Audrey Laski and her husband John (pictured below) are indefatigible travellers who in recent years have made special trips to France, Italy and India. Here are a few of Audrey's many colourful stories, illustrated with sketches from her own substantial collection of sketchbook.
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On the Noahís Ark
Twentyfour hours on the backwaters of Kerala, on a boat which looked for all the world like Noahís Ark, constructed of teak and bamboo, was just the rest we needed, and the experience of Southern India. We found that we were the only guests aboard, a bit of a surprise when there were no fewer than five staff: Dilip, the young man in charge, the old steersman, the cook, the cookís helper and the general dogsbody.
We were welcomed with a cooling drink in a coconut shell, and later with a great lunch, fried slivers of backwater fish, and shown all the ducks and waterlilies that made the lake fascinating. Come the evening, another delicious meal, and afterwards, enough oil lamps were lit to enable us to do what we best liked on holiday ‚ to read to each other our favourite poems ‚ from an anthology of 20C poetry we had brought for the purpose.
To our delight, Dilip came and listened, and let us persuade him to try his hand at reading an English poem, difficult as this was for anyone whose first language was something else. When we retired to our mosquito nets, we saw he was still in the cabin studying the anthology, and agreed that we wanted to give him it. We felt it even more strongly when, on waking, we found him copying out the poems he liked best, and his joy at seeing the inscription to him which proved the book was his own was thrilling. It was also nothing to do with his not owning books already; he had shown us the small collection he took with him on these journeys. It was the mark of a shared happy literary experience, as great for us as for him.
Click here for Audrey's poem on Kerala, "On The Backwaters"
On the Beach
The Engineerís House is half-way up the long path from the beach at Porticello to the road which leads in one direction to Cannetto and the actual town of Lipari, and in the other to Aquapendente, and when we are very lucky, our dear friend the Engineerís daughter lends it to us for a couple of weeks. Mostly we make our own meals there, enjoying the fun of frying eggs and fresh anchovies and even making lamb stews, but sometimes we fancy being fed, and go slowly down to the beach where day trippers have parked their cars, and the van of Mister Bufa is open for business.
It isnít the only food van on the beach, but it is the one we have become friends with, loving the merriment and warmth of old Mister Bufa, younger Master Bufa, Mistress Bufa with her enormous smile and the charming young girl who helps them. What we nearly always eat there is the Aeolian Salad. The islands of which Lipari is the biggest are called the Aeolian Isles because the Ancient Greeks believed Aeolus, God of the Winds, kept the winds there in a big bag, letting them out when he wanted to give sailors a treat or a fright, so Mister Bufa calls his salad Aeolian, and it is amazing. Everything is in it: lettuce, tomato, tuna, anchovy, capers, olives, hard-boiled egg, onion, cheese, all dressed with a delicious oil. Usually we only need one between us. Sometimes, instead, we have panini, huge sandwiches filled with a similar mix and served hot. There is rough wine and bread to go with it, and watermelon for pudding. What could be better?
The Marmot Hunt
Marmots are cheeky little cousins of beavers who live in groups in mountain regions in Europe and other parts of the world. We first saw them when we were driving through the Alps and loved their wicked habit of sitting in the road until an oncoming car had to pull up and then running for the roadside and sitting up there looking for all the world as if they were giggling their little heads off.
So when I spent my first period in hospital and saw that my wardmates all had teddy bears or other stuffed toys with them for company, I thought I would really like to have a marmot, partly because I've always liked to be a bit different, and partly because I thought the memory of the cheekiness of the real creatures would cheer me up in hospital. We soon found out, however, that getting a toy marmot is not an easy matter; shops don't stock them. In the end it became clear that we would have to go back to the Alps. However, this time we didn't have a car, and after taking a train to Gap found that even there, no toy marmots seemed to be for sale.
The only thing for it was to rise horribly early to catch a bus to Barcelonnette right in the mountains. And, after a hysterical twenty minutes in which I saw six buses which might have been ours go past the stop, we finally caught it, arrived in Barcelonnette and found the main drag lined with stalls on which hundreds of toy marmots paraded. We walked up and down comparing and contrasting, rejecting the ones with funny hats and silly uniforms and finally deciding on a big one holding a pine cone and a little one as her baby, a delicious pair who now sit on our sofa waiting for me to need them. They already cheer me up whenever I look at them.
