And so to bed

It's already a long way into tomorrow in a day that went faster than our TGV Express to Paris.

We slept unsoundly on our last night on the boat, the church bells woke us as usual at six and we went back to sleep as usual till eight, missing as usual the seven o'clock call to start work. By eight of course we had five hours left till the taxi arrived and six hours worth of stuff to do, so we thought we'd work out how to go about it over a leisurely breakfast.

Helen and Chris popped by for a quick goodbye, and Rudolph and Karin didn't want to hold us up as they were going through the same process, but we really hadn't made too much of a dent in anything by smoko.  Perhaps we thought we could change in our methodology to something which didn't involve entertaining visitors.

We'd almost come up with a plan when Maggie and Jacques arrived having just picked up the keys to their soon to be new but for the moment very crumbling ancient barn and house and wondering if we'd be interested in a quick squizz, which we thought given our now desperate situation was an absolutely splendid idea. By the time we got back it was time for coffee and for reasons which we couldn't explain, the amount of work left to do seemed to be about the same as it was last night yet the amount of time left to do it in was contracting at a nearly alarming rate.

So we had lunch.

To heck with it, it's our last day cruising for the year!

We did leave on time, our boat tidy, our friends farewelled, our town quietly going about it's lack of business, our neighbourhood deathly Sunday silent, and ourselves with a strange sense of leaving our home, rather than setting off back to it.

Once over the hill we were time travelling again, a well-worn path to a welcome back in Orleans, back in "our" room as though we'd never left. When we arrived we had five hours till midnight and six hours worth of stuff to catch up on, or make that seven.

And so to bed. There will be no church bells to wake us in the morning, and work to do, and after all we have till Thursday to get it done.