Trying to discover why I had persisting pain around my mouth, head, et al. I went to see a doctor, a dentist, a jaw chap, a periodontist and a physiotherapist. After many months I had a scan to look at my sinuses, to find a large cyst was blocking my nasal passage. After fourteen months, from when I began this path of discovery, I am now booked in for an operation. To say that I’m not looking forward to having my nasal cavities explored is an understatement. Still, through all this annoying daily pain, I decided to find things which would take my mind off, well, myself.

I had read about an art residency in the French countryside, which appealed greatly, as Kerry and I had stayed in the area a long time ago, and loved it.

The place where the residency was housed looked wonderful; a series of old buildings where there were choices of rooms to stay, studio space to share, and a wonderful countryside to explore. It didn’t come cheap, but after a year of flinging money around to discover what was causing me all this pain, I thought ‘what the hang’. I set about making up a portfolio of work, writing out reasons why Provence would be a perfect place to complete a project etc, etc. Then, when I came to send my application through, which included a ‘donation’ as it was called, rather than a fee, an interesting thing happened. When I tapped on to the payment page, this little sign popped up for both PayPal, and bankcards…

Ah ha! I immediately grabbed Kerry and showed him this sign. It looks as if it could be a scam, I thought. And yes, it was in a way, for it seems the claim that this was an art residency might not be quite true. We scrolled through many comments by people who had stayed here, to find that there were no large studio spaces to share with others. It was isolated in the countryside, and one needed a car to find a cafe or food. One woman stated that the space, purportedly a studio, was too small to share with another artist. Others had a lot more negative things to say. More reading revealed that it was in fact just an Air BnB, and an expensive one at that, which was available to anyone who cared to pay. There were many reports of families with children enjoying their holiday there. I was miffed, for a bit, but SO pleased that none of my money was lost to this business.

I looked for other residencies, and while I was doing so, a thought popped into my head. I knew a delightful artistic village in the south of France, where I had stayed ten years before. Villefranche-sur-Mer, is close to Nice, and to the Italian border. Why not just take myself off for my own art residency? Well, I have found, but not yet booked, an AirBnB, with the idea of going next Spring (European). Boy, did that pick me up. Just have to save like mad, and get my forthcoming operation out of the way!

Take a look at the link from 2019 above, as you may very well want to go there after reading this post.