Dearie me, we are really on our way home.
Once again we are on board the Pride of Bruges, waiting to set sail.
We are glad it is the Pride of Bruges again, there are two ferries on this route, and we don’t like the other one. This one has nicer staff and a better chef and our prepaid wifi cards work. Ferry travel is splendid, there are chocolates and a fridge full of drinks in our cabin, and we shall retire for a gentle early snooze after our dinner later on.
We had a disappointing sort of breakfast in Paris this morning, because there was only one of it. During our travels we have become accustomed to a first breakfast of things like fruit juice and cheese and ham, followed by a second breakfast of eggs and bacon and sausages, followed by a third breakfast of continental pastries and French bread and strong black coffee. I can recommend this as a way to start a day, although it might be better for the fit of your trousers if you also had a tapeworm.
We ambled happily through the beautiful Parisian streets to collect the car, and then Mark wanted the thrill-ride experience of driving around the Arc de Triomphe. This is easily as exciting as any ride in Disneyland, and involves putting your fist on the horn and swerving madly around everybody else until eventually you finish up at a promising looking junction, and then you have to cut across three or four lines of traffic and accelerate out.
It was ace, and we must have done all right, because the car was no more scratched and dinged than it was when we set off. We all cheered when we escaped, and then switched the stupid telephone navigation off, because it keeps on whittering even when it clearly has no idea at all where it is going. It kept saying “Do a U turn” even when we were quite clearly pointing in the right direction, so we shouted at it and put it in the glove box, the map was better because of not having so much to say for itself.
We stopped for a picnic in our in-car kitchen on the way. This is much more complicated than it sounds because we have now filled every inch of spare boot space with red wine and cognac. This is so that for the next few months we won’t need to buy the rubbish that the French export to the UK because they think we don’t know any better, and we can drink nice wine instead.
We had a merry little picnic, it appears that somehow as well as everything else we have eaten in this little jaunt, we have also eaten a tin of shortbread, and two pounds of home made fudge.
Not long after that somehow all the signs changed and we weren’t in France any more.
We were so sad. France was home for ages, and it still is a little bit. It always fills me with the same mix of exasperation and joy, at the tiresome, bloody-minded French, who won’t do a thing you think they should, and also at the free-spirited independent French, who won’t do a thing that anybody thinks they should. Maybe one day if we win the lottery we will come and live here again.
This is a short and early entry, but I am struggling with maritime wifi, and so am going to get it online quickly. England tomorrow.
It will be lovely to be home.
