We spent some time today discussing whether this was because cities in the south of France in August are stupid sweaty places to hang out, or whether it’s more because climate change is making everywhere awful. Either way, we need to leave town before the weekend when the temperature indefinitely rises above 37C - our vague plan to head into the Pyrenees and simply stay there until the numbers look sensible again.
The heat has largely suppressed our attempts both to create a functional French existence and to tread water in the academic world, in addition to the combined efforts of an increasingly uncooperative 15 month old and, of course, the endless tortuous bureaucracy.
Following advice from those who have done this before, we have been trying to do only one thing a day. Yesterday was trying to join a car-share scheme, but in every online form, it seems there’s one trick question which is impossible to pass.
The car share scheme required a proof of address, which requires an electricity bill, which requires arranging a visit from a technician, which requires a French mobile phone number.
So today I attempted to get a mobile phone number, which, amazingly, needed another French phone number in order to complete the form (and required a French département of birth, which I just made up - turns out you need to lie a lot).
Our entire functional lives are therefore completely on hold until we receive our first electricity bill - which is effectively akin to a secret key that you negotiate from a dragon in a 80s text-based role playing computer game,a key which will let you open a door only to be inevitably confronted by a bigger and more unreasonable dragon.
We spent most of the rest of the day wandering around another bewilderingly huge shopping complex, pondering whether it was ethically acceptable to buy an air conditioner (we decided it wasn’t, and now we’re sort of regretting it).
Sam, meanwhile, adds bonus complexity to the most mundane of tasks - meaning that you end optimizing things a lot less. One has less time to think about the relative thermodynamic efficiency of different cooling systems if you are responsible for a 15 month old chaos machine hell-bent on destroying any fragile object in a 20 meter radius.
We caved, internally broken, and took him to the play area in the McDonald’s opposite, taking some significant guilty pleasure in the fact he was expending energy in a ball pit rather than the crockery aisle of a supermarket.
Moderately guilt-ridden from the consumerist multi-national activities of the afternoon, we went to the local pool on our way home, which appeared to contain the entire population of the village.
Attempts to do any actual swimming were impossible, so we hung out with Sam in the paddling pool. Being at the stage where he’s considering floating on his own, but is still quite concerned about it, he lost track of his beachball which was picked up by a 7 year old girl.
After a few minutes had passed, the girl had assumed ownership of the ball along with her posse of intimidating mates. Realizing that I would actually need to retrieve the ball, I approached and politely asked “Peux-tu nous donner notre balon maintenant?”
It wasn’t going to be that simple.
“C'est a vous?”
I realized, with some terror and disbelief that I was now in a negotiation with a motivated French 7 year old who had a considerable linguistic advantage. “Oui...”, I gestured.
“Pouvons-nous continuer à jouer avec la balle jusqu'à ce que vous ayez besoin d'y aller, alors vous pouvez la récupérer?”
I stared at her blankly - trying to look authoritative despite the fact I had no idea what she said. She didn’t budge.
Eventually, and humiliatingly, she broke down the sentence until I had some vague idea what she was saying, and I abruptly said we had to go.
We rode home, becoming instantly sweaty again, and drank all the Rosé.
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