My Roaring Forties

My roaring forties would like to apologise for the long absence.  A hefty work load  has meant that there hasn’t been much time for blogging.  Imagine my delight then, when my former boss and the prettiest lady in all christendom offered to step in.  Yes ladies, avert your boyfriends’ gaze…. she’s kindly taken time out  from her fascinating columns in the Daily Mail ( a couple of her best are listed below if you’d like a read)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2124246/Samantha-Brick-downsides-looking-pretty-Why-women-hate-beautiful.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2310797/Samantha-Brick-Joan-Collins-right-Any-woman-wants-stay-beautiful-needs-diet-day.html

And now ….. please welcome the facially fabulous Ms Samantha Brick…. do try not to scratch her eyes out!

Hiya everyone

Ooh la la, I’m super excited to be here.  I thought that you might like to hear about what a day in the life of a busy former tv executive on a six figure salary turned french housewife and writer for the utterly brill Daily Mail,  is really like.

I start my  day at five am  by opening my eyes.   Leaving the cosy confines of my snuggly duvet,  not to mention my fab french hubby, I get up.  As a former tv executive earning a six figure salary, I often used to get up in the morning.

I walk into my caramel hued kitchen, past my biscuit painted shelves, open my buttery shaded  cupboard, get out  fawn toned mugs and make two steaming bowls of faeces coloured coffee.  I then walk through to my lilac and lavender  sitting room and greet my gorgeous french hubby Pascal, who, naked,  is managing to clean his gun, hand me a newly scrawled list of my daily chores (yup he can write too) and scratch his genitals all at the same time.  I beam, blissfully and reach for  a wet wipe as our hands touch over the coffee.  Who said men can’t multi task!

When I was a tv executive earning a six figure salary, I would leave my pastel pretty house in Richmond at about 9am wearing my Stella Macartney tracksuit, carrying my understated yet luxurious DVF wrap dress and Jimmy Choos in my gucci holdall. Juggling my ever beeping Blackberry, Smythson appointment book  and my quilted ‘must have’ Chloe clutch bag, I’d  hurry scurry to my private pilates appointment in my super duper mercedes.  After strengthening my inner core,  I’d spend two hours in the hairdressers, before heading to Soho house to discuss future programmes with such tv talents as  the gorgeous Sarah Duchess of York and Tania Bryer over a yummy light lunch of Cristal Champagne and steamed veggies.  Of course, I never paid for these. The waiters would wave away my proffered credit card, dazzled by my beauty.  I would then pop into my office, where to my horror, my all female hormonal staff would be literally scratching each others eyes out, or pulling each other’s neatly highlighted hair,  when they should have been making my brilliant telly programmes. (The day that they installed a wrestling ring complete with mud to fully go girl on girl was a wretched one readers). I’d pop into the loo for a little cry over how mean girls can be to other girls.    Then I’d pick  up my twelve pieces of matching Louis vuitton luggage and head out to Heathrow to catch a plane (turning left of course) to Thailand to embark on a much needed holiday at five star spa, Chiva Som, essential for de stressing after my very very difficult day.

I often think about those days now and wonder how  on earth my company went so badly  wrong?    My life is so different now I’m a simple french house wife.

After waving my gorgeous french hubby off to work, I settle down to the chores. I start by chopping wood (I love a roaring fire).  We have no central heating and in winter the temperature drops to minus ten here in our corner of the Lot!   I fell four mighty oaks and then scrub the house from top to bottom .  When I think back to my former career as a tv executive earning a six figure salary, I feel like Cinderella in reverse!  But blissfully happy, I assure you.

Chores over, it’s time to head to the supermarket.  When I first came here, I couldn’t speak a word of French.  But now, five years on, I blend in like a native. This is helped by dressing for my weekly food buying trip, in a stripey breton top and beret.  Where once I would have accessorised with silky Hermes scarf, I now artfully arrange a string of onions around my neck.  Thus looking like the simple french housewife I am (a far cry from the tv executive who started the career Kate Thornton – yup I earned those six figures with my eye for talent spotting ), I skip lightly out of the house.  I get into my voiture (car), drive down la rue (road) until reaching our local supermarket and drive into le car park (er…. car park).

Here the inevitable happens.  I am greeted by a tidal wave of men.  They literally fight amongst themselves to get to me, all hoping to park my car for me.   A  group of them rush to proffure flowers, bubbly and train tickets (which is odd, cos our nearest station is 400 km away).   Once inside, I have no need of trolleys.  I merely pile my goodies into the arms of les hommes that follow me around.  There is no opportunity to pay.  My credit card  is inevitably waved away by the spotty adolescent at the check out.

On my way home, I pass a female friend from the village.  I wave and she ignores me.  This, as my many many fans will know, is not a surprise.  My struggles with other women is well documented and began when I was a tv executive, earning a six figure salary.  Women do not like me because I am beautiful.  There can be no other reason and certainly not in this case.  Helene (her real name), has not spoken to me for many months. She used to be my best friend in the village.  But ever since I rushed over to show her the bit in my newly published memoir,   where I recount our highly confidential,  conversation where she tearfully shared a tricky gynaecological problem,  she has ignored me.  As I was looking particularly pretty that day, blond hair tied back, lashings of mascara, wearing a flippety floral frock, I know that this is pure jealousy. (She was wearing dungarees at the time).   There can be no other reason.  So, to all my  detractors on twitter – what further proof do you need that women don’t like women who are more beautiful?

A word on the book by the way. It’s available on Amazon right now.  I’m excited to say that over nineteen people have rushed out to buy a copy.  That’s as many people who watched my hit Sky series ‘Hot Love’ that I was the executive on.   Pascal, my gorgeous french hubby,  controls the purse strings and knowing how I like to spend spend spend, gives me a limited budget of nine euros a week for food, household bills etc….. so the Mail articles and the memoir give me much needed ‘pin money’.

