Bowling down an unusually quiet Ladbroke Grove early one pale-grey morning more than twenty years ago, it was obvious the Notting Hill carnival, which has its heartland along that stretch of road, was over for another year, barring pieces of forlorn streamers left in gutters. The calm of the place didn’t bother me; I was well in those days and happy to be travelling along alone in a decrepit mini-cab hung with pine-tree-shaped air fresheners as we made our way south to Gatwick airport. As we drove along, I felt acutely aware of being thirty-five years old and still – reluctantly – single, something of an obsession for me in those days. My love life had been traumatic; repeated readings as a teenager of this lady’s novels set in Regency England had been enjoyable but totally failed to prepare me for London’s 1990s dating wars; I had just about given up on ever meeting anyone who didn’t just want to avail themselves of my money, my contacts, my home or my body, not that I was either wealthy, slim or especially well-connected. More just naïve, slightly overweight, and embarrassingly hungry for love. Ever meeting anyone who might want me as a life partner felt . . . unlikely.
Ironically, just as I was beginning to accept I might never meet ‘the one’ and, furthermore, that life might still actually be just about bearable on my own, things had begun to change. Work felt stable; I was getting on with my colleagues and my boss at the financial ratings firm where I was employed. The work itself was dull, but the people were nice, the hours regular and the job paid my bills. Heck, it even meant I got to go on a modest foreign holiday once or twice a year.
I was embarking on one of these precious holidays when I arrived at Toulouse airport in southern France after the flight from Gatwick. Once there, I joined a group of walkers standing waiting together outside arrivals, sunshine filtering down onto them through huge windows. We were preparing to walk and camp together along a central section of the Pyrénées GR10 path crossing from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, in what would unexpectedly prove to be one of the most formative experiences of my life.
Also in the group was a tall, very tall, fair-haired guy with wire-framed glasses and an eager, kindly expression on his face. His French was impeccable, I noticed as I listened to him talking with airport staff. The first time I’d seen him, back at the short-haul check-in in Gatwick, I’d noticed him looking at me across a sea of rucksacks and walking poles. Looking at me. Did he fancy me, I remember wondering? Yes, correct, he did indeed, as later events would come to prove. Forget about short hops. Me and the tall guy would eventually get together for the long haul.
Standing in that group at Toulouse airport, I had a setback, though, when I discovered somebody had pinched my walking stick from my trolley as I was collecting my rucksack from the luggage carousel. It had been there only moments earlier. This was annoying, I’d been planning on using that stick to power me along for the fourteen days of walking in the Pyrénées. Some of the others in the group looked awkward as I explained to them that someone must have nicked it. I felt embarrassed to introduce a discussion of even minor criminality into the beginning of our holiday.
There were a few discreet sniggers at my news.
But one person didn’t snigger; didn’t even come close to doing that. Instead, he looked genuinely. troubled for me, sorry someone had sneaked off with my stick.
“Shall I go and have a look? Maybe ask at lost property?” He looked worried for me as he spoke. He was very tall. Taller than me. I liked that, being on the tall side myself.
“Thank you,” I gulped, feeling it must be my fault someone had nicked my stick, that I should have been more careful.
When the tall guy, Mark, came back from the walking stick hunt, he admitted he’d not had any luck.
It didn’t matter.
Yes, I lost a walking stick that early Autumn day in France, but I gained something that has become infinitely more precious to me in every way possible. Over the following weeks and months, Mark and I spent more and more time getting close to each other, going to the theatre, walking in the countryside, even making it all the way to Ely Cathedral from Cambridge. It was more than I had dared hope; discovering I wasn’t too old to feel love for someone and being loved by him in my turn. Through losing that stick, you see, I gained the love of my life. Not a bad deal, as these things go, I think you’ll agree.
Helen Fowler Writer 