«Искусство лишь зеркало, отражающее того, кто в него смотрится». Оскар Уайльд ©
readSunshine breaks: How we went goggle-eyed in Mauritius...
By Jason Isaacs
It's just that I like to stay long enough to become a local, part of the community.
To do things, go places, explore, to discover the culture of the place. If we're not on a family outing, I love to work, but for the next week or so I'm meant to 'relax'.
What does that mean? I'm relaxed when I'm stimulated. When I'm not, I'm psychotic.
And why would I want to torture my two little girls with a 12-hour overnight flight when they can't sit still for five minutes? Do I really want to put us all through seven days either hiding from or lying in the burning sun?
The 'all staying in one room' thing seems like a prison sentence, too. I'm a night person and a borderline insomniac but my wife and kids are such light sleepers that if I blink they sit bolt upright thinking there has been an earthquake.
How can I check my email, read a newspaper or even watch a movie if we're all stuck in the same room from the girls' bedtime? I'm braced for the worst.
SUNDAY Day One
The mini-DVD players are charged, the iPod is loaded with stories and movies, countless bags are stuffed with Roald Dahl novels, cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches, colouring books, felt-tip pens, yogurts, teddy bears and wipes. We don't travel light.
MONDAY Day Two
Seven movies, 14 hours and about 9,000 tearful renditions of ' Daddy, are we theeeere yet?' later, we arrive in a hot, wet, steamy Mauritius. Wow. It's like having a hot flannel slapped on your face.
Wakey wakey! A beaming driver pours us all into an air-conditioned people-carrier - a surprisingly welcome relief after just a few minutes of tropical weather - and starts winding through the deliciously colourful landscape to take us to our hotel.
That mountain there's called Lion Mountain,' our driver tells the kids. '
'Those two over there are called Tom and Jerry. Can you find them on the map?'
Lily suffers from motion sickness, and trying to read a map is likely to bring that cream cheese and cucumber back to haunt us. I grab the map and pretend I thought the driver was talking to me.
'Here they are! I found them. Is that them?' I say. The driver is a bit surprised but plays along, and later he tells us a little about the ethnic mix on the island - various parts Chinese, Indian, African and European.
Emma comments how gorgeous the women look. Really? I hadn't noticed ...
About 45 minutes later, we pull into the One&Only Saint Geran, our designated home for the coming week. Ooh la la, as Lily likes to say.
It's fancy. ' It looks like a palace for a princess,' says Ruby. She's not wrong.
It's like a mirage. The first thing I notice is a golf course that looks as if it's made from green velvet. Can I justify sneaking off for four hours or so immediately? It's only 9am here, but to our clanking bones it's 4am and no one's been to bed.
' Hmmmm,' I scheme inside my head. '
'Maybe I can get them all napping?' Then a gong heralds our arrival and snaps me out of my daydream. We're offered colourful cocktails, fresh juice and snacks in reception.
This area is massive, with a cathedral-height atrium open at one end to a vast, cloudless sky and an unnaturally blue ocean.
The welcoming committee dazzle us with smiles and hospitality - our every need will be taken care of.
The team at the Kids' Club team can't wait to meet Lily and Ruby (yes, they know their names), and would the adults like a massage to settle in? Are we hungry? Would we like a tour? Actually we're a bit overwhelmed, so I ask if we can just go to our room and we'll call later to make a plan.
The nicest four people in the world smile, nod and understand me better, after three minutes, than anyone I've known my whole life.
From nowhere, our butler, Raj, introduces himself (did he just say ' butler'?) and shows us to our room, flinging open double doors that empty on to a giant hammock, sunbeds and, er, perfection. We're on the beach.
Right on it. There are palm trees, blindingly white sand and shallow, turquoise, wave- free ocean.
Ruby and Lily immediately rip off all their clothes and run out, chased by Emma wielding suncream.
Raj, unfazed, explains how all the gadgets work, such as the large flatscreen TV, the iPod speakers, the multiple shower heads. He also sees my face fall as he opens a cupboard full of chocolate and snacks.
'Would you like me to take all these away?' he whispers, sympathetically.
' Please,' I whisper back, knowing that otherwise I will scoff them in the wee hours when my self-control goes to sleep without my body.
Raj tells us he is on call day and night, and explains how to find our way to the Kids' Club, the pool, the restaurants, the boat launch.
Something weird's going on. I could swear that he really cares, personally, that we have a great time. It was the same at reception - I'm experiencing profound culture shock.
