Читать книгу Two Men In a Car (A Businessman, a Chauffeur, and Their Holidays in France) - Mike Buchanan - Страница 5

I refuse to grow up, on the grounds that I might not like it!

Paul Carrington (1950- )

The rocking chair – the heroic police officer – Mercedes S-class saloons – the problem with the ferry booking – Paul gets in touch with his ‘inner child’ – When You Come to the End of Your Lollipop – Anne and Mark – the witty dentist’s receptionist – Cognac – ‘a simple cup of English breakfast tea’ – Super Mario – the problem with Hennessy’s current cellarmaster – normal cheese – the problem with French stamps – The French Helpfulness Index – window cleaning and shutter painting – the fetching waitress in Bordeaux – the helpful dentist – Louis, the flying dog – Paul spots something incredible – the divine Château Mirambeau – a judgmental waiter in Jonzac – Where do you go to my lovely? – Stanground boys and the art of bicycle borrowing – why the French are shorter than the English – funny sunflowers – Hiroshima – a tour of the Médoc wine region – Madamoiselle Toptotty and the magnificent warehouse – ‘Zey are all good vintages, monsieur’ – Château Lynch-Bages and the awful lunch – French merde, German merde – un trog, une trogette – Quasimodo – an old lady crosses the road

SATURDAY 4 AUGUST

We couldn’t fit the rocking chair into the car. We’d drawn up packing lists for the holiday (Apx 1), and I was taking many more items than Paul, who clearly preferred to travel light. It had taken some time to pack the car, and even though it was roomy – and 17’ long – the rocking chair would just have to remain behind. We set off for Dover at 5.10 a.m., Paul driving.

I’d recently had notice of another speeding offence in Bedford, a heroic police officer having ‘clocked’ me driving at a reckless 38mph in a 30mph limit area in the middle of a sunny day, on a wide road – Barker’s Lane, Bedford, since you ask – with no pedestrians in sight. Clearly the police had sorted out all the serious crime in the Bedford area. This ‘offence’ would in due course take my licence points tally to 12 and disqualify me from driving for six months. So I thought it prudent that Paul drive, lest Bedford’s finest add yet more points to my licence.

Some nine months beforehand I’d bought the car which Paul was now driving. I was due to replace my car and asked Paul for his views on the best saloon car available for my budget of around £20,000. I figured he was in a good position to give advice, as he chauffeurs his clients in some wonderful cars. Without hesitation he said I should test drive a three- or four-year-old Mercedes S-class 320CDI. So I went to the Mercedes showroom in Bedford, and immediately spotted the model.

I took the car for a test drive, and was hooked in a matter of moments. The wunderwagen was a testament to fine German engineering. It had all the luxuries I could imagine and then more, such as double glazing. Driving it felt more like sailing a yacht on a calm lake than driving a car. There were numerous small touches I liked. When you turned the engine off, the steering wheel rose and moved away from the driver, while the driver’s seat moved back. This was obviously to assist the chunkier driver, like myself, to exit from the car more easily. I really had no choice but to buy it.

I particularly enjoy the car when Paul is driving, and I’m in the back with a bottle of red wine firmly anchored in the wine bottle holder. At such times I feel like Arthur, the happy drunk played by Dudley Moore in the film of the same name.

It was a fine morning and Paul drove the 140 miles from Bedford to the P&O terminal in Dover in two hours. The Channel was like a millpond. Just as we were about to check the tickets in, Paul spotted that I’d actually booked the journey for the preceding day, so we were concerned we might not get onto the ferry. But for a trifling £48.00 additional fare P&O graciously allowed us onto the 8.40 a.m. sailing.

The 560-mile drive from Calais to our gite near the small town of Mirambeau, some 50 miles north of Bordeaux, was a doddle compared with driving such a distance in the UK. Very light traffic most of the way, even though this was the first Saturday in August, and we’d feared that half of France’s cars would be on the road. Even allowing for lengthy breaks at service stations for lunch, dinner, and coffee, the journey of 560 miles took less than nine hours.

We arrived at our gite at 8.30 p.m. and were pleased with the spacious and clean accommodation, and the swimming pool. Audrey made us feel quickly at home and introduced us to the guests in the other gites. The view across a number of vineyards was spectacular, and at 9.30 p.m. we were nursing glasses of a chilled Alsace Riesling, enjoying a spectacular sunset.

Paul suggested he get his guitar out for an impromptu music session, but I explained that people came to places like this to relax and to enjoy the peace and quiet, so a music session might not be a good idea. He looked a little disappointed but appeared to accept the point with good grace.

SUNDAY 5 AUGUST

Because of the long drive of the previous day, we agreed to spend most of this day relaxing by the gite. By 10.00 a.m. we were shopping at Super U in Mirambeau, one of those wonderful medium-sized supermarkets that seem to be everywhere in France. Good value for money and as always in France the displays of fruit, vegetables and seafood were a treat for the eyes. The only thing that surprised me was a glass tank of water in the seafood section containing sizeable live eels.

Knowing Paul’s taste for plain English food – ham, egg and chips appeared to be his staple diet – I was conservative in my purchases. Suggestions of anything a little more adventurous – Boursin with garlic and herbs, or duck pâté – were met by Paul with looks of horror.

