Houston, we have evening!

Maybe it’s because I made tea a little earlier than our usual late night feasts, or maybe it’s because it’s been sunny and I don’t really notice with the clouds that the days are getting longer, but we have an evening. An actual evening. It’s quarter to seven and it’s still light. We’ve had tea and it feels like there’s a good few hours of evening left.

Forsythia

It feels like it’s been a very productive last few days, not least because of the rotivator. The potato patch is ready and my potatoes will be going in over the next couple of days. Steve’s been busy planting out hundreds of seeds and his heated propagator has already been fruitful. I’ve commandeered it now to get my peppers started. I’ve also moved some peas outside, and moved some of the broad beans from the polytunnel outside so they have a bit more room. More broad beans have gone in and hopefully one more batch will see us through the summer with enough to freeze to keep us going for the winter.

Rotivator and our tomato and brassica patch

We’re still enjoying the remnants of last year’s crops – I had a gorgeous piece of baguette with butter and blackcurrant jam for lunch and Steve had ham with peach chutney. The peach chutney is delicious, but we’ve only got one jar left – so next year’s peaches, which are a bit hit and miss size-wise and flavour-wise will make fantastic chutney. You’d think 2 kg jars of it would be enough, but it’s not. I reckon I need about 10 times that!

One LJ went to mow... went to mow a meadow

It felt good, though, getting out in the garden for a couple of hours before lunch, having a fantastic rural lunch and then going out to get even more productive. After that, about four o’clock, I spent a half hour in the garden with a book and a bit of French homework, being besieged by animals. The chickens like to come and have a nosey at everything and Marge had a swig of my coffee before I removed it from her. Caffeine can’t be good for a chicken! Steve has finished fencing in the last bit of the veg area, except for a bit at the very back that we’d forgotten about, but the chickens had not. They came clambering in over the vines as soon as they saw me go in the poly-tunnel. It was nice, though, to sit in the garden with my legs out, trying to get a bit of sun on my scarred pins, even if I only managed 20 pages.

A girl can't get peace of an afternoon...

The apricot Steve planted has got its first blossom, so I’m hoping we don’t have another frost – the last one was only a couple of days ago, but only on the cars, though the ground was cold.

Thirsty work, being a chicken

But it’s lovely to be surrounded by all the animals, even if you get no peace and quiet. After I realised the back bit wasn’t fenced off, I spent a good 15 minutes chasing chickens with a spring-loaded rake and a stick. It’s like teaching. Never all going in the same direction at the same time and at the same speed. Always someone ready to go off at a tangent.

Even the cats are sunbathing: Mr Fox and Mr Bird

Sunny days and Sundays really make me smile

Jake usually doesn’t get out of bed at the weekend until past 11. He’s already ‘teen-boy’. So it was quite a surprise to have him up at 8:00 on a Sunday morning, and in a fine temper. He stayed in a fine mood all day, too, which is more than I can say about the Stephen with the sore head, but oh well. Such is the universe!

Jake and I went to the nearby skate park today. He’s a marvel. He didn’t quite have the confidence to do the big ramp, but he had a go, just about made it and was then scared to come down! He was also scared that someone might see him and he’d be embarrassed. He doesn’t quite go along with the idea of ‘when will I ever see these people again?’ which is my firm motto for embarrassing behaviour. In fact, if I were to see them every day, it wouldn’t bother me.

Then I came back and got on with the garden a bit. I dug over about a third of the bit of what will be the potato patch. The ground is really soft and lush – hopefully good for potatoes. I’ve planted out the sweet peas I soaked last night. I’ve also fashioned a cold frame inside the polytunnel for those things needing a bit extra warmth to get them going – amazing what you can do with an old windscreen!! I’m so looking forward to the coming months, and that’s not an easy thing for a girl like me to say. Tomorrow, I will do a bit more of the potato patch. We had some carrots left in over the winter, and I can’t decide to dig them up or leave them. Yet again, I had little success with the spring onions. Onions are not my area of expertise!