But I’m a first and foremost a french housewife and a writer second.  Shortly after returning from the shops. a roar and the strong and oh so manly scent of rancid sweat informs me that my gorgeous hubby Pascal is home for lunch.   He strides into the lilac and lavender living room sweeps onto the floor a buttercup yellow vase of creamy hyacinths that I had recently placed on the chocolate hued oak farmhouse table (I do love a feminine touch).  In it’s place, he throws down  a huge, freshly shot, still profusely bleeding, wild boar. ‘Cook zee peeeg’ he barks, before opening a window that looks out onto the lavender covered valley and releasing his not insignificant bowels into the bowls of  scarlet geraniums on the terrace below. They don’t water themselves folks!   Assuming that by ‘peeg’ he means the wild boar, rather than myself,  I giggle coquettishly, and begin dragging the ten stone carcus across the chalky flagstones into the kitchen.  ”Men!’ I sigh happily, as I begin to skin and gut it.

I’m a committed vegetarian.  When I was a tv executive, my six figure salary would often be spent on tiny salads bought from and delivered by fortnum’s food hall.  Here I make do for lunch with a cup of delicious green tea and a single raisin.  While I’m chewing, Pascal storms into the kitchen to enquire why I haven’t put his customary flagon of beer on the lunch table.  I start guiltily.  He advances towards me, manly mostache bristling in suspicion.

‘What you eeeeeet, Sam?’ He snarls.

‘Rien de tout’ (nothing at all) I whimper, trying to swallow the blasted raisin, busying myself by humping the gigantic, now roasted piece of meat out of the aga.

‘Eeef you get fat, I deeeevooorrrrccceeee you……..’

How lucky I am, to have a man who cares so much about me.  I set the lunch table, no need for a knife and fork for my french fella.  He simply pulls great hunks of flesh with his  hands and stuffs them into his mouth, while cleaning his 12 inch blade hunting knife on my cath kidson tea towel.  He ends the meal with a fart, the strenghth and decibel level sends the dogs scurrying for the door!  My boyfriends in london were such wimps, I think contendedly.

Lunch over, I wave Pascal back to work   His dire warnings about my weight have given me an idea for an article.  As you may know, I am the writer who tells it as it is.  I bravely speak for all women with my brave and utterly truthful views.  I therefore decide that all women need to be thin in order to be happy and successful. I pin this utterly appropriate thesis on an interview I find in the Telegraph online with my heroine, Joan Collins.  ’I have been on a diet since I was 14′  claims La Collins.  The journalist goes on to talk about her throwaway wry  asides, her deep rooted security in her looks. Her well balanced and  rounded personality and innate intelligence.  Not to mention  her ability to enjoy a decent lunch washed down with several glasses of red.  But I know that Joan was sincere in this statement.  So I write the article. Contrary to popular belief, I research these pieces thoroughly.  Wikipedia features high on my online history list.  I also find a department of health report  detailing how one in three young women will suffer at some point from anorexia.  I shed a tear. Lucky lucky things!

Proof that anyone over a size twelve can’t be happy and successful (as if proof were needed ha ha)

Multi platinum selling singer / songwriter, Oscar winner and new mum Adele.  Think how much happier and more successful she could be at a size ten.

Woman’s hour Jenni Murray OBE .  Award winning writer and broadcaster.  A breast cancer survivor who lobbies hard for better oncological care for fellow sufferers. Doyenne of Radio 4,  she very seldom appears on telly tho.  When I was a tv executive, I’d earn every penny of my six figure salary, Jenni, by putting you on a 1000 calorie a day diet, before popping you into a Vivienne Westwood basque and giving you a daytime series where you’d probe z list celebrities about their shopping addictions.  Emotive stuff hey!

Nigella Lawson….lusted over by millions of men, multi millionnaire cookbook queen. just flipping greedy in my book!

Piece filed, it’s time to cook Pascal’s (and my six gorgeous doggies) dinner.  This is the easy bit.  I put seven bowls on the terrace, pile them high with raw meat and pour myself a delicious glass of rose as I contendedly watch all of my men folk chow down.

And that’s it….. We go to bed early, as in our remote corner of France, seventeen miles from the nearest village, there is precious little to do come nightfall and at 5 am it will all start again.  As I snuggle down in the manly arms of my gorgeous french hubby, I smile to myself….. golly this french housewife lark is a long way from being a tv executive…… on a six figure salary!

Bonne bises

Sam x

I’m at the end of the world.  I’m not kidding.  Ushuaia is the most southerly town in the world.  400 miles from Antarctica.  It is the most remote place I’ve ever visited.

I arrived yesterday lunchtime.  The flight was terrifying.  Having flown over enormous snowcapped uninhabited mountains for over an hour, we then descended and flew in between enormous snow capped mountains, so close you could almost touch them.  I’m calling  it The Valley of Death.  The  plane, caught in the unpredictable swirly cross currents,  was blown about like a feather in a hurricane.

As we lurched in our metal tin, swinging terrifyingly close to the Andes, I was reminded of my French A level.  Not that my french a level was terrifying.  Tedious yes, actually likely to kill me, not really.   No, I thought of the book Vol de Nuit – Night Flight by Antoine de Saint Exupery.  It tells the story of the Argentine patagonian mail service, flown nightly across the Andes to remote parts of the country and of a pilot forced to fly into an incoming storm which cloaks the plane in clouds.  Pre nagigation equipment, pilots were directed by the land below and avoided bumping into mountains by manouevering the planes around them.  On this night, the pilot disorientated, flies his plane above the clouds, knowing it is too dangerous to then sink below, as he might smash into the Andes and therefore among the stars and the peace above the storm, flies until he runs out of fuel and drops to his death.

Cheery little book it is and I’m a nervous flier at the best of times.  All I could think was not  ‘on my god I’m going to die’ but, as we landed safely,  ‘oh god, I’ve got to fly out of here in three days!’

