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You are here: Home Life in Blogs & photos Lives & Livelihoods 25: Glad to be back!

12/06/2009Lives & Livelihoods 25: Glad to be back!

After a rare visit to his native city of Manchester, Basil Howitt was thrilled to touch down once more at Perpignan airport and be whisked back to his adoptive village of Lansac in the Pyrenean foothills.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m very pleased I visited Manchester, though I wasn’t looking forward to it. But since I hadn’t been there for two years, I finally succumbed to the cajolings and arm twistings of my dear wife Clare and treasured stepdaughter Catherine.

It wasn’t as though I could complain about the prospect of Manchester’s gloomy skies and endless rain, since here in Lansac we have had the worst – or longest – winter in living memory, according to the locals.

Hooked! A 50 year love affair
My reluctance to leave my adoptive country for my native shores is easily explained. I can recall with Proustian clarity the first time as a boy I set eyes on France at the start of a family holiday in Paris.

Gare maritime
Dieppe harbour one summer in the mid 1950s! The packet boat from Newhaven nudges the quay. I will never forget the frantic hullabaloo of the dockworkers in blue overalls - gesticulating, shouting and dashing madly as they caught and looped the mooring ropes and started to unload the swinging freight – all so very unEnglish. And there also on the quayside was a steam engine like no other I had ever seen –with its huge boiler festooned with pipes, its strange funnel, and somehow looking so much bigger than British engines.



In that moment I was hooked – and of course still am. Living here permanently now is a dream come true after a 50 year love affair.

The Old Flame
Anyway, in spite of this life-long Francophilia, for a while I fell again under the spell of Manchester - now an Old Flame for me! Catherine had laid on everything she could to enchant me and demonstrate Manchester’s charms – and how successful she was! She drove us straight from the airport to a very good fish and chip shop, The Battered Cod in Fallowfield. In our flat in Levenshulme I then pigged myself on (naturally) battered cod - 2 large, succulent pieces, the golden coating crisp and thick - and mushy peas.

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