Steve had a good sleep last night, whilst Jake and I watched 300 and ate pancakes. I might be good at many culinary things, but pancakes are not one of them. They are Steve’s forté and I leave well enough alone. But with him sleeping, it seemed best to make them ourselves. We had them with melted butter and sugar, comme les francaises!

blame the boy!

 

LJ’s craft corner

This is a t-shirt I painted for Steve’s birthday.

He said it would look better if the star went over the sleeve. I might continue it up there. I wanted it kind of off-centre so it didn’t look too tidy. I’m quite impressed if I do say so myself.

Whilst the Beani is away…

It’s weird being on my own in my own house. I don’t think I’ve been alone for 24 hours since… I don’t know when.

Still, it’s an opportunity that I’m unused to. I took it easy at first, finding difficulty in shedding Steve and Jake’s virtual presence and reclaiming my single girl ways. I lit a fire (Steve’s job, always) and I made hot chocolate and ate sweeties (Jake’s job) and then I did something unprecedented. I watched the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, that delightful girls’-only viewing. I curled up with the dogs and a hot chocolate on the couch and laughed at Mma Ramotswe and her lovely secretary Grace Makutsi, with the inimitable Mr Matekoni. He is the finest man ever, according to me. He is kind and noble and old-fashioned and romantic. He reminds me in many ways of my Gramps and Andy – hard-working, honest, loyal, kind… I loooooove Rra Matekoni.

This is odd. It’s like watching Disney in a lap dancing club, watching girly stuff that doesn’t have a spy in it, or guns (although I admit it does have detecting in it, which is right up my street) and it’s not that I mind 24 and Burn Notice and so on, because I introduced them, but sometimes, it’s nice to watch something the boys wouldn’t like at all. Not that I enjoy watching it because they don’t like it, but I enjoy watching it all the more because only I like it.

And this morning… Steve and I usually keep fairly quiet til eleven-ish, not because we don’t want to wake Jake, but because we like this quiet time. I like quiet mornings, it must be said. But today, I’m listening to a little bit of HED (p.e.) and it’s great. I can listen to whatever I like, and I like to listen to HED. I suspect I’ve not quite shaken off Steve’s tastes yet. I may be up to Depeche Mode by Friday, who’s to say?

I have been tame so far. I scratched my tummy in front of the fridge in a very Homer-Simpson kind of a way, but honestly, I’d do that anyway. I’m wondering if I’m going to do something wild, like paint the front room pink or go around naked in just high heels, or get up at lunch time. I doubt it.

The truth be told, I can’t think of anything more revolutionary to do than go to bed half an hour later, get up half an hour earlier, watch something less usual and listen to some early morning music. Maybe, just maybe, I might get really revolutionary and not watch anything at all tonight. Although, with six more Rra Matakonis to watch, I suspect that might be reserved for nights later in the week.

What’s a girl to do when the Beanster is away??!

I want something naughty that will give me a smile afterwards. I suspect I’ll settle for nothing more exciting than keeping the toilet door open. Answers on a postcard please.

Le Crissmass Pooddinguh

Yesterday, Jake came home from school with an impromptu request.

“Our teacher wants to know if I can bring some crackers in, because I’m English.”

Crackers, for those of you who don’t know, like the French, are toilet-roll inners wrapped in fancy paper. Inside this is a little bit of card with a tiny bit of powder that ‘cracks’ when you pull them with a partner, to reveal, oh joy of joys, a little plastic ‘Made in China’ gift. Apparently, China are outsourcing to Vietnam now, so it might say ‘Made in Vietnam’. There’s also a terrible joke and a paper hat. It’s compulsory to wear the paper hat if you want to look the part. That is… if the part is looking like a drunken, fashion-less fool. For this privilege, you usually pay about £10 for a box. My brother Al and I have a competition to see how many we can win – we even have a technique and a specific angle.