Emma can't get the kids to keep still, so I play bad cop, slathering them in suncream ('not my eyes, Daddy, not my eyes, I'm wearing goggles') and forcing bathing suits on them.
The ocean seems too forbiddingly beautiful, so we head off for the pool. It's enormous and winds its way through and around La Terrasse, a giant restaurant, with little bridges to swim under and underwater stools at a pool bar.
'Daddy, you can sit in the water and eat olives for free,' chorus the children.
Best of all, the pool is mostly shallow enough for the girls to stand up in. They shriek and splash and dive for coins and are, frankly, not looking as tired as I am. Maybe I'll play golf tomorrow.
We have luch by the pool and the kids' menu hits the spot - neat Japanese-style Bento boxes with main courses, drinks, desserts and healthy green things to ignore.
Typically, Emma and I vary horribly from what's on the menu and give the waiter half a novel to write on his order pad, all of which he absorbs with grace and, seemingly, delight. Our food, although not cheap, turns out to be light, tasty and beautifully cooked.
It's exactly what I'd hoped for: a perfect mix of all the ethnic influences on the island. Roll on supper.
Pot luck: Jason in the role of Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films
' Would you and Mrs Isaacs like your tandem massage now?' asks a smiling Raj.
' Tandem?' I ask. ' As in together? Oh no thanks, we can't leave our kids.' ' Of course not,' Raj beams.
'We have a babysitter who'll play with them, or you could leave them at the Kids' Club.
'Have you been there yet?' ' Not yet, but we won't be leaving our kids with a babysitter, Raj. They're really not comfortable being with anyone else. Maybe my wife could have her massage first?' ' But of course,' he nods, sagely.
While Emma has what will no doubt be the first of many spa treatments, Lily, Ruby and I head to the Kids' Club.
Two incredibly sweet women welcome them - by name of course - as we watch a heaving, laughing mass of French children whirling out of the cinema, past the computer room, the games room, the arts and crafts area and the paddling pool and ending up at the buffet.
My daughters don't speak French and I note that they appear slightly intimidated by the fun en masse. There's no way they're coming back here, I think to myself.
But the girls are thrilled to be given gift packs, T-shirts and backpacks and we walk back to the pool, passing the watersports dock on the way. An endless supply of boats takes people water-skiing, fishing, inflatable banana-riding and sailing. You can also windsurf or kitesurf.
We pause to admire some of the Olympian activity in the water, as a bunch of kids not much older than mine tell us this is where they learned to water-ski and now look at them. We do - they're amazing.
'Ask Fred for a lesson,' they say. ' He's the best teacher.'
Fred smiles and shrugs: no sense of false modesty there.
' Would you like a lesson, young lady?' he asks Lily.'
'We can start you on a wakeboard. It's real easy.' ' What do you think, darling?' I ask hopefully.
' Sure, Daddy. Maybe tomorrow,' she responds coyly.
Eating out: A dining pavilion for more romantic guests at the resort
Never going to happen. That's the Kids' Club and the water-skiing out then. Great.
Back on the beach, lying in an ocean as warm as a bath, Emma appears with a look I've only seen on her face about an hour after childbirth: unadulterated bliss.
' How was it, darling?' I enquire.
She can't form words but she just nods in slow motion, grinning.
Now it's my turn on the massage table but I'm afraid it'll be wasted on me. I'm wired and I've never been very good at this pampering lark. Still, I don't want to be rude.
I walk through the enormous spa, past the well-equipped gym ('I'm definitely going every day. Definitely'), to a large wooden villa with two massage beds next to each other.
It's ludicrously picturesque and romantic but all I'm thinking is that if Emma were here I'd be able to chat with her for the next hour, instead of the rather stilted conversation that always happens in a massage.
Well, it does when I have one, anyway, because I feel awkward and never quite relax into switch-off mode.
Here goes.
MONDAY Day Nine
What just happened? I remember the massage starting but since then it's all a bit of a blur. Have I been dreaming? What day is it? Fragments float back.
Why are my jeans so tight? Didn't I go to the gym? I remember food, lots of it. Food, glorious food, like I've never indulged in before.
A meal at Rasoi by Vineet is easily the best Indian restaurant I've ever come across, built on a dock where the soundtrack of the lapping water calmed the soul.
Five exquisite courses of French cuisine courtesy of Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse at Spoon des Iles, where we arrived full of anxiety because the girls were in the Kids' Club watching a movie with their new friends, and departed with drum-tight bellies in a state of gastronomically induced coma.
