Arrival

We didn’t expect a funeral when we arrived. We’d been driving most of the day from the coast. We like to take the ferry from Dover, it seems more like a proper journey to cross the sea, rather than slithering under it like a kind of worm. Anyway, we got to Calais and faced the long drive down to the south west. Monica drives too, but I do most of it. She gets tired after a bit so I have to take over. We went via Paris, that was a mistake. The peripherique was all snarled up and we very nearly had a contretemps with a white van. It seems the French white van drivers are just as bad as they are back home.

We got a bit lost when we got close to Rosbif-sur-Lie. They seemed to have renumbered the roads, and the D19 had become the D35, so we ended up in Villeneuve and had to double back. Still, we got there in the end, only to be faced with a funeral. We’ve no idea who it was, of course, but it must have been someone pretty popular because there was a big turnout. From what we could see it was a mixture of French and English. You can always tell the English from their clothes, as I said to Monica. Lots of Marks and Spencer and ties and chaps standing about with their hands behind their backs, military style. We didn’t hang about because we wanted to get on to Le Pigeonnier before drinks time. The run down from the coast, then getting lost had taken a bit longer than we reckoned and we were both knackered.

It was really was rather wonderful arriving “chez nous”. Our new home in the South West, what we’ve been planning for a very long time and finally, here we are. Monica did the honours and opened up. True to form and true to the name, there was a dead pigeon in the middle of the floor. I did wonder whether that was an omen.