However, they aren’t known in France, and whilst you can buy them from various English shops, they’re three times the price, and since there’s not so many of us here over Christmas, it just didn’t seem worth it. So, no, we didn’t have any crackers.

I went to my dad’s to see if I could find any in his grange. I had a distinct memory of sleeping with a bag full of crackers next to me last Christmas. But we couldn’t find any. Just as we were packing up, my Dad’s neighbour turned up with a stere of wood for my dad’s fire – so we spent a good ten minutes taking them off the trailer and catching up on new dogs and local news.

So… in lieu of that, I decided to crack into a Christmas pudding as a swap. Most of the ingredients are available here, except they don’t really ‘do’ different mixed fruit – just raisins. I’d kind of adapted it and it’s now without glacé cherries. How can France not do glacé cherries? Surely glacé implies ‘iced’? I thought they would be like marrons glacés, but they aren’t available over here, despite how popular they are in England. Neither is crystallised ginger. All of these are missing, but my Christmas pudding seemed right. I shall have to make my own crystallised ginger and glacé cherries next year when the cherry crops are ready. I found the stout and enough dried fruit to sink a ship, so I managed to make three 2-litre puddings. One is for Christmas pudding ice-cream, one is for eating, and one was a spare.

So… I sent Jake with a note saying I was prepared to come in with a Christmas pudding and some custard. The French love custard, like we love crème patisserie. I got an excited phone call ten minutes into school time saying the children would be delighted to sample some Christmas pudding.

Unfortunately, between nine and two, a million things went wrong. I got a flat tyre, my dad’s Clio wasn’t starting, since it’s been out of use for a few weeks, the charger wouldn’t charge, every time we tried to attach it, the alarm kicked in, and Steve called me a chocolate fireguard and made me sit in the van, because all I could think about was 180 euros for two second-hand tyres like last time. That’s nine tyres this year.

So, by the time I got to school, I was a little frazzled. Still, rows of delighted children will cure you of that. They were all extremely excited to taste Le Crissmass pooddinguh and to take the recipes and get the ingredients. I have to say I was giddy, too, as they worked out what was what. Some said it wasn’t for them. Some liked it though it was a bit strange. Several came back for more, though I think they were just hoping for ‘la pièce’  the lucky sixpence. Axel, who’s a bundle of enthusiasm (I wish I had a friend called Axel. It’s a cool name. I wonder if he’s named after the German band who did the tune to Beverley Hills Cop, Axel F, or after W Axl Rose, the rock star who really should have taken early retirement. The cornrows didn’t do it for me like snake hips did in Welcome to the Jungle. Still, Axel is pretty cool anyway) had an English phrase book from way back when, complete with details of pounds, shillings and sixpences, and when he looked up la crème anglaise, it said “The custard” which I thought was quite cute, and actually accurate, except you wouldn’t ask for the bananas with the custard, really, unless you were reading from Axel’s pre-decimal phrase book. There’s a lovely, hyper-intelligent girl, Sara, in the class. One boy was flicking an elastic band at her, so I said “Donnes-moi!” in my teacher voice and put it in my pocket. Jake was horrified by this. He said: “That’s robbery!” and was quite outraged.

I’m sad he didn’t see me in my prime when I routinely confiscated several phones from various little beggars, would stand at the door with a bin and anyone who didn’t spit gum into it and was subsequently found with gum would be found somewhere with lots of gum stuck to the bottom and made to remove it all. If it came out in my classroom, it was considered my property. I considered my classroom as The People’s Republic of Lady Justine – You have no vote and no say. But I was fair, if strict. I had several rules, one of which was ‘you can’t wear more make-up than me’ and ‘you can’t do ‘THAT’ face’… ‘THAT’ face being that ‘I’ve just seen some dog licking vomit off a pile of doggy doo’ combined with the ‘I have no regard for you and I wish you would die a horrid death in a violent way, preferably involving me spitting on you repeatedly to show my scorn’. I patented this face. I have photographic proof. I can do the scornful adolescent sneer so much better than any child I’ve ever come across. So, any imitation of ‘THAT’ face was immediately banned. Much like a young Elvis might have banned all the ancient old impersonators who would come to represent him. I perfected that look. I made it an art form. None of my friends did it. In fact, they all had healthy, wonderful relationships with their family. However, we did do the class ‘scorn-n-sneer’ to teachers who we didn’t like. So… confiscating an elastic band being flicked at a precocious and amazing little girl is fair game.