True blue: Jason found impossibly blue seas in Mauritius
Enjoying a romantic meal à deux on the beach, in a tent open to the balmy evening on all sides, with our own personal grill chef cooking a selection of meats, chicken, prawns and vegetables.
Why do I remember Nutella? Fried bananas? Because the kids ate whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted - and they loved it.
I recall magnificent, biblical, tropical downpours that lasted half an hour before being replaced by blistering sunshine.
Live entertainment every night with all three of my girls dancing; sometimes in the rain, sometimes not, sometimes in just their underwear ( well the younger two, anyway), sometimes not, in front of a band that could cover and improve just about any song you cared to mention.
I recall the glass-bottom boat ride where all the kids saw Nemo at the same time and nearly shattered the glass for shrieking.
Other images, smells and sounds crowd me as I pack for our journey home, such as the day I beat - no, make that crushed - the tennis pro, only to find out he was the tennis pro's assistant, who had been playing for just four months.
Then followed the good-natured annihilation that Matthias, the real pro, meted out to me.
Lily, water-skiing - or rather refusing to give in after the ocean beat her up 20 times in a row, then finally standing, triumphantly, and wondering why her father was crying.
The food again - the buffets at breakfast that necessitated at least an hour of lying down and digesting before thinking about what came next. Floating in the warm, crystal-clear, womb-like ocean for what seemed like days at a time.
The girls, disappearing to the Kids' Club for hours and reappearing with intricately braided hair or tales of fabulous new friends. It all seemed so unlikely a week ago.
I know what was impossible a week ago: the sleep. Buckets of it. Falling deeper and more comprehensively and more peacefully into the comforting void than ever before. The world slowed down, day and night.
How did it all happen? Did it really happen? Is it the perpetual generosity and care you receive here? The personal attention that makes every detail just so? Is it something in the water? Is it heat-stroke? It might not be Mauritius, Mauritians or the oh-so-lovely One&Only Saint Geran. It might just have been luck. Perhaps we had better come back next year and check.
Jason Isaacs was talking to Karen Kay. His new film, Good, is released this week.
By Jason Isaacs
Last updated at 12:18 PM on 13th April 2009
I hate holidays. If I'm honest, I'm dreading this one. A week in Mauritius? Nightmare. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my wife, Emma, and our children in sunny foreign countries.
Since Lily was born seven years ago, and Ruby joined the party four years later, we've been lucky enough that my acting jobs have taken us to live in lots of places: Australia, California, Canada, Spain, Morocco, Rhode Island and more.
Pooling around: Jason Isaacs and daughter Ruby enjoy a dip at the resort
It's just that I like to stay long enough to become a local, part of the community.
To do things, go places, explore, to discover the culture of the place. If we're not on a family outing, I love to work, but for the next week or so I'm meant to 'relax'.
What does that mean? I'm relaxed when I'm stimulated. When I'm not, I'm psychotic.
And why would I want to torture my two little girls with a 12-hour overnight flight when they can't sit still for five minutes? Do I really want to put us all through seven days either hiding from or lying in the burning sun?
The 'all staying in one room' thing seems like a prison sentence, too. I'm a night person and a borderline insomniac but my wife and kids are such light sleepers that if I blink they sit bolt upright thinking there has been an earthquake.
How can I check my email, read a newspaper or even watch a movie if we're all stuck in the same room from the girls' bedtime? I'm braced for the worst.
SUNDAY Day One
The mini-DVD players are charged, the iPod is loaded with stories and movies, countless bags are stuffed with Roald Dahl novels, cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches, colouring books, felt-tip pens, yogurts, teddy bears and wipes. We don't travel light.
MONDAY Day Two
Seven movies, 14 hours and about 9,000 tearful renditions of ' Daddy, are we theeeere yet?' later, we arrive in a hot, wet, steamy Mauritius. Wow. It's like having a hot flannel slapped on your face.
Wakey wakey! A beaming driver pours us all into an air-conditioned people-carrier - a surprisingly welcome relief after just a few minutes of tropical weather - and starts winding through the deliciously colourful landscape to take us to our hotel.
Magical Charm: The beach at the One&Only resort
That mountain there's called Lion Mountain,' our driver tells the kids. '
'Those two over there are called Tom and Jerry. Can you find them on the map?'
Lily suffers from motion sickness, and trying to read a map is likely to bring that cream cheese and cucumber back to haunt us. I grab the map and pretend I thought the driver was talking to me.
'Here they are! I found them. Is that them?' I say. The driver is a bit surprised but plays along, and later he tells us a little about the ethnic mix on the island - various parts Chinese, Indian, African and European.
