Just back from a week in
Nowhere-in-France. It’s received wisdom
that everywhere in France has its own microclimate. At least, that’s what just
about any Brit living in France will tell you. It’s like a sort of competition.
It just takes one person to say “ooh, we’re eating on the terrace in 28 degrees
and it’s only February 3rd!” and suddenly they’re all at it…”It’s 40
degrees here, we’re all in swimwear and the rest of Europe is snowbound, but of
course, we have our own microclimate…” Well, last week we came out quite well
in the competitive microclimate contest, with almost none of the predicted
rainfall. Good for us, but not for the general wellbeing of the surrounding
countryside. It IS amazing, though, that
you could drive 100 metres in any direction away from our house and find that
suddenly it was raining – or conversely, that it was raining chez nous but
sunny in the next hamlet.
Anyway, it wasn’t just
the weather that was up and down. So was fortune. I had my first French car
accident. A woman in one of those Toyota 4 x 4’s that looks like a total
eclipse on wheels executed an overtaking manoeuvre on an empty road, and
managed to practically sever my wing mirror from the car. I had to give chase
for a good few Km at speeds I normally only travel on motorways, all the while
flashing my lights at her, before she finally pulled over. Ironically, the
place she chose to come to a stop was right outside the cemetery. Considering I
was the one whose car got damaged, she was almost apoplectic with rage,
accusing me of just about everything from deliberately swerving into her..(er…hello?)
to not pulling over to give her room (on an empty road where I was already on
the correct side of the road and she could have got TWO of her
total-eclipses-on-wheels past me without scratching the paintwork: if she’d
really tried), finally tailing off into accusing me of making her late for
work! By the following day, when we had
a rematch to sort out the insurance claim, she’d had a personality transplant,
and agreed to pay for the damage to my car without claiming on the insurance.
Good call.
Over the Easter
weekend, we took a little drive up the road to the coast. It was a bit windy,
but otherwise a glorious day, and we took a route which allowed us to bypass some
of the local sights which always make me smile: the roundabouts. I don’t know why, or how it started, but
France seems to excel at creating fantastic, interesting, clever traffic
roundabouts. Given my experience above, and the general quality of some of the
driving, I’m not sure I should be applauding this inventiveness: it can only
serve to distract drivers from what they should be doing. However, I do love the roundabouts around our
coastal resorts, and it’s fun to tell people that they should “Carry straight
on at the massive boy pulling the little boat”, or “take the second exit at the
big paper boats” or “go past the giant fir cones and bricks”.
Have a look:
Oh. I LOVE the roundabouts, CB! None like that in our neck of the woods last year and somehow I doubt I'll find any this year either, but it would be fun. :-) I go for the giant hands!!
ReplyDeleteI love them all, Perpetua! The pictures above are just a small selection: there are also giant books, half-scale little fishing cabanes with nets, big wine presses....even the plain ol' floral ones are really special, with little Japanese gardens complete with tiny bridges, or "deserts" with grasses and aloe vera. The giant hands are, as you can probably guess, at the start of the road past the oyster beds!
DeleteAren't those roundabouts fun!
ReplyDeleteNone near me, unfortunately, though there were villages whose turn off from the main road was marked by enormous wine bottles...
I wonder if the reason that your lady was happy to settle without making a claim was that she had had previous close encounters...
Amazing how producing the constat takes the wind out of some hefty sails.
They're great, aren't they! I think we have more than our fair share around there, but there's the odd one elsewhere in France.
DeleteI have a feeling that my lady (although it's a bit of a misnomer, given her interesting and colourful use of her native language) probably does have some "previous". And I have a protected "malus" for the first accident. So I wasn't too worried about filling in the constat. It is curious, though, how she was almost apoplectic when I finally got her to stop. I was quite worried for her..I'm not sure what the protocol is if someone explodes in front of you.Does one dial 15 and let the SAMU deal with it?
Call the anti terrorist police....but they may be some time in arriving if you are in la France Profonde...
DeleteSnigger...Still, as I said before, it all happened in just the right spot: slap bang outside the cemetery.
ReplyDeleteHello:
ReplyDeleteWe have happened upon your most engaging blog through Perpetua and have so enjoyed, as clearly have others, these amazing roundabouts which are, indeed, great fun. Alas, here in Hungary we have nothing similar and any attempt at landscaping is, more often than not, a complete disaster.
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Kellemes hétvégét!
Wow! Hello Jane and Lance and thanks so much for reading and commenting. The local roundabouts near us in France are a real feature of the area and always bring a smile to my face, and I'm glad you liked them, too.
DeleteKöszönöm!
You really should write a book you know...
ReplyDeleteI laugh out loud at some of your antics.
I don't have the patience to write a book, Sidonay! And I suspect my ramblings would probably peter out after only a few pages! Still, glad I made you laugh! Sometimes all I can do is laugh at these situations: it's not worth getting worked up. Now, if only I could have persuaded the other driver of that....;-)
Delete