Mind how you go: France - the sequel, now the cuckoo has landed

 

The cuckoo has landed. Yes, I am back in Blighty, after a 600 mile drive, two PCR tests, and 29 loads of washing. Or so it felt. And this after not having driven further than Stoke in 18 months until a test run to Buxton the weekend before I went to France, though that was only 50 miles.

I didn't initially think the holiday would spawn two blog posts, but there were a few noteworthy events since I wrote the one in August, so I decided to commit them to screen after all, prefaced by sub-headings for ease. 

The model guest

This is my 11th stay in the village, and my 7th as a home owner. And my first as a host! For I finally took the plunge and had a guest to stay, an old tutor from my university days in Belfast, whose hospitality I have enjoyed on work trips on and off for 40 years, but to whom I have never returned the favour - until now.

He was a delight to have around, spontaneously doing food shopping and the washing up. We remarked on what a treat it is when you live alone (as we both do) to have someone to share the chores with. He had helpful suggestions on task lighting for the area which would be a kitchen if I had the full complement of relevant appliances, and also made the happy discovery that my fridge does in fact have a freezer compartment! On the practical front, he pointed out some crumbling areas of masonry that had escaped my eye, an earth cable outside that might benefit from a protective cover against the elements, and a patch of possibly recent woodworm. For the time being I have set a "tissue trap" over the affected area (the beetles will eat their way through it if they are still extant), and will address the "tissue issue" on my next visit. 

My friend was also a mine of surprising food facts: for example, that if you eat even the tiniest bit of eggshell you might get appendicitis; that mashed bananas are okay to eat even after they go brown, and that eating carbs for breakfast is in fact the worst time of day. Wot, no croissants or pains aux raisins...? Why, in English they are even collectively called "morning goods". Clearly that one is never going to (Garibaldi) fly.

Most impressive of all, on the first day that I suggested we make an excursion to some local beauty spots in the Dordogne, he said he'd much rather go in search of a clothes airer for me, as there is nowhere to dry my laundry in the French house, assuming I had first figured out the coin-operated washing machine in the wall outside Carrefour. He would only agree to doing touristy things once we had scoured the aisles of a Leclerc hypermarket (in vain) in search of one. 

Another endearing aspect of my friend was the fact that he understood the insecurities associated with aging, announcing brightly one morning that he was going to the bathroom "to try to make myself look a bit less like Cro-Magnon". So yes, he is welcome back anytime.

And he hadn't been gone five minutes when the orange and white cat (by now a daily visitor) annexed his bed.

Pass the pool tickets

Towards the end of the holiday - and the end of the swimming pool season - a French friend in the village handed me a clutch of swim tickets, which had in turn been given to her by a Dutch lady who had some spare. I kept a couple for myself, as there were only two days left before the annual closure, and I couldn't see myself going for a swim more than once a day, and passed three on to my English neighbours next door. When I went to settle a bill with the guy who troubleshot my gas hob in 2019 (things move very slowly in rural France, not least invoicing), I offloaded the remaining tickets onto him, as time was running out. He couldn't use them himself, as he was working, but was confident he could give them to a French friend with small children. Sure enough, when I went that afternoon, there was a lady of a similar age to him in the pool, children in tow, so I inferred (with some satisfaction, I can tell you ;) ) that the last tickets had found a home...

Of note too is that when you go for a swim, you have to present your vaccine passport, which in my case consisted of a letter in an NHS envelope. The lady on the door didn't even glance at it, saying: "I trust you." I was touched by this, though it did make me realise that I could have had the letter in there inviting me for my bone density scan - or arguably just a bank statement.

Covid regulation hoop-jumping

I am now well and truly blooded in all the requisite forms and procedures involved (currently!) in going to and coming back from France. One of these requirements is the pre-departure Covid test at a local laboratory, the precise timing of which you have to calculate with care, as it needs to be so many hours before you leave the country, plus you also need to be sure of receiving the results before you set off on your homeward journey. I guess you could assume a negative result and set off regardless, but in the event of a positive result you would need to be prepared to turn back and self-isolate where you had come from. The lab promised results within 24 hours, and I had factored in 26 before I really did need to leave. As it happens, they were through in less than 10, which was a jolly quick turnaround.

