Last week a very good friend of mine from the UK came down to visit us. Ineke does all my proof-reading and, as I draw ever nearer to having the AMB website restructured, I asked if she’d like to pop down so we could put the new website through its paces. Thankfully Ineke was most impressed with the new layout and features which led me to believe that I was on the right track and that now was the right time to restructure the entire website. However, like me, she did notice something quite obvious: I’m fast running out of adjectives to describe the French Riviera: beautiful, charming, stunning panorama, gorgeous, lovely, amazing and magical appear with frightening regularity. Yet as I explained to Ineke “How do you best describe paradise?” and with so many more towns and villages to write about, my Thesaurus is going to be well-thumbed.

Actually, these past few months have been rather interesting as I’ve had somewhat of a journey down memory lane when reading my old articles and remembering my feelings when visiting a particular town or little perched village for the first time. While many of my original impressions remain I’ve had to revise a few as, a couple of years later, I’ve come to appreciate places I didn’t “click” with straight away. Much like good wine, I now realize I need to wait a while to let all my impressions mature and filter through before hammering away at my keyboard. 

However, only now do I realize that this insight was actually brought home to me by a tiny sparrow a couple of weeks ago in a place I certainly would classify as paradise. One wonderful, sunny afternoon I was invited to share afternoon tea on the terrace of the Grand Hotel du Cap Ferrat. Sitting there with beauty all around me I noticed a small house sparrow perched quite happily on one of the tables opposite me, perfectly at ease and enjoying the moment as if he had all the time in the world.

The moral of the story? Well, at their peak in the early 1970s, there were an estimated 25 million house sparrows breeding in Britain. The number is now closer to 13 million. The question raised by many UK ornithologists is “Where have all the house sparrows gone?”. I can now answer their question . . . they are happily living and breeding on the Cote d’Azur and enjoying a sunny day in paradise. Wouldn’t you?