Tip toe through the tulips Luneville

Through sheer happenstance when booking the rental car, I arranged to return it today, not tomorrow or the day after that.   I just sort of stabbed at a date at random and today was the date that bobbed up on my computer screen.

Today would be the day we returned the car, and commenced our voyage.

This turned out to be quite fortuitous really, as tomorrow and the day after that turned out to be public holidays and the chances of being able to return a car on those days were somewhere between slim and non-existent.  To add to this good fortune, Grahame and Aileen arrived yesterday with a car of their own, and a list of things that needed doing in Luneville, which as it happens was exactly where we needed to be to return the car.

After wandering around with them for the latter part of the morning,  we thought perhaps we could delay the start of our cruising year for a bit.   It would have been remiss of us not to join them for lunch, after all, one has to take time to smell the tulips.

On the sunny side of the street. Sarrebourg

It has been two days since our last supermarket episode, so an almost unanimous decision was made that since the day was fine and sunny (and our last one with the rental car) we should once again visit the shops.   There were after all, supermarkets in Sarrebourg that we hadn't graced with our presence in almost a year, and if we do get underway tomorrow we could be two days before we get to the next shopping opportunity, and besides there were a couple of carless people in the port who could benefit from a lift.

While walking around today, we noticed that it hasn't taken long for us to acclimatise ourselves to life in the northern hemisphere.

Barely three weeks ago in Hyde Park in temperatures almost not in double digits, our old habits kept us looking for patches of shade, hiding from the sun's rays no matter how feeble, lest we should surely fry.   

Now, we must confess, it is the other more brightly lit side of the street that we find ourselves loitering on, soaking up whatever warmth we can find, and this in temperatures approaching twenty.

The Art of Living Lagarde

"It is not a car, it's the art of living" said the sticker in the back window of the 2CV, but I had eyes elsewhere.

I used to dream of owning a Renault 8 Gordini back when Renault Gordinis were new, and had I had the means and been old enough to drive I may well have.

I think the owner of the one I saw today understood the tear in the corner of my eye as I attempted to tell him that of all the few dozen classic cars that gathered around our port this morning, his was my  favourite.  Or maybe he didn't understand a thing I was saying.  I can't be sure either way, but he seemed attentive enough.

There were plenty of others though, some German sports cars, one from England, Renaults, Peugeots (a beautiful 203 Cabriolet), Citroens including a fleet of Tractions-Avant and even an SM, at one time the fastest production car in the world, but none of them could match the mid 60's Cooper-S-beating Gordini in my eye.  Wandering around a collection of vehicles from one's youth tends to trigger all sorts of nostalgic memories which is perhaps why the photo above is not a Gordini, but could have been taken in our neighbour's back yard in West End in the seventies.

I spent part of a delightful morning buried in those memories, poking at them, the memories and the cars that triggered them, nodding and grunting approvingly to their owners, and then just as suddenly as they arrived, someone gave an invisible signal, the engines spluttered into life and the cars were gone, leaving me once again with only the memories.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, a girl on a mission, left alone and unwilling to be distracted, and finding little romance in things mechanical for that matter,  had single handedly brought the lack of tidiness inside the boat under control.

I suppose in a day or two while she rests on her well deserved laurels, I too shall have to sort out my bits necessary to get our season underway.

It's not the boat, it's the art of living.

To the shops! Luneville

Since we didn't get any actual work done around the boat yesterday, as soon as we woke we set about searching for distractions to ensure that we would get nothing done today as well.  Staying in bed for quite some time was a great start and we didn't really have to look too far to find other things to do.

To begin with while we could take advantage of our rented car, we did need to commence our providoring, stocking up on the sorts of things that may be difficult to come by during our summer cruising when we may be further away from supermarkets.  Despite the contents of the boat beginning to resemble something akin to a floating tip, we struck out for the supermarkets in Luneville.

For one of us, this activity appears to be something approaching actual fun, the other is yet to discover any pleasure at all in walking up and down endless aisles imploring me to "like" them on facebook.  I confess I do have complete admiration for the other's ability to meander for hours amid the shelves, reading labels and squeezing rhubarb until at some completely random time in the process the shopping is declared "complete".

But "complete" is code for "let's go to the supermarket across the road now..." so we do that and repeat the process.

When we return to the boat and unpack it all a miracle unfolds: the trolleys full of unrelated items transforms into "food for a month".

That I do "like".

A nice cup of tea Lagarde

We really should have set about unpacking all the contents of the boat that we had so carefully stored safe from the ravages of winter's humidity, and we really should have busying ourselves settling in and perhaps provisioning ready for the year ahead.  Really that's what we should have been doing.

But the weather wasn't all that friendly, and I managed to get the covers off between icy showers, and bed was snug and a great place to read at least until the onset of something more like summer.

Besides, Maggie has the best teapot on earth.  I'm sure there is a commandment forbidding us to covet our neighbour's tea-pot, but there's nothing to prevent us sitting in her parlour and consuming it's contents along with vast quantities of fresh carrot cake until it's far too late to do any work.

Why should we hurry we wondered?

Home again home again, jiggety jig. Paris - Lagarde

Zooming towards Luneville on the train at more than three hundred kilometres an hour, it was impossible to ignore the feeling slowly building in the pit of our stomachs.    It's not quite excitement and not quite anxiety, but whatever the emotion it gets stronger as we pick up the rental car and right on cue it evaporates half an hour later as we drive over the hill and catch the first sight of Lagarde.

We see the church steeple first, across the yellow Colza fields, then it disappears as we round the bend and cross the bridge over the lock, wind our way past Jacques and Maggie's house and finally to the harbour where our home awaits.  There's always a minor sense of relief when we discover she's still floating, and even more as we slip under those covers and a thin layer of winter mud to find that inside is pretty much as we left it.

Then comes the excitement at being home, the unpacking can wait, it's just nice to be here even if we can't see out through the covers.

It's nice to be afloat again, but better than that, we are home.

May Day Paris

Apart from stalls selling diadem studded replicas of the Eiffel Tower there is precious little sign of commerce in Paris on this Public Holiday.   

A hundred metres from our berth, at the Place Bastille there are numbers of ethnic groups holding rowdy demonstrations involving drums and shouting and hawking petitions to be signed, and they are almost outnumbered by riot police who in turn are outnumbered by silent spectators.  

Around the Arsenal itself almost two kilometres of marquee has been erected which will house the spring Antique Fair for much of the month, presuming of course that spring eventually arrives, but for this week it gives an opportunity to what we suspect are mostly not highly ranked artisans, to display their works.   "Works" in this case seem to comprise either random splotches of paint or representations of naked females in often in improbable poses (or perhaps with broken limbs?), but the hint of something truly inspirational bobs up every now and then, just often enough to give one enough strength to make it through to the next tent. 

A few hundred metres beyond, not a soul is stirring.

We did make an effort to explore, but there are only so many deserted streets full of shuttered buildings one can wander through, braced against the chill before one sees the error in one's way.

Eventually the siren call of the warm saloon of Ozzie Crawl became irresistible, and we settled down to watch re-runs of "A Place in the Sun" and to heck with the sleet and riots and outside.