Dodgy Car-Dealing

We’ve pretty much ticked all the boxes on our sequence lists and I’m now in full packing-up mode, this includes selling the old French police car, a Laguna that I'd bought for this project last year.

I’ve been telling everyone that the car is for sale. A couple of weeks back, when I was alone at the house, I had just stuck a 'For Sale’ notice in the car's window when I saw a familiar Mercedes pulling into our drive, M.Mullet got out of his car, greeted me a little too intimately, prowled around my car and asked me why I was selling it so cheaply, ‘Leave the car with me when you go - I will sell it for you’.

The paperwork for selling vehicles in France is complicated and I told M.Mullet that I needed to have the car sold before I left France, but if he found a buyer he’d get a cut, I went into the house to get drinks for us. When I came back out M.Mullet's demeanor had completely changed, he seemed to be trying to control himself, then he put his face close to mine and snarled, ‘you will never sell that car’ and drove off.

That shook me up

I stepped up my campaign, there was a pétanque tournament at the village bar on Saturday, so I drove the car there and parked with my ‘For Sale’ notice showing prominently, by the end of the afternoon one of the players, a Dutchman, had made an offer and we shook hands on what we both knew was the bargain of the century, he insisted that I took the ‘For Sale’ sign out of the car, I passed it to him and he tore it up. We drank many glasses to celebrate the purchase and he said that he would come by and exchange cash for the vehicle a few days later.

While the Dutchman was out test-driving the Laguna, The Walrus who is also Dutch looked at me and gave me a warning.
be careful! he is from Holland – he will not pay what you are asking.
So when I received a call that evening from another prospective buyer, I said that it was probably sold - and I took her number.

Sure enough, a couple of days later the Dutchman phoned, having assessed my urgency to get the car sold, he was offering me a considerably lower price than the one we had agreed - he said that his new price was all he was prepared to pay, he would call back when I’d had a chance to think about it.

I phoned the woman back, asked if she still wanted the car and took it over to her that evening. She lived a long way away and it was midnight before her husband drove me back home with 3,000 euros stuffed in my underwear.

...and I got to tell Mr Dutchman where to put his money when he called the following day to see when he could pick up his Laguna

An Offer I Can’t Refuse

25th March
After yesterday’s Ada holiday , I’m back on track in the World of Weird that is this little filming project, I’ll catch you up on the insect and cat news later, but I’ve been champing at the bit to unburden myself of a recent adventure:

I had a swift response to Friday’s canvassing for garden-related stuff, the following afternoon a battered Mercedes scrunched into our driveway. M. Mullet got out, swaggered round to the car boot and opened it with a flourish to reveal a pile of ceramic flower pots and plastic seed trays. I thanked him and said that I’d be happy to buy them.

Oh no, they’re just sitting there taking up space in our garage, they are a gift

M. Mullet has a wolfy leer about him, clearly this was not going to be the end of it, his eyes were scanning the property over my shoulder, taking note that no other car was in view, he finally asked if I was on my own (I was).

Goodness me no, my husband is filming behind the house – shall I call him?

He didn’t call my bluff and headed off, but the following day his wife knocked on our front door and asked me if I would like to have an aperitif with her that evening, I said that would be lovely thank you
then she said Good you will join my home maintenance party

She saw my puzzled look and explained that she was hosting a party for housewives where we would be introduced to some house cleaning products, I wanted to laugh, my idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

The penny dropped - this was how I had to pay for the car-load of pots

The Mullet’s place was easy to spot due to the broken lorry blocking the road outside, but then I had to negotiate quite a lot of big car parts and dog poo before I got to the front door, M. Mullet opened the door and there was  a tussle to stop the dogs savaging me. The 'party’ was going to be run by a large severe-looking lady in a tight suit, M.Mullet left for the bar and we were all given catalogues, there were 5 other 'guests', all French except for Brenda*, I was the only non-smoker in the room.

Brenda hissed at me that she’d tried to decline her invitation by saying that there’d be no point as she didn’t understand French, They told me you were coming to translate – why didn’t you say no?

I hissed back: Why didn’t you?

We were then treated to the Stanhome Experience which is exclusively directed at women and emphasizes their responsibility to provide family security through cleanliness. The Tight-suited Lady stood and lectured us, pausing now and again while I turned to Brenda and rendered her words into English.

There is nothing that will remove as many stains as Spunkoff, here are my husband’s white cricket trousers, they were covered with sperm and grass stains, see how new they look now

Mme Mullet was to receive a commission from the sales, she told us that she hoped to reach a target that would win her the bonus prize, I asked her what that would be

A magic squeegee**

Finally order forms were passed around, I selected a cleaning sponge and some hand cream at the sort of price I would pay for good Champagne and smoked salmon. Everyone else placed their order and went home but Mme Mullet had insisted that Brenda and I stay for aperitifs, we waited while the evening’s sales were totalled.

The squeegee target was not reached, Tight-suit lady handed us all a Stanhome-branded coaster and left. M. Mullet came back from the bar, poured us some warm whiskey and tried to comfort his distraught wife about her tight-fisted friends. It was an uncomfortable evening on every level.

* Brenda is great value - a chain-smoking septuagenarian party girl from Liverpool, recipient of multiple implants and facelifts

** Obviously if I could’ve just bought her the mop as an exchange for the pots I would have happily done so – but mere money won’t buy such a glorious thing.

Customer Survey

22nd March
I made a business trip to the village bar on Friday evening - to let it be known that I’m in the market for any old garden-related stuff that people are throwing out or won’t be needing for a while. I’m going to use it to dress the garden sets.

I took the new bar manager Shane shopping again last week and the trip was decorated by some colourful swearing. He cursed the tight-fisted a******s who are refusing to buy his fancy wines. This is mainly due to unrealistic expectations on his part, I suspected that our village society might not have the right profile for his plans and decided to conduct a survey of his existing clientele on a typical Friday night:

Old Dad
Turns up wearing fat slippers, usually drinks Ricard, rarely eats out, likes to see a piece of meat and plenty of chips on his plate.

Herisson
Comes in for beer after long day farming, lives with his parents, his Italian mother would be volubly upset if he ate away from home.

Frank and Philippe
Pétanque club captain and his best mate, they wear unfashionable jeans, drink beer mixed with mint syrup then Ricard chasers, their idea of evening entertainment = burping contests, when they’ve got drunk enough they go for a pizza.

Mimi
Philippe’s wife, she’s very smart but as a perpetually designated driver she just drinks Coke.

The Mullet* family
Mme Mullet is a hairdresser and does the family hair, her husband does stuff with used vehicles and leers shamelessly at other women in front of his wife, she watches miserably clutching a Kalua-based cocktail. There are two doughy-faced sons in biker leathers, their mullets resplendent enough to gain free entry to a Guns n Roses convention. The boys drink beer but M. Mullet surprised me by drinking what amounted to about a pint of Muscat (an inexpensive sweet white wine) They do eat out together a lot, I’ve seen them at Jeanne’s café, they tell me that for a special treat they would go to the Macdonalds in the out of town shopping mall.

Lost Bloke Asking Directions
No purchase

Me**
I hung with Mimi and put rum in my coke.

* The Mullet family are French, I was curious to discover what the French might call this cut and came across this place and this one
discovering along the way that

the French term is Coupe à la Waddle, referring to Chris Waddle, the English football player who adopted this haircut in the 1980s while he played for Olympique Marseille.

** I went to the bar on my own, The Director wanted to stay in and finish making a ratchet-sprung gnat-catcher and the Camera Boys took the car to go find somewhere a little more lively.