Nothing says "Lets overcome cabin fever" on a drizzly day more than a road trip, and it wasn't terribly difficult to devise an entirely suitable circuit, which would take us home to Lagarde for Sunday lunch at Restaurant PK209, dessert in downtown Metz and back to Nancy in time for tea with Ron and Robin who had very conveniently arrived a few days before we did and held the adjoining spot so we could be neighbours not for the first time this year.
The plan went swimmingly until it was time to take leave of the restaurant, and May, bless her asked if would be kind enough to ask the waiter if she could buy two of the little pirate decorations that she had noted were accompanying children's sundaes. The French language holds few mysteries for us now, apart from the one big one about how on earth one goes about communicating in it, we are very comfortable with it.
So I rose to the occasion, and believe that for the first time I may even have dropped a verb into the sentence, although it may not have actually been a useful one if the puzzled look on the waiter's face is to be used as a gauge. Oh to heck with it I thought, and covered one eye, madly waving my make-believe sword under his nose while shouting "AArrrrh, Arrr!"
I suspect it's a sad reflection on my language skills, that he understood perfectly and gave the toys to us presumably in recognition of my performance. He must have phoned Metz as well because when we arrived there was a parade with bands and clowns and floral floats presumably in our honour, or was it part of the Mirabelle festival, we couldn't be sure.
We couldn't leave Metz without dessert of course, although it didn't come with pirates, nor popping into the cathedral just to remind ourselves that people in this country have been been apparently speaking to one another with no difficulty for thousands of years. Surely one can't bluff and mime one's way through the construction of an entire cathedral?
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