I nearly came a cropper though when I tried to pay for the lab test upfront with a 50 euro note. The girl on reception looked horrified, and gestured for me to remove the offending cash from the counter. "We can't accept that - it's microbial!" 

Another aspect of the protocol to re-enter the country is a lengthy online form you must complete in the 48 hour window before arriving in the UK. (You need good maths for this caper, let me tell you.) I overheard two women talking about this outside the lab. I assumed they were frequent foreign travellers as they were already referring to said form by an acronym - "PLF".  Move over, Palestine Liberation Front - the new acronym on the block is for the Passenger Locator Form!

Another yogurt implement incident

In 1978, aged 19, my friend Averil and I went backpacking round France and Italy. Rouen was an early stop in the trip and where we realised we had failed to pack any cutlery. After trying and failing with a comb, we managed to eat a yogurt with the end of a toothbrush. I am 62 now, and stopped in Rouen overnight on the journey back, where history repeated itself.

The ne plus ultra of customer service

Whilst on the ferry I wandered into the duty free - looking for a small edt bottle of Shalimar in fact, but no joy - and instead came out with a box of six assorted wines from a small producer in Aix-en-Provence which the manager said were better quality and value than the ones I had randomly picked out myself. This lady also arranged for her colleague - who looked like a female prison warder in navy trousers and sturdy steel-capped shoes, with a big bunch of keys in her hand - to open up the car deck specially for me, despite it being normally out of bounds to passengers during the crossing. To be fair I couldn't have handled the box of wine and my belongings when the ship docked, but it still felt like a big favour. The colleague proceeded to undo bolts and pull back levers on the heavy metal door with a dramatic flourish, as though she were opening up a bank vault to reveal a gleaming pile of ingots, not my 9 year old Ford Focus, fortuitously parked just behind it.

And my luck kept coming...the same manager of the duty free magically popped up on the till of the cafeteria moments after I returned from the wine stowing mission. She insisted I be given a second cup of machine-dispensed hot chocolate free, in a bigger paper cup, because I had accidentally used a small espresso one and some of my drink had run over the side!

Here is the wine (not all purchased on this trip, hehe). Even so, I think I may need to up my drinking...;)

The not so speedy supercar

On the long drive back from Newhaven, I got stuck in stop-start traffic on the M25 (as you do, even in a pandemic with sizeable numbers of people still supposedly working from home). Interestingly, the French for "stop-start" traffic is "circulation en accordéon" (accordion traffic - or perhaps, concertina, even), which is nicely graphic. At one point I got stuck behind the low slung head turning high performance beast that is a McClaren car, and thought how frustrated the driver must have been not to get above second gear till nearly the exit for the M40.

Now I am back I am already looking forward to my next visit to the house, even if it will be dominated by chasing up a joiner to do some much needed window repairs, pouring gravel down a hole under the stairs, and treating the woodworm as appropriate. And more hoovering and weeding and de-cobwebbing, obviously. Apparently the cat is still hanging around my house, doubtless puzzled that I still haven't opened the door to let him in...

Mind how you go: why six swallows do not a summer make, and one cuckoo flew the nest

This post is a tale of two halves...it starts with the latest on my "supermarket sweep" of comorbidities (I exaggerate, I know, but I have gone and picked up another diagnosis!), and then the action moves to France, where I have boldly gone, despite the Government's relentless pushing of "staycations". The very word alone would propel me to go abroad for a holiday, I will be honest. More on that anon. 

