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.

Every cloud has a Sylvie lining

“We’ve got either a car or a hotel for you 60 km away in Creil – we’re just checking availability of both. We suggest you go there, we will update you on the way. We are sending a taxi for you”

I sat on the kerb outside the car rental office. Monsieur G was chain smoking and talking rapidly on the phone, he was trying to get me a car whichever way he could, but having no luck. At this point, 13 hours after getting out of bed it might have been sensible to give up on the trip. To admit defeat and go home or stay here in Beauvais just outside Paris until the Landy was fixed. I couldn’t though. I looked at my displaced strimmer, clothes and wellies all sitting next to me like horticultural refugees on the kerb. I really had this yearning to get to Le Monteil. I needed to be there and felt like I was being tested somehow; not in a religious sense but a philosophical sense. How strong was my mettle? How resourceful are you? This is nothing compared to trying to grow your own fuel.

As Le Monteil wasn’t/isn’t yet habitable, I was going to stay in the bed and breakfast three hamlets down the hill from the house and as the owners were going to be new neighbours and likely helpful people to know in the future I didn’t want to let them down. I looked into the car lot behind me. Just to make matters worse John Non Jovial was sunning himself on the bonnet of a red Citroen C3. Comb over was manically pacing up and down and muttering to himself. I think my American friends would say he was on the edge of going postal.

Monsieur G and I decided he could go and have the rest of his Saturday afternoon. I would be collected in a taxi and await my fate. Since quitting corporate world I had learned to embrace not being in charge and today was the exam after months of training. Monsieur G said he would call me during the week to update me on the Landy. He was such a lovely man, he had really wanted to show this visitor to his shores that his country would look after people like me. We embraced and he went off to see his family.

I looked at the map. Creil would take me to the east of Paris, I had planned my entire route along the west of Paris. Even if I got a car, I would now need to circumnavigate Paris and it was late afternoon and I had the equivalent of driving from Glasgow to London yet to do. Olivia would need three come back tours and be on the road until she was 90 to cover that.

I didn’t have time to consider the implications of this. A badly driven Renault saloon scraped along the kerb in front of me. Heavily tinted windows prevented me from seeing who was in it.. The driver’s door opened but whomever was driving was clearly so short I wouldn’t be able to see them until they rounded the back of the car and came into view…it seemed to take an eternity. And then she appeared. Sylvie. Half woman, half taxi driver and not someone you’d readily arm wrestle with. Mirrored aviator sunglasses, a fixed facial expression, shotputter stance which said “all that shit is going in my car? No problem. I can handle it. Let’s get your sorry ass wherever it needs to be” but with a French accent of course.

Fate had thrust me into the hands of strangers today all of whom I’d never expected to meet. I was just going to go with the flow of this one. Sylvie pushed her aviators higher up on her nose, thrust a powerful hand towards me, half shaking my hand half yanking me to my feet.

“Creil?”

Took me a while to understand what she was on about then it clicked,

“Yes please”

There was something decidedly secret service about Sylvie. I was starting to sense she could do martial arts to a fatal level; just from the way she swept my petrol strimmer into the boot of her car. I climbed in. The diesel must have been wearing off because I was starting to get a new smell, something vaguely familiar, reminded me of the roses at home but didn’t smell like roses, more like,

“Horse shit”

“Excuse me?!”

“Horse shit. My car is full of it. I have just been cleaning out my stables. Open your window otherwise you will be dead in three minutes”

Then beneath the aviators a broad smile erupted and she slapped my thigh, laughed and with a squeal of tires we were off.

Even if I’d found the energy, and suppressed my bubbling emotions to be able to talk, I wouldn’t have been able to get a word in,

“So do you speak Spanish?”

“No… “

“I do. I learned it on a two week trip to Columbia”

I knew I was going to regret the question but I just couldn’t help myself. After all Columbia wasn’t a typical holiday destination and the random nature of the conversation compelled me,

“Soooo….what were you doing there?”

There was a dramatic pause, the aviators were pushed further up on the nose,

“All I can say is it involved a man I met in Chile and related to the work I was doing at the time”

I wasn’t sure how to follow that, I was too tired to come up with something logical let alone intelligent,

“Was the weather good?”

