Tomorrow there will be, what our family calls, a ‘Love Actually moment’ at Marseilles Airport. Kate and I will brave the snow and the biting cold to journey to collect someone very special. He will only be able to be here for a few days before work schedules demand his presence elsewhere but at least we will have him with us for a while. I hope he is as enchanted with Uzès and the house as I ….
Well of course he won’t be, but I will know by the degree of his grin and smile whether he at least likes it……

Virgin Atlantic flight, London boundMarseilles Airport, has things in common with all airports; strange places, where you say good-bye with sadness (or sometimes relief!) and meet people with excited expectation. When I stand in an arrivals terminal, wherever it maybe in the world, (normally at SFO) in my mind I am always at LHR, the place where all my travels started. I always wonder at the marvel as you stand there surrounded by complete strangers, all waiting for complete strangers but each one of those strangers is special to someone. Somehow, for a few seconds, you share in each others anticipation. It never fails to evoke emotion as tears get fiercely blinked away. Watching as a small child gets scooped up into the arms of a parent or as a traveling student suddenly reverts to being a five year old in the joyful embrace of his mother or a grandma comes round ‘the corner’, her anxious face lighting up with joy once a familiar face is recognized. As the Richard Curtis movie told us, ‘Love, actually, is all around’ and nowhere is it more evident, as it will be tomorrow once more for us, than at an airport arrivals lounge. Tomorrow at Marseilles Airport, I am sure it won’t be any different!