By midday I was seated by the pool under a large umbrella, appreciating a cool breeze. Paul was fighting with an inflatable crocodile and whale in the pool. I was suddenly struck by how much fun Paul was having with them and I took photographs of him jumping onto them, falling off them, etc. His mood could best be described as childlike and gleeful. He was really in touch with his ‘inner child’ which indeed he is for much of the time. It’s one of the things people like most about him. In his own words, ‘I refuse to grow up, on the grounds that I might not like it!’ Whilst playing with the inflatable animals he started to sing a refrain from a song which I hadn’t heard before:

‘When you come to the end of your lollipop,

To the end, to the end, of your lollipop,

When you come to the end of your lollipop,

Plop goes your heart!’

Paul said the song – the imaginatively-titled When You Come to the End of Your Lollipop – had been recorded by Max Bygraves. I said they didn’t write songs like that any more, sadly, and we laughed. I’d never seen or heard anything so incongruous in all my born days, and found myself laughing about the scene for some days afterwards.

After a time Paul left the pool and came over for a chat. I told him about my reflections on his ‘inner child’ and he said it was about time I got in touch with my own. I said I would, later in the day, and in the meantime I continued reading my book, one of PG Wodehouse’s masterpieces.

Not long afterwards the children from the adjoining gite started playing in the pool, splashing about and making a lot of noise, as children will. I expected to be annoyed at being roused from my peaceful idyll – I normally would have been – but to my surprise I actually enjoyed seeing and hearing them having fun.

An hour or two later when I was alone by the pool I jumped in, played with the crocodile and the whale, and generally had more fun than a 49-year-old man should have with inflatable toys. I felt my ‘inner child’ was awakening after a long time asleep, and life began to feel good again.

Paul had suffered a problem with a tooth the day before we left for France. His dentist had made a temporary repair and prescribed some antibiotics and painkillers. The tooth was continuing to give him some trouble and he resolved to visit the dentist in nearby Mirambeau the next day, and possibly have it removed.

I tried lighting the oven so as to roast a chicken for dinner, but it wouldn’t light so I had to think of an alternative. Despite having a Roux Brothers cookbook to hand I decided to make spaghetti bolognese – henceforth ‘spag bol’ – again, for the umpteenth time in my life. While I was making it, Paul started playing the guitar in the living room. Then all was quiet and a minute or two later he started playing it by the swimming pool. You can’t keep a born performer down.

Four-year-old Emily was an instant fan and she proved to be a good singer and dancer. She enjoyed singing along with Paul to the refrain ‘One, two, three, four, five – once I caught a fish alive’. Paul invented The Emily Blues on the spot, and Emily danced and sang along happily to everything he played.

Paul went to bed early and I enjoyed a glass or three of wine with our neighbours, 6’4’’ Mark – who worked for the RAF in Telford – and his wife, the comely 6’0’’ Anne. Mark and Anne had been married for almost 15 years and had three children, a 10-year-old twin boy (Alex) and a girl (Kate), and 12-year-old Glen. I explained something of my recent circumstances, my second marriage having failed not long before the holiday.

After some time I fetched a bottle of ‘House of Lords’ Scotch whisky – a present from a generous colleague at the Conservative Party, for which I was then working – at which point Anne sensibly retired for the night.

Mark and I put the world to rights over the course of an hour or two, and I asked him what the secret of his happy marriage was. ‘Luck’ was his conclusion, explaining that you couldn’t know how you would get on with a partner until the years rolled by. Not exactly the blinding insight into happy long-term relationships which I had hoped to gain from the conversation.

MONDAY 6 AUGUST

It was an overcast morning and we decided to drive to Cognac and maybe see a museum or two. But first we had to visit the dentist in Mirambeau. We soon found it and the receptionist looked strikingly like René’s wife Edith in ‘Allo ‘Allo. I explained in French that my friend had a problem with his teeth. ‘Obvieusement’, she noted drily, before pursing her lips and looking away theatrically, to the obvious delight of a couple of old people in the waiting room. I asked if Paul could see a dentist that day, at which point she stabbed her finger vigorously on the appointments diary, and explained in warp-speed French that the earliest possible appointment would be in four days’ time.

Paul and I were starting to develop our own French vocabulary, and by the end of this day it had extended to:

-un plonkeur / une plonkeuse

-un tosseur / une tosseuse

-un wankeur / une wankeuse

-Château Breezebloque – a house with exposed breezeblock walls

-un chitôle – one or a few adjacent unkempt houses with paint peeling off shutters, dirty windows etc. On occasion, a street or even a whole village or town merited this description

The term un chitôle emerged as we were passing a couple of old farm cottages. I was admiring them when Paul exclaimed, ‘What a shithole!’ And I had to admit that maybe he had a point. But this was France and you weren’t supposed – at least in more refined circles – to even think such things, let alone say them. You were supposed to find such buildings quaint. Whenever we passed a well-kept house, particularly one with a garden of any merit, Paul would remark cheerily, ‘obviously owned by an Englishman!’

Paul then suggested that the French state should allow in 50,000 East European immigrants a year, to:

-clean house exteriors

-clean windows

-clean cars

-strip and paint the wood on shutters etc.

-tend the gardens, or at least plant a number of roses

We arrived in Cognac around midday, and Paul wasn’t impressed that most of the shops would be shut for two or three hours – ‘Lazy tosseurs!’ But we sat down for a coffee and tea in one of the cafés on the main square. Paul didn’t like the tea – Lipton’s yellow label – and complained about not being able to order ‘a simple cup of English breakfast tea’.