How bloody British a question was that? It was all I could muster however. The answer just increased Sylvie’s mystique,

“Yeah not bad. Not bad actually. Of course we were fishing most of the time so it didn’t matter the weather was like”

This was all so random and surreal I felt really emotional. Besides, the unprecedented combination of diesel fumes and horse manure was making me feel sick.  I looked around for clues in the car to initiate a more sensible conversation. I spied a dog lead.

“Oh you have a dog!”

“Yes two. One is a Labrador” (now we’re cooking) “One is a German shepherd, I’ve trained her to kill on sight” (and it was all going so well)

Once again I geared myself up to ask a question I was worried I was going to regret hearing the answer to,

“Kill on sight?? Er that’s…er….(quick more Haribo)…unusual!”

“She’d never actually kill anyone she’d just hurt them badly. I live alone on a farm with my horses and my dogs. They’re my children. Someone once tried to break in and do harm to me and my animals. I cannot have that again”

Another random stranger thrown my way with whom I could instantly connect and feel a warmth for. The rest of the journey was full of chat about dogs, our mutual desire to have a small holding and be self sufficient whilst sharing an overall love for animals.

The conversation became so engrossing I hardly noticed that we’d arrived at our destination. So imagine my surprise when it turned out  to be a Shell petrol station in a concrete infested suburb of Creil……..

Citroen C3P.O.

Monsieur. G and I wandered into the dim Portakabin which was the National Car rental office at Beauvais airport. A spinny fan hummed overhead and I swear the room went black and white at this point. If I had been feeling less tired and more butch I could have been Lauren Bacall at this moment. All of a sudden from an open door a spanner was thrown, clattering onto the floor. A door in the back office was slammed and then two men came out shrieking in each others’ faces. One was really tall and thin with the worse blond highlights I’d seen on a man this side of 1986, the light bouncing off them more than it did the diamond in his ear. A queeny hissy fit worthy of back stage at a drag show was being launched at a short, rotund colleague with the most amazing comb over I had ever seen. The men were in each others faces, shouting, screaming, gesticulating all at once. The French was flying back and forth so fast I truly wish I was able to report what the cause of this disagreement was. I had no clue. I stood stock-still and stared wide eyed as the floor show continued. Monsieur G seemed to be nonchalantly picking car detritus from his finger nails with a matchstick he’d been chewing on. I felt the need to intervene partly out of civic duty but also because I really didn’t have time for this and I could hear the clock ticking. I should have been trying to remember the words to one of Olivia’s less successful albums of the late 1990s.

I don’t know where the words came from. They were a mix of things which had been buried in the back of my mind since 1986 mixed with words I’d learned especially for my trip in case I needed them. In passable French I shouted,

“Stop it! Stop it! I’ve been awake since 2.30 this morning, I smell of diesel, I have only eaten childrens sweets since Calais and I need to get me and my petrol strimmer to Correze before midnight, please can I have a very small Citroen” The End.

Even Monsieur G stood to attention at this point. The fighting instantly stopped. The French one half of Air Supply stormed out the room, the stricken comb over was re-applied,

“Monsieur, can I help you?”

“Yes I have broken down, my insurance will pay for a hire car. I believe you have one car left”

I handed him the papers from the AA. In theory the good old AA should be a passport to anything but sadly not here at the National Car rental office in Beauvais,

“Monsieur! Your insurance company do not have an agreement with us! We will not give you a car!”

At this point Monsieur G woke up, stood up, straightened is cap and said,

“Excuse me? You said on the phone you have a car? It’s the last one in Beauvais… look at this poor English man! We have to help him and his gardening equipment! It’s the French thing to do!!”

I was past caring about insurance at this point so to dissipate the rising tension, I coolly said,

“Please don’t worry, I am happy to pay for the car myself”

Comb over had had a bad day. He was indignant and unfortunately the Great British Institution which is the AA had offended his sensibilities. Or finished them off after John Non Jovial had trampled on them.

“I am sorry Monsieur! But! If my cars are not good enough for your insurance company then they are not good enough for you! You will not have the red Citroen C3 with air conditioning! NO! You will not!”

