For Ducks. Charleville-Mezieres

Today was going to be our last with power and water for a while.  At first we thought we’d get the washing up to date, then clean some stuff and get some groceries and generally be busy little bees, before exploring a bit more of the town.

But the rain didn’t let up, so we didn’t do anything.

We watched the ducks wafting by, noted they seemed quite comfortable just hanging out with their mates and went to lunch in a warm dry cafe with Dave and Ria.

We took the long way home.  It was a sort of progressive supper/conversation really, the sort of afternoon from which a play could evolve:   Coffee with Dave and Ria, and then with Steve and Peta, then drinks with Bob and Anna and then with Bob and Anna and Steve and Peta, before moving eventually to Ian and Lynda and Dave and Ria.

The rain didn’t stop, neither did the conversation, nor did we get wet.

Tomorrow perhaps we’ll get some washing up to date, then clean some stuff and get some groceries and generally be busy little bees, before exploring a bit more of the town.

Or perhaps we’ll simply move on.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon Monthermé to Charleville- Mezieres

In a week the town square in Charleville had been transformed to a place of summer celebration.  

When we walked through it last week, it was an empty space, hot and barren in the summer sun and paved with ancient cobblestones with a Carousel revolving endlessly in an apparent attempt to relieve the  the spirits of those traversing the square.

Today, it was filled with sand and beaches and volleyball and badminton and pools with boats and plastic ducks and children playing and swimming and driving bumper boats.   The inflatable bumper boats really spoke of summer.  

What a joy it must be to cruise in a vessel so reliable and vibration free!

We shouldn’t complain.  Our Mr P had brought us back after all, with only a few hints of protest along the way; a few minutes of belligerence every now and then to shake us out of our complacency.  Even the normally unflappable Jacques seemed nonplussed at this behaviour, but it wasn’t enough to spoil our somewhat idyllic day with Maggie and he.   Perhaps still one more round of tightening is in order.   

We noted with something akin to envy that not one of those kids had grease under their fingernails.  Perhaps we could just give up our quest for reliability aboard, and trade our entire catastrophe for one of those little bumper boats!

Water under the bridge. Revin to Monthermé

We even set the alarm this morning.  

Monsieur Biadelle had said he’d be with us at eight and that was one appointment we didn’t want to miss.   I explained as best I could, that Mr Perkins problem was simple, it was just getting to a solution that was complicated, which I thought was no mean feat in my haltering verbless French.   

He nodded politely, tilted his head and told me he could fix it within the day, ten hours at most, he would just need to go back to his workshop, take the part to a guy who knows a guy, then bring it back, “or perhaps” I could see him thinking to himself, “I could hit it with a hammer”.

We cancelled plans to move,  and had barely sent off messages to those who were to meet us later, confirming that we would still be here, when he returned triumphant, reassembled injector in hand, but no hint as to how he had achieved it.   He borrowed some spanners, assembled the disassembled bits, bled the fuel, waited till we’d started the motor and as efficiently as he had arrived, disappeared with a week’s worth of grocery money in his pocket, a very fair sum indeed for the time he’d spent.

We stared at each other.  The sound of Mr Perkins starting had flicked that inner switch.  Within minutes we had cast off our lines and were on the river, heading in direction Monthermé, communicating our change of plans to they who were trying to find us.

While in the sense that we arrived at our destination without incident the story has a happy ending, Mr Perkins was not his old self, some adjustments will be necessary.  Some cleaning and tightening of nuts will be involved.

We will keep a cautious eye out, and a spanner handy, and perhaps a hammer just in case, but our week in Revin is now water under the bridge.

A patch of blue Revin

We both woke up this morning.  That is always a good thing.

Then, without even waiting for coffee I checked the Royal Mail tracker and it said the package was in Paris and they’d get around to delivering it sooner or later.  That was not quite so good, but rather than dwell on it we made plans fill in the day by cruising with Dave and Ria to Monthermé and riding our bikes back.

So we got all excited and one of us hurriedly cut lunches while the other jogged to the post office “just in case”.