No Zoom required:  flying between the mountains

Actually it’s not three days, it’s only two.  I’ve binned off the last day to fly back to Buenos Aires.  I was excited about coming here.  There seemed something very romantic about a town that is only accessible by plane, where the Andes dramatically drop into the freezing Beagle Channel, the last blob of land on the map before Antarctica. Ushuaia is a place, so remote, even legendary explorer and chronicler of Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin didn’t make it here.   There’s a word for me here:  Intrepid!  But having arrived and acknowledged all of this, I don’t really know what to do next.  Plus, I’ve found that the location and landscape are not the only things that are ever so slightly hostile.   Here’s what I don’t like about  Ushuaia

THE WEATHER

It’s just like England.  It was sunny when I arrived and tho not hot, was mild and balmy.  But then it rained all afternoon  and was incredibly windy and dare I say it, cold…. really very cold.

The argentine flag in the stiff breeze of Ushuaia, shortly before those clouds turned black and the heavens opened

THE HOTEL

Or rather guest house.  These have been rather brilliant elsewhere.  Not here.    My room is tiny and boiling and is about 2 feet from a main road.  The other side of the house faces the bay and has a phenomenal view.

The staff are friendly enough. But have mastered the art of being the exact opposite of helpful.  This morning I asked if I could borrow their printer to print my boarding pass outta here. ‘We have no printer’ was the response from the lady at the desk, conveniently and possibly even defiantly positioning herself so I couldn’t see the giant printer dominating the area  behind her.

‘I am very happy to pay’ I say, through gritted teeth, but with a beaming smile

‘No, it’s impossible’, she shouts. Not, I think, because she’s angry, but more to blot out the sound of the printer whirring into life and, well, printing something.  And with that she turns away to assist the   middle aged german man who come to claim his… guess what?  Print out of his itinery!  I am trying not to take this personally.  But when I venture out to the main square, this  becomes more difficult.

THE POLITICS

We’re not very far from the Malvinas here – and Ushuaia has  a thriving and possibly justified sense of injustice over the Falklands.  There are signs up everywhere explaining in Spanish and helpfully in English (which is odd cos we don’t often get English translations here) that the South Atlantic is controlled and protected by Argentina, apart from Les Malvinas, which have been illegally occupied by the piratical British since 1832. And, in all honesty, I can see their point.  What business have we holding onto a couple of islands thousands and thousands of miles from London, yet a mere four hundred kilometres from here.  There’s a couple of banners with union jacks crossed out. There is a very moving square with an eternal flame and a list of the Argentinian dead during the conflict.  It was built last year to mark the 30^th anniversary and it’s a reminder that both sides have fatalities.  Encircling the monument is a display of remarkable photographs capturing scenes of the conflict.  They have been provided by several photographers, Argentinian and English to show both sides of the battle.  The accompanying words, however,  also helpfully translated, do ever so slightly plant the thought that General Gautierri and his crew might have won this one.

 

Look, it’s not all bad.  I acknowledge that I should have done my research before I came here  and  Ushuaia itself is a bonkers little town, part tourist tat trap,  part working port.  Surrounded by mountains, it revels in its remoteness.

The scenery is spectacular and today I went on a boat that sailed down the Beagle channel.  We left port , left the bay of Ushuaia and entered…. the middle of freaking nowhere!!!!!!!  Misty waters and massive mountains, the channel marks the boundry between Argentina and Chile and so there it was that here in Ushuaia I saw my second south American country close up.  I also got up close and reasonably personal with  sea lions, cormorants and we landed on an  uninhabited island, so untouched by human hand, so environmentally pure, you could smell the seaweed as seaweed used to smell when we were children, enticingly salty and slightly sour and utterly delicious.

The Beagle Channel, with a special guest appearance by Chile…!

I also had dinner  in a really cool little pizza restaurant, where the very very hot  waiter and I had a long conversation using the international language of flirt (the only language we had in common).  This to the inevitable disgust of the rest of the diners, mostly German, who wherever I have been have stared at me in slack jawed disgust at the idea of a woman dining alone.  In El Calafate, this got so bad, I was forced to go up to a fellow diner’s table and ask if there was anything wrong.  I have to say, there has not been a solo dinner, where I haven’t met great argentinians and had a lot of fun, whether it’s waiters or fellow diners.  It does seem to be the northern Europeans who are struggling with the concept.

Despite its drawbacks, despite the fact I have spent so much  of my time here in a kagoule and waterproof trousers, thus displaying all the sartorial elegance of a pot holer,  it’s actually probably the highlight of the trip.  In so far as I’ll never come this far south again, unless I take up polar exploration, which seems highly unlikely at this stage.  It’s taken me miles out of my comfort zone and just flying in was an adventure.  I feel like a proper traveller here.  Also, I am 99.9% sure I’m the only Brit in the village and this makes me strangely proud.  As if I have made it where others fear to go. But, like a rare orchid growing on a slag heap, I am wilting and need the sun.  So hi ho, hi ho, it’s back to Buenos Aires I go.

Post script:  Don’t buy anything from Ushuaia airport cafe.  I’ve just spent four quid on a diet coke.

Glass of champagne at 9:30 am?  Don’t mind if I do.  I am wine tasting in Mendoza and astonishingly, I find that I am very at home in the home of fine wine.

I arrived yesterday on an overnight  1400 kilometre bus journey  from Salta.  This was brilliant.  Bus stations have no information boards, just rows of embarkation points, so you have to keep your eyes open, your wits about you and hope you spot your multiseat steel chariot. This is not easy when there are a thousand other people all doing the same thing.  I tried to get on the wrong one.  Seriously though what are the chances that two buses run by the same bus company are departing within 15 minutes of each other to the same place  half way down the country?  Fortunately the eagle eyed baggage handler spotted my mistake and directed me to the right bus.

I’d paid plenty pesos to travel first class.  This was without doubt the soundest financial decision I have ever taken.  We were just 6 seats, on the ground floor, with a curtain shutting us away from the proles who are all upstairs.  Each seat is divided by a curtain for sleepytime privacy.  Huge leather chairs, you could get two of me into my seat and I’m hippy,  that recline into beds.  We had blankets and pillows and our own Steward  and as the 3:45pm  departed on time, I settled back to enjoy the view as Salta gave way to hills and fields and funny little towns.  Argentina is about ten times the size of the UK, Patagonia alone is 3 times larger , yet there are only 40 million people living here  and nearly half of those live in Buenos Aires.   This basically translates into empty roads and plenty of countryside.

