ee! our John

EE! Our John. Goes to France II

Yes, I know it's been a long time. Almost six months in fact since i lasted posted anything. No excuses i have just been lazy, unmotivated, distracted. Whatever. Anyway, its a new year and i am full of beans and raring to start back hammering those keys again. (OK, I know its 28  days into the new year. I had a hangover OK?)

Right where was I....erm........ Oh thats right, Kayaking on the Dordogne...........

St.Emilion proved to be a lovely place to spend our holidays. The campsite was excellent with great facilities and the sun shone everyday.  The town of St.Emilion is old and picturesque but overall rather dull. If you don't believe me try visiting the 'pot museum which for 8 Euros apiece you can kill your senses by strolling around a warren of damp cellars looking at ancient earthenware like some kind of pre-historic Tupperware party. If only one had some pot to smoke during the tour it might have been bearable.

Not surprisingly the town is dominated by wine merchants all vying for the tourist Euro. On our first full day in town we fell for the charming patter of an Aussie salesman who somehow managed to cajole us into his shop for a tasting session. He did his best to hide his New World roots, refusing to answer any questions about his origins, possibly thinking we would not want to buy fine French wines from an Antipodean upstart. I must say he was very good though and after only thirty minutes we left with an appreciation of the St.Emilion appellation and five Bottles of Grand Cru which cost 160 euros. In true Bury style we drank the five Bottles warm with Barbecue burgers later that evening.

  A couple of days later we took "The Duke" for a spin and found a CarreFour supermarket in a nearby town where Andy was delighted to find he could buy a bottle of Cote Du Rhone for a measly 1 euro 30. For the rest of the holiday (and beyond) every time we had a glass of wine he would take great joy in declaring,

" One euro thirty. We could have bought more than a hundred bottles of this with the money we spent on the five bottles of fancy shit and you can't tell me it was ten times better let alone a hundred times better than this."

Nic and I invested in a game of Yahtzee at the supermarket. It was one of those sets with a plastic bowl and cup to shake and throw the dice in. It was great for ensuring you didn't lose the dice but made us very unpopular with the rest of the site when the rattle of dice woke up babies all around us as we grimly saw out the game in the wee small hours. In a spirit of good neighbourliness and to allow Andy to do a bit of night fishing we spent one night down by the lake playing by dim torchlight  beneath a flurry of bats. When the game was over we left Andy to his fishing and retired to tents calling at the bins on the way to dispose of our carrier bag of empties and rubbish. Next day Andy and Nic spent a fruitless 10 minutes scrambling around in the bin trying to find our carrier bag which turned out to have contained Andy's very expensive wraparound sunglasses and my copy of George RR Martin's Game of Thrones book which i had lent him. Obviously it was most annoying to discover the rubbish had already been collected, after all that book cost me 3.99.

It was during a drunken session of yahtzee or cards that Andy mentioned he had seen a notice advertising Kayaking on the nearby Dordogne and we all agreed it sounded like a fun thing to do.

The Kayaking centre appeared to be run by a group of twelve year old boys . Having never done it before I should have been worried when their safety training simply involved asking if we all could swim. We were issued with a bright yellow Kayak which we carried down some steep steps and plonked in the river. After a wobbly embarkation we set off into the middle of the river where it suddenly struck me i had no idea which way we were meant to be going. Luckily Andy had asked for directions and he and Vanessa stormed of down stream with a purposeful and clearly well practiced stroke. We struck out for the centre of the placid, gently flowing Dordogne river and i allowed  my imagination to wander. I was Nathaniel of the Long Cararbine'  and Nicola my Cora as we fled the evil Magwa from The Last of The Mohicans.

At first the whole thing seemed a doddle and we fell into a perfectly timed steady rhythm which propelled us nicely along. Unfortunately, this lasted about two minutes as my over enthusiasm to escape Magwa caused me to paddle much harder than Nic resulting in us spinning completely around and heading back to whence we had come. We never really recovered from that point on and our teamwork and coordination fell apart like Man City's back four. We managed to turn a two hour 8km beginners jaunt into a fraught foul mouthed four hour 12 km zig-zag from bank to bank. At least twice i had to clamber knee deep into the muddy river bank to push us out of the Lilly pads amongst which we had beached. Nicola kept up an increasingly frantic and virulent diatribe of commands and demands,

"'Row on the left. Now."

"Not that hard"

'John, for God's sake stop paddling so hard'

"stop we're going in the wrong direction"

"Fishermen. Watch out for the Fisherman"

"Will you just fucking leave it to me!!!"