Ten minutes later a short man walked by, whose eye level was barely above our own – and we were seated. A few moments after he passed, Paul and I exchanged a glance and burst into laughter. I mistakenly thought the man looked like Asterix the Gaul, but Paul got it right. The man was the spitting image of Super Mario, the computer game character. I wanted to stop the man and take a photograph, but couldn’t think of a reason for doing so, which wouldn’t upset him.

We both walked around the excellent Musée des Arts du Cognac which made me thirst for a tasting, so we strolled a few yards up the road to the Hennessy building. Paul wasn’t too keen on a tour but I was, and in a group of maybe 40 English-speaking tourists I was alone in paying the 20 euro price for the tour inclusive of a tasting of Hennessy XO (Extra Old) at the end. The French tour guide was a young lady and her English was flawless. The tour was interesting and really brought the subject alive, from growing the grapes to barrel making, distilling, blending, and all the rest. The tour included a visit to the warehouse on the opposite bank of the Charente river, where Hennessy holds stocks of cognacs from as far back as 1800, for blending purposes.

The lady explained that the cellarmaster decided on how to blend the many cognacs together. Since 1800 the position had always been held by a man, and kept within the same family for seven generations. But the current cellarmaster had ‘only’ a daughter, and it was long ago decided that only men had the fortitude to manage all the tasting that the job required. The current cellarmaster was training his nephew to take up the position when he retired. All this led to predictable groans from the tour members of the female persuasion.

At the end of the tour I tasted a sample of Hennessy XO and was most impressed. But it cost 110 euros a bottle and I decided to restrain myself for once, buying a bottle of VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale) for 32 euros instead.

On the way back from Cognac to Mirambeau we went into a supermarket where Paul – with his back to a huge neon Fromages sign 5 metres away – asked, ‘So where’s the fuckin’ cheese then? I want a normal cheese, like you’d find in Tesco.’ It transpired that by ‘normal’ he meant cheddar cheese, but we couldn’t find any. After a lengthy search Paul remarked, ‘Fifty varieties of fuckin’ goat’s cheese with fuckin’ garlic, but no fuckin’ cheddar. Wankeurs!’

While I was making dinner – rabbit fillets poached in white wine, onion, garlic and basil sauce, with sautéed leeks and potatoes – Paul was writing his postcards nearby, and something was clearly agitating him. All became clear when he said, ‘Even their stamps are shite! Thin cheap fuckin’ paper, with a gnat’s gob of glue on the back. They slide off the fuckin’ cards! It’s obviously all just too much for the French. Tosseurs!’ But he enjoyed the meal and remarked I should teach him how to cook such dishes, ‘because I’d get into a couple of women’s knickers, if I could cook something like this!’

TUESDAY 7 AUGUST

An overcast day, and we decided to go to Bordeaux. Over breakfast we realised that we needed a proper index to define our various terms of description of the French, and soon developed The French Helpfulness Index (Table 1.1).

TABLE 1.1 – THE FRENCH HELPFULNESS INDEX (1)

Category	Points	Key pointers to identification
Un bon œuf	9 – 10	This person is friendly, helpful, maintains a well-repaired and clean house, a clean car and a well-tended garden. In response to a request for directions, this person will cheerfully point you in the right direction. We met a number of French people in this category, to our disappointment.
Un plonkeur / une plonkeuse	6 – 8	This person doesn’t clean his windows, nor his car, nor repair his house, nor tend a garden. Many French people are in this category. Will respond to the enquiry ‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ with ‘Oui, a leetel’, and actually make an effort if in a good mood. Best approached after lunch, i.e. 3.15 p.m.
Un tosseur / une tosseuse	3 – 5	This person is unhelpful by nature, but more so once he / she discovers you are English, or you speak anything other than flawless French. Will respond to the enquiry ‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ with ‘No, ah do nod spick a zingle wort of ze Onglish lonkwich, ah’m afret we shell eff to convorse in Fronch. Kandly prozeed wiss your onquerry.’
Un wankeur / une wankeuse	1 – 2	This person refuses to accept the very existence of the English language. Responds to your cheery ‘good morning’ – or ‘good moaning’, if you’re willing to make an effort yourself – with a look of utter bewilderment. Responds to any enquiry with a fast torrent of French, in which no individual words could possibly be identified, even by a native French speaker.

(1) Scale of 1-10 points, 10 points representing extreme helpfulness.

Paul then drove to Bordeaux, 50 miles to the south. On the way he recorded the following:

‘Aristocrats before the Revolution expected their windows to be cleaned every month, and shutters to be painted every year. The Revolutionaries saw window cleaners and shutter painters as establishment lackeys, and beheaded them along with their masters. The last French window cleaners and shutter painters were guillotined in 1789, and nobody has dared clean a window or paint a shutter in France since.

Except during the Second World War. After invading France the Germans – true to form – demanded that their commandeered buildings have clean windows and freshly-painted shutters, and they forced the French peasants to carry out the work.

But the French were a cunning lot, and it occurred to the French Resistance – which every French adult belonged to, at least after the war – that they could spy on enemy plans if they could see through the windows. So they took on the jobs of window cleaning and shutter painting. After the war things returned to normal, and the window cleaners and shutter painters were made redundant.’

