I particularly enjoy the car when Paul is driving, and I’m in the back with a bottle of red wine firmly anchored in the wine bottle holder. At such times I feel like Arthur, the happy drunk played by Dudley Moore in the film of the same name.
It was a fine morning and Paul drove the 140 miles from Bedford to the P&O terminal in Dover in two hours. The Channel was like a millpond. Just as we were about to check the tickets in, Paul spotted that I’d actually booked the journey for the preceding day, so we were concerned we might not get onto the ferry. But for a trifling £48.00 additional fare P&O graciously allowed us onto the 8.40 a.m. sailing.
The 560-mile drive from Calais to our gite near the small town of Mirambeau, some 50 miles north of Bordeaux, was a doddle compared with driving such a distance in the UK. Very light traffic most of the way, even though this was the first Saturday in August, and we’d feared that half of France’s cars would be on the road. Even allowing for lengthy breaks at service stations for lunch, dinner, and coffee, the journey of 560 miles took less than nine hours.
We arrived at our gite at 8.30 p.m. and were pleased with the spacious and clean accommodation, and the swimming pool. Audrey made us feel quickly at home and introduced us to the guests in the other gites. The view across a number of vineyards was spectacular, and at 9.30 p.m. we were nursing glasses of a chilled Alsace Riesling, enjoying a spectacular sunset.
Paul suggested he get his guitar out for an impromptu music session, but I explained that people came to places like this to relax and to enjoy the peace and quiet, so a music session might not be a good idea. He looked a little disappointed but appeared to accept the point with good grace.
SUNDAY 5 AUGUST
Because of the long drive of the previous day, we agreed to spend most of this day relaxing by the gite. By 10.00 a.m. we were shopping at Super U in Mirambeau, one of those wonderful medium-sized supermarkets that seem to be everywhere in France. Good value for money and as always in France the displays of fruit, vegetables and seafood were a treat for the eyes. The only thing that surprised me was a glass tank of water in the seafood section containing sizeable live eels.
Knowing Paul’s taste for plain English food – ham, egg and chips appeared to be his staple diet – I was conservative in my purchases. Suggestions of anything a little more adventurous – Boursin with garlic and herbs, or duck pâté – were met by Paul with looks of horror.
By midday I was seated by the pool under a large umbrella, appreciating a cool breeze. Paul was fighting with an inflatable crocodile and whale in the pool. I was suddenly struck by how much fun Paul was having with them and I took photographs of him jumping onto them, falling off them, etc. His mood could best be described as childlike and gleeful. He was really in touch with his ‘inner child’ which indeed he is for much of the time. It’s one of the things people like most about him. In his own words, ‘I refuse to grow up, on the grounds that I might not like it!’ Whilst playing with the inflatable animals he started to sing a refrain from a song which I hadn’t heard before:
‘When you come to the end of your lollipop,
To the end, to the end, of your lollipop,
When you come to the end of your lollipop,
Plop goes your heart!’
Paul said the song – the imaginatively-titled When You Come to the End of Your Lollipop – had been recorded by Max Bygraves. I said they didn’t write songs like that any more, sadly, and we laughed. I’d never seen or heard anything so incongruous in all my born days, and found myself laughing about the scene for some days afterwards.
After a time Paul left the pool and came over for a chat. I told him about my reflections on his ‘inner child’ and he said it was about time I got in touch with my own. I said I would, later in the day, and in the meantime I continued reading my book, one of PG Wodehouse’s masterpieces.
Not long afterwards the children from the adjoining gite started playing in the pool, splashing about and making a lot of noise, as children will. I expected to be annoyed at being roused from my peaceful idyll – I normally would have been – but to my surprise I actually enjoyed seeing and hearing them having fun.
An hour or two later when I was alone by the pool I jumped in, played with the crocodile and the whale, and generally had more fun than a 49-year-old man should have with inflatable toys. I felt my ‘inner child’ was awakening after a long time asleep, and life began to feel good again.
Paul had suffered a problem with a tooth the day before we left for France. His dentist had made a temporary repair and prescribed some antibiotics and painkillers. The tooth was continuing to give him some trouble and he resolved to visit the dentist in nearby Mirambeau the next day, and possibly have it removed.
I tried lighting the oven so as to roast a chicken for dinner, but it wouldn’t light so I had to think of an alternative. Despite having a Roux Brothers cookbook to hand I decided to make spaghetti bolognese – henceforth ‘spag bol’ – again, for the umpteenth time in my life. While I was making it, Paul started playing the guitar in the living room. Then all was quiet and a minute or two later he started playing it by the swimming pool. You can’t keep a born performer down.
Four-year-old Emily was an instant fan and she proved to be a good singer and dancer. She enjoyed singing along with Paul to the refrain ‘One, two, three, four, five – once I caught a fish alive’. Paul invented The Emily Blues on the spot, and Emily danced and sang along happily to everything he played.
Paul went to bed early and I enjoyed a glass or three of wine with our neighbours, 6’4’’ Mark – who worked for the RAF in Telford – and his wife, the comely 6’0’’ Anne. Mark and Anne had been married for almost 15 years and had three children, a 10-year-old twin boy (Alex) and a girl (Kate), and 12-year-old Glen. I explained something of my recent circumstances, my second marriage having failed not long before the holiday.
After some time I fetched a bottle of ‘House of Lords’ Scotch whisky – a present from a generous colleague at the Conservative Party, for which I was then working – at which point Anne sensibly retired for the night.
Mark and I put the world to rights over the course of an hour or two, and I asked him what the secret of his happy marriage was. ‘Luck’ was his conclusion, explaining that you couldn’t know how you would get on with a partner until the years rolled by. Not exactly the blinding insight into happy long-term relationships which I had hoped to gain from the conversation.
MONDAY 6 AUGUST
It was an overcast morning and we decided to drive to Cognac and maybe see a museum or two. But first we had to visit the dentist in Mirambeau. We soon found it and the receptionist looked strikingly like René’s wife Edith in ‘Allo ‘Allo. I explained in French that my friend had a problem with his teeth. ‘Obvieusement’, she noted drily, before pursing her lips and looking away theatrically, to the obvious delight of a couple of old people in the waiting room. I asked if Paul could see a dentist that day, at which point she stabbed her finger vigorously on the appointments diary, and explained in warp-speed French that the earliest possible appointment would be in four days’ time.
Paul and I were starting to develop our own French vocabulary, and by the end of this day it had extended to:
-un plonkeur / une plonkeuse
-un tosseur / une tosseuse
-un wankeur / une wankeuse
-Château Breezebloque – a house with exposed breezeblock walls
-un chitôle – one or a few adjacent unkempt houses with paint peeling off shutters, dirty windows etc. On occasion, a street or even a whole village or town merited this description
The