As evening drew in, I chatted  to a French couple, who were hilarious and agreed with my suggestion that as Provencals they cannot  possibly be going to Mendoza for the wine.  No, they agreed, they were en route to Santiago in Chile.  Our other travelling companions were a youngish british couple, who kept to themselves.

Before dinner, we played  a game of bus bingo.  Yes seriously, a game of Bingo, which as none of us first classers spoke Spanish was slightly redundant. I was  fine as long as they only numbers called over the  tanoy were uno, dos , tres.  After that I was completely lost and so therefore did not win the bottle of wine prize.

Dinner was inedible.  Me and the french lady, why is it that you can spend six hours locked in conversation with someone, learn all their secrets and share yours, but never learn their name, played a game called guess what we’re eating.  slow roasted thermal underwar?  Braised hand towel?  But a glass of champagne afterwards was delicious and at about 11pm, I snuggled  down, assuming that I probably wouldn’t sleep, as I am a notorious insomniac, but at least I was  comfortable.

Readers, I slept like I have not slept in years. Like a baby, like the dead,  we all did.  I got about ten hours.  It was amazing. The shortest 17 hours of my entire life later, we arrived in Mendoza.  If I had more time here, I wouldn’t be travelling any other way.

Anyway, back to the wine tasting.   We were a small group of 6.  There was yours truly, another british girl, Rebecca from London, who was serious and very interested in wine.  Marie from Seattle travelling with her friend Beth from Baltimore (all of us in our mid to late 30’s to early 40’s).  Bringing up the rear were the very reserved but perfectly pleasant Hans and Barbara from Chicago.  Our guide was a wine expert by day and a jazz singer by night called Majo.  She was lovely.    We were to visit 3 wineries, tasting five wines at each and then ending with a gourmet late lunch, with more wines  at a fourth.

Now there is Malbec and there is Malbec and then there is Malbec drunk at a boutique winery sourrounded by the vines that provided the juice , in full view of the Andes.  Oh my word, it was incredible.  And it wasn’t just the big M.  Torrentes, Cabernet Saugvignon, Sparkling wines………  You name it, we tasted it

Did we spit it out like all good wine tasters?  Did we buggery    Suffice to say, by the time we got to the third winery, we were all, how can I put this politely…. pissed.  Marie from Seattle had invited me to stay at her beach house.  Beth from Baltimore had ranted for half an hour on Kim Kardashian (got it out of her system bless her).  Even Rebecca, was getting a little less particular about sniffing and properly tasting and was knocking it back like a sailor on shore leave.

But the biggest revelation was shy and reserved Barbara from Chicago.  As by the second winery, shy and reserved Barbara  had become party Barb…. Drunk as a skunk she was, she dominated the proceedings with all the divadom of Joan Rivers.  Tragically the mists of time (a week ago) and the abundance of the grape, means I can’t actually remember a word she said. I do remember that she fell over…. twice.

As we drank and giggled and told each other we loved each other and  stuffed our faces at the gourmet lunch,  we swapped numbers and emails in the sure and certain knowledge that   we would never be in touch or see each other again.

Big hugs all round as we returned to Mendoza.  It was a brilliant day.  And I had to go and have a lie down to recover.

Post script:  There will be no blog from Bariloche save this:  I had a funny turn at Mendoza airport.  I started running a temperature and feeling panicky.  On the plane, I  decided that I was knackered.  I’d covered six thousand miles in about as many days and needed a holiday from my holiday.  My little hotel in the chocolate capital was the perfect place to do this. On the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi, I woke up every morning to the sunrise over the water and the gentle lapping of waves on the rocky shore.  I sunbathed and read books and thought and pondered and pottered. I went on a little trip on the lake to a deserted bay.  I have no idea where, everything was conducted in Spanish. In fact, I had so much thinking time, I started entertaining a brief fantasy that the manager of the hotel was a serial killer.  He was incredibly polite.  But had the cold dead eyes of a psychopath.  He also wore well pressed chinos and perfect pink polo shirts.  He was just too well kempt. He was definitely hiding something.  A past?  A machete?  Would he come at night and slaughter me and throw my mutilated remains into the lake?  He was  charming but if I needed to ask anything, I always approached the afternoon / evening staff, who I didn’t think were going to kill me.

It had been a long, long, long, long time since I’d done absolutely nothing and after three days of this, I felt relaxed and rested and ready to carry on my Patagonian adventure.

Off to Salta in the wild northwest, to stay at the guest house of friends of a friend.  Salta is in the far north west corner of Argentina.  It was never part of the original plan to go there, but holy  tamales I’m glad I did.  The guest house, Poncho Huasi, in the town of Cerrillos, about 15 km outside of Salta,  was a haven after the bustle of Buenos Aires.  It’s Nick, Alicia and their son Calixto’s home (along with the family dog Wichi).   There are four rooms and mine was perfect, looking out onto a glorious garden.

After settling in and having my first ever Empanada (like a tiny cornish pasty but oh so much more melt in the mouth marvellous), I took a trip into Salta.  On a bus… A local  bus????  On my own??? In South America (there now isn’t enough space for the question marks! ).  I’d been given strict instructions from Alicia on how to negotiate payment and where to get off (perhaps more important, how to get back on to come home).    And off I trotted, flagged down a bus, which, despite there being a straight main road pretty much all the way to the city centre, stopped down every dusty bumpy side track to pick people up, it seemed from right outside their houses.  This was brilliant.  I spent the entire journey wondering if I could talk the number 37 in Brixton do navigate the one way system  round my way to do the same thing.

Salta itself is very different to Buenos Aires.  It’s how I imagined South America  to be. It’s pretty but dusty and has a bit of an edge to it. It feels wild and slightly lawless, although fairly friendly.   Unlike Buenos Aires where everyone looks European, the people here are very dark. There didn’t seem to be many tourists around either

Highlight was  the cathedral in the main square.  It’s stunning inside and out, and I spent hours sipping Torentes, staring at it as the afternoon turned evening and as night fell, it was illuminated, flooding the whole main square with light.

