Sales

Drive in the rain, shop, drive in the rain, shop some more, drive in the rain, pick up a few more bargains. Today was every boy's dream of heaven.

Not.

We managed to stretch out 450 kilometres to ten or so hours, but to be fair, we've almost finished our major purchases. That is good, because we are rather concerned about how little money we seem to have left and we haven't been gone two weeks yet! It's all been very much on budget though, and we've been a bit lucky to have arrived at a time when the summer holidays have just begun, and every major store has sale signs which seem to leap out and drag us in.

We pick up our bikes tomorrow, and do some grocery shopping, pick up some hardware, then return the car which has been our umbilical cord to some extent.

Did I mention the vacuum cleaner bargain? It will go in the same locker as the sewing machine and iron, and anything else that needs electricity to make it work.

The sewing machine did cause some consternation among some of our French friends though. They were very agreeable when they knew it was a Singer: "Sonn-zjay" as they pronounced it, telling us it was a very old French Company.

"Non" said I, it is American and it's pronounced "Sing-er".

Thanks to the miracle of the modern Wikepedia, we were soon able to show that the Singer Factory in Europe was very old, and very important to the corporation, and yes indeed, good old Isaac Singer did open his second factory in France in 18-something, but indeed he was as is his corporation, sadly, American.

For a time, I really wanted them to be right, I think our "Sonn-zjay" did too.