Emma comments how gorgeous the women look. Really? I hadn't noticed ...
About 45 minutes later, we pull into the One&Only Saint Geran, our designated home for the coming week. Ooh la la, as Lily likes to say.
It's fancy. ' It looks like a palace for a princess,' says Ruby. She's not wrong.
It's like a mirage. The first thing I notice is a golf course that looks as if it's made from green velvet. Can I justify sneaking off for four hours or so immediately? It's only 9am here, but to our clanking bones it's 4am and no one's been to bed.
' Hmmmm,' I scheme inside my head. '
'Maybe I can get them all napping?' Then a gong heralds our arrival and snaps me out of my daydream. We're offered colourful cocktails, fresh juice and snacks in reception.
This area is massive, with a cathedral-height atrium open at one end to a vast, cloudless sky and an unnaturally blue ocean.
The welcoming committee dazzle us with smiles and hospitality - our every need will be taken care of.
The team at the Kids' Club team can't wait to meet Lily and Ruby (yes, they know their names), and would the adults like a massage to settle in? Are we hungry? Would we like a tour? Actually we're a bit overwhelmed, so I ask if we can just go to our room and we'll call later to make a plan.
Indulged like never before: Emma, Lily, Jason and Ruby relax after yet another meal
The nicest four people in the world smile, nod and understand me better, after three minutes, than anyone I've known my whole life.
From nowhere, our butler, Raj, introduces himself (did he just say ' butler'?) and shows us to our room, flinging open double doors that empty on to a giant hammock, sunbeds and, er, perfection. We're on the beach.
Right on it. There are palm trees, blindingly white sand and shallow, turquoise, wave- free ocean.
Ruby and Lily immediately rip off all their clothes and run out, chased by Emma wielding suncream.
Raj, unfazed, explains how all the gadgets work, such as the large flatscreen TV, the iPod speakers, the multiple shower heads. He also sees my face fall as he opens a cupboard full of chocolate and snacks.
'Would you like me to take all these away?' he whispers, sympathetically.
' Please,' I whisper back, knowing that otherwise I will scoff them in the wee hours when my self-control goes to sleep without my body.
Raj tells us he is on call day and night, and explains how to find our way to the Kids' Club, the pool, the restaurants, the boat launch.
Something weird's going on. I could swear that he really cares, personally, that we have a great time. It was the same at reception - I'm experiencing profound culture shock.
Emma can't get the kids to keep still, so I play bad cop, slathering them in suncream ('not my eyes, Daddy, not my eyes, I'm wearing goggles') and forcing bathing suits on them.
The ocean seems too forbiddingly beautiful, so we head off for the pool. It's enormous and winds its way through and around La Terrasse, a giant restaurant, with little bridges to swim under and underwater stools at a pool bar.
'Daddy, you can sit in the water and eat olives for free,' chorus the children.
Best of all, the pool is mostly shallow enough for the girls to stand up in. They shriek and splash and dive for coins and are, frankly, not looking as tired as I am. Maybe I'll play golf tomorrow.
We have luch by the pool and the kids' menu hits the spot - neat Japanese-style Bento boxes with main courses, drinks, desserts and healthy green things to ignore.
Typically, Emma and I vary horribly from what's on the menu and give the waiter half a novel to write on his order pad, all of which he absorbs with grace and, seemingly, delight. Our food, although not cheap, turns out to be light, tasty and beautifully cooked.
It's exactly what I'd hoped for: a perfect mix of all the ethnic influences on the island. Roll on supper.
Pot luck: Jason in the role of Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films' Would you and Mrs Isaacs like your tandem massage now?' asks a smiling Raj.
' Tandem?' I ask. ' As in together? Oh no thanks, we can't leave our kids.' ' Of course not,' Raj beams.
'We have a babysitter who'll play with them, or you could leave them at the Kids' Club.
'Have you been there yet?' ' Not yet, but we won't be leaving our kids with a babysitter, Raj. They're really not comfortable being with anyone else. Maybe my wife could have her massage first?' ' But of course,' he nods, sagely.
While Emma has what will no doubt be the first of many spa treatments, Lily, Ruby and I head to the Kids' Club.
Two incredibly sweet women welcome them - by name of course - as we watch a heaving, laughing mass of French children whirling out of the cinema, past the computer room, the games room, the arts and crafts area and the paddling pool and ending up at the buffet.
My daughters don't speak French and I note that they appear slightly intimidated by the fun en masse. There's no way they're coming back here, I think to myself.