A poncho wearing, panpipe weilding street band came and played  a beautiful folk song.  “Ah”  I thought “the sound of South America”.  They followed this up with a rousing rendition of…. wait for it…. The Lambada!  “Ouch” I thought, “the other sound of South America”.

The next day,  Nick (who runs a bespoke tour company) and I headed off on a two day trip along the Quebrada de Humuahuaca.  This is a route along a dramatic gorge formed 15 million years ago as a result of the rising of a little mountain range you may have heard of called The Andes.   Oh my god it was beautiful.  A long straight road, climbing higher and higher passing row upon jagged row of  rocky  multi coloured  hills. From Oxblood red, to amber, to deep purple to rose pink,  they   shimmered  in the sun. A technicolour corridor stretching for miles.

It was here that I had my first taste of Mate, the traditional drink of Argentina, made from hot (not boiling water), from the yerba plant  and drunk from a cup through a metal straw.  The Mate is piled on top of the hot water and the trick is not to move the straw thus not disturbing the mate.  I had heard of it, and presumed it was a little treat for the tourists.  But no, everyone here  drinks mate.  Visit any square and locals will be out with their thermos flasks and mate cups, refilling as they chat and sun themselves in squares across Argentina.  Hotels, restaurants and even service stations will fill thermos’s with hot water for you.  It’s strong, tastes like bitter, rich herbal tea and is utterly delicious.  It’s what the lonely planet won’t tell you.  And here’s another thing they don’t bother to impart.

All along the route, there are red beribboned shrines to Gauchito Antonio Gill.  He was a  northern Argentinian gaucho who fought against the spanish and found himself facing a firing squad for his troubles.  As they took aim, he told the commander that his baby  son would become terribly ill and that when this happened the Commander  should pray to the soul of Gauchito Anthonio Gill that his    son would recover.  According to legend, this prophecy came true and the commander’s son did recover.  Locals have been praying to Gauchito Antonio Gill ever since.  At the shrines, they leave useful presents of bottles of fanta and lit cigarettes that burn down, leaving a long worm like trail of ash within the shrine.  There are bar b que’s set up by these roadside shrines and familys come and sit and eat, under the watchful eye of this unofficial saint.

More macabre, are the shrines to death.  The belief being that if you worship death, he will not claim you.  I rather liked this idea and have been worshiping death ever since.  Look, I’m still freaking alive in South America!  It must be true

The Quebrada ends at the pretty hippy  town of Humahuaca, , just 200 kilometres south of the Bolivian border.  The main square taken over by a daily market selling everything from panpipes to carpets.  At the top of the square are steps leading up to a monument to the liberation of the north, ordered by Colonel Juan Peron himself.  As we walked up, I passed a small child skipping and singing to herself.  She was beautiful, all huge slanted eyes with the flat smooth faced features of the north.  She looked up at me and giggled. I fell instantly in love.

We spent the night in Tilcara.  Another beautiful little town.  There was a festival in full swing  and everywhere there was music.  Dinner was in the garden of a restaurant that Nick knew well.  The owners greeting him and therefore me, with a kiss and a stream of local gossip. How I wished I knew spanish at that moment, it sounded perfectly scurrilous.   We  ate Llama, me firstly out of politeness but then with utter relish and abandon.  It was delicious. Unlike any meat I’d ever had, lean and white and melted in the mouth.

I stayed at Quinta La Pacena, a guesthouse on the outskirts of town.  For forty quid, it had the kind of laidback luxury that would have cost hundreds in the UK.  My room, the gate house ,was small but pretty with a canopied bed.

Best  of all was the garden.  In this hot and dusty small town, surrounded by jagged rocky hills, was an oasis of grass and flowers, an apple tree, lavender and roses.  It was perhaps the biggest surprise of South America to date.  The owner Lily, spoke no English, yet after breakfast, we had an intense coversation conducted mostly through mime and beaming smiles and kisses.  It left me feeling lovebombed Latin America style as we headed out of town .

After a four kilometre trek up into the hills,  we headed back to Tilcara to pick up a friend of Nick’s who we were giving a lift back to Salta. Mariano, is a music teacher in Buenos Aires, but come the summer holidays he performs folk and Jazz all across the north.  With him was his 18 year old pianist Juan and they were mucho fun as travelling companions.

Mariano spoke good English, had a wicked sense of humour and a strong streak of flirt, which he extended throughout the rest of the trip.   This was combined with a love of Charles Dickens.  He was very keen to visit Bristol, where David Copperfield was set.  We tried to convince him that it was actually based in Kent and London.  But there was no persuading him. In fact so adamant was he, I’m going to re read it, to make doubly sure.

We swung onto the road to Chile and stopped to climb up a steep ledge to look at the Seven Coloured Hill, the back drop of the town of Purmamarca.   The vivid colours of rock ranged from 15 million to 65 million years old.  As we sipped Mate, Mariano seranaded us with that old Argentian classic El Condo Passo (Simon and Garfunkel), played on an instrument somewhere between a recorder and a flute.  Then as we scrambled down on an extremely narrow ledge, me in flipflops that had seen better days, he and I tried not to break our necks while we bonded over the work of Miles Davies and Bette Davies and possibly even Snooker legend Steve Davis !

Seven coloured hill.  Purumamarca.

After lunch in Purumamarca, we headed up a dramatic road into the hills to cross over and visit the Salinas Grandes (the salt plains) that stretch  over 200 kilometres at the feet of the Andes.  The landscape changed as we drove.  More barren,  the view was dominated by dramatic rocky peaks, that looked like an everstretching row of jagged castle walls.  Peppered through the lower parts were cacti.  Firmly entrenched and  ramrod straight, from a distance they looked like soldiers, heading up the steep  hill to their rocky castle  home.

Nick handed over a bag of Coca leaves, for altitude sickness as we were driving up to well over 4000 metres.  This readers, is the stuff that Cocaine is made of.  I made him promise that if I started talking self agrandissing bullshit at a rapid rate, or even worse, gurning, he was to take them off me immediately.