The outskirts of Bordeaux were dingy and dirty but as we approached the centre the city suddenly became more pleasing to the eye, and we parked in an underground car park, ‘des Grands Hommes’. I jokingly said I hoped that this wasn’t a euphemism for a car park frequented by Village People lookalikes, so we were startled to see one very large man in full motorbike leather attire. But neither the native American nor the builder showed up, so we relaxed.

Paul parked in a disabled bay four floors below ground and commented favourably on the availability of disabled spots in France. We then walked a few yards to the lift, only to discover it was broken down. ‘Fuckin’ French tosseurs!’, he remarked whilst gasping his way up the steps to ground level.

In one of the very smart shops near the Grand Théatre we went into a shop because I wanted to buy some good cognac glasses, following my trip to Hennessy. I duly bought four Riedel cognac glasses, to me a snip at 70 euros. Paul was visibly horrified by the extravagance.

At the Tourist Office we paid for a tour of a few Médoc vineyards on the following Friday – 70 euros for each of us. The tour would include Château Lynch-Bages, a claret of which I’m particularly fond. We also asked whether there was a dentist we might visit whilst we were in Bordeaux, and we were duly presented with a list of six or seven, one being on the nearby Allée Tourny. We went there, pressed the bell, but there was no response. So we walked into the adjacent pharmacy to buy more painkillers and enquire about the dentist. The lady explained that the dentist was on holiday for the whole of August, and helpfully suggested July or September might be a better month for us to take our holidays, to lessen the likelihood of such problems. Clearly the Tourist Office had given us the list of dentists who go on holiday in August. Merci beaucoup.

By this time Paul was tired again and we stopped for lunch at the Villa Tourny restaurant, also on the Allée Tourny, and sat outside. The waitress was very fetching, brown-eyed with rich chestnut hair. Maybe 28-30, she wore black clothes and a tattoo was visible on her hip. Paul and I agreed she’d look fine on the back of either of our motorbikes. Even though I’ve never owned a motorbike and never will.

Paul agreed to a steak for lunch, which I asked to be bien cuit. The French have now learnt that when English people ask for a steak in this way there’s no point in giving them what they think they should have, namely a rare steak in a pool of blood.

I had linguini with duck strips, and we both judged our meals very good. I polished off a bottle of a sound Entre-deux-mers and the world seemed a better place than it had an hour earlier. On our way out, as I was strolling past the waitress, I declared, ‘Merci madame. Vous êtes très belle!’ I didn’t dare look back for her reaction.

A ten minute walk to the second dentist on the list proved fruitful. A walk up the steps took us to a lady wearing a white coat. I enquired whether she was a dentist to which she smilingly replied that she was, whilst somehow communicating the thought, ‘Do I look like a bricklayer, then?’ Paul asked her where the toilet was, and she indicated a door about six feet away. He walked in and as the room was very dark, pulled what he reasonably assumed was a light cord. The toilet duly flushed and we all laughed. Something told me this was designed to amuse the dentist, to compensate her for having to deal with English-speaking patients.

But she was very helpful and professional, she checked Paul’s tooth and asked questions about his treatment and medication. She concluded that Paul should simply continue with the antibiotics and painkillers, and see his dentist again on his return to England. Paul looked very relieved and offered his E111 card which he understood guaranteed free – or at least reduced price – treatment in the EU.

Her expression made it clear that Paul was offering something as appropriate under the circumstances as a pot plant. She said she knew nothing about such cards and asked for 21 euros. Paul again looked very relieved – he’d expected to pay 50 to 60 euros – and duly paid the sum. The dentist gave Paul a receipt which she said he could use in the UK to reclaim the money from the NHS. He was so cheerful that on his way out he remarked that not all French people were plonkeurs, tosseurs, or wankeurs. A breakthrough, I felt.

We then walked to an elegant wine shop at number 2, Allée Tourny, L’Intendant. The bottles were arranged in racks in the wall, and the general plan was that as you ascended the three or four floors on the spiral staircase, the bottles became ever more expensive. The ones at the top were in the 350+ euros per bottle range and Paul noted I was almost drooling with pleasure at seeing Cheval Blanc, Ausone, Lafite Rothschild and the rest. But the effects of the lunchtime wine were starting to wear off, which probably saved me a fortune, as I restricted myself to one bottle of 1981 Château Lynch-Bages (120 euros) and one of 1997 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou (55 euros). Paul said he was impressed that I was holding conversations in French, but I knew I was far from fluent in the language.

In the evening I cooked chicken breasts in red wine with the obligatory onions, garlic and whatever herbs I could find. Paul judged it excellent, which was good enough for me.

WEDNESDAY 8 AUGUST

It was a fine day and whilst I was engaged in my writing in the morning Paul walked around the area, accompanied as usual by Louis, the owner’s Jack Russell. Louis’ main aim in life was to catch rabbits but sadly he was now too old to manage it. On one occasion when Paul opened the car door to retrieve something, Louis flew into the car. Clearly he thought Paul had adopted him.

Paul returned from his walk in fine spirits and said he’d seen something incredible. He’d spotted a Frenchman painting. Only a gate rather than a shutter, but it was a start. He vowed to take his camera with him the next time he went walking. I asked how he planned to explain to a Frenchman who was painting something, why he was photographing him. He was clearly baffled by the stupidity of my question and replied, ‘In English!’