Steve just said ‘but you’re not a teacher any more’ and has given an explanation as to how he’d have complained. Like Father, like Son. And little does Steve know that if he’d have complained after having had to have an elastic band removed from his personage by a guest of the school because he was aiming it at a sweet little girl, I’d have carted him off to the Maire to be told off and shamed. I’d have insisted on speaking to his parents (That’s you Susan!) to express my outrage and insisted they share my indignation.

I did this with a boy once, who shall be known as Darren. It’s a pseudonym, though why I don’t name and shame is beyond me.

Said boy was lurking in the corridor, trying to pull a few of my sheep-like fifteen-year-old top set kids out of the fold for mischief. I’d appropriately admonished them and pulled them back into the pack, and said to Boy:

“Who are you?!”

“Why?” *why do they ALWAYS ask ‘why?’ – nothing sets my sparks going like that. Especially when they do it with a whiney nasally tone.

“Because I want to know.”

“What have I done?”

“Well, you won’ t tell me who you are.”

“I don’t have to…”

“In fact, dear, you’re right. You don’t. However, like the police I reserve the right to detain you until you do, so to the back of my class, now.” And I prompted said Boy to my classroom door.

“And you can spit your gum out and tuck your shirt in.” *Any English teachers will know this instantly. I don’t know why British education still bothers trying to clothe pupils in what’s essentially a polyester suit, since all they want to do is wear their tie in weird ways and un-tuck their shirts.  I did the same. We wore shirts out to cover rolled up skirts. We had a doughnut ring of skirt around our midriffs. I’m not sure why boys do it, except that if you have your shirt in, you look like a ‘stiff’, as 11 year old me would have said.

“And you can suck my dick…” he said, smirking, thinking the class would laugh. They didn’t. Mouths opened. Jaws dropped. Eyes were on stalks. A bit of tumbleweed blew by.

“Fine… come with me.” I promptly escorted said boy to the headmaster, a portly fellow of great gravitas and dignity, about as prim as you’d want him to be.

“Sir, I’ve brought you a boy….”

Sir looked appropriately worried.

“He’s just asked me to SUCK — HIS — DICK.” I enunciated each word, loudly and clearly, as if the words aren’t common in my mouth. Darren blushed.

The head looked mortified and played along well. He made all the appropriate ‘in front of a lady’ noises, as if this was 1820. I asked for permission to call Darren’s mother. I did the same to her.

“I’m sorry to be calling you, Mrs Jones, but I have some very disturbing things to report. I’m afraid Darren has been incredibly rude. I have to say, as a woman, I’m sure you’ll understand, I felt quite violated by this, but Darren told me to SUCK–HIS–DICK….” I let the words echo. I’ve never seen anyone paler. “I’m sure you’ll understand, if a male teacher said this to a female 15 year old student, how horrific that would be – struck off, possible police investigations and so on.”

I laid it on thick and spread it about like a maturing cheese on a cracker.

By the end of it, Darren was excluded temporarily. He had a file like a telephone book and was on his ‘three strikes and you’re out’ last warning – hence why he wouldn’t tell me his name. I’m quite sure a young boy CANNOT be more mortified than when a female teacher repeats to his loving mother exactly what their little darling just said, and then milks it a little. I thought not, at the time.

It turns out, in Catholic schools, the way to get back in is to apologise in person to every member of the governing body. So Dear Darren had to apologise, precisely, using his exact words, to the priest, the head, the deputies, his parents, and finally, me.