The Thursday before I left I had a bone density scan at a hospital in Burslem (one of The Five Towns in The Potteries, not to be confused with bursitis). I didn't know this hospital even existed - and I nearly didn't have the scan at all, as there was some confusion in my records as to whether I had actually fractured my scaphoid bone back in January when I fell on ice, as you may recall. For they could only scan people who had sustained a fracture, being strictly a Fracture Clinic, not a "Had a Nasty Fall of Any Kind Clinic". However the staff put their heads together and decided to let me through based on a 1-1 draw of medical opinion for and against, plus the fact that it had taken me an hour to get there, what with the roadworks on Stoke's notorious 'D-Road' being such a nightmare at the moment. Good job they did, as I came out with osteoporosis(!), which I did not see coming. 

Source: Pinterest

The nurse in the Fracture Clinic I was sent straight in to see after the scan had what looked like two plaster of Paris objects on her desk. I had no idea what they were, and was told they were cross-sections of two kinds of bone: one normal, one with osteoporosis. The healthy one was dense and thick and full of wavy lines with reasonably small holes in between like a Gaudi building in Barcelona (okay, eyeballing that photo maybe the holes are bigger than I remember ;)); the other one looked like a Cadbury's Crunchie bar you had sucked the middle out of - surely you must have done that? It had much thinner stalagmites and stalactites that had been snapped off here and there as though someone had driven a model Dinky car all the way through. Plus the top and bottom of the cast skewed sideways at a disconcerting angle, like a Leaning Tower of Pisa made of bone. I did not want to accept the conclusion in the direction of which I was being pointed, namely that my bones looked more like that one...Next up, a perky young student with the Stoke equivalent of Scouse brows took blood - to rule out other unspecified sinister things (as they do). She announced brightly afterwards that she hadn't had any practice with needles since Christmas. ;) It looks like they might want me to go on bone strengthening drugs, but these are quite punishing on the oesophagus apparently, so there would need to be 'buy in' from the nice gastric consultant who made a cameo appearance in a previous post. At the very least now I need to mind where I put my feet.

Like this, but *much* holier and more slanty ~ Source: ABC7

Moving on, the very next day I had a barium swallow requiring a six hour fast in the run up...well, I say "swallow" - it was in fact a series of about six tightly choreographed swallows preceded by a pause where you have to hold the liquid in your mouth first. I found it a strange and interesting procedure, standing on a platform that tilted this way and that - a bit like being an astronaut. Plus some lying down in an Odalisque pose and drinking through a straw at exactly the sort of angle a person suffering from reflux like me would never dare to do, hehe. And rolling over through a full 360 degrees in fits and starts as though you were an insomniac (which I also am) trying to find a comfortable sleeping position. The barium stuff tasted way better than I expected: like molten Love Hearts or a raspberry flavoured Sherbert Fountain crossed with Gaviscon. I was bracing myself for something far more elemental, like sucking on Shungite. 

Blimey, I wasn't far off too... They must have a jolly good juicer is all I can say. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barium

I don't have the results of that procedure yet, but calculated that I had a perfect window of opportunity to come away to France and check on my house there while waiting...the lifting of quarantine on my return, and the removal of the requirement for TWO of the four Covid tests being the icing on the cake. There's even talk of capping the prices of the PCR test I have to take on Day 2 after I get back.

[In case anyone is shocked at my skipping the country in this manner, I promise I didn't take my decision lightly: I checked the French pandemic situation on the Worldometer site, and note that France is running at 22,636 new cases at the time of writing, with 81 deaths a day. The vast majority of people with Covid at the moment (99.86%!) have mild symptoms. Then the dreaded Beta variant accounts for about 2% of cases, mostly in Reunion Island, some 5,700 miles away. So the country looked as safe if not more safe than Britain, not least the sleepy village where I was headed. Masks are still compulsory in French shops, and vaccine passports are required in a whole clatter of public places like cafes, restaurants, museums and cinemas - even open air markets.]