As we climbed up and up, we chewed and chewed, and saw that the clouds were coming in.  We’re not going to see anything, I thought as we drove straight into the misty white, up winding roads.  How wrong I was.  We drove above the  clouds, to 4175 metres and then over the top heading towards Chile.  Suddenly the sun emerged and from a vantage point high in the hills, the Salinas Grandes spread out shimmering beneath us  Behind that, my first tantalising glimpse of the Andes.  They are to be my travelling companions for the next  ten days, as I head south.  They divide Argentina and Chile all the way down to Ushuaia, the end of the world.  And  they certainly know how to make  an entrance.  It was at this point, I took the decision to throw away my Lonely Planet, which although briefly and somewhat sneeringly mentiones the Salinas Grandes, makes no mention of this utterly incredible road.

Above: Emerging through the clouds I saw the Andes!

Salinas Grandes

Juan and I walked on the salt.  He spoke a little bit of English, and was keen to know all about the Royal family.  So I found myself in the most alien surroundings of my entire life, chatting about Princess Kate Middleton and then once again, using the art of mime, explained the complicated structure of a hereditary monarch, the line of succession, the anointing of the oil at the Coronation.  Frankly, not only was I surprising myself with my royal knowledge, I was turning out to be a regular Marcel Marceau.  A few minutes longer and I would have painted my face white and been trying to escape from an imaginary box!

And that was it, we returned to Salta after a truly spectacular two days.  Mariano and Juan were off to perform a concert  in Cafayate.  They kept telling me to bin off Mendoza and go with them.  What would they have done if I’d said yes?  Run screaming for the hills?  Put me on drums?  We’ll never know.

So from Salta, it’s south all the way.  Mendoza then into Patagonia, right down to the end of the world.  But I’ll tell you something, the rest of Argentina is going to have to work pretty damn hard to beat this!

Poncho Huasi is www.ponchohuasi.com  – you’ll also find a link to Nick’s Poncho tours from this site.  I urge you, should you ever find yourself in this brilliant, bonkers country, to avail yourself of their brilliant services.  It was a mindblowing trip.

Four years ago. I was sitting with my friend Dom in a cafe in High Street Kensington, sobbing into a cup of tea. I had just been left by my junkie boyfriend of two years, during which time he’d lied , stolen and as he began his recovery, cheated on me. It was a hattrick of twattery.  Living  those lost years felt a bit like being on a journey around India on a third class bus.  Witnessing the rampant poverty through a stinking veil of dysentery, but sticking with it because I’d been promised that one day, we’d reach the Taj Mahal. Then suddenly and totally unexpectedly being thrown off the bus in the slums of Calcutta. I was broke and broken.. But Dom reminded me that I’d always wanted to go to “the Argentine” (his words), and marched me into Trailfinders. At that time, I could only afford a brochure. But I made a promise to myself that one day, I’d make it to the land of steak, red wine and gauchos.

It’s taken four years . But after one emergency house sale, 48 months of hard graft, the spare bedrooms of two friends, 14 hours sleeping bolt upright courtesy of British Airways (by far the hardest bit of this long journey from heartbreak to South America), and a brief tussle with Argentinian immigration, I am finally here.

I arrive in Buenos Aires, part excited, part terrified. I am in an unfamiliar city, in a strange country, on an alien continent. I am totally and utterly alone.

So I decide to go and visit an old friend. I know where to find her. She’s lived at the same address in Buenos Aires for over 40 years, Row C, H 88, Recoleta Cemetery. Her name is Eva Peron and she is responsible for my long term love affair with Argentina.

Thirty years ago, my grandmother took me during a school half term to a matinee of Evita, the original production, and I fell hopelessly in love with the woman who dragged herself up from the gutter to become first lady of Argentina. Aged 12, I didn’t notice the duplicity, the thrist for power, the naked ambition. I only saw the woman who fought for the descamisados (shirtless ones) of Argentina, my romantic little heart bursting at the thought of her life being cut short by cervical cancer at the age of 33.  My grandmother, a rentless traveller throughout her later life, until old age prevented it, died last year and left me £2 grand, enough to pay for a flight and a few nights accommodation. There really didn’t seem to be a reason not to go.

So, on the first day of my Argentine adventure, I wander in 30 degree heat, (it had been -3 in London) from my hotel through Palermo in search of Evita. I stop briefly for a cafe con leche at a canopied cafe overlooking a leafy plaza (square) and avoid the brightly coloured boutiques selling bags and shoes and jewellery. Later, I tell myself, I’ll look later.

Crossing Avenieda Santa Fe, I head towards the affluent Recoleta barrio.

EVITA MUSEUM, PALERMO, BUENOS AIRES

My first stop is the Evita museum, tucked away on a side street. Evita is still  celebrated in Argentina 62 years after her death, but discreetly. She is remembered , but cautiously and with nothing like the fanatiscism of a worshiping nation in the 1940’s /50’s. Modern Argentina is more circumspect. A young Argentinian woman tells me that the problem is that while the Eva Peron foundation bought every household in Argentina a fridge, what use was it when there was nothing to put in it. I am reminded of the saying, ‘buy a man a fish and he will eat, teach him to fish etc…….’  Several days later someone tells me about a family living in the far north in the 50’s who wrote to her saying that they could not afford beds and Evita sent them a houseful of furniture, thus ensuring the family’s  lifelong devotion to Peronism. My head tells me that the young woman was right, but my romantic heart loves the furniture story more.

The building may be discreet, but the museum itself is fantastic. Not least because the boy selling the tickets is possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen. Pale skinned, enormous, dark, soulful eyes, long curly hair as black as ink and twenty if he was a day. I fall instantly in love. As he rose languorously from behind his desk, he handed me a ticket. Our eyes locked and he seemed to gaze deep into my soul. He leant forward and whispered gently, ‘you may take photos, I beg you Senora, don’t use flash’. Is this Argentinian, do you think for ‘will you marry me?’ Or at least, do you fancy a kiss and a cuddle behind the novelty Evita mugs?  I think not reader. Although, he did reach into a drawer and give me a postcard of an Evita portrait and he didn’t do that for the people behind me. (clutch those straws baby!)

