A MOST REMARKABLE RESTAURANT - It's called Ca' Mea, which I understand to mean "My House" in the local Piemontese dialect. Mountains rise up front and back. Heavily wooded and very steep, they leave barely enough room for the stone building itself, which is over 200 years old, and was once an olive mill; for the deep rocky gorge outside the front door at the bottom of which pours the torrent that once powered the mill; for the thin, twisty road that brought us up here from the coast; and for the brief one lane bridge crossing the gorge from road to former mill. The nearest village is Badalucco, population 1,200. The nearest town of size is San Remo, about 12 miles away. This is a restaurant with problems. In addition to its isolation there can be never be adequate room for parking. Nonetheless, when we were there two days ago, mid-day Tuesday, so were about 40 others.
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Went and got a haircut this morning. I am in Nice. Here and also elsewhere in France I believe,this begins with a shampoo, which appears to be mandatory. For several minutes a woman works soap into your hair which to me is neither more nor less than a scalp massage, and delightful. Then the haircut, performed by the same woman almost entirely with scissors. Takes about 30 minutes. Costs a lot, I guess, 26 euros counting tip, about $32, compared to the shop I frequent when in Bronxville, where a guy with limited English polishes me off in five or ten minutes for $16, no shampoo, hardly any scissor work, using mostly what looks like a large electric shaver. Today, coming out, I crossed to the corner kiosk, and bought a paper, then sat down outside a café on the square under the trees. The waiter brought me a café au lait and I read my paper, the International New York Times, which certain of us still think of as the Paris Herald Tribune, which is what it was until a few months ago. In this way I blew another 6 euros, paper and coffee, blew also an extremely pleasant half hour, and from time to time thought about retirement, and felt good about it and about myself. It's hard to be retired, and for years one resists the very idea. Basically retirement means that the people you have always done business with in the past want you to step aside, get out of the way. Than which nothing could be more normal. Happens to everybody. Look, I'm 84 years old. I can't hide that, however much I might want to. It's on the internet. Anybody can find out in five seconds. I'm under no illusions about the world--fewer than in the past, anyway--and to believe that respect for age and past achievements might exist in America or elsewhere would be an illusion to end all illusions. I had a good run. And Amazon with its Kindle, does string it out a bit longer--Amazon the Octopus, the literary monopoly, Amazon which I hate but which I put all my books onto. Gratefully, I might add. My books exist in all the other E-book formats too, but it was the Octopus that showed the way. As I sipped my coffee under the trees all these ruminations came to me for two reasons. One, I was reading a piece by Christopher Clarey in Paris whose beat seems match my beat on the paper when I was starting out more than fifty years ago. (I don't know Clarey, but I wonder if we would have anything to talk about if we should meet.) And two, I am in fact still getting published--in a way--for yesterday from Spain I received in the mail, just republished, a copy of a book I wrote years and years ago: new cover, new translation, new title even. I held the new book in my hands and got almost the same kick I used to get in the past seeing and holding a new book of mine for the first time. This new one is called "De Bolidos Y Hombres." Let's everybody rush out and buy it. Please. Think of my morale.
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