But the girls are thrilled to be given gift packs, T-shirts and backpacks and we walk back to the pool, passing the watersports dock on the way. An endless supply of boats takes people water-skiing, fishing, inflatable banana-riding and sailing. You can also windsurf or kitesurf.
We pause to admire some of the Olympian activity in the water, as a bunch of kids not much older than mine tell us this is where they learned to water-ski and now look at them. We do - they're amazing.
'Ask Fred for a lesson,' they say. ' He's the best teacher.'
Fred smiles and shrugs: no sense of false modesty there.
' Would you like a lesson, young lady?' he asks Lily.'
'We can start you on a wakeboard. It's real easy.' ' What do you think, darling?' I ask hopefully.
' Sure, Daddy. Maybe tomorrow,' she responds coyly.
Eating out: A dining pavilion for more romantic guests at the resortNever going to happen. That's the Kids' Club and the water-skiing out then. Great.
Back on the beach, lying in an ocean as warm as a bath, Emma appears with a look I've only seen on her face about an hour after childbirth: unadulterated bliss.
' How was it, darling?' I enquire.
She can't form words but she just nods in slow motion, grinning.
Now it's my turn on the massage table but I'm afraid it'll be wasted on me. I'm wired and I've never been very good at this pampering lark. Still, I don't want to be rude.
I walk through the enormous spa, past the well-equipped gym ('I'm definitely going every day. Definitely'), to a large wooden villa with two massage beds next to each other.
It's ludicrously picturesque and romantic but all I'm thinking is that if Emma were here I'd be able to chat with her for the next hour, instead of the rather stilted conversation that always happens in a massage.
Well, it does when I have one, anyway, because I feel awkward and never quite relax into switch-off mode.
Here goes.
MONDAY Day Nine
What just happened? I remember the massage starting but since then it's all a bit of a blur. Have I been dreaming? What day is it? Fragments float back.
Why are my jeans so tight? Didn't I go to the gym? I remember food, lots of it. Food, glorious food, like I've never indulged in before.
A meal at Rasoi by Vineet is easily the best Indian restaurant I've ever come across, built on a dock where the soundtrack of the lapping water calmed the soul.
Five exquisite courses of French cuisine courtesy of Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse at Spoon des Iles, where we arrived full of anxiety because the girls were in the Kids' Club watching a movie with their new friends, and departed with drum-tight bellies in a state of gastronomically induced coma.
True blue: Jason found impossibly blue seas in MauritiusEnjoying a romantic meal à deux on the beach, in a tent open to the balmy evening on all sides, with our own personal grill chef cooking a selection of meats, chicken, prawns and vegetables.
Why do I remember Nutella? Fried bananas? Because the kids ate whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted - and they loved it.
I recall magnificent, biblical, tropical downpours that lasted half an hour before being replaced by blistering sunshine.
Live entertainment every night with all three of my girls dancing; sometimes in the rain, sometimes not, sometimes in just their underwear ( well the younger two, anyway), sometimes not, in front of a band that could cover and improve just about any song you cared to mention.
I recall the glass-bottom boat ride where all the kids saw Nemo at the same time and nearly shattered the glass for shrieking.
Other images, smells and sounds crowd me as I pack for our journey home, such as the day I beat - no, make that crushed - the tennis pro, only to find out he was the tennis pro's assistant, who had been playing for just four months.
Then followed the good-natured annihilation that Matthias, the real pro, meted out to me.
Lily, water-skiing - or rather refusing to give in after the ocean beat her up 20 times in a row, then finally standing, triumphantly, and wondering why her father was crying.
The food again - the buffets at breakfast that necessitated at least an hour of lying down and digesting before thinking about what came next. Floating in the warm, crystal-clear, womb-like ocean for what seemed like days at a time.
The girls, disappearing to the Kids' Club for hours and reappearing with intricately braided hair or tales of fabulous new friends. It all seemed so unlikely a week ago.
I know what was impossible a week ago: the sleep. Buckets of it. Falling deeper and more comprehensively and more peacefully into the comforting void than ever before. The world slowed down, day and night.
How did it all happen? Did it really happen? Is it the perpetual generosity and care you receive here? The personal attention that makes every detail just so? Is it something in the water? Is it heat-stroke? It might not be Mauritius, Mauritians or the oh-so-lovely One&Only Saint Geran. It might just have been luck. Perhaps we had better come back next year and check.
Jason Isaacs was talking to Karen Kay. His new film, Good, is released this week.
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13.04.2009 в 22:39-
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13.04.2009 в 23:05-
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28.04.2009 в 00:44