If we’ve ever been as disappointed to receive a package that we’d been desperately awaiting, we can’t remember when it was.   We couldn’t bring ourselves to entirely abandon our cruise aboard Max so hitched a lift as far as the first lock, bade our sad farewells and walked back the couple of kilometres to where the greasy mess awaited.  Max had not disappointed, although having to leave him did.  For just a moment, without a tinge of jealousy, we found our gratitude for our own lot wavering ever so slightly, but we soon recovered.

Of course mid-waver, as if to throw fuel onto some smouldering ember, there was one nut in our repair process that wouldn’t come undone without a special tool.  There always is.  Despite the best effort of the gardener in the park next door, who threw his mower repair shed to our mercy, we couldn’t find a Perkins injector undoer for love or money.   He didn’t even have a bigger hammer than the one I already had hit it with.

So we called for help from the guy in Charleville with the special tool (and perhaps a bigger hammer) and now we wait once more in Revin, until the dawn of a new day, full of hope and promise, although with no need to check the Royal Mail tracker.

Twiddling our thumbs. Revin

Royal Mail parcel tracking, says our part “has arrived in ROISSY CTCI IMP RAP and is being processed for delivery.”  

We are just a few hours from Roissy by fast train, but we have no idea how long a postal van will take.   “Perhaps tomorrow”, said the nice man at the Post Office, without having to say, in the way of these things, “or perhaps not”.

So we’ll walk and explore and read and hang around under the shade for at least another day, presuming all the while that the part in the post is the one we need, and that when it arrives installing it is within our collective skill set.  

It doesn’t seem possible that tomorrow we will have been here a week, but we have, and we know that while we are completely content to sit and wait, the moment we are able to move, the switch in our head will fire and the need to move will hit with some urgency.

We can’t explain that, it is just the way it is.   

In the meantime, we’ll settle in and wait for another sunset.

Gather round for a photo Revin

Mr Perkins part, according to Royal Mail parcel tracking, “has been passed to the overseas postal service for delivery in FRANCE.”   I am not quite sure, but I think that’s a good thing on balance, although there might just well be a hint in there somewhere that we aren’t going to see it tomorrow.

So we are forced to sit here for a bit longer with our friends, doing not much but not having time to do anything more, wondering how Dave doesn’t get fed up with having nothing to repair on his boat, while Ian and I seem to be up to our elbows in tools for one reason or another.   We mustn’t overdo it though, the evenings together are not conducive to retiring early.

They all swam today, the other five, in water that judging by the way my toes went blue when they were dipped in it, must have been barely above freezing.   

 I managed as is my custom, not to be “refreshed” as they describe it, being firmly of the belief that if there is nothing wrong with the boat, there can be no reason to go overboard, noting with some satisfaction their squeals of what sounded like vaguely like pain and definitely not ecstasy on entering the water.  

Dave assured me that according to his on-board sensors the water temperature was a balmy twenty-one degrees.   Perhaps there is something he can fix after all.

Silver Lining Revin

It began like a Sunday kind of Monday and then we realised that it was Tuesday and thought hard about going back to bed until we’d sorted things out. 

The cloud cover and misty rain did nothing to alleviate that feeling either.  If one had squinted hard enough the glistening slate roofs across the river could have been ice or even snow perhaps with a bit of imagination.    

We wondered for a time if long pants were going to be the order of the day but half the news the part for Mr P had arrived at the distributors in the UK and would be despatched this afternoon seemed to combine with the first coffee to put a bit of a rosy hue back into things, and that was even before we’d received Ria’s message that they would be with us by lunch.

Sure enough, just on lunch o’clock when Dave and Ria arrived aboard their Max in a blaze of triumph and glory, that perhaps only they and we could see, bringing with them warmth and sunshine, as though they were couriers of climate.

We have shared their dream and stuck our noses in their boating business for years, planning with them and enjoying their boat building adventure as it unfolded, it seems only fair that now we can enjoy the results with them.

If they can bring the weather with them as they did today, we may never leave their sides.