Alternative titles for this blog could have been:
How I watched England crash out of the World cup in a pub in France with a group of Germans.
If the Translator app on the iphone fails to make your point, gesture wildly and make a thunk, thunk sound.
This year ether due to madness or a strong sense of family the wife and I went on holiday to France with the rest of her family. Said family was her sister and husband with their 3 year old daughter (the one who taught me how to use the iphone), her brother his wife and their 2 kids, and finally the other brother, a man called Mathew.
We were staying in Bendoet which is just under 1000 miles from my current location in Chepstow. The plan was simple, 3 cars would drive to Dover, bord the ferry and then drive across country to our rented house next to the sea. Now one of my favorite programs is Top Gear and to me this whole trip smacked of a Top Gear challenge so in the spirit of that I bought 4 Walkie Talkies with a range of 5 km (which we discovered was actually about 500 meters). Also in true Top Gear Fashion I shall tell you the cars we drove in:
Car A was an Audi A3 convertible, Car B was a BMW 5 series and Car C (my car) a Ford Mondeo Ghia.
Now even if you are not a petrol head I think you can see a flaw in the plan straight away, as much as I love my car it’s not a match for the other two. However apart from that minor error the drive itself was fairly uneventful. Apart from one of the couples getting lost (not me for a change), the only other problem was my car picked up a strange thudding noise near the end of the trip, hence the alternative title to this blog. Fortunately this turned out to be nothing more than my back left tyre wearing unevenly and not something far more costly. However I do not recommend attempting to talk to a French garage owner with just an ipone app an half remembered high school French, it’s a little scary*.
The holiday itself was great, good weather, great food, great company and a gentle reminder that the Dragonlance books are not as good as I thought they were when I was 14**. The only shadow was the above mentioned England game. We thought rather foolishly that the best place to watch it was a bar by the marina, not taking into account there might be a large group of rich holidaying Germans also in the area. If the game sucked for my fellow Brits imagine how we felt.
Sadly all good things must come to an end and I am once again in dear old blighty. Still with batteries recharged I will press on with my current quest to find a new job and bore the hell out of everyone with my insane ramblings.
So until next time, It’s goodnight from me, and it’s goodnight from him.***
* In fairness the guy was really nice, he didn’t charge me anything for looking at
my car so I bought him and his workers chocolate eclairs as a thank you.
** However I have come to the conclusion that Rastlin is in fact a grown up Stewie from Family Guy
*** The sign off of The Two Ronnies – if you didn’t know that then watch some of their stuff you uncultured swines.