Julie's at last

7th May 2010
Having said a fond farewell to Kaye we headed for Julie and Khaled’s but when we phoned her we discovered that she was heading out and would not return until late that evening so it was easier all round for us to stay on an aire 65 miles away. This meant Julie did not have to worry about us and could enjoy her evening out and we could have a shorter drive that day. What she did not tell us was it was a soiree at which we would have been given FREE wine! However we did enjoy a pleasant drive plus an evening trying out our French with some other motorhomers and it was all very pleasant.

8th May 2010
We arrived refreshed and ready to attend the village’s ceremony honouring the Allies of world war two, at which Hana was going to carry the flowers to lay on their cenotaph. Sadly the night before she had been told she had to attend school so she missed it. Fortunately we did not as it was a classic French farce, don’t get me wrong it was a fairly solemn occasion and initially started well.

A large, important gentleman with a moustache sporting a row of small dress medals on a light coloured blazer was preparing the choir, while another chap practised the trombone. Meanwhile a chap in uniform we supposed to be a gendarme set up a microphone attached to a big speaker which we later learned also had a tape player in it. Large gent starts choir singing the Marseillaise, a small solemn procession enters stage right led by young man with tricolour. Trombonist suddenly realises he should be with procession and starts to play and runs to the back; everybody gets to memorial and deploys in semi-circle. Small smartly dressed deputy mayor with small children stands while choir sings all verses! Small children are restive, mayor grabs hand, and finally choir stops. They walk solemnly up and place wreath of flowers which will not stay and keeps trying to roll off! Having laid them on sideways, steps back for solemn moment then children are able to leave and join their mates.

Mayor approaches microphone and it promptly falls off with load bang as it hits the road, he picks it up and starts to address the crowd only to be instantly corrected by large choirmaster. As the exchange is in French we do not quite understand but it appears to be the date of the armistice which is under discussion!! As mayor finishes Gendarme starts tape only to be growled at by large gent, who approaches microphone and drops it on road again, bang! He makes a short speech, turns to choir, signals to man to start tape, choir starts to sing; large man stops choir and tape, something is wrong with tape. Tape restarts and finally it is alright and with loud applause we all retire to town hall for free drinks, peanuts and olives, marvellous. To be fair to him, the deputy mayor walks up and says did I look a real prat? We assured him he did not and truthfully he didn’t really, it was just funny to a visitor who didn’t know what was going on. What was nice though was how lovely everybody was to us but I think that was a lot to do with how well Julie and Khaled are respected.

Monday 9th - So on with the happy hols, the weather is decidedly warmer and we have had sunshine more or less all day today with Joan finally able to don her shorts! My inclination is to move on soon and get into Italy where hopefully the weather will continue to improve. That said it would take several days and we must deliver Kathleen and Kens tea bags first.

Tuesday 10th- Well we cannot believe it but it is really hot and we are both in shorts today. Just a day of pleasure. I cut the grass which sounds hard but it is such a huge garden that they have a sit on mower, so it was fun. We then made contact with K&K for the ceremonial handing over of the ‘T’ Bags tomorrow. We anticipate that they will both be in full ceremonial dress uniform and after the ceremony will suitably reward us with large libations of alcohol, olives etc. Sadly, the aforementioned trombonist will be at work and therefore unable to attend.

That’s all folks, sorry if it isn’t very long but we really have just been enjoying Julie, Hana and all the animals company.

All our love
‘US’ xxxx