Fading Memories

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Forty Two
Thursday 25th July - Bray-sur-Somme

This must be how lobsters feel, puzzled as they slowly come to the boil. It all looks cool enough, yet on board the boat things are running well into the forties. We are therefore not on board the boat.

The little supermarket in the village is air conditioned, and we did give a brief thought to painting our fingernails in multi colours to disguise ourselves as a packet of M&Ms in the hope of hiding out there for the day, settling instead to linger while choosing which ice block would last the longest on the walk back.

There we were, lying on our cushions doing not much at all for the fourth successive day of uncomfortable temperature, dreaming of the promise of the cool change, jeans, jumpers and wet weather which apparently the morrow will bring.

Bray-sur-Somme according to our rather old chart book, is hidden a few kilometres up a windy bit of the Somme which is badly silted up and not at all navigable. While mostly we take a good deal of notice of our charts, we were fairly sure we could get there without great risk, and a few careful enquiries did nothing to dissuade us.

Moving made for a pleasant diversion in the heat, and moving through narrow waterways lined with dense forest made it even more pleasurable, slowly of course lest we should come to grief on the shallow bits, which thankfully we did not.

We found a place with shade that we deemed suitable to resume our lolling about and whinging about how hot it was, and after a small orientating stroll, set about doing so for the rest of yet another pleasant albeit too warm for our tastes afternoon.

Yesterday we were so comfortable under our tree with the temperature reaching the upper thirties, that we decided to repeat it exactly.

We had the same shady tree, the same cool towels, the same book,the same man with the dog and the beer and the music, and the same harvester droning away, except that it had finished its work over the hill and had begun on the flats opposite.

This was not a good thing as it was just close enough so that the clouds of dust it was creating could spread and settle on our wet clothing, and find its way into every pore of the boat interior as well. Perhaps tomorrow we won’t try to repeat today after all.

When the forecast tells us to prepare for four days of extreme temperature, we tend to panic, notwithstanding that in the very same temperature at home one of us would be digging holes or building something in humidity at least three times that which we experience here.

But we aren’t at home and we don't have any holes to dig, so we find a shady tree and lie about with only the sounds of harvesting happening on a hill far away (and the old man with the dog who sits at the picnic table drinking beer and listening to his car radio), commiserating with each other, alternately reading and wiping ourselves with cool wet towels, congratulating ourselves at the end of the day that we have made it through without fuss or the benefit of ceiling fans.

With one of us still lamenting the loss of our continuous source of wildflowers, a cheerful pot of purple somethings called out from the “throw out table” in the supermarket today, and found itself transported to a place where it will spend the rest of its natural life.

Naturally, the ugly plastic pot was exactly too large to fit inside one of our ever growing collection of ceramic pots-that-last-year’s-orchid-came-in and exactly the wrong shape to risk a transplant, so we’ll pretend that grey plastic is the next big thing, and enjoy them while they last.

Eugène Poubelle invented refuse collection, a fact which is celebrated in the French language by adopting his name as the descriptive name for “garbage bin” so it always strikes us as odd that in a country which is historically synonymous with waste collection, we often have difficulty finding somewhere to dispose of ours.

There are often fewer bins in public spaces than would be considered adequate in less civilised countries, but it all seems to work because by and large in the absence of bins, people are in the habit of taking their refuse home with them. We, well Grahame actually to be technically correct, had been on a bit of a tidy up around “our bins”, tied the broken bags after picking up the stray stuff and placed them neatly on top of the lids.

It was an unhappy caravan park caretaker and self appointed guardian of the public purse, who on discovering his handiwork, presumed that it was our mess and explained in no uncertain terms that the only bins near our mooring beneath the sign that welcomed us, were not for our use. Unwilling to believe that we were not responsible, she gave us a large bag and directed us to use the facilities provided behind the school, omitting the bit about where exactly we might find the school were we to comply. Oh Mr Poubelle, how simple life must have been before you came along.

Technically we have a three day limit on our stay in any given spot, and (technically) would have been obliged to move yesterday, harvest or not.

Therefore it was a bit of good fortune really that (technically) we could start the clock again after our move, because Grahame and Aileen were on their way and had we not done so we would have been compelled to stay well beyond our welcome while we caught up with each other’s adventures.

Bill and Mandy turned too and before we could say “anyone for duck?” we were among a flock of Kiwis, bracing ourselves for what would inevitably turn into a three day party. There’s no sense in fighting the inevitable after all, and besides, we have just a few days until the onset of another serious heatwave, bigger and badder than the last, so we all needed to seriously enjoy the evening cool while we could.