I drove into Mirambeau and had a leisurely stroll around the town centre before buying more provisions at the Super U. In the town I saw something to gladden the heart, a woman cleaning her windows. I told Paul of this observation on my return, to which he retorted, ‘Yeah, right!’ Clearly a claim of sighting a naked Nicole Kidman riding a unicycle, whilst juggling flaming clubs, would have been more credible to him. He refused to believe windows were ever cleaned in France until and unless he’d seen it for himself.

After a Spanish omelette dinner in the gite we relaxed for a while, swimming and reading books, drinking a glass or two of wine. At 9 p.m. I declared I was bored and suggested we go for a drive. With Paul driving, obviously, so I could have a drink.

No bars appeared to be open in Mirambeau, and then we spotted a sign for Château Mirambeau. A leisurely drive up a hill took us to the place, and after passing through some magnificent gates and along a long drive, we saw a most beautiful building, its charm enhanced by the fading golden light of the sun. It was as if we’d stumbled across Chatsworth House on the outskirts of Corby. It has an obviously classy restaurant, and I told Paul I’d treat him to dinner there one evening, on the strict conditions he ordered neither a plate of chips, nor a cup of strong English breakfast tea.

Paul drove on to Jonzac, 20 miles away, and parked near a smart café not far from an enormous building of a military appearance. People were enjoying their late dinners and drinks at the outdoor tables but stopped to look at Paul parking the 17’ long Mercedes opposite, and a couple of not-very-smartly-dressed English people emerging. Now Paul had already told me he didn’t want a ‘second dinner’, and that a plate of chips and an orange juice would suffice for him. After perusing the menu I ordered a Thai curry and a glass of wine for myself, which cost around 25 euros, along with chips and orange juice for Paul, at 4 euros. I could see from the waiter’s expression that he didn’t consider our orders took due consideration of the concept of égalité.

Throughout our hour at the café the young men of the area did what young men do all over France, namely shatter the peace and quiet by driving low-capacity motorbikes with screeching engines past every group of people enjoying a quiet night out. Native French people appear never to be troubled by this antisocial behaviour. I wanted to hurl bricks at the culprits.

When we returned to the gite I was quite mellow so I decided to smoke my pipe, and enjoyed a glass or two of Hennessy VSOP whilst listening on my MP3 player to AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Free. Anyone spotting my efforts at ‘air guitar’ and ‘air drumming’ would have assumed I was epileptic, I imagine. And so ended another happy day.

THURSDAY 9 AUGUST

I was awoken at 11 a.m. by the sound of Paul singing the chorus to Peter Sarstedt’s Where do you go to my lovely?

Where do you go to my lovely,

when you’re alone in your bed?

Tell me the thoughts that surround you,

I want to look inside your head.

I must admit to a few moments’ consternation before I realised Paul wasn’t actually in my room, but entertaining the other holidaymakers just outside our gite.

I’d adopted the habit of taking along a small digital recorder on our travels and it wasn’t long before it came into use. We’d driven to the local Super U, and as usual Paul had sought out a convenient disabled parking spot. But there was a problem. A large white-painted stone – or ‘a 200-pound lump of fuckin’ concrete’, in Paul’s elegant phrase – was positioned near the left hand side of the parking spot. I took a photo of Paul pointing at the stone, looking most unhappy. Then he drove a few yards to another disabled parking spot, without a stone, where I photographed him with an expression which said, ‘The French can do it, if they only try!’

In typical Paul fashion, he grumbled all the way to the store about the ‘fuckin’ French’. Just outside the store, a middle-aged French lady turned around and faced him, and with a winning smile remarked, ‘You need to be careful – some of us do speak English, you know!’ Paul was taken aback and muttered to me later, ‘Fuckin’ great. I’m cursing the French in front of the one fuckin’ person in this miserable fuckin’ town who can speak English!’

Not long afterwards he related a story about his friends and himself, who grew up in the village of Stanground, near Peterborough:

‘When Stanground boys went to the cinema in Peterborough in the 1960s, we very often borrowed bicycles from behind the cinema. We didn’t consider it stealing, we just didn’t ask the owners if we could borrow them.

We rode the bikes back to Stanground where we usually dumped them in the river, then walked the final 200 yards like the respectable people we were. This only came to public attention when a boat snagged on something, where the river was supposed to be 12 or 15 feet deep. But there was by then an underwater mountain of bicycles.’

I noted that the population of Mirambeau were markedly shorter than one might expect in an English town, as one often finds in France. And I had a theory to explain the phenomenon. For centuries, and even to this day in certain parts of France – the Pyrenees and the Loire Valley come to mind – people have lived in caves hewn into the limestone rock. These people are known as ‘troglodytes’, and happily refer to themselves as such.

But human nature being what it is, the average person would prefer the lesser effort of excavating a cave to a height of 5’, rather than 6’ or even 7’. The outcome was predictable. Short people would thrive in the caves, while tall people would keep knocking their foreheads on the stone, and in due course replace the existing tall village idiot. Before long Paul and I came to refer to any particularly short and ugly person as un trog or une trogette. Mirambeau had more than its fair share of them.

On a long winding road we followed a small car with a French number plate. The car was apparently incapable of more than 20mph. We could see an old couple arguing in the car, and from time to time a piece of litter was hurled through the sunroof. Paul then admitted that he threw litter out of cars, but only when there were no other cars around. He clearly felt this gave him the moral high ground over the old French couple.

