September 15-16: A DEDICATED NON-STOP MENTON MANSFIELD COUCHSURFING PRESSWOMAN PILGRIMAGE

Every Aotearoan-New Zealander who makes it to Menton has to go on a wee mission to Villa Isola Bella, where the writer Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote in some of her happiest days. Poet Kate Camp, 2017's Katherine Mansfield Fellow, is currently getting paid to sit in a room here and write. Though today she's up north and the gate is locked, but I can sit on a little guttering on the other side of the street, gazing and reflecting. She kindly sent me the address link - it's just east of the Menton-Garavan station https://goo.gl/maps/EewoGaGAWQm

The mother of one of my lovely Couchsurfing hosts also did this visit, for pure, literary pilgrimage reasons. In a relatively short life, Katherine Mansfield kicked some pretty major arse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Mansfield

CouchSurfing is marvellous and generous humanity in action. I'm being hosted by two smart, warm, and delightful political science majors - one Canadian, one Welsh-Irish-raised-in-Berlin hybrid - who are in their second year at the Menton campus of the quite famous French university Sciences Po. When I arrive at their lofty seaside apartment latish Friday night to a roomful of their friends/fellow students, I'm invited to share their tasty wine, rice, and curry dinner and to contribute to discussions. The group is planning an event to attract people to the environmental association they're starting on campus. After the others leave around midnight we stay up chatting till two. I am further treated to fresh sheets and banana ice-cream with cinnamon.

Waking at seven, spectacular, sparkling views of the Italian border and the Mediterranean  are duly afforded. Anna and Sophie say they sometimes have to remind themselves that this is really their life. It's pretty good, even if extremely high academic standards, including Arabic lessons, are fairly hard graft. But as it is Saturday morning we pop across the road for a swim. This is more or less the view from the water...

And we swim about in this...

The water is mega-salty and mega-brain-chilling cold from heavy late-night rain. We manage somehow. Doubtless, the various sky aerial gods are smiling beneficently upon us. 

Breakfast, conversation and poetry books are exchanged; my literary pilgrimage is carried out; a few photos are shot while strolling back past the yachts, feeling a bit angry, and suspecting they are a good part of the reason some people are not allowed to cross the border from Italy into France. Upon return I gratefully utilise the wi-fi to organise myself - including confirming my next CouchSurfing host an hour and a half further west along the coast in Antibes. 

Then I race off through the alleys of the old town to meet and interview an economist acquaintance, Gian Carlo, about his insights into the European rail industry. He has chosen a delightful location for our chat, namely, the gardens of Palais de Camolès, upon the grounds of Musée des Beaux-Arts, and which are tended by local school children. We talk carbon emissions, high-speed rail and train-culture cultural differences, and enjoy the sunshine, scents and sights...

The flowers and scented perennial herbs are busy with bees. I feel like the bees, diving headlong into the richness. Time to catch another train...