The Haribo effect had worn off a while ago because there was no come back to that. The gap however was filled with my oil covered Sir Galahad,

“How dare you speak to a visitor of our republic like that! You are an embarrassment to France! Look at this poor Englishman!” Was I really looking that pathetic??? I also thought my outfit had international tones to it “He is in need! And we should show him that France cares!”

This was now clearly becoming an issue of national pride for Monsieur G but comb over wasn’t feeling patriotic, in fact he was a pill shy of a breakdown of some sort and I was tipping him towards it with my need for a small French car. He rose up, chest plumped up, the second strand from the left getting dangerously close to sliding behind his glasses,

“I will not be insulted! My cars are as good as Hertz and Avis! He can tell his insurance company that as well!!!”

I don’t know why I didn’t see it coming. Haribo haze? Or maybe the intoxication due to diesel fumes? Or maybe sheer exhaustion. Monsieur G was not standing for this. The honour of France was at stake. As I stood there flummoxed he simply catapulted himself forward. Within seconds its was man on man chest stabbing with fingers, seconds after that faces were bearing down on faces and the only word I understood was an international one which cannot be repeated. But I wasn’t going to see either of them next Tuesday. I had to stop this here and now. Two firsts were achieved simultaneously. I’ve never had two men fight over me and I’ve never had to break up a fight let alone by stepping inbetween to scrapping Frenchmen. With a deft swing of the man bag I thrust myself between them, I had comb over by the tie and a more friendly but equally restraining hand on my mechanic hero,

“Please! I only want a hire car. I am not asking for much. I am so sorry my insurance company have insulted you. I will write to them. Please can I have the small red Citroen with air conditioning?”

Well, it was heartfelt but it didn’t work. After a pause, comb over looked at me and in a voice which was more akin to telling me he was leaving me and taking the Celine Dion CD’s with him simply and quietly said,

“I’m sorry”

With that he walked  out the back door, Monsieur G left by the front slamming it after him. I was left with the hum of the ceiling fan and an increasing sense of desperation. At that moment the phone rang.  It was Emily from the AA……

Defender of the Realm

When the alarm goes at 5.30 for work I feel I have leaden feet and clinical lethargy with a side diagnosis of dopey, grumpy and sneezy syndrome.  When it goes at 2.30am to jump into my Landrover and drive to France I feel like a spring chicken on speed. I’ve never listened to Radio 2 in the middle of the night and I think I was so disproportionately happy to be heading to Dover that it was probably disproportionately interesting.

The Landy on a motorway is neither quiet nor smooth but somehow it sings and gives you joy. What is nice is how other Landy drivers flash and wave. It feels like a brotherhood of automotive dropouts in a world of cruise controlled jelly moulds.

The cross channel ferry between Dover and Calais is now an additional mode of transport in my commuting repertoire. It’s grim. At any time of day there are bus loads of school children unloaded into the cafeterias and corridors swarming like out of control wildebeest. They are interspersed with endless pensioners ambling about looking for a Daily Mail and a cup of tea. When the two combine, it’s like a game of skittles at sea.

When you land in Calais, civilisation begins immediately, you are straight onto a smooth surfaced, traffic free autoroute pointing you south. I had taped to the dashboard a route mapped out in stages and times for me to tick off and then congratulate me. I had seen pilots do it electronically with way points. ie reach Amiens at 11.30, pass Paris at 12.30. All of these led to a drink and a nice dinner at the end of the day. Olivia Newton John and myself were dueting all the way down the A16 from Calais with Paris in sight. Ironically she and I were asking ourselves “Have you never been mellow?” when I saw the fuel gauge start to move to the left with more speed than it should. Actually it was sprinting for the left. I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a cloud of smoke following me. God works in mysterious ways and right at that moment she provided an exit to a French motorway picnic area. As I pulled to a stop and descended from the Landy  I could see diesel flooding from the front of the car. At this point I was hit by diesel odour so strong that it still gives me a headache thinking about it.

