Bec – August 2011

What an interesting day!! If I wasn’t so totally relaxed I don’t think my control freak nature would have quite coped with it.

It all started with an early morning wake up call from my husband – early being 8am (early for us at the moment) and a mad rush to get dressed, eat breakfast, make sandwiches and herd three children and one husband out the door to head off for our trip to Grotte La Cocaliere (one of the 3 most beautiful caves in France).

We were on time, the children were in agreeable moods, and we were genuinely excited by the prospect of spending a large quantity of time underground in 14 degree surroundings, compared to the 38 degrees above ground.

Got to the parking lot where the three day old Renault Espace lives, find the space where it is located, press the remote …..and nothing….yes….nothing. No unlocking, no lights, no action what so ever. NOT HAPPY JAN!!!

The new car comes complete with a space age flat card key that doesn’t even need to be put into the ignition…it just needs to be in the vicinity of the vehicle…all this technology blows my mind……but when it doesn’t work it just blows!!

Thankfully we have a 24hr rescue line and we were told in broken english that I would be serviced by the automobile man in 1 hour… (I wondered if I should tell Jamie!!!!)

Turns out, more shenanigans were about to happen. They seem to follow me….or maybe I invite them….either way….they certainly make for some good stories!

I waited for my automobile man to service me….and I finally saw a tow truck coming around the corner. He saw me…I saw him and I waved. I went over and said thank you so much for coming to help me and that he could park on the top level as his truck was too big to fit into the car park (all this in very broken french). He was very friendly…told me in broken english to join him in the cabin and we drove off to go round the one-way village road and head back towards the car park. There was quite a bit of traffic and the round trip probably took about twenty minutes. When we arrived he said that he was impressed I drove a motorbike.

MERD! A motorbike…NO an automobile I say…no a motorbike..and he shows me his paperwork with someone else’s name on top. My conversational French dictionary just didn’t cover this situation and I scrambled to think of the words. All I could get out is “Tu est pour moi?” (are you for me?) and his reply was “J’ai regrette tu n’est pas pour moi” (I wish you were for me!!). Time to back out of this one…so with as many Pardons as I could fit into a second I scrambled off back to the street corner to wait for MY tow truck driver.

He did arrive……and of course he did not speak any English……..now I don’t speak ‘Mechanic language’….. not even in my native tongue ……so there was NO chance in French….. I decided I would resign myself to play the damsel in distress act and that seemed to work just fine for me and him.

The car was ‘Mal’ – not working properly – so it has been taken away to be fixed and it shall return tomorrow after lunch.

The caves will have to wait until next week. The boys were terrified that they would miss them…but we assured them that they had been there since prehistoric times… and chances are, they would still be there in seven days.

I have learnt my lesson and I MUST get a better dictionary and upgrade my french. Jamie on the other hand thinks it is quite hysterical that his wife, who loves to have a go at speaking languages, comes home with these wonderful stories due to crossed wires.

I think we should just chalk it up to one of those interesting days…I mean it could really happen to anyone…