No Ticket, No Shade & No Swimming

I have a few things to cover in this post; Firstly the heatwave! Like much of Europe, for the past 2 weeks, we have experienced very high temperatures, blue skies and sunshine. Our Provençal farmhouse has very thick stone walls so despite the heat outside, it remains surprisingly cool inside, without the need for aircon which is wonderful. The owner of our property was here for two weeks to do some maintenance which honestly was a bit awkward but we got through it. While he was here, he put up fly screens which is quite unusual to see in French farmhouses. Unfortunately some of his efforts were in vain - it has been so hot that the fly screen adhesive appears to have melted and the mesh is peeling away from the frames.

Our youngest daughter has enjoyed the heatwave as she has been here for her half term holiday. I am now completely au fait with all the airports around here, having now done pick ups and drop offs in Marseille, Montpellier and Nimes. And in the process, I have also become very familiar with the péage system - possibly a little too familiar. I now have my approach to the booths down to a fine art - I can get my car wing mirror to almost skim the machine so that I can nonchalantly put out my arm at the payment booth rather than needing to clamber out like an orangutan to try and reach for the ticket. Although.....on one of the airport runs I did have a slight mishap.

At the beginning of the péage, I pulled into the ticket lane, flopped my arm out of the car and... no ticket appeared.

At the same time I saw the barrier go up for me to leave. Puzzled and slightly conscious of the queue building behind me, I drove through.

But then I began to worry. If I have no ticket, what happens at the other end when I have to pay? I continued driving, all the while imagining increasingly embarrassing outcomes, and eventually decided to pull off the motorway into a service station so I could Google what to do.

ChatGPT reassured me that I had done nothing wrong. Is anyone else getting a bit fed up with ChatGPT being so relentlessly supportive? Clearly I had done something idiotic. I was perfectly happy to own that. I just wanted to know how much trouble I was in. That said, it was reassuring to know that I wouldn't be thrown in jail or fined or something similar.

At the end of the péage, as I left the freeway near my home, I slunk up to the booth and pressed the button to speak to someone. In my best French (!) I explained that I accidentally didn't have a ticket and that I had joined the freeway in Marseille. An amount flashed up on the screen which was the normal price I would have paid anyway. I paid it and drove through without any cars behind me getting impatient (which is what I was most worried about) – almost as if nothing had happened. Phew!

I also have a few wildlife moments to recount:

Yesterday, I saw a man in the vineyards with a horse. The horse was attached to an old-fashioned plough and they were walking together through the vines... in 35-degree heat. I half expected to find the pair of them passed out when I came back through.

I have also seen my first wild boar. Unfortunately he was dead, so possibly the description of "wild" is not entirely appropriate.

We were walking our dogs one evening when we saw a brown lump on the pathway.

My daughter said she thought it was an animal.

I said, "Oh well, it could be a big log."

(See, I can't help it. Better-feeling thought.)

My daughter replied, "But Mum, it has fur and a tail."

OK, so my eyesight is maybe not as sharp as it used to be…

It is boar hunting season at the moment so there are warnings not to let your dogs out in the forest in case they are mistaken for a boar. I can only imagine that was the fate of this poor chap, although I have no idea why he had been left there on the path. By the next day he was gone, leaving only a messy dark patch covered in flies.

Last Monday my partner and I decided to visit the Gorges Du Gardon which is meant to be very beautiful. It is essentially a canyon carved out by the river Gardon. We made a packed lunch, loaded up with water and sunscreen and headed out. I had assumed that walking along the river would be nice and shady on a hot day. I was wrong. It was stinking hot and there was almost no shade anywhere. We kept walking along thinking that there would be a nice shady spot to stop for lunch just around the next corner, but after several corners and no sign of shade, we decided to stop anyway. My partner immediately decided to go for a swim in the river. I was more hesitant. The day before we had been at L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and had dangled our feet in the river there. It was freezing cold to the point where you actually thought your foot might drop off if you left it in too long.

I am not good with the cold and I frequently describe myself as a lizard which I have realised can be a little disconcerting for some of my clients.....but I just mean that I don’t function well at temperatures under about 20 degrees.

So I watched my partner go into the water - saying as he did so ‘you can take a photo of me if you like’ I took off my shoes and socks, dangled my feet in the river and got my phone out to take the picture.

Now, it should be known that 99% of the photos on our family icloud account have not been taken by me. One, because I am not good at taking photos and two because I just never think to do so. I have never been the Mum at school taking a million pictures of my kids and videoing their concerts, preferring instead to just be in the moment. I have been known to be a little irritated by the parents who show up to the school concert and put their phone out for the whole thing, right in your line of sight. Or, even worse, the ones who show up with the all singing all dancing HUGE digital SLR camera AND a tripod that they stick right in front of you.....what the????

I digress,…so I took a very bad photo.....all river and a tiny dot in the middle that is my partner. I then got up to sit under a postage stamp sized spot of shade under a very small tree branch. I commenced eating my sandwich as my partner came out of the water saying ’it’s really nice in there, you should go in’ (He always says that, I almost never take his advice).

I looked out to the water and contemplated whether I might brave it and go in. As I did so, I saw something right where I had been dangling my feet earlier.

I almost spat out my sandwich and began making involuntary prehistoric noises.

My partner looked up, concerned.

"What? What?"

I grunted again and pointed.

"What? Where?"

Right where I was pointing was a snake... in the water.

As if addressing a toddler, my partner said:

"Some words would have been good."

They say you're either a snake person or a spider person. I am most definitely in the spider camp.

What's surprising to me is that my kids are all absolutely petrified of spiders. The kids have never seen me or their Dad react to a spider in the way that they do. I will catch spiders in the house and put them outside. If I am not there to stop them, any of my girls will unleash an entire can of Mortein on a poor unsuspecting Huntsman while dancing around and screaming the house down.

I have contemplated whether it could be because of their childhood nanny, who, having dried her washing on the line, proceeded to wear her clean clothes the next day and was afflicted by a shocking pain in the crotch. She went to the emergency department and was told she had been bitten by a spider who was minding his own business in her underpants.

I'm on the spider's side of that one. Imagine the shock for him?

So I am good with spiders but not with snakes. I was not expecting to see a snake in France... and certainly not a water snake. In my mind, all snakes are potential deadly assassins. Reality may differ, but that's not really the point.

When we went to investigate further, there were another two of them wriggling around. OK, they were baby ones, but still...

I was definitely not getting in the water after that.

And, interestingly, my partner did not go back in either (!)

So that’s about it for this post except to say, if you read my 1 Euro car reservation post, you might be amused to hear that the 1 Euro was refunded to my account last week because I didn’t buy the car that wasn’t available and possibly never existed. At least they held to their promise of the refund.

À bientôt!