All the while we could see Andy and Vanessa drifting further and further from sight. Their laughter carrying on the gentle summer breeze mocked our ever more desperate efforts.  As we fought a life and death struggle to stay afloat with Nic calling out the stroke, 'Left, right, left ,right. LEFT, LEFT. I said left you idiot'  a bright orange vessel came alongside us with a young girl sat up front trailing her tiny hands in the warm waters whilst behind her, her Father lay on his back blowing smoke rings towards the clear blue skies every now and then casually dipping a paddle and pulling them past us with the greatest of ease.

Finally, as the sun began to fall towards the horizon we saw the jetty ahead of us and i pulled us strongly to the bank. As i did so Nic spotted Andy and Vanessa twenty yards further down stream and began to paddle madly towards them which only succeeded in driving us back across the river towards the opposite bank.

"What the fuck are you doing," I cried hysterically, "NIC. Will you just stop fucking paddling, PLEASE"

Taking control and ignoring the sobs coming from up front I paddled with all my might and steered us at top speed back to the bank where Andy and V  held out their hands to haul us in. In a moment of what i can only call wild relief and showing none of my customary gentlemanliness i jumped out of the boat leaving Nic behind only to go stumbling onto my backside in a humiliated heap.

" Never a fucking 'gain" I screamed. "Never in a million fucking years."

Neither Nic or I or indeed anyone spoke amidst the bristling tension which filled the transit van taking us back to the centre. I figured Andy and V's silence and refusal to look at us was due to their acute embarrassment at our inept performance on the water. I found our later they were too frightened  to speak or make eye contact in case one of us exploded with rage.

It was one of those experiences which has quickly entered the annals of family folklore and draws howls of laughter whenever Andy recounts the tale. Nic and i always laugh along  but i notice neither of us make eye contact during the telling. We are too busy strangling a curse and clenching our fist until the knuckles go white.

Happily the rest of the holiday saw no further traumatic events as Nic and I concentrated on obliterating the memory of that dreadful day by drinking huge amounts of Cote Du Rhone and playing Yahtzee.

So a word of warning. If you ever get invited to go Kayaking and you want to preserve the quality of your relationship with the one you love i suggest you feign illness or say you can't swim.

EE! Our John Goes to France 1

 

La Cle de Contact

Andy's VW camper is bright orange and nicknamed 'The Duke' in honour of a certain TV celebrity and bargain hunter of a similar hue. It's recently undergone somewhat of a transformation having had a respray, new wooden floor and rear seat belts installed. It did look fine when we loaded it up with 4 sets of luggage, 4 sleeping bags, 1 ice box. 1 small BBQ, 1 ghetto blaster, 2 fishing rods ,4 people and 1 tent(with poles) and set off from a drizzly Bury, bound for St.Emillion in SW France. 

    Things went smoothly on the journey down until we hit that great splodge of quicksand known as the M25 which sucked us into to a two hour battle to cross a mere 30 miles. We arrived in Dover with 15 minutes to spare before our ferry was due to leave only to be told by the kind lady at check-in that we were too late to board. She promptly gave us a yellow paper owl to stick in the front window of the van. I have no idea of the purpose of this Owl except to speculate that it was some kind of identifier so that other people would immediately be alerted to the fact that we were obviously bad folk , prone to tardiness, who could not be trusted and should be approached with extreme caution.

Two hours and £97 later we boarded a P&O ferry bound for Calais.

The crossing was smooth, quick and uneventful until we came to disembark. As we settled into our seats in the van and the ferry docked things suddenly took a major turn for the worse. Andy put the ignition key in the lock and turned it to start the engine only for the damned thing to snap leaving Andy with one half in his hand and the lodged deep inside the barrel of the lock.

"Shit, the fucking key's just snapped," ' he exclaimed, with a look somewhere between hysterical resignation and panic on his face.

" Use your spare."

" I can't. The other half of the key is stuck in the lock"

"Can you not fish it out " I ventured helpfully.

" I've got a hair clip if that helps" offered Vanessa

" I know why not put a magnet in the lock and the bottom half of the key will stick to it and then you can remove it from the lock." I sat back and waited for the inevitable pats on the back and cries of 'Brilliant! John. You genius.'

'Oh good idea. I'll just go and get my magnet from handbag' said Nic sarcastically.

I thought better of suggesting chewing gum and string.

Silence descended over 'The Duke' as the last vehicle drove off the ferry and the guy in the luminous waistcoat waved frantically in our direction. My  mind was beginning to work overtime imagining the possible scenarios that lay ahead. Would we be towed off and dumped in Calais or maybe we would be doomed to sit in this van going from Calais to Dover and back again ad infinitum. Whatever,the holiday was surely over before it had even begun.

