Cruising

Without car, we had no excuse for not getting stuck into all the little jobs that need starting, but on a gloriously sunny spring Saturday it didn't take very long at all for us to work out that we don't actually need an excuse and in any case we are badly out of practice at this doing nothing caper.

So it was decided that with ice in the brand new fridge, even if it remains for now dependant on shore power, we would take our first tentative steps into sinking into a sensible routine for summer.

We weren't alone of course, with the advent of the weekend came a small number of boat owners each as intent as were we in making a dent in his own little list of "things to do". But the sun combines with water and boats to create some sort of sedative and it was not long before the sounds of scraping and cleaning were replaced by the sounds of reading or snoozing quietly in the shade, interspersed by the occasional click of a top being removed from a bottle.

Even those whose boats were still on their winter hardstand were undeterred.

When he arrived to pick us up after returning the rental car, Gerard our Taxi chap welcomed us with open arms, like siblings, or perhaps as the benefactors who had provided his entire family through winter.

It was our departure last year that tipped the balance we think. It is a little known fact that Taxis meters here tick over at a double-plus-a-bit multiplier on a Sunday. This is probably little known because on a Sunday any Frenchman worth his salt is resting quietly with his elbows on a table laden with food, and there is simply no thought to moving further away than the kitchen or cellar, and therefore no opportunity to test nor desire to discuss the economics of Taxi travel.

By some quirk of fate many months before we had booked a train on that date,without regard to the day of the week on which it may fall and this one fell on Sunday.

We had aside a small amount of cash, enough for the fare and uncharacteristically, a small tip (the tip being uncharacteristic rather than the size of it), with perhaps enough left for an even smaller coffee en route.

We squirmed in our seats as we watched first the fare, then the tip, and finally the coffee dissolve before half the journey's distance was done.

Nothing is too much trouble for Gerard though, and he cheerfully led us on a grand detour past every "Sorry we're closed on Sunday" ATM, kindly waiting while we tried a couple of others which lethargically refused to take our card, humming all the while in time with the ticking meter.

By journey's end both parties had I suspect achieved something of a personal best. The twenty five kilometres had cost just a whisker less than 4€ per kilometer, and Gerard's children and grandchildren would not want for anything over winter.

All of this is to record that today we are once again without car, happily confined again to life aboard.

Preparations

Yesterday we drove to Ikea in Metz. We quite like it there, but we like the drive better, so much that we did it again today. Sixty kilometres through rolling countryside, flowering trees and fields of rape glowing bright yellow, in perfect twenty something degree sunshine, and the car goes back tomorrow so it was going to be our last chance to buy something in a flat pack for a time.

We've been thinking about our plans, and how a month in Paris seemed such a good idea, and how easily we took the decision this morning to abandon the journey west for this year. We have a window of opportunity you see, to upgrade the electrics at the end of this month, and doesn't the long suffering Michel look happy at the thought that he may not have to rescue us again. More importantly we should end up with years of trouble free service if all goes according to plan, so Paris can wait.

We turned off life support for the fridge this evening, grateful for the fact that we were able to wring another year out of it anyway, and while its passing was not unexpected, the battery charger we bought last year to get us by, and nearly didn't bring with us is now a barely adequate doorstop, awaiting the manufacturer's replacement to arrive.

It seems that in Lagarde our amazing luck continues to hold; if something is going to break, for completely inexplicable reasons, it does so in port, where help is cheerfully at hand.

Meanwhile outside, the trees continue to grow leaves and drop flowers and the grass remains greener than green, and tomorrow we buy tins of tuna and cassoulet and jars of pickles and fresh baguette, enough for a week with no fridge, and when we think the time is right, we will quietly slip away.

We will be alone on the river, and that's got to be worth not going to Ikea for.

For the past three years we've watched the boating season coming to an end.

Slowly the numbers of boats on the water diminishes as each finds it's own particular burrow in which to hibernate for winter. At that time the harbour is a hive of activity, slowly filling beyond capacity with a sort of sleepy buzz as people go about applying covers and taking home the remnants of their summer aboard.

Now, as the leaves are arriving on the trees, the harbour is stirring, but ever so slowly.

