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2. Le camionette

Dinner?

Our new house has shutters. We slept with them closed last night, thus continuing to confuse our already quite bewildered body clocks. Rosie woke up at about 9.30, which I think is a new record for lateness (I would happily sleep until midday if R+S would let me). I was rudely forced out of bed (bed currently being a therma-rest on a stone floor), and instructed to go fetch baguettes from the bakery on top of the hill. I wondered off pondering whether I was experiencing reality or some sort of cheesy French parody.
Upon my return, Rosie and Sam were talking to the caretaker of the chateau, really not helping breaking the French stereotype (to be clear, we don’t live in the chateau, we’ve rented the gardener’s cottage). Barely having said “Bonjour” to him, I was met with the now increasingly familiar “Votre femme parle beaucoup mieux le français que vous!”, which although refreshingly honest, is getting a little annoying.
Having made it clear that any comparison “n’est pas juste”, given Rosie’s mother is a French teacher, the conversation thankfully turned to Sam - who was carefully eyeing up all of the rusty, spiky tools in the caretaker’s garage. Thankfully - he was appeased with a rugby ball (“Moi, je ne me soucie pas du football - peut-être que maintenant votre fils sera un grand joueur de rugby!”). The gardener headed off, noting that the snails were delicious.
Having assembled the bicycles, we headed out to explore our new environs, went for a swim in the local pool and managed to avoid being shouted at. We had lunch at a place which sold both seitan and kombucha - which, slightly shamefully, made my inner Boulderite relax considerably. We hung out there for a bit in the familiar smug vegan atmosphere and gave them too much money.
Our main job for the day was hiring a van. The mechanism for this was an airbnb-like system called ‘Ouicar’, which pairs car owners with potential renters. Having written a long email to the guy, explaining our situation, we got a one line reply of “La camionnette est disponible”. I replied enthusiastically, asking when I could pick it up - and was met with silence for about 12 hours. Finally responding with the name of the road (not the number), we biked over and found a huge van which looked like it might have been involved in some sort of poorly executed bank job. The guy arrived then said we would keep the van as long as we needed (“je suis super-chill!”). Thus begins a theme of things appearing to be totally impossible, and then actually just being fine (but don’t ask how or why).
Having assured the guy I knew how to drive a manual (in theory, at least), we then attempted to find a fridge and a washing machine - which involved driving down roads which were designed for vehicles about 50% smaller than our truck, always followed by and faced by an endless stream of mildly suicidal people who were willing to overtake by driving on the footpath, or simply playing chicken until somebody reversed. Fundamentally shaken and narrowly avoiding destroying several vehicles, we arrived at “les grands magasins”.
Even by American standards, the “hypermarches” are vast, selling almost literally anything you could ever feasibly want, from washing machines to wetsuits to 1000 euro bottles of wine. We spent far too long discussing the merits of different fridges, leaving the shop in a dazed state and somehow managing to avoid buying the extended warranty in French.
We got home about 9.30pm, Sam fell asleep after thoroughly losing his sense of humor during the fridge debacle. It started raining lightly and the snails came out. We ate the seitan...

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