Snippets of French life from the last couple of weeks:
The Paris- Clermont Ferrand express ‘forgot’ to stop
at Nevers. When they caught up with it in Clermont the driver was drunk and
there was a cube of Rosé wine in his cab.
Schools broke up for summer last Friday and fire
crackers have been going off day and night ever since, what with Bastille Day
fireworks due this Friday the 14th.
When pupils go back in September
a new law has been passed to cancel Wednesdays and go to a 4-day week. Parents all
seem to be in favour. Imagine the chaos in England.
There is a cacophony of car horns every Saturday
afternoon and night as processions of cars circle the town celebrating a
wedding and yelling out the windows. Later they scream past on the wrong side
of the road, drunk, and performing wheelies and skids on gravel car parks. I
never did anything like that of course. I didn’t wait for a wedding………..
This morning I was walking Laddie round the grounds of
the port which is by a lovely park just outside the town centre with a car
parking area in a lay-by. In the middle of nowhere girls in white blouses and
black skirts were setting up some podiums (podia??) and a trestle table with
white tablecloths and beside the road a black refrigerated Mercedes ‘Traiteur’ van (fine food and drinks) was offloading cases
of champagne and orange juice and no doubt helpings of smoked salmon.
It was
11-30.
“Allo, allo” says I, “what’s this all about then?”
15 minutes later, on
my way back, there is a group of smartly-dressed people gathered, mayor, press
and flash-bulbs, the whole bit. I hung around but no-one offered me a glass so
unable to contain myself any longer I approached the staff who were struggling
to erect a small tent arrangement (it had started to rain) and said “Qu’est-ce
qui se passe?” (It is acceptable in France, Paris excepted, to approach and
speak to almost anybody in public, but you have to be prepared to accept that
you may not be able to disengage for some considerable time on some occasions).
“It is an inauguration.”
“Inauguration of what?”
“The new electric car charging point.”
Hence the set-up at the side of the road.
No doubt the local paper will have photos of the Mayor
and the car charger tomorrow. Exciting stuff. Meantime let’s raise a glass to
the pollution-free future of the automobile. Donald Trump eat your heart out,
the French are coming.
Incidentally sales of electric cars in France, at 27%
of the total have exceeded sales of diesel and petrol engine cars for the first
time at around 25% each.
Current best price for diesel is 1.14 Euros, approx. £1.00
per litre.
A quiet scorching hot afternoon moored in Pouilly a
couple of weeks ago with only 2 boats in the port, when a dark blue people
carrier screeches (well stops suddenly) opposite Blue Moon and all 4 doors open
simultaneously and fully armed Gendarmes leap out, slowly, and I stick my head
over the side to watch someone get raided. Must be a drugs bust or something.
To my shock 2 of them approached me. Very politely I was asked to produce VNF cruising
licence, identity, proof of boat ownership, insurance, fire extinguishers, life
jackets, etc.
Sue was at the supermarket but thanks to her organised
documentation your correspondent is still a free man and the cops walked away
empty-handed.
Last week we were in Tanlay port one of our favourite
stops, after another long hot day, and on our way to the on-site café 100 yards
away for an ice-cold draft beer or two and I had promised Sue I would spoil her
with a Pizza. I just can’t fight my generous nature.
A boat was coming in with an elderly-ish lady (Note
from Sue – younger than John) on the front looking uncertain and a
gruff-looking bloke at the helm trying to line the boat up to the quayside, so
I took the rope and helped them moor up. As I did so I thought I heard a miaow
but assumed I was wrong.
At the café they sat at the next table under the tree
in the shade and ordered a beer and a pichet of Chablis. We all sat relaxing
looking at the boats when a dog jumped off theirs, closely followed by a black
cat. It’s OK the lady said, we have 2 cats and a dog travelling with us. The
other cat is more timid and will only come out later if it wants. It is
tiger-coloured. The black one will wander round and go back on board later. The
owners, Urs and Doris were Swiss and owned a restaurant at lock 34 at the
southern end of the Burgundy canal and were bringing their boat up for a repair
at St. Flo.
