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

Making An Entrance - Twice

7th June
My friend Florence recently organised a birthday picnic bash for her husband who has been neglected of late due to the recent arrival of a baby.

I baked my current speciality, a MegaCherryFrangipane Tart and set off in the police car but the road into Florence’s village had a big hole in it, and I couldn’t pass. Roads around here will often start off as tarmac and then dwindle without warning into a narrow gravelly track before petering out altogether. Trying to find another way into the village I found myself up one of these tracks and then, in my attempt to turn the car round, ended up backing it into a ditch.

I was tantalisingly near Florence’s house so I left the tart and champagne in the car, crossed the field, pushed through a hedge and walked up the lane to the party, arriving triumphant in torn frock and hair stuck with twigs, Florence ordered the men to accompany me back to the car and get it out of the ditch. They did so in great high spirits but were a bit competitive about how to deal with the problem and managed to further entrench the car, so Florence found a jeep-owning neighbour who came and towed me out. In gratitude I handed over the MegaCherryFrangipane Tart to Jeep Man but then felt thoroughly embarrassed about first stealing the men from the party then re-arriving tartless.

I needn’t have worried, the party had improved since our disappearance, the email that David sent round a few days later includes a reassurance to his friends (who seem to be mostly in their twenties) that being 30 is fine after all, and he then goes on to thank the attendees for their contributions, including this appreciation of my piéce de théatre:

Merci à Lulu pour l'animation de l'après-midi intitulée "A car in a ditch !"

Mr Potato Head Under Pressure

5th June
I went down to the woodyard to get some ply from Mr Potato Head, his mother is extremely tiny and fierce. As I walked up her drive she threw back her head and yelped which is her way of calling her son's attention. Four little dogs joined in the racket, barking and jumping up at me until he arrived.

I had to wait to tell Mr Potato Head what I wanted because his mother had to shout at him first - she was telling him he wasn’t allowed to do anything until he’d delivered the truckload of wood sitting outside the house.

When she’d finished shouting, Mr Potato Head asked me what I was after and I said that I needed three sheets of ply but I was hoping he’d cut them up for me and he said fine and took my drawing away leaving a red-faced and distraught woman on my hands. She told me that her husband is going into hospital soon to have his leg amputated - the protracted result of a tractor accident and spilt battery acid many years ago. This is too sad to hear, Mr Potato Head put the ply in my car and said he must hurry and do the delivery before his mother bursts, I remind him that he hasn’t ever sent me a bill yet and that he must do it soon because we will leave next month...

Omigod we’re leaving