As the Landy stood in a sea of its own diesel I could see that the car was covered in the filthy slimy, malodorous stuff. I had been spewing diesel over myself for quite a while. It probably explained the throbbing headache. Breaking down by the side of the motorway has always filled me with dread. Doing that in a foreign country has to be up there with being sick on a rollercoaster or hearing the words, “Ken Dodd will be doing your enema for you today”

The AA now have an overseas service which ultimately transfers you to a nice French lady after Vodafone have fleeced you in the process. Nice French lady tells you (in English) that due to the motorways being owned by the police (huh?!?!) the French AA are not allowed to come and rescue you.  The police have to organise your rescue. “Please phone 112 at your earliest convenience to speak to them sir”. Unfortunately 112 is actually the firemen you silly but nice AA lady and not the police but the firemen are massively helpful and put you through to a random policeman who gets out a road atlas from his desk, locates the scene of your trauma and gives you the phone number for the village policeman closest to you. Who actually turns out to be equally lovely and makes the necessary arrangements…”Rest assured! Help is on its way!” I didn’t have enough time to be cynical as within five minutes a rescue truck chugged into the car park. Monsieur G had landed. Probably the most instantly exuberant, jolly and smiley mechanic I’d ever met. And probably the biggest Landrover nut France has ever produced. “Day-phon-daaaaaaaaaar!” (Defender) he half shrieked, half gasped as he yanked my hand from the wrist and involved me in a moment of impromptu body popping by way of a greeting. “She’s a beauty isn’t she?!”

“Yes but she’s drowning in a sea of diesel and I need to be in the Correze by 6.30 this evening!”

I’ve never known anyone express “You’ve having a laugh aren’t you? But don’t worry we’ll sort it” without actually speaking, conveying it instead through a waggle of a cigarette, a smile, a pat on the shoulder and the turning round of a flat cap.

I love how we blame our ridiculous health and safety laws on being in the EU. The police appointed mechanic smoked throughout a major fuel leak and his recovery truck didn’t have any seatbelts. It felt bizarrely liberating and somehow comforting. I think by making ourselves so “safe” in the UK we inadvertently terrorise ourselves. Bouncing along in that tow truck was like running with scissors through a forest in a thunder storm.

The Landy was deposited in M. G’s yard. It sat upright and conspicuously green amongst a sea of miniscule and mangled Citroen going back to the era of Charles de Gaulle. It was now Saturday afternoon, on my route planner I should be having a wee stop somewhere near Orleans right now. Olivia would have made it into the 1980s and there was every chance we’d getting Physical on the A71 south.

Yes there were mechanics around but they weren’t going to be looking at this patient in great detail anytime soon. Many Gallic shrugs were emitted as they all looked under the bonnet. The fumes were too much for me to get close. My clothes stank enough of the stuff anyway….

M.G walked towards me and shook his head,

“The problem is easy to fix, but we need to remove bits to get to it… your garage in the UK forgot to tighten the connector between the fuel pipe and the engine” Basically my dear Landy had eviscerated itself on the motorway apparently due to the vibrations. Was my singing that bad? I don’t think Olivia Newton John vibrates much, certainly not as a lady of pensionable age. Thank god it wasn’t Bonnie Tyler otherwise I might be looking at a new big end.

I must have looked even more despondent than I was feeling as M. G decided on a course of action to cheer me up. Part one was a tour of several Landy’s he had in various states of undress. Bizarrely it felt reassuring.. I might not have a connection between fuel and engine but I did have more than a chassis with a protruding gear stick.

part two was to phone for a hire car... there was much exuberant dialogue going on down the phone, relating to the fact we seemed to be in the French  equivalent of rural Kansas on a weekend and options were slim to nil...Finally the Marlboro red nearly dropped out of M. G's mouth, he pounded the desk and excalimed, "I have found the last car in Beauvais! It's not very big but it will get you to the Correze!"

I loaded my gardening kit and expansive travelling wardrobe into M. G's car and we headed to the airport. I still smelled of diesel and was now quite weary having been sustained on Haribo and coffee which was causing a major dip of mood and strength.

The airport at Beauvais is so small a row of houses with neatly tended gardens and bright floral arrangements suddenly stops and becomes the car hire offices. And that's where the nightmare was just about to go nuclear.......