But no! Andy somehow managing to dredge the very last ounce of inspiration from the Jackson family bodge it and bang it gene (its connected to the 'hoard it and store it'  gene by way of the 'if in doubt put some tape and an elastic band on it' gene) shoved his half of the key in the log and jiggled it about until the engine started and we raced out into the darkness of a French evening wondering how long before we stopped. 

Our journey continued with a muted air with everybody nervously wondering whether anything else would go wrong with poor old Duke. Andy adding fuel to our anxiety when he pointed out that the top half of the key would not stay in the lock and was resting on the dashboard and if in the unlikely event that the engine cut out the steering would automatically lock and he would have to quickly grab the half key and try to get it in the lock and start the engine whilst hurtling head long into the back of a German couple and their forty foot long caravan.

The Duke who rattled and cursed and threatend to implode when pushed even a fraction over 78mp chugged along at a steady 75 mph down through Paris and onto the A9 to Bordeaux drinking thirstily and demanding a rest every two hours. We pulled into one service station at about 3am and Andy filled the tank before parking alongside the shop. Nic and i clambered over our bags and tumbled out the side door to be hit with a strong smell of petrol, the source of which was soon apparent as a stream of liquid was pouring from the rear of the Duke.

"Is that petrol"

'' It smells like petrol"

"Its petrol"'

"What do we do now?"

Well we did exactly what all good English folk do when faced with a potential crisis. We went for a brew and tried hard to forget we even had  a van let alone one spewing petrol everywhere. After about thirty minutes and two strong espressos each  we tentatively ventured back outside with fingers crossed that the Duke had not exploded.

The leak had stopped and the petrol dissipated in the rain. Andy's guess was that there was a leak at the top of the petrol tank and he had probably filled it too high. We decided to continue our journey but i spent the next hour constatly looking ouit the back window for signs of leaks or flames. 

Well, luckily the Duke managed to soldier on through the remainder of the night rattling along the surprisingly busy Autoroute before finally emerging into a  glorious hot, sunny morning and depositing a tense, tired foursome in Domaine De Barbonne Campsite in St.Emillion.

Watch out for the next episode when i'll be telling you why the innocent pastime of Kayaking should be avoided at all cost if you want to keep your relationship healthy......

    

 

 

    

Scary Shoes

There was a parcel waiting for me in the green house when i came home from work on Friday evening. It was my new sandals from the Next Directory. I couldn't wait to try them on. They are frayed, blue, canvas kind of like an old pair of pumps with the toes and upper heels cut away to make open toed sandals.

These faux vintage flip flops were to form part of my new uniform for the summer. I had decided to reinvent myself as a maturing, bohemian, drop out. Other things on my list to buy included a tye-dye t-shirt, sarong, beaded necklace, ethnic friendship bracelet , a pair of faded cut away jeans and a man bag. (oh! and possibly a bit of dope ).

You see Nic's bother Andy has bought an old, orange, VW camper van and the four of us are heading off in it to the South of France on a camping holiday in August , hopefully without the mishaps of last year's sojourn to the Isle of Skye. As soon as he told us he had bought it i was having visions of giving up work, dropping out and traveling the world. Perhaps we could earn a little cash picking grapes in Italy, bananas in  Venezuela or forming a Scooby Doo tribute act in Florida. I'd be Shaggy of course.

A nice daydream I'm sure you would agree. There's just one problem though. I can't walk in these bleeding flip flops. They should come with an instruction book or a free two hour course at the local library. My big toes are the size and colour of bruised peaches and throb with pain from the constant stubbing against blunt objects such as the Coffee table, settee, Nicola, raised paving stones etc..

Every time i get to the top of the stairs i look back to see one sandal on the bottom step and the other a few steps higher. And coming down stairs is just plain scary. The first time i tried it i nearly broke my neck. The shoes seem to be moving about half the speed of my feet, they are playing constant catch up with me. I have to hang on to the hand rail and walk with long, slow strides as though  i was trying to hide the fact that i was drunk. No wonder the late sixties were seen as a time of Love and Peace. You couldn't possible commit a crime in this footwear. Well, maybe you could burgle a bungalow but you'd never be able to run away if chased and if it came to a fight you'd be more likely to hit a low flying bird with one of your shoes than be able to kick your assailant.

I daren't go out in them for fear i might leave one behind in the supermarket beer isle or tucked up against the fish finger section of the freezer and be followed out of the store by a horde of green fleeced Asda aces chasing after me waving it in the air and hailing me as the New Messiah.

No. Being a hippy is not for me it's far too dangerous and I've never been able to light the incense sticks properly either. No, I am going to invest in a white linen suit, a panama hat and a pair of sturdy tan brogues (and possibly some cigars) and perfect the look of the quintessential Englishman abroad. Now where can i find a mad dog.