Fading Memories
Legends from our own lunchtimes
Friday, July 01, 2022
The Joy of Paperwork Thursday 30th June - Diksmuide
Thursday, June 30, 2022
Reunited Wednesday 29th June - Diksmuide
When Thijs sent us this photo yesterday recording the moment that our “Joyeux” was reunited with water it triggered a series of irrational emotions.
The first was a distinct sense of urgency for us to get aboard, something we’d either not felt or was deeply repressed for the past several years. The other was as it turned out, a false hope that after three years idly resting in a shed, she would be in as tidy condition as the day we left her.
What a grubby little thing she was too, despite first appearances, but she seemed happy to see us. When Davy, (the technician who’d been charged with making sure everything that was supposed to move did, and everything that was supposed to be bolted in place was), fired her up for the first time in three years, one could almost swear she was trying to wag her stern.
There’s nothing particularly exciting about cleaning a boat that has been stored for several years, nor anything glamorous about moving aboard that same boat without access to potable water while undertaking those tasks, yet I may have written about it endlessly had Dave and Ria not turned up, to distract us for the rest of the evening and to save you, dear reader, from that particular pain!
As one pair of gates closes.. Tuesday 28th June - Saint-Pierre-Sur-Dives to Diksmuide
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Monday is Market Day Monday 27th June - Saint-Pierre-Sur-Dives
A walk in the garden Sunday 26th June - Saint-Pierre-Sur-Dives
There’s no better way of spending a Sunday in France than going for a gentle drive in the countryside, having a large-ish lunch and following it all up with a gentle walk in one of our favourite gardens in the entire world.
Last time we visited the Jardins du Pays d’Auge we spent the rest of that evening filled with adrenalin soaked inspiration frantically sketching planting plans for our own back yard, as well as for Maggie and Jacques.
On our return home we just as furtively put that plan into place complete with winding timber pathways.
It really feels as though we were only here yesterday, so the realisation that the planting we did after that visit has now been aggressively thinned to make way for (although we didn’t know it at the time) some more inspired work when we return, is a little disorienting in a timeline sense.
Chez Maggie is even more puzzling in that regard. In the instant that we’ve been away it has been transformed from “project suit handyman” to in the words that Kevin Mcleod might use, “something of a triumph”.
Perhaps we need to start reporting time in the same way we do weather -
Time away: - Three years
Feels like - Yesterday
Sunday, June 26, 2022
A Mating Pair Saturday 25th June - Saint-Pierre-Sur-Dives
It’s a bit hard to tell whether it’s been jetlag or a hypnotic fascination with the whereabouts of my bag that have kept me up at night. Whatever the reason I can report that it arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle yesterday, moved from the international terminal to the domestic one and then to a freight terminal all before bedtime.
By bedtime it was barely 280 km away, disappointingly by 2:00 with half that distance to go, activity ceased but sometime between then and 6:00 there were only 45 kilometres separating me and my razor.
May I suggest that if you show even the tiniest symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, it would be a great idea NOT to put a tracker in your luggage?
Clean shaven, bleary-eyed, but with a fresh shirt that actually fitted, there was nothing left to do but to leave our bags to be reacquainted while we toddled off for a long and very convivial celebratory lunch.
Saturday, June 25, 2022
A shave! Friday 24th June - Saint-Pierre-Sur-Dives
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