Launch: 10:25am, Thurs 18-08-2011
(Our fourth wedding anniversary. Go team!)
Operatives: Full équipe (Halmeoni, HJ, Bob, Jinu, Ian)
Report
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10h24: Leave apartment fully equipped. Drop off mounds of accumulated rubbish & recycling. Jinu leads way enthusiastically to parking garage.
10h45: Southbound on Cours Sablon, Ian screams. (Hungry.) Pull into parking spot for quick feed. Leave on climate control. Make small-talk with Halmeoni.
11h03: Car won't start. (Dead battery.)
11h06-11h42: Unsuccessfully try to convince Frenchmen at traffic lights to jump-start car. Also, discover that most cars are no longer equipped with jumper cables.
11h43: Unnamed Frenchmen in utility van has pique of conscience. Returns to say that, actually, he does have cables. Jump-starts car.
11h59: Start drive to recharge battery. Needing a decent whack of kilometres, end up quickly on motorway out of town. On a whim, end up at Château de La Batisse, a mid-range castle and sincere B-grade tourist attraction.
12h22: Contemplating casual visit, step out of idling car to ask random car owner if he has jumper cables, just in case.
12h23: Language-haggle with a Dutchman*.
[*This is the process whereby two foreigners meet in a mutually foreign language, usually each presuming the other is local. The result is a ping-ponging through all spoken languages until optimal comfort zone is established.]
12h24: After indicating Pythonesque knight in nearby wooden shack, Dutchman explains imminent "mediaeval theatrics" in the Château gardens.
Seriously consider going to see mediaeval theatrics. Force myself to focus. Focus! Groceries! Groceries! Slap myself twice. Step back into still-idling car.
12h56: Arrive in the dizzying world of heavy commercial and hypermarchés. Confused and disoriented, accidentally drive in to KFC for lunch.
13h04: Sit down to eat. Realize that I am eating artificially generated poultry literally running with cooking grease. Can barely choke it down, but continue out of a sense of obligation. Apologize to Halmeoni for this, her first meal out in France.
Incredibly, even Jinu refuses to eat the chicken, taking only the french fries, which I notice he is now dipping in mayonnaise. Only Ian is satisfied with his lunch.
Swear to myself to never ever return to KFC ever again.
13h29: Jinu plays gleefully in the KFC kid's play area for 25 minutes. May return to KFC again.
Dimly hear laughter behind me. Turn around and see for the first time that the Colonel looks exactly like Satan.
13h58: Board car. Leave KFC car park for hypermarché, located directly opposite across six-lane road with traffic island.
14h21: Arrive in hypermarché car park.
14h26: Commence grocing!
14h28: Almost crushed to death in back-to-school aisle.
14h56: Jinu demands potty. This takes a very long time, since getting to the toilets requires walking past the outdoor play sets, the Cars 2 cross-merchandising, and the ride-on mowers.
16h50: Check-out counter. Pay more for groceries than we ever have in our lives. (Don't know when we'll next have a car.) This doesn't include the fruit & veg, to be bought at the fruit & veg market next.
16h54: Collapse in hypermarché café with a bowl of strawberry ice-cream, two sirops, a Perrier, and a pair of boobs.
17h23: Take Jinu to toilets while Ian continues his hard work pulling whatever he can out of those boobs. Stop by hypermarché bookshop on the way back, where Jinu plays with digger toys while I completely fail to find any interesting books to buy for him, despite my psychologically exhausted impulse-buying mentality.
17h59: Pack up boobs, bottles, head back to car.
18h07: Drive to Rouge et Vert (meat and veg market) before closing time of 19h00.
18h18: Get in door. Power through. Jinu still in good mood despite no nap and now a perpetual state of disciplining.
Change Ian in front seat of car. (Back seat now unusable due to baby seats at both access points. HJ has been climbing through from the driver's seat.) Ian looks pretty cute propped up in the fake leather upholstery.
19h20: Back home! Unload winnings at front door, flashers on.
19h32: Jinu leads enthusiastically to take car back to parking garage. Halmeoni cooks clams and Ian gets back on the teat.
19h44: Home again from parking garage! Unpack groceries. (The Rouge et Vert -- the only place to sell East Asian rice in Clermont -- sells it only by the kilo, not by the 10k, so unpacking is like sandbagging for a flood. We took 18kg, leaving 3kg on the shelf out of consideration for future customers.)
20h24: Finished unpacking.
Eat clam soup. Is good.
20h36: Napless Jinu starts to lose mind, says nothing but "moo" for five minutes (camera only made it out for last half a minute).
Yes it is, Jinu. Yes it is.
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Post-script.
Next day was Operation Flat-Pack: Collect furniture from local Ikea clone. We took Halmeoni to a great restaurant. Ian screamed, and Jinu smashed crockery.
3 comments:
Wow.
Sadly, I am used to this 'experience'. Am impressed you left at 10:30 am. Our usual time of gettng near the car is closer to 11. Yesterday involved driving lessons, butcher, bakery, indian grocery store, lunch with a child wandering into a dhaba kitchen, today will involve all those minor things that we didn't get to - like 9L of milk and vegetables.
Happy (belated) anniversary. Sounds like you didn't have a chance to fit in celebrations on the day. But I think that multiple-day festivals are often the way to go, anyway.
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