Each artefact, a glimpse into Evita’s life, is displayed in light airy colonial rooms, with chaise longues, that you are actually allowed to sit on. Wherever possible, windows are thrown wide open and visitors are encouraged out onto balconies to gaze out across the city, as if viewing Eva is as much about viewing Buenos Aires and vice versa. The two seem so intertwined. The exhibition begins with her death mask, cast decadently in gold . Family photos from her childhood as an illegitimate born into poverty, playbills from her time as an actress, rare snippets of her films, displays of her Christian Dior dresses from her time as first lady of Argentina are all displayed, along with some incredible archive of her funeral, of her speeches from the balcony of the Casa Rosada to thousands and thousands of devoted argentinians packing the square  below. There is a radio broadcast she gave, the last before her death, where, barely audible over her own sobs, she begs the nation to pray that she ‘is restored to the good health that has left her’ It chokes me up. She was 9 years younger than me when she died.

Evita’s death mask:

“I came from the people, they need to adore me, so Christian Dior me, from my head to my toes…”

Below a selection of the Dior dresses worn by Madam herself

The exhibition ends with the macabre story of her body. Embalmbed after her death, Peron ordered it to be displayed for eternity. But a year later, he was ousted from power and Evita’s remains were  snatched by rebels and went missing for 20 years. Eventually, she was handed back  to Peron (then in Exile in Spain)  in 1971.  The final exhibit is  a film projected onto a wall, showing the state of her body when it was returned. It’s accompanied by the voice of her sister, denouncing the men who had abused her sister’s dead body, striking her skull several times, smashing the nose, her feet somewhat inexplicably covered with tar.  One can only imagine what they’d been doing with her. But despite the abuse,  in the film her body remains preserved. skin alabaster white, eyes closed and still incredibly beautiful.
And it is this body that now lies in Recoleta cemetery. A mini city without traffic or bustle. A city of death,   row after opulent crisscrossing row of ornate mausoleums.  These are not the stone slab of your average churchyard.  They are  mini palaces entombing the dead. Look closely through the glass in some  and you can actually see coffins on display. As I approach, I pass a young local woman, who crossed herself as she passes. The dead of Buenos Aires are treated with respect it seems.
She’s not hard to find. Even though her tomb is one of the least impressive and she is just one of six  in her family plot. No great glorious mausoleum for her it seems. It is however, surrounded by tourists, clogging up the narrow alleyway, pushed flat against the mausoleum’s behind. This isn’t good. I’ve brought her a present and I’m buggered if I’m going to give it to her in front of a crowd of tourists all clicking furiously at the front of the tomb, that despite it’s discreet location is festooned with garlands of fake flowers and rosaries from other fans. The gawpers come and go. But after about half an hour, I get my chance. For a brief moment, we’re alone. I’ve brought her a fake gold bangle that I found when packing jewellery for my trip. I remember buying it for £1.99 in Tammy girl in 1983, so I’ve had it just about as long as I’ve been waiting for this moment and now its hers.  I’m sorry Evita that it is not Christian Dior.   I tuck it into the bars of the tomb, concealing it behind a garland of fake roses. I blow her a kiss and I leave, just as a new group appear around the corner  to pay homage.

The Duarte family tomb, final resting place of Evita.

Two hours later and I have walked back to Palermo and am sitting outside a bar at the Plaza Viejo drinking my first glass of malbec in the land in which it was made. I raise a glass to Evita as the sun sets over the square. I think I am going to rather like Argentina.

Last weekend, I was in Manchester, a city that I have had a long and happy relationship with. I was a student there nearly twenty years ago, and although it’s much changed since then, one thing remains . It is without doubt the friendliest place in the world. Even mundane tasks like buying a paper, come with conversation so warm, you feel like being engulfed in a fleecy fluffy eiderdown. Wherever we went, we were love bombed by northern affability. On a busy shopping street, I accidently bumped into a woman, she apologised. Buying a lipstick turned into a half hour conversation about the pleasures of having tea at the Ritz and in our hotel bar, the mixologist spent hours patiently explaining every detail of my chilli chocolate martini (and even gave up his precious recipe).

On our first night, I was outside a restaurant when I fell into conversation with a junkie. This is not unusual. They gravitate to me, seeing someone who will probably at the very least give them money in note form, and possibly will even invite them to come and stay. He was called Paul, he pretended to sell me his only tattered three week old copy of the Big Issue and I pretended to buy it. He was, like all Mancunians, friendly, and as keen to hear my story as telling his own. His was more interesting and much sadder. He’d been a screen printer, working for years for a company who eventually fired him. What impressed me, was that he explained honestly, why he was fired. He was hooked on the junk. He claimed heroin but his skin had the hallmarks of crack abuse as well. It looked to me like it was the speedball – a deadly mixture of crack cocaine and heroin. The narcotic of the reckless that killed John Belushi. It is the most frightening drug combination that a human can take. I know that what they call a ‘one and one’ a peppercorn sized amount of the crack and the brown, costs twenty quid. Which coincidentally was exactly what Paul said he needed for a hostel. It was a freezing night, and so for that, and for his sweet nature and honest conversation, I gave him a fiver. He thanked me. I hope it went on the hostel.

It reminded me of an afternoon I spent in London, a city not famed for its friendliness. I once witnessed a vicar push past an elderly lady to get a seat on the tube (true story). It was an afternoon, spent in the company of what you and I would ordinarily call the dregs of society. This is how it came about. A boyfriend of mine had been staying with me for three months and had finally admitted to me that his former relationship with smack (and crack) was ferociously back on and far more important to him than his relationship with me. Although I had suspected something was up, I had been working hard, so concealing this from me had not been difficult. But at 1am, he slumped onto the kitchen floor and confessed all. He had run out of money, had been stealing from me, no longer recognised himself and had hit rock bottom. He was broken, I, who’s association with drug addiction was limited to Zammo in Grange Hill, felt my blood itch with fear for him. I felt scared and protective and for the first time in my life, the need to be very very grown up. We put him on lockdown and while he went through withdrawl, waited three long, sweaty, shivery days for his parents to come and take him to rehab. When they finally turned up, he panicked, broke out via the back door, jumped over six garden walls and disappeared.

