Waste of Time

On the way to the place we have to sort out the car – we had to drive miles and when we arrived, it was the devil’s own job to find parking. White vans everywhere. I was just about to reverse into a space when this bastard in a little van shot straight into it forwards. Typical, he couldn’t give a toss that I was there first. That’s the French driver for you. Huh.

Anyway, on the way there I was trying to get all the people we’d met in the last week or so sorted out in my head. There’s Jeff and Megan, old Pierre next door – though mind you, haven’t seen much of him lately – Mrs Boothby – I think she’s called Petra or something – jolly old Rupert and his hippy wife whose name I do not know. We haven’t caught up with the other people we met at lunch yet. Mind you, I’ve no real desire to bump into them on a regular basis. Jeff’s okay, very helpful kind of chap, as long as he doesn’t go on passing out our phone number to all and sundry. Which reminds me, I said this to Monica, we’ve got to get back to Rupert about his invitation to dinner. Kind of him, but I’m not sure I could stick a whole evening with his hippy wife.

It turned out the visit to the place where we had to sort out the car was a complete fiasco. Jeff had told me what documents we had to take – log book, passport and a proof of residence – well we had all that. But it turned out proof of residence didn’t really mean proof of residence but a bill from the electricity company or something. I showed them the letter from the bank but the supercilious jobsworth behind his glass panel – and I may say we had to wait for our turn for forty minutes, with a particularly smelly child who picked his nose all the time on the next chair – shoved it back through the little hole in the glass panel with a curt Non. He refused to speak English too in spite of the fact we explained we had only just arrived and didn’t really speak French yet. Non, he kept on saying, Non, wagging his finger at us. The fact is we haven’t got a bill from the electricity yet, because we’ve only just arrived. And the insurance company have only given us a month. It just shows how this country is in the grip of its own creaking bureaucracy. No wonder that by all accounts London is filling up with young French people. They’re trying to get away from all this nonsense.

It was good to get home again anyway. We opened a bottle of wine and Monica had cooked up one of her inevitable fish pies for supper. Marvellous. Still, we are living the French way of life and that is really something after all those years of toil back in Blighty. Mind you, I'm still wondering about M. Coq's lobster. I mean, to have a mayor who had a captive crustacean in his office is clearly a bit odd. Perhaps Jeff knows about it. I must ask him.