The House with the Private Beach
When we sold Metier in 1985, we bought a house on the Cap d’Antibes called Les Ondes on the Chemin des Ondes.
I had been worried that images from Google showed what looked like a large development where the house had been. But when I walked up the road, the house was still there and appeared to have changed little since we sold it in the early 1990s.
The beach had changed little too, although you will notice there is now a sign, which shows that it is a public beach. It was for most of the year private though, in that there was no parking nearby and others couldn’t be bothered to walk from Juan or Antibes.
But they had made the road one way up the hill!
We spent several happy summers at Les Ones, but in the end sold it as it was always getting burgled when we were there. We also had three hire cars stolen from outside. Talking to staff in the hotel, they felt that things had got a lot better. I hope that’s right. But then it was never too bad until May.
One holiday stands out. My wife and I took, one of her barrister colleagues, Martin, away to the house for a few days. He was and hopefully still is very outspoken. He would lie on that beach and say in a loud upper-class English voice, ‘Look at that lump of lard over there’ at some lady who’d been eating for two. Luckily, no-one understood his English or perhaps most were laughing with him.
That holiday too we went to a Michelin starred restaurant in Antibes, where the wine waiter was the spitting image of Stephen Fry, doing an impression of Lord Melchett from Blackadder, doing a cariacature of a wine waiter complete with tastevin. He never understood why we kept laughing at him.
I also remember this so well, as Martin paid for his holiday with a painting, that sits in my dining room.
Antibes and the Picasso Museum
I at least managed to get to the Picasso Museum in Antibes. When we had the house on the Cap d’Antibes, we did go a couple of times, but inevitably when we tried it was closed. And it was closed on our last visit in April 2007.
The museum is very much worth a visit as it is one of the best collections of Picasso’s work. I suspect too, that it has got bigger in the twenty years since I last visited. There is also a large collection of works by Nicolas de Stael, who is an artist, of whom I’d never heard.
But then what do I know about art?
As you can see in the pictures, there is still a lot of work being done around the museum.
The Anonymous Widower 