Out to Lunch
29th October:
A very, erm, French day.
Our elderly Renault’s windscreen wipers refused to budge yesterday just as the heavens opened. We were far from home, and in what could be fairly called the middle of the middle of nowhere.
After initially honeyed words leading to threats of extreme corporal punishment and even torture had failed to move either our RenauIt or his blades, I said to my wife how annoying it was that windscreen wipers always break down when it is raining.
With a deep sigh, she explained as if to a child that, in the same way as misdialled telephone numbers appear never to be engaged, normal motorists usually only try to use their wipers when it is raining, which is why it is then they discover a problem.
I do not know if you have ever tried to drive in heavy rain without windscreen wipers, but in case not, here are a couple of important tips, the first and last being the most important:
- Don’t do it.
- If you must, drive very, very slowly.
- Do not ask the person sitting next to you to help navigate, or ructions, violence or divorce is likely to follow.
- Don’t allow your wipers to cease to function in France.
One of the 873 (and counting) most annoying things about French drivers for me is their contradictory attitudes to driving in wet weather. If there is so much as a cloud passing across the sun, all French drivers will switch their lights on. At the first drop of rain, they will turn their headlights to full beam, and switch on all fog lamps and spotlights and searchlights which may be mounted on their vehicles for the purpose of looking butch and blinding oncoming drivers.
Now here’s the really amazing and infuriating bit:
Having totally overreacted to the conditions, they will proceed to drive even more insanely than before.
Indeed, the lunacy of their actions will relate directly to how bad those conditions are. The wetter the road becomes, the closer the average French driver will come to your back bumper, as if seeking comfort and company in the inclement conditions. Also, the faster he or she will take corners and bends awash with more surface water than you will find gushing down the biggest, baddest flume at AltonTowers. But from their perspective, their lights are on and blazing, so all is well and they are secure in the knowledge that they are acting like responsible road users.
Given that prior knowledge, I suppose it was extremely irresponsible of me to try to drive home without windscreen wipers. Especially on an expressway. It was not until we entered the N147 that I realised that the faster one drives without the wipers on, the more blurred the screen becomes. I also forgot the way the French motorist’s mind works, and the first giant euro-lorry loomed in my rear mirror within minutes of our speed dropping under 90kph.
I still do not know how we saw the escape route reserved for lorry drivers whose brakes fail, but we did and I took it. A bonnet full of sand was better than a juggernaught in the boot.
*
Next day, we arranged for the car and us to be taken to the garage where we bought it. The manager was most sympathetic, and invited us to take a complimentary coffee while his top windscreen wiper man investigated. Within an hour, the manager returned to say that the wiper motor was kaput, but it would not take long to fit a new one as we had been put into the priority lane.
The American writer and philanthropist Gertrude Stein spent much of her life in Paris and counted Matisse and Picasso as chums. In one of her pithy critiques, she acknowledged that France had scientific methods, machines and electricity aplenty, but claimed most French people did not really believe in these things. For them, the real business of living was about tradition and human nature. In that and even after all the intervening years and technological advances in France, Ms Stein and I are as one.
It was another two hours before our windscreen ace arrived to say there was (surprise, surprise) a small problem. He had not thought to ask earlier, but it now transpired that the store was bereft of windscreen wiper blades. As he spoke, I noticed he was pulling on his coat, and that what seems the entire staff of the garage and showrooms were flooding from the building. At first I thought from their concerned expressions that there was a bomb scare, then looked at my wrist and saw it was a minute to noon. The concerned expressions were because they might be late for lunch.
As we sat like the band on the Titanic, the manager was the last to abandon ship, shouting over his shoulder that the car would be ready by Monday, but there was no problem for us, as Martine would organise us a hire car for the weekend. When I asked where Martine could be found, he looked at me as if I was mad, pointed at his watch and said she would be back from her lunch at 2.30pm. Precisely. Obviously, we would have made arrangements for our lunch.
With that he was gone, leaving us in charge of around ten million euros- worth of new and used cars, the keys for which were conveniently dangling from a giant board near the (open) automatic doors to the workshop.
A despairing call to a French friend’s mobile revealed that he had been on his way to lunch, but would come and pick us up. Nobody should suffer the cruel and unnatural punishment of going without their lunch, no matter how responsible they were for a lack of foresight and planning.
An hour later and we were racing down a highway, desperately seeking sustenance before the witching hour of 2pm. Our chauffeur was not familiar with that part of town, and things were looking grim. Then, just as I was about to suggest a singalong to keep our spirits up or picking straws to see who amongst us would make the ultimate sacrifice and become lunch, my wife spotted the magic sign of the crossed knife and fork. Within minutes we were parked, in through the door and seated with another hundred diners, all well into their meals.
In the way that these things happen to us in France, serendipity had come into full play. Not only had we chanced upon a much-respected ouvrier (cheap lunch) restaurant, but it was owned and run by someone we knew. We regularly take our dog for walks around a lake near our mountain home, and in summertime our host runs a busy creperie on the shore. As he explained, he had one business for the good weather, and one for the bad. As Donella pointed out while we attacked the first of four courses for less than a tenner a head, it also appeared that the boss had a new wife. The lady who had served us and been given an affectionate squeeze in passing was not, she said, the same woman whose waist the owner had regularly encircled at the creperie during the summer.
When my wife asked our French friend’s opinion. he looked surprised that she was surprised, and neglected his fillet of coley fish in cream and white wine sauce long enough to give a puzzled Gallic shrug. It was, he opined, obvious. The owner had the more svelte lady of the lake for summertime, and the larger lady of the town for when the winter winds blew.
What could be a more sensible working and living arrangement than that...?