How civilised is France? Very bloody civilised, that’s how civilised. At least in the South, everything revolves around friends and family and eating and drinking. Work happens but it’s kept in its proper place and proportion, and should a friend call round to say hello, which happens a lot, then work is told kindly but firmly to go away until later. In St Mandrier it seems that pretty much everyone knows everyone else so that leaves a lot of scope for interruption and a lot of time to drink pastis and wine (not in the same glass obviously, that’d be stupid.) So what have I done? Well I’ve drunk a lot of pastis and wine and the night before last I fell back in to the late night whisky trap with the usual results. Yesterday ended up being a stay-in-bed-for-12-hours kind of day, followed by a trip on the oh so civilised boat bus across the bay to Toulon to attempt a bit of Christmas shopping. Unfortunately my head wasn’t quite up to it and was not aided by walking around a shopping centre where they were playing the Smurfs Christmas album featuring their version of Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody (is that what it’s called? Well you know the one I mean, “are you hanging up your stocking on the wall” etc.) Hungover head with Smurfs singing in it is not a good place to be. Added to this was the fact that I’d managed in my dazed state in the morning to put my new contact lenses in the wrong way round (having managed to throw my old ones away last night somehow) leading to much seeing confusion which of course I blamed on my hangover only realising later, when it came time to take them out, why the world had become a very blurry place… Still not getting any cleverer…
Woman on boat thinks “what a lovely colour for a ferry”…
On the good side, my French has got to the point where changing my ticket to Bergerac for one that doesn’t involve a couchette was not a problem and even included getting a 15 Euro rebate and my new train arriving in Bergerac in time for Dinner on Friday as planned. Hallelujah! What can possibly go wrong? Well pretty much everything given SNCF’s fairly random train running ways but in theory I’m sorted and shouldn’t have to lose another nights sleep while in France.
It rained here this morning. Most disappointing as it doesn’t generally do much of that around these parts, at least in my experience, although he locals insist it rains a lot. I’m guessing that if they were to have to sit in an office in London watching 9 months of consistent drizzle out of the window they may shut the f—k up about the amount of rain they get, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Ok, maybe on my WORST enemy but not on my second worst. Doesn’t “worst” sound very German when it goes around your head a few times? In fact I wouldn’t wish it on my würst anemone. Jah das ist gut.
What happened to all the pictures? Well I can’t figure out how to post them from the internet café in St Mandrier so tough. There’ll be a bumper crop of lovely pictures when I get to lovely Bergerac and get on the lovely internet connection at lovely Geoff’s lovely old house. Enough with the “lovely” yet?
St Mandrier is lovely too…
Today it’s back to Toulon to try Christmas shopping again… I hate Christmas shopping.