Paul opined that the old man wanted to throw caution to the wind and move up into third gear, but ‘the old trout’ wanted to keep the car in second gear. He continued, ‘At a wild guess, when the husband wants to go up to third gear and hit 30mph, the wife ties her knicker elastic around the handbrake, and pulls at it with all her might!’

We pulled off into a small road to get a taste of rural France and drove towards the town of St Dizan-du-Gua. A few seconds later we were passing a field of sunflowers when we both spotted something that made us laugh out loud. Someone had removed a few seeds from a number of sunflower heads so as to give images of smiling faces. Needless to say we had to stop, and I took a photograph of Paul beside one of them.

I also took a photograph of a crop – a cereal crop? – on the opposite side of the road, a crop which had puzzled me for over 25 years. Nobody seems to know what it is. Paul thought it was maize, but I was sure it wasn’t, as it had just a few feathery seeds at the top.

Not long afterwards we were driving through a large area of land in which only grape vines were growing. ‘I reckon this is a vineyard’, Paul said. I stared at him in disbelief and mumbled, ‘No shit, Sherlock!’, and we laughed.

Paul was now starting to become a little agitated that he had become the butt of jokes, as I recorded everything daft that he did or said, but nothing daft that I did or said. I was about to record this observation into my digital recorder when I spotted that I was about to speak into my electronic breathalyser, which was roughly the same shape and size. Paul roared out laughing and said he wanted the incident to go into the book, and I agreed that it would.

St Dizan-du-Gua was a pretty village with a fetching church and steeple. Although Paul did remark on the high number of Châteaux Breezebloques.

Some time later we drove through the small village of St Fort-en-Gironde. Paul spotted a few newish houses with new tiles and painted shutters, ‘obviously the English have taken over the village.’

Shortly afterwards we were at the end of a long queue of slow-moving traffic following a tractor moving at 3mph, cutting the grass verge. But the forward visibility was excellent, so why the queue? I speculated that this might be a tourist attraction, a rare opportunity to see a Frenchman working.

Soon we came to St Romain-sur-Gironde, a quaint old village, but I was struggling to find anything to say about it, and so asked Paul for his thoughts. ‘Quality gate rotting on the left, peeling paint on the shutters on the right. What is it with the French?’ There were a few nice gardens with roses, so we concluded this was yet another village taken over by the English. Paul then spotted a field of sunflowers surrounded by a fence, ‘clearly fenced-in, in case they run away!’

We came to the town of Mortagne. Lots of well-kept boats and yachts in the port, all very attractive. We stopped for a drink at the Bar Restaurant Glacier du Port, to have our customary beer and cup of tea. Paul again didn’t like the tea, and declared – not for the first time – that it would be a ‘bloody miracle’ if he were ever to find a cup of strong English breakfast tea in France.

Above the bar, Paul spotted some recently-painted shutters above a neon sign whose first few and last few letters only were still present. ‘Obviously the shutter painter stood on the neon sign to balance himself, and knocked some letters off. Tosseur!’

For some reason I explained the French law of inheritance to Paul. This law is said to account for the poor state of upkeep of some buildings and estates in France. Estates are divided equally between siblings, so individuals do not have a financial incentive to invest in properties, to keep them in a good condition. Paul, as usual, had a view on the matter, and recorded it.

‘I’m disagreeing with Michael on the French law of inheritance whereby the children all inherit equal shares, whether individuals have looked after their parents for 40 years or never even bothered to send them a postcard.

What should happen is that upon an estate owner’s death, the estate solicitor should call in a Polish builder – from Krakow, ideally – and get him to do any repair work required on the building, and decorate the interior with magnolia paint. Then the solicitor should bring in a shutter maker and painter from Corsica, and an English window cleaner from South London.

Only when these people have been paid should the estate be put up for sale, and the remaining money shared equally between the surviving children. This will sort out the problem of grimy looking buildings, bad shutters, and dirty windows.’

I always appreciate Paul’s clarity of thought on complex problems.

We drove into the resort of St George which looked very well-heeled, clean and pleasant. Paul tried to find something to moan about, but for once struggled. We had a drink in a café and as is often the case in France, the toilet had no wooden or plastic seat. This came as no surprise to me, but Paul was horrified and assumed it had been stolen.

FRIDAY 10 AUGUST

This was the day of the Médoc wine tour. We left the gite at around 6.30 a.m. and found the traffic very light. At about 7.00 a.m. we saw a sign indicating the direction to Toulouse. I pointed out the sign to Paul and remarked, ‘If you go that way, you’ll have nothing to lose!’ He replied, ‘Why’s that, then?’, saw the sign, and groaned.

The next sign that attracted our attention was a ‘1 in 6 gradient down’ sign. With his face pressed theatrically against the windscreen, Paul declared the sign helpful.

Maybe it was the grim outskirts of Bordeaux, but we found ourselves reflecting on moments in history when people might have said, ‘Cheer up, things could be worse!’ We finally attributed the line to the Mayor of Hiroshima, consoling a friend who had just had his bicycle stolen. 8.15 a.m. on August 6, 1945.

We arrived at the Tourist Office at about 7.30 a.m. We passed the café where we’d eaten lunch earlier in the week, where I’d told the waitress she was très belle. She was setting up some tables and when we passed by and said a breezy ‘Bonjour!’ she looked at us and flashed a million-dollar smile of recognition, before returning the greeting. I didn’t imagine she recalled us at all. That’s très belles femmes for you.