So, Cillian with his elastic band, Stephen with his sympathy and Jake with his distress on Cillian’s behalf about robbery can join the queue of people I’ve caused grievance to.

They can find it directly behind Darren. By now, it’s about 200,000 people long.

What they’ve yet to realise is how boys actually need a firm hand. Rules is rules, but when Miss brings you cake and tells you all the rude jokes in Shakespeare, and sometimes lets you have a rest in her office, you’ll pretty much do anything for her. Boys like it strict. Let it be known. And, if they don’t like it strict, they need it strict!

 

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Je fait mon nid

I’m in full-on nesting behaviour. Not least for cleaning out the chicken house and putting down new flax, but mainly for getting out my sewing machine and arranging my sewing table. It took a while, but I’m getting round to unpacking. Looks like I might be staying a while. I’ve got the fabric for the draught excluders, and I hope to make them tomorrow. At least then, I won’t have a cold French breeze billowing around my ankles.

The main only user of the sewing machine so far has been Jake. He loves a bit of sewing, mainly because it is a machine. He was talking to Steve about the ‘piston’ – which I take to be the mechanism that makes the needle go up and down. He is well able to thread the machine and wind the bobbin on, and he has used more of the embroidery stitches than I probably ever will. He sewed his name and has spent the evening trying out all the different stitches. I love this side of Jake. He’s a gun-toting, cap-blasting fire-starting smoke-monger, and yet he likes my sewing machine. A man in the making who is perfectly at home with his creative side. As I write, he is sitting illustrating a poem (for his homework!) and Steve is sitting in ‘Steve Corner’ drawing too. A creative little household, tonight. I like the addition of the table to the living room – since Jake has already adopted it as his place in the room. It’s nice to have the three of us (and the Mollster, lying in front of the fire) engaged in creative pursuits, albeit with 24 as a backdrop in the warmth locked away from the cold. It’s the kind of winter-time pursuits I dreamed of.

What’s weird is this change on Jake – he used to leave homework until Sunday night  – way after his bath and tea – usually in tears of frustration and sulks. Now he’s showing us his schoolbooks and getting excited about doing homework. I have to say a lot of it is to do with the school. After half term, they are starting ‘la lutte’ in P.E. Wrestling. Indeed. How to make a 10 year old boy very happy indeed. He will also be doing ‘endurance’ – whatever that involves – in preparation for cross country running in February. I love that he’s already excited about going back to school. I love that he hasn’t sulked once about going to school. I love that he wanted to bake cakes for his classmates and have a party for them. I love that he comes home and talks about what he’s done. I don’t know if it’s just because we’re in the thick of it together, the only English speaking people, or if it’s because we’ve become surrogate friends, or if he’s growing up in a lovely non-English way where it means he hasn’t sunk further into Kevin-The-Teenager behaviour. He has occasional moments, but he seems a million times more content. And the little boy lying in front of me saying

“Give us a kiss, Moll!”

and the man behind me asking

“Jake, have you got a pen? I’ve got a puzzle for you…”

are two people who aren’t caught up in the stresses and pressures of English city life. By the way, the puzzle is the ‘As I was going to St Ives’ puzzle. Jake’s gone back to his table and is now writing  out the sums to go with it. The answer is one. But I’m not going to tell him.

Ah, and here comes the almost-sulk. But gone like a quick cloud. After all, it’s half-eleven and these two have been in each other’s company for several hours. A peace longer than an hour is to be celebrated as much as one between Israel and Palestine!

Preparations for Autumn

Jake’s been off school yesterday and today – so today we’ve been baking biscuits, as opposed to my usual cookies. I’ve dug out my cookie cutters for Hallowe’en and we’ve iced and decorated our biscuits. It’s a very simple recipe:

• 225 g caster sugar
• 225 g butter
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 450 g flour, sifted

Just cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and then add the flour in 50 g increments, mixing it in with your hands until it’s a dough. Leave somewhere very cool for an hour (or in the fridge!) and then roll and cut out. Some people are fussy about them being level and flat and so on. I don’t care because they don’t last long. Bake for 10 minutes at Gas Mark 4 – whatever that is. Then leave to cool, then ice!

