French leave

Bonjour!  Greetings from the sunshine of Southern France.  No sooner had we decanted ourselves from Ardmore Park into our new place in Singapore than we hopped on a plane (well two different planes, actually, but that's another story) to head off for an extended stay in France.  I'd like to say we were tempted to stay and clear up everything from the move before we left - but that would be a lie; it was wonderful to leave it behind, even though it will still be there to come back to. But hey, we'll probably have forgotten that we ever had half the stuff in the first place and feel able to give it all away.


We took Lola with us - her first time ever in a plane and I'm happy to say she is now a fully fledged intercontinental dog.  In fact, she did much better on the flight than we did, as both Chris and I touched down with horrible colds, which seems to happen every time we fly.  It's got so bad that we actually explored the option of returning to Singapore by boat, which is doable, but it would take a month and I'm afraid we'd both be stir crazy by then.


The journey from Paris was quite an adventure, starting with finding each other at Charles de Gaulle airport.  Chris and Lola got in first, so I had to find them when my plane landed an hour or so later.  No problem in principle - I knew where they were and it would all have been pretty straightforward apart from the fact that I had four pieces of luggage, plus a handbag.  No issue while I was able to manhandle the cases (Samsonite Cosmolite in red, in case you're interested)  on to a trolley and wheel them around, but a teensy bit more difficult (given that I'm  not an octopus) when I reached the point beyond which trolleys were not permitted and had to hand wheel all four of them onto and off the escalator and into the airport shuttle train and off again.  Ah well, it all supports my emerging philosophy of a simpler life.......

So we found each other, I gave the lovely Chris and the equally lovely Lola a big kiss (no tongues for Lola, though) and we set off to pick up the car.  All was going really well until we discovered that the car they gave us was a different model than the one we had ordered and had a smaller boot (remember what I said about my four cases?), but we managed to pack it all in, including Lola's air transport crate, with barely a centimetre to spare and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves until we discovered that the satnav spoke Portuguese.  Now, I have no problem with Portugal - lovely country and Lisbon is one of my favourite cities - and had the satnav been fluent in other languages as well, I'd have been delighted about the Portuguese thing.  However, this satnav was no polyglot and insisted on speaking to us in Portuguese and Portuguese only until we had the lassie from the car hire desk give it a stiff talking to and sort it out.  


One of the reasons for getting a car with satnav was to enable us to drive to Limoux without having to go though Paris.  Alas, we did not get our wish.  Perhaps the system was a bit miffed with us and decided to get its own back by abusing our trust in its abilities, but in any case, we ended up on the inner ring road, driving through roadworks for the new tram system and generally getting quite grumpy.  As soon as we were on the way south though, things improved and we made trip in really good time and, amazingly, on one tank of petrol!  We were home in time for dinner - a gorgeous Cavaillon melon with Serrano ham, prawns with remoulade sauce and a spot of salad and cheese.  Yum.


Lola took to her new surroundings like a duck to water and just loves the freedom of being off the leash and able to rove around the garden and the olive grove.  She has a new bed, red with white polkadots - very chic - and seems to love going up and down the stairs, two at a time.  She did give us a real fright on our second day though.  We were sitting at lunch; Lola was beside us, an then she wasn't.  No answer when we called her name.  Panic ensued.  I ran off to explore the garden and down the drive while Chris sped off in the car to look further afield.  I caught sight of her just as I reached the bottom of the drive, trotting up the road towards  me, perfectly happy.  Big sighs of relief all round. 


A bientot.