The Médoc is a very special region for lovers of fine red wine and I was greatly looking forward to the day. Paul doesn’t drink red wine so he was simply joining me for a day out, saying he’d appreciate the craft skills that went into winemaking, barrel making and the rest.

Napoleon III asked for a classification of the wines of the Médoc and in 1855 this was finished, based on the prices the wines had fetched over the previous 100 years or more. There have been a very small number of changes since 1855, and in general wines higher up the classification will cost more than those lower down. But there are exceptions and Château Lynch-Bages, which was to be the second estate we visited on this day, is one of them, selling for higher prices than most cinquièmes crus.

There were about 30 people on the tour bus, and our first visit was to Château D’Arsac in the Margaux commune. My prime recollection is of a hauntingly beautiful young tour guide, who spoke only French. She took us around the vineyard and explained various matters about the history and technicalities of winemaking at the estate. I’m sure I speak for most of the men on the tour when I say I didn’t take in everything she said, such was her beauty. Who am I kidding? We took nothing in.

A number of the men – myself included – managed to take a photograph of the young lady in the most improbable circumstances. In my own case, whilst she was talking in front of a large warehouse. She gave me a cool look but seemed satisfied when I smiled and uttered the unlikely phrase, ‘magnificent warehouse!’

Madamoiselle Toptotty then took us on a tour of the estate grounds, in which were some very unremarkable examples of modern sculpture. The worse they were, the more inclined Paul and I were to photograph them. But I loved one particular piece which Paul loathed with even more than his customary vigour. This was an enormously long iron girder which was resting against the château, and extended for some distance above it. ‘Looks like the fuckin’ builders forgot to take it away once they’d finished the fuckin’ roofing job’, he commented.

We tasted a glass of the wine. Well, I had two glasses, to be fair, because Paul didn’t drink his. We returned to the coach and resumed chatting to the pleasant couple who’d sat near us, an Italian man and his Australian-born wife, Anthea B. She had the most beautiful pale grey eyes, and was still a handsome woman of maybe 45 years of age. As a younger woman she must have been a Madamoiselle Toptotty in her own right.

I need now to relate an anecdote from the summer of 2005 or 2006. I was lunching at Mamma Mia’s, an excellent and long-established Italian restaurant in my adopted home town, the throbbing metropolis of Bedford. You must visit the place if you’re ever in the area. On this particular occasion, a hot day, the red wine was warm, maybe 23^oC – 24^oC. I asked Bruno, the proprietor of the restaurant, for an ice bucket to cool the bottle. He was clearly shocked at my request, and said with some feeling that red wine must be served at room temperature.

I explained to Bruno that this idea originated in France in the 19th century, when average dining room temperatures were unlikely to have been much above 16^oC in the winter months, but he wouldn’t accept the point. I’ve had the same argument with a number of people over the years, and am now disinclined to enter into a discussion on the matter. It’s up there with religion and politics as a topic to avoid. But eventually Bruno relented and brought the ice bucket, with some theatrical head-shaking.

The reason for relating this anecdote is that when I asked Anthea B. after the tour if she’d enjoyed it, she said she had, apart from the wine being ‘cold’. Her Italian husband agreed, saying strong red wine should be served at 22^oC – 24^oC. Against my better judgment I argued the point and they clearly considered me a fool, but were too polite to say so. Then I had a brainwave, an increasingly rare event as I get older.

In my bag on the coach I had a copy of the weighty 5th edition of The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. I rifled through it and soon came to the section with serving temperature recommendations for a wide variety of wines. The ideal temperature for a Médoc wine is in the region of 14^oC – 18^oC. I couldn’t resist showing them the table whilst explaining generously that of course the wine would warm in the glass in a warm environment, and Italians in my experience liked their wines a little warmer. The couple read the text and table without a word and were markedly cool – ironically – towards Paul and myself for the remainder of the day.

Château Lynch-Bages is a ‘fifth growth’ in the 1855 classification but for many years has been regarded more highly, and priced accordingly. It is situated in the southern half of the Pauillac commune, the region around the town of Pauillac. Three of the current four Premier Grand Cru estates are based in this commune, namely Château Latour, Château Mouton Rothschild, and Château Lafite Rothschild. The fourth, Château Haut-Brion, is in the Graves region of Bordeaux.

At Château Lynch-Bages the bilingual – and rather solemn – young tour guide of the female persuasion walked us through the on-site winery, and explained everything in the minutest detail, including the change from the wooden vats used for fermenting up to the 1970s, to the modern stainless steel vats. The old wooden vats, and associated equipment, had been retained in an excellent museum. The enormous physical effort of winemaking in the old days, compared with the mechanised processes of the modern era, was apparent.

At various places in the old winemaking area, and particularly on the first floor, were examples of modern art paintings, very large, produced by a German artist whose name I was determined not to record. I remarked to a few of my fellow tour members, ‘German merde. Makes a change from French merde!’, which resulted in some vigorous nodding of heads. I took photographs of several paintings, not quite believing how awful they were. By this time, a number of the tour members – notably the English-speaking ones – had become quite vocal in their criticism of the art. ‘Wouldn’t have one if you gave it to me’, someone remarked. Paul, as usual, had the last word on the subject, ‘The château owners really shouldn’t buy art when they’re pissed!’ I could only agree.