I am unscientific with my icing sugar – Put a bit in, add some milk and mix to a thick paste. Add light colours of food colouring first and be very sparing if you’re adding darker colours to mix to other colours.

Jake and I painted them with a cocktail stick – and then we all enjoyed eating them!!

I’m planning on having a ‘feu de joie’ (a fire of joy – or bonfire to you and I) for the 5th November, seeing as we can’t get back to England at half term. I’ve planned an extensive list of potato and apple products – pommes d’amour (toffee apples), purée de pommes de terre (mashed potato) sausages, jacket potatoes done on the barbecue, parkin (only if I can find molasses, my make-do substitute for Tate and Lyle’s divine black treacle) bonfire toffee, fudge, baked bananas and chocolate, mushy peas, pickled red cabbage – so Jake can invite some of his friends round. I’ll invite a few neighbours and English people who I like – and we’ll have some games and a small bonfire (not forgetting firewood is now a commodity, not something to get rid of!) which I think will be jolly lovely!!

We’d also gone to look for the non-existent maison de la Resistance in Chasseneuil – apparently a room in someone’s house (not unlike a ‘teddy bear’ museum I went to in Japan which really was just someone’s front room done up!!) – but didn’t find it, so I dragged us up to the Necropolis in Chasseneuil instead. Amazing to think it was a small hub of Resistance activity. I thought Jake might be interested because these were your real life Jack Bauers and Tony Almeidas, taking pills to stop themselves confessing under torture. The Necropolis is dedicated to the Resistance fighters in Chasseneuil. It’s quite amazing to think of these real people fighting. Not like the British, sending people to war, but actual war around your own home, affecting everybody – your parents, your children.

Unfortunately, however, in the midst of this solemnity and sombre necropolis, Jake and Steve decided it’d be great to do their usual horsing about, throwing each other about, attacking each other, kicking each other, punching each other. I said I’m not taking them anywhere ever again. They can’t go anywhere without it being street theatre and almost a contact sport for the average passer-by. So they’re staying at home from now on. I shall not allow their noise pollution to escape Les Ecures. I’m sure it’s their way of holding hands, but it’s more like chimps playing. In fact, I’ve seen this very thing on Monkey World, where the little chimp chases after the bigger chimp and they roll about for a bit and then the little chimp ends up playing too rough and the big chimp ends up losing his temper and playing too hard. How little we have evolved.

I’m standing at the foot of this huge memorial, mulling over the seriousness of world war and contemplating life 70 years ago, and they’re rampaging through it like they’ve escaped from La Vallée des Singes.

Next week, I might go and look at some stuff on my own and leave them at home. Men.

As I write, Jake’s just gone outside to set fire to some pine needles, and is murmuring about ‘it only gives off a smoke’ – Neanderthal, then, rather than chimp?!

 

 

Toys for the boys…

We’ve been looking for a long time for somewhere like Brico Depot. It’s more of a Wickes than a B&Q or Homebase. The local L’Eclerc Brico is fine, but it’s very… hmmm… girlie. It has a full row of fancy light shades and three rows of wallpapers, horse brushes and potted plants. You can buy wheelbarrows and such like, but they’re very expensive. The wood there was also really expensive, and they didn’t really have what we wanted. I thought we might need Leroy Merlin, another chain of Brico, but whilst I was ferreting around locating the Honda dealership, I saw Brico Depot and I thought it might do to take a look. Plus, when we researched ‘contreplaque’ – plywood – Brico Depot came up on the search. Plus, it’s nearer than Leroy Merlin. So, it was off to Brico Depot.

Well, Steve was in heaven from the first moment.