We were the first to take up residence for the new season, the first to remove the covers and give the boat it's scrub for summer. Those who remained for the winter see us as another sign their ordeal is over. On Friday we shall all celebrate. The canal is still closed at Nancy and the complete absence of traffic exaggerates the stillness. About a third of the hire fleet is still ashore, and the team are busy with the steam cleaners.

We've made a list of things to make and do too. The fridge has coughed and spluttered and wheezed and told us it's time. We've got the new upholstery in place and will one day come to terms with the colour, the bed is back where it belongs until we work out how to replace it.

I suppose we should get on with it, but the sunset through the trees on the opposite bank looks for all the world like purple lace and at the pace we are moving it may take quite some time to actually do anything at all.

We really are back!

We dined last evening on baguette and cheese and rabbit terrine and drank the juice of freshly crushed apples with strawberries the size of for want of a better description, big strawberries, for dessert and then collapsed at seven, unable to stay awake a moment longer, grateful that we had elected not to dine in the motel restaurant.

We woke of course, not entirely refreshed, a little after one, and wondered why they just couldn't move France closer to home. By five we had nodded off again until a much more sensible hour had arrived, waking to our first day in a "proper" spring.

When it all boils down spring seems to be just lots of lovely green shoots and every tree covered in flowers and petals falling from the sky, paving the roads in pink, and we think we like it. When the time came to move once more, we headed west instead of east and drove in a big loop to Lagarde, breathing in the countryside as we did, trying at once to linger in the scene for as long as possible while anxious to arrive. We could have driven through it all day, but we had things to do, people to see.

Again that feeling of not having left enveloped us, and we had coffee with Jacques and Maggie, and tea with Chris and Helen, and coffee with Bill and they told us of winter and wondered how it was that it seemed like yesterday that we had left, and we told them how much we had to do to unpack and clean the boat and how we must get going, but we didn't.

We had planned to do quite a lot yesterday actually.

Now we plan to do it today, or perhaps tomorrow, or maybe next week.

It's good to be back!

Perhaps it's the jetlag, coupled with the cleaning and moving-house lag, but we are distinctly confused by the impression that time has stood still in our absence.  Just as when we arrived home last year, we were uncertain of whether we had really been in Europe, now we can find no evidence that we ever left.

Strangely when we arrived in Luneville this afternoon, it too felt like home, even though we are as yet a day and thirty kilometres from the boat.  It was the  baguettes we were served at the two am "dinner" en route that triggered the feeling that not only were we back, but that nothing could possibly go wrong, and even if it did we had made no plans so how would we know?

In Paris despite our fuzziness, we fluked a succession of flawlessly timed transportation interchanges, which allowed us to avoid a three hour wait in a cosy cafe in Paris, and allowed a one hour wait in a cosy cafe in Nancy instead, and saw us arriving in Luneville exactly two hours before the car rental people were due back from lunch which as fate would have it, was where they were when last we dropped a car off to them.

Perhaps therein lies the clue that we have indeed been away.   Had we not, we would have planned for but one thing.

We would have planned NEVER to arrive ANYWHERE at lunch time, EVER.

Time Travelling Again

If the past five months went quickly, the last two weeks have simply dissolved.

The house is habitable and (mostly) furnished and we have been able to thoughtfully dispose of much that which was too large for the new more diminutive spaces. Actually they are more like the spaces that we were accustomed to for all but the last eight years, so it's a bit like pulling on a favourite old pair of jeans that one hasn't worn for a while, right down to being the same length but not quite wide enough in spots, but if we breath in we still fit.

Yesterday, mid afternoon we declared it done and drove the rental car to the big smoke in a sort of jet lagged fug. This is not necessarily a good thing when one hasn't yet commenced one's journey, and it must be said that we left with the feeling that there simply weren't enough goodbyes to go round properly, wondering how those we hold dear have put up with our busyness for the past few months.

Suddenly it all stopped. The Big E hid his tears behind his shades, ours held off until we were out of sight. We were in the air, and the washing machine that has been our life turned off, we left the roller coaster and ran to the merry go round.

Here we sit in Singapore. In transit, in our old seats in the Qantas Club, trying to believe that we have actually been home, trying to come to terms with all that has happened in that time, excited to be seeing our Northern friends.

By dawn we will be in Paris.