In Bordeaux I had bought a bottle of 1981 Château Lynch-Bages for around 120 euros, and wasn’t about to give up this opportunity to ask our tour guide if she knew the vintage. The timing of my question was very fortuitous, she declared gravely, for she herself had been born in 1981, and she’d drunk a bottle of that very vintage the previous weekend to celebrate her birthday. She declared it excellent, which pleased me. But then, what else would she say? I was reminded of the response I had from a lady working in a wine shop in Burgundy many years previously, after I’d enquired whether a particular bottle – a rather expensive one – was from a ‘good’ vintage. ‘Zey are all good vintages, monsieur’, she had replied tersely. I’m quite sure she believed it.

The lunch at a restaurant some distance from the château was a major disappointment. I assumed someone in the wine tour business had negotiated an onerous contract with the restaurant, and we were to suffer as a result. It emerged that both the starter and the main course were to consist of fish. We hadn’t been informed of this, nor were we offered an alternative. The starter of a tiny pickled sardine, with a little salad, set the tone for what was to come. A young lady from New Zealand picked at it nervously, as if she believed it contained a hefty dose of polonium. She ate a tiny portion of the sardine before abandoning her heroic effort.

A bottle of a modest Médoc was served with the first course, and one of the men on our table somehow managed to divide it equally between the ten people on the table, a feat that would have been quite beyond me.

The main course consisted of a fillet of indeterminate white fish wrapped in a short length of paper-thin ham. Now I’m not a great fish eater myself, so I started at one end of the fillet, only to find five or six very sharp bones. I gave up in disgust, but ten minutes later made a renewed effort, and found those had been the only bones in the fillet.

A single bottle of 2001 Lynch-Bages accompanied the second course, and it was excellent. I looked forward to the 1981 with even greater anticipation. Paul then asked for a glass of white wine, but the maitre d’ explained there would be a supplement for white wine, whereupon Paul’s face became an ominous-looking purple. I told the maitre d’ that was fine, ordered the white wine, and with some effort calmed Paul down. He was still moaning bitterly about the matter a week later.

The final course was a choice between cheese, and a pineapple slice cooked with brown sugar, and ice cream. I opted for the cheese, and was duly presented with two small pieces, which combined were maybe the size of a Dairylea triangle, and two grapes – one green, one red. Paul had opted for the pineapple option, and needless to say he wasn’t impressed.

The third château and estate was Château Pichon-Longueville-Comtesse-de-Lalande, on the extreme southern border of the Pauillac commune, adjacent to the more famous Château Latour estate. The coach tour guide spoke at length about the estate, explaining that she was writing a book on the estate and its history.

Before we tasted the wine we were shown two museums of objects belonging to the owners. The first had examples of glass objects up to the nineteenth century, and objects related to wine and winemaking. The quality level was outstanding. But the upstairs museum was a real eye-opener, displaying a collection of large ornamental glass objects of exquisite quality, all produced in the 20th or 21st centuries. They merited a visit to the estate on their own. I took a number of photographs, but they didn’t do them justice.

We were permitted to walk on the manicured lawn behind the château, and to admire the gardens, swimming pool and more besides. There were worse families to be born into than this one, Paul and I reflected.

We were given a small glass of the 2004 vintage to taste, and while it was pleasant, it didn’t compare with the 2001 Lynch-Bages. But I gratefully downed both my own glass and Paul’s, and remarked to Paul how beautiful the house and grounds were. He agreed, adding, ‘Yes, we could almost be in England!’

We returned to Mirambeau just as the Super U was about to shut. A short woman of maybe 60 years of age crossed in front of the car, and we both agreed she was possibly the ugliest woman we’d ever seen. Une trogette of the highest order. A minute later a short man in a rusty old Peugeot parked and emerged from his car, and we both agreed he was possibly the ugliest man we’d ever seen. Un trog of the highest order. Paul speculated that pork chops would have to be hung around the necks of these people to persuade the village dogs to play with them.

Both shared an endearing feature, the lower jaw jutting out prominently beyond the upper jaw. We speculated they might be related, the result of a bizarre genetic experiment in the area or – more likely – the outcome of extensive inbreeding in the Mirambeau area over several centuries. John Prescott would be a real ‘looker’ in these parts.

On the way back to the gite we stopped at a zebra crossing for an old lady of extreme frailty. Unfortunately we stopped when she was only a yard or two into the crossing, and at two or three points in her lengthy journey across the road she actually stopped, presumably to recover her strength. We were worried that she might actually have expired at one point, because with two sticks she was no more likely to fall over than a three-legged table.

So agonisingly slow was her progress that I reflected I had plenty of time to go to the car boot, get my camera out, and take a picture of the heroic woman. She managed a feeble wave of appreciation once she’d crossed, as if nobody had ever stopped for her before. Paul moaned with some feeling that if he hadn’t stopped we’d have still passed five yards in front of her, and returned to the gite half an hour earlier.

That evening Mark – from the adjoining gite – told us they were departing the next day. I asked him to write down his full name and address, so I could post a complimentary copy of this book to him in due course. At which point he had to reveal that his surname was Phillips, and he groaned. I guessed he’d had enough ribbing on the subject of ‘Anne and Mark Phillips’ to last a lifetime.