The noise from frogs has been almost deafening at
several ports and tonight was no exception with non-stop croaking contests well
into the small hours apparently, according to light sleepers. Most long-term
boaters, like us, are not young and we start yawning around 9.30 and bed by 10
if we can hold on till then. The fresh air, heat and constant movement around
the boat all day usually ensure sound sleep.
Anyway, this particular night apart from the frogs we
also hear that unique painful screaming of cats fighting. Next morning a distressed
Doris is out, still in night attire, calling for the ‘tiger’ cat which has
managed to escape through a rooflight in the middle of the night. She is even
more upset because she explains she lost another cat 2 years ago at this exact
same spot. I promise to look out for it as I walk into the village for our
bread and croissant for breakfast. I see one cat but it doesn’t fit the
description. Later as we say our goodbyes and cast off she is still there
looking forlorn. “We’ll just have to stay another day and see if he comes back”,
she says. We will message them soon and check the outcome.
We have made some new French friends this week. After
5 days at Montbard marina sitting on the boat watching the rain come down from
leaden grey skies there was a break in the weather forecast for Monday 3rd
July onwards. So on Saturday afternoon I wandered with Laddie up to the first
lock on the route to arrange a departure time with the lockkeeper. “Is 9
tomorrow morning (when they first open) OK?” “No problem. You will travel with Soraya.” He
pointed to a beautiful large cruiser in immaculate condition half a kilometre
away in the port.
As they were moored some way away from us I had not
seen the owners coming and going so I went up to introduce myself. It can be a
bit of a lottery as you are stuck with them the whole day, and sometimes more.
It can be dangerous as the boats surge around in the lock and you can easily
get damaged if you are with a novice or someone not calm. So you need to
establish who will go in front and who behind, both of which have advantages
and drawbacks such as breathing the diesel fumes of the boat in front.
“Hi I’m John, Blue Moon.” “ Michel.” He was very polite and gave me the choice to
go first. We were going ‘downhill’ which is easier, so Sue could control the
boat on a single central rope so she chose to go second, at the back of the
lock. I would sit on the throttle contemplating nature and talking to Laddie
instead of making sure the boat didn’t get swept back and sit down on the ‘step’
in front of the rear gates as the water level dropped. (not as rare an event as
you might think.)
This would tip the boat up and we would all be in the
drink never to sail again. On the other hand we were perilously close to being
swept forward into the back of Soraya, totally sociably unacceptable to say the
least. As we sallied back and forth in the swirls and eddies between these two
fates Sue would helpfully scream the occasional obscenity at me to ensure my
attention did not wander from the task in hand.
Michel and his charming wife Chantal were calm and
experienced and they leaped ashore and took our ropes every time we stopped.
Sue’s foreboding about breakdowns persisted, correctly as it turned out, and we
followed them slowly all week through the sea of clinging weeds, reversing the propeller
every so often to untangle them and clearing out the water filter or ‘salad
basket’ more and more frequently, twice a day became every 2 locks it was so
bad. Then we stopped the engine completely in the bottom of a lock, as no water
at all was coming out of the exhaust coolant pipe.
Sue was on her knees with the floor up and frantically
rodding the vertical water intake tube, about an inch and a half diameter, with
a kind of flue brush at the end of a cable, while the lock-keepers watched
anxiously as we were now holding up the canal, with other boats waiting. But it
was rock solid. Michel came to the rescue, climbing over from his boat with a
kind of electric blower, a vacuum in reverse. I passed our cable reel up to the
dockside and a helpful resident plugged it in to his mains and Michel blasted
out the blockage in an explosion of air, water and weed from under the boat.
Saved again from an ignominious and expensive fate. Another bottle of Chablis
was called for and duly drunk together with them once we reached St. Florentin
an hour later.
Apart from that we’ve nothing to report except that
the hugely anticipated aircon once we got back to our car after 6 weeks
travelling, failed. 89 Euros and Monday morning later we’re back in business.
More in a week or so. A bientot.
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