I also took a lateral flow test for my own peace of mind before leaving the country, even though that was one of the tests you no longer have to do, and arrived at Newhaven ferry terminal with a bristling clutch of documentation - as much to do with Brexit as with Covid to be fair: passport, International Driving Permit, Green Card, vaccination certificate, and a sworn statement in two languages to the effect that I didn't have any Coronavirus symptoms. A marshal from the ferry company promptly gave me yet another similar form of their own to fill in, so I had now sworn my health status in triplicate. All my paperwork was found to be in order, which felt like a win, and I had a lighthearted moment with the Border Force team, explaining that I had a Hoover, ironing board and two feather dusters with me, and was driving 600 miles to do a load of housework. As I drove onto the ferry I felt a surge of excitement, as though Neptune was favouring the brave. Mad, bad, completely cuckoo? You decide.

The ferry was sparsely populated for August, and there were probably no more than 25 cars aboard. I met a lady who had made the trip to the UK back in April (I am not sure on what grounds, as travel was even more tightly controlled back then) and she said there were only 8 cars on her sailing, yet the ferry staff said that was a good day! I managed to use the ship's wifi during the crossing, and given the mere smattering of passengers I'd say there would have been ample bandwidth to go round, even if all the mostly retired folk in the lounge had been avid gamers.

Some 400 miles later, I reached journey's end, having only spotted half a dozen British cars since leaving Dieppe. And felt sad for the many more who didn't feel they could or should have the holiday they had planned.

The house was nowhere near as dirty or damp and musty as I was expecting after my long absence, though there were numerous impudent lianas of wisteria which had insinuated themselves inside the shutters and dead leaves all over the floor, while spiders had taken back control like a spindly multi-legged version of the Taliban. There was also a huge pile of post for a couple who have the same street address as me, but in the next village. The next day, I walked to their house to deliver it all. Luckily they had a sufficiently roomy letter box. They weren't around in person so I could explain, so I imagine it will give them a bit of a shock... All those offers on casual slacks and camping stools they have missed!

There have been a couple of incidents so far which brought it home to me how much I value the little quirks of village life. My French elderly friend is very ill, sadly, and I went to buy her some flowers in the supermarket. A man of a similar age jokily asked me at the till if they were for him, and quick as a flash I said: "No, they're for R...", knowing full well he would know who I meant.

After that I popped to the Post Office, which is housed in a Media Centre at the end of a long passageway. The postmistress was sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall, mask slung round her chin, soaking up the sun. On my approach, she scrambled to her feet, reassembled herself, and scurried into the PO seconds ahead of me.

On the way back, armed with lots of stamps for postcards I may not get around to writing if past years are anything to go by, I was astonished to chance across Neptune himself nestling in some boulders on the ground.

Another evening I ran into the sick friend's cousin, who was sitting outside his house in the dark, his little auburn-coloured dachshund by his side. He mentioned his upcoming visit to the doctor's in another village. "I drive there with the dog - she's no bother. As long as I can drive I will stay with that practice, as I am used to them. Obviously not when I can't anymore, as she would not be great behind the wheel." "No indeed", I replied, "There are her short legs for starters."

I haven't spent any time yet in holiday mode, as I am trying to get the house shipshape ahead of a friend coming to stay. The other day saw me brushing the cobwebs off the rafters of Miss Havisham's attic and sweeping the floor and stairs. I am not sure I could have faced the task were it not for the prospect of a visitor spurring me on.

In other news, I am now on Day 2 of waiting in for an Amazon parcel. In the UK you are given a precise and narrow time slot for delivery, whereas Amazon France have guaranteed delivery days, not hours, and thanks to a nifty oxymoron these 'guaranteed' days are only estimates, as I now realise. And this despite signing up to a free trial of the French version of Amazon Prime: normally held in high regard as a behemoth of speedy shipping, over here it is a completely meaningless concept. I am the only one who appears to be 'primed' so far, eagerly awaiting the mattress topper I have bought for my guest...

Touching briefly on scented matters(!), I have brought a few more perfumes out here to join my growing collection. I keep them in the bathroom cabinet - I know, sacrilege, flying in the face of my own advice from way back - because I am on holiday, and have clearly let my usual standards drop. ;)

Oh, plus I have made a new furry friend! Please don't tell Truffle...