision and started to prepare for a new adventure.

The negativity of Spanish friends towards my chosen destination came as a surprise: I had been under the impression it was only the Brits who had issues with their nearest neighbours, but it turned out that the Spanish also held a poor opinion of the folk to their immediate north.

Much seemed to stem from the mass 1960s exodus of working-age Spaniards from their then crisis-hit country. Many travelled to South America to look for work, but more stayed in Europe; destination Holland, Germany, Switzerland and, most especially, France.

Apparently those first-generation economic migrants were held in contempt by the French locals (something the Spanish seemed to quickly have forgotten, given their behaviour towards Moroccans and other economic immigrants to Spain…), so I was issued with countless warnings about the cold and unwelcoming nature of my future hosts, from people whose only experience of Gallic temperament was contained in letters and phone calls from hapless family members some forty years previously.

Only time would tell whether my own introduction to French life would be as unsatisfactory.

My regular students were particularly sad to hear that I was leaving, and I in turn suffered untold feelings of guilt for abandoning them: miraculously some had even made progress in the spoken English language, and I felt badly about casting them back into the anonymity of the local language schools, with their unhelpful obsession with the rote-learning of grammar, and their disinterested attitude to conversation.

(I tried for months to find someone to take my place – such a loyal student base could have provided some lucky Anglophile with a business opportunity to build on if they were thus inclined – but sadly nobody was.)

Those last months were a poignant time: Spain had been my home since I was an eighteen-year old girl, and there I was leaving it as a twenty-six year old woman (in external appearance only; the eighteen-year old girl and her insecurities were still very much in evidence on the inside…).

I’d learnt so much about Spain, its people, and the big wide world in general; and most especially I had got to know myself a whole lot better – but was I packing enough wisdom and life experience to make a success of my new French life? Who knew.

Epilogue

It’s now late autumn 2003. I walk around the empty apartment for the last time, footsteps echoing on the cracked terracotta tiles.

Everything feels eerily quiet and inert, but then it is only six o’clock in the morning.

Early as it may be, the time for goodbyes has come and I take one final look at the space that has been my home for four long years, before calling the dog to heel and pulling the door shut firmly behind us.

Anja is still waiting patiently outside next to my battered car, the usefulness of its windows long since obliterated by chaotic piles of suitcases and bags, canine paraphernalia and my life all packed up in boxes.

There are tears in her eyes, but mine are dry. We embrace. She walks up the road behind the car for quite a way, eventually breaking into a slow jog; I can still see her waving…

Behind me, Strauss eventually settles with a few circling movements into the small space allocated to him for this journey. Before he is even asleep, I am watching Marbella recede into the distance. Half an hour later, and it is the province of Málaga that I see getting ever smaller in my rear view mirror. Just four hours later still, and even Andalucía itself takes its place as a memory printed indelibly in my mind.

My stomach churns, with trepidation but mainly with excitement: in 1,400km I will be starting a new life.

I have no regrets.