It has super-large trolleys, since you might need super-large things, or a lot of stuff. They were all bashed up and wonky with chipped paint. That bodes well to Steve. Spit and sawdust. There was a huge sign over the front entrance that said ‘free coffee from 7 – 10 each morning’ – another bonus for Steve the caffeine freak.

The entrance gate was all wrapped up in gaffer tape and the motor didn’t work. It was harshly lit, with huge metal shelves piled ceiling high. Nothing was in any particular real order, just rows and rows of stuff. If you were lucky, they were kind of next to each other. It was crammed with all kinds of stuff. Not an inch of spare space. Plenty of assistants. Incredibly busy, but not crowded. Efficient.

Not only that, but it was cheap, which is a real rarity in France.

So, Jake and I followed Steve about, as we are wont to do in supermarkets, as Steve went ‘got that… like that… got that… want that… oooh, that’s cheap…. oooh, that’s good…. oooh, I need one of those….’

He’s making shutters for my Dad, so we picked up the wood for that (plywood is really expensive – more expensive than actual, good-quality wood. How does that work??!) and some wood for a chicken feeder, as well as two cheap bins, a 50 metre hose and a ‘melange’ of screws and nails.

I have to say, Steve was quite giddy. Like my Uncle Brian is at B&Q on pensioner-Wednesday. Brico Depot, c’est pour lui.

It’s like Rouen all over again.

It’s seven o’clock. I send a text to Steve to ensure he got the train.

“Only just. I was up at four thirty. Started walking ten minutes later. Had to run the last 10 minutes.”

“Have you found the navette shuttle bus?”

“No. I’m in Limoges. Can you tell me where it is.”

Now, I know that Steve and I don’t do directions well. I, according to him, am rubbish at navigating. He, according to me, is rubbish at following directions. He gets me all flustered because he’s in a foul mood and I end up thinking: “Sod it. Find your own way.”

So, I give the best, most clear directions I can.

“Go outside from the main entrance, so you’re looking at the main square. Then follow the building round to your right. This is the left if you’re looking AT the building. You should see a tower at the end of the building. Go round the tower following it to your right. *I can’t say ‘go round…’ that could mean anything to Steve, apparently. I’ve learned this from last time* and then you will see a lift going up to the platforms, four disabled spaces and a sign that shows your car will be towed. The bus stops here.”

Thanks Google Earth. You’re a life saver.

He does as I say. He then phones me.

“There’s no bus stop here.”

“I know. The shuttle hasn’t been running for long.” I’m making excuses for France here, for the airport, for the train station and all types of transit.

“There’s old people sitting down. None of them looks like they’re going to the airport.”

A huge part of me wants to say “It’s seven thirty. If you’d just learn french, you’d be able to ask them. But no….”

Instead, I say “Well, the shuttle will be there in 10 minutes. Why don’t you wait and see?”

He cuts me off, saying he’s going to find someone.

I hope he’s done what I’d do and gone back inside the terminal to ask. Turns out, he was tramping around looking for the tourist office. Apparently it’s badly signposted and he couldn’t find it. I know they’d only have said what I was going to say. Still, I can sense he’s getting to the end of his thin, thin hold on his temper.

He then sent me a text half an hour later to say he is back there and still can’t find it, having not been able to locate the tourist office. I tell him to wait and see what turns up at 10:15 when the bus is supposed to be there.

In the meantime, I’ve located the Limoges Airport website, found the link to the navette service, realised it’s an 8 seater mini bus and I’ve found a picture of it. It’s grey. I text him this information.

Moments later, the bus is there. He’s on it.

He’s going to be at Limoges Airport for about 5 hours. It’s small and boring. I’m sure he’ll be hyped up on coffee by the time he gets back.

And…. I know the worst is that Roy would have given him a lift, but Steve would rather do it HIS way.

I’m going to ban him doing things HIS way, when it involves me getting up at the crack of dawn to plough through the internet to find out where the hell he is.