His mother collapsed on the floor, screaming that he was going to die. He’d been clean, as far as I knew, for three days. I ran out of the front door just in time to see him get on a bus, headed for Brixton. Adrenaline shooting through my body, I ran after the bus and kept running until I hit Atlantic road nearly two miles away. I thought only one thing. I would do anything at all to find him, even though I had absolutely no idea how to locate a desperate relapsing smack head. This was not familiar territory to a 30 something middle class surrey girl. The only thing I did know was it was November, I hadn’t put on a coat and I was freezing.

Walking down Coldharbour lane, I saw a group of guys standing in a doorway. Dealers, even I could spot that. Terror of what my boyfriend was doing to himself, induced a recklessness in me. I didn’t care if they stabbed me, I marched up to them, burst into tears and asked if they knew him or where I might find him.

They stared at me for a minute and then one of them started shouting at me.
‘Look at you… look at what he’s done to you. I’ll find the bastard and kill him for you’. Another, unasked, took his coat off and put it round my shivering shoulders. The third, gave me a hug and then the three of them formed a guard around me and took me off to look. They didn’t know him and I didn’t know that he never scored in Brixton. But those three looked after me for three hours, taking me to crack dens, known dealing spots, anywhere they knew he might turn up. I saw sights, I never want to see again. Imagine the most sordid and degrading drug scene in a film. Then replace Harvey Keitel or Ewan McGregor with real people. Then imagine going into filthy bloodstained rooms and seeing fifty different yet equally broken examples of this.

Each location we tried was worse than the last. These guys made no apology. But held my hands and squeezed them hard. Without a word, they let me know that they understood the enormity of what I was seeing, and that, I was picturing my boy in the same circumstances. I’m pretty sure they had guns. It was clear that everyone we encountered was terrified of them. It was the only time in my life I saw people flattening themselves against walls as we passed. But flanked by these three strangers, I could sense was that they were genuinely trying to help me. Phone calls were made, descriptions were passed on, orders were given that if anyone in their network dealt to him, they were to grab him and bring him to me. In three hours, they didn’t make a penny. I have no idea how much money I lost them. They just helped me in what they knew, and I was beginning to realise, was a completely useless search. You can’t find someone who doesn’t want to be found. Eventually we walked back out into the more palatable part of Brixton to meet their boss. A large man, who you would not mess with, unless you genuinely had suicidal tendencies. Me and my new friends explained the situation. He listened and then stared at me for about two minutes, before speaking.

Him: ‘You want him back?’

Me: Yes…(tearful again)

There was a long pause and he stared at me again.

Him: You undercover?

Me: Eh?

Another long pause while he assessed whether I was the rozzers. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a blue wrap and put it into my hand.

Him: ‘I’m giving you stuff. No charge. You ring him and tell him you’ve got it and tell him to meet you here. Tell him he can have it if he comes home with you. We don’t want to call his bluff, he’s a junkie, he might hurt you.’

Me: ‘But I’ve been ringing all afternoon, his phone’s off.’

Him: You leave a message telling him what you’ve got. He’ll find you. Ten minutes tops’ He turned to one of my other new friends. ‘Get her a cup of tea. She’s freezing’. With that, he disappeared. Leaving me holding a wrap of heroin in one hand and soon a hot cup of tea in the other. I didn’t have time to even thank him.

He was right. Ten minutes later my desperate boy emerged through the crowds and shuffled towards me, slumped and broken. He couldn’t meet my eyes but he took my hand. I turned to say goodbye to my new friends. I’d never learnt their names. Two of them gave me big hugs and walked away. I turned to the third and took off his coat to give back to him. He shook his head and put it back around my shoulders. Then without a word, grabbed my junkie boyfriend and pushed him hard to the floor and walked away.

That day, and many times after that, I learned that heroin is a greedy bitch. It will take your job, your money, your relationships, your dignity, your humanity and chances are, eventually it will take your life. It will show you no mercy. The people who sell it are by reputation immoral and terrifying. They belong in prison. But on a cold november afternoon, in a notoriously unfriendly city, among the most ruthless, lawless people, making a living from other people’s terrible addictions, I made three unlikely friends.

So, Manchester, your warmth never suprises. But London, sometimes you can still shock the hell out of me.

By the way, I never gave him the smack. I flushed it down the loo, into the stinking sewers where it belonged.

How I wish it were Saturday. Because on Saturday I had not yet seen Annie Hall and so had the seeing of Annie Hall for the very first time still to come.

I loved it. The way Woody talked to the camera, the way he stopped people in the street, what she wore, how spontaneous the script sounded – it’s a great film that made me understand for the very first time why Woody Allen is considered such a genius.

There are lots of movies I’ve never seen and need to start watching more. I have just produced a short film and am currently writing a screenplay. But, I feel that my film knowledge is a little lacking due to previous addictions to going out boozing and watching really, really bad television. I didn’t see The Godfather trilogy until I was 39 for instance. I’ve never seen Betty Blue all the way through and although I’ve always wanted to see the Amityville Horror, I’m a little concerned that I will find it so terrifying that I will rip my ears off and eyes out!

But hey! This is where you come in… Welcome to the inauguaral meeting of myroaringforties cinema club!

At the end of this uncharacteristically short post, you will see a button called Leave a comment. Click on leave a comment and, how can I put this simply, er… Leave a comment, recommending me a film. Anything you like… your favourite. The one that you think everyone should see. It could be comedy, tragedy… it might even be Overboard starring Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn! (My own personal recommendation… truly terrible… truly brilliant in equal measures) – see trailer below!

Overboard Trailer

Thanking you in advance for assisting in the higher education of myroaringforties!