Moonlight sonata

Sylvie explained that her instruction had been to drop me off at the car hire office which seemed to be masquerading as an innocent petrol station. Had I missed that instruction? She needed to leave me to go to the rescue of some Japanese tourists whose minibus had overheated. I imagined them waiting very politely by the side of a road, bowing at any passing taxi.

So once again I found myself deposited by the side of the road, my chattels gathered around me as I laboriously made my way to greener, more fertile land. If this happened one more time then Bob Geldof was likely to turn up and hold a telethon for me. It was six o clock in the evening and the air smelt of summer in the city. I was less than 45 minutes north of Paris when I should have been in the Limousin sipping something alcoholic.

I wandered inside the petrol station,

“I am looking for a car hire office”

A gangly multi pierced shy lad behind the counter quietly finished serving someone their lottery ticket and coolly turned around a tent sign so that it now displayed Hertz. There was something vaguely secretive about it.

“Mr Crowfoot, I have been expecting you… your car is ready”

It was now a bit like a Bond film where the least likely, everyday person becomes mission critical as they double up as an overseas agent. I didn’t know whether to cry with joy or dive into the Haribo display which was tantalising me in the corner.

Once the lad had finished serving people he locked the shop and took me and my crates over to a very used looking Vauxhall Astra just beyond the tyre pressure machine.

“Emily has called, everything is taken care of. Just sign here and you can be on your way”

I’d never met Emily from the AA but she was my Moneypenny and Q rolled into one. After hours of desperation and feeling out of control I was now back in charge and on my way. Correze, I was coming. I plugged in Olivia and I headed towards Paris down the A1…

When you drive through Paris this way you literally pass under the runways of Charles de Gaulle,  airplanes sitting but feet above your head; then you enter onto a rollercoaster mish mash of roads which weave in and out of the concrete eastern suburbs until an hour later you find yourself in the rolling open fields of the countryside and it’s French Kansas again.

When you get on the A71 at Orleans you can point the car south and watch the landscape change as you go through the eastern edge of the Loire, through forest after forest until the Auvergne is upon you with its endlessly undulating fields interspersed with copses and cattle. The sun was more than setting as I turned right onto the A89 and into the volcanic scenery of the Correze, like a softer greener version of the Dolomites.

As I took the exit off the autoroute for our little piece of the vast Correze, a deer showed up in headlights at the far end of the beam. I slowed and drove towards it as it stared me out, turned and then coolly sauntered off. I took that as a good omen. Even the wildlife was expecting me. I passed through the main village, the market square lit by the moon and not a light burning anywhere. It was now just passed midnight. In four hours Madame Claudette the baker would be awake, firing up the ovens creating shelves of carbohydrate heavenliness.

I started on the twisty turny roads that take you up to Le Monteil but I wasn’t going all the way to the top of the plateau. Half way up my lights and weary eyes picked up a handwritten sign for the bed and breakfast. I drove down an avenue of trees, the type you only seem to get in France and I pulled through two huge wrought iron gates before driving into the lawned courtyard of what seemed to be a mini chateau, painted entirely in white so that it look ghostly in the moonlight. One solitary light burned brightly behind net curtains in a downstairs window. I peered in and saw a kindly looking man with grey hair reading by a wood fire in a wonderfully French kitchen. Pans hung from the ceiling and huge oak armoires lined the walls. I tapped on the window and he sprang to his feet almost propelling his book into the embers. A huge oak door opened to my right and the man thrust himself forward, hugging the life out of me. “You’ve made it! And safely!” I had met Jean. He now dragged me by the arm to the middle of the lawn,

“Have you ever seen a sky like this?”

Not the introduction I was expecting but I looked skyward and the answer was no I hadn’t. It was like a frozen firework display. No light pollution meant that you could see the silvery dustiness of the milkyway. The air smelled so pure and so thick you could almost bite it. A mountain range lay away from us, silhouetted by the moonlight. As exhausted as I was and as desperate for bed as I was, I couldn’t wait to wake up so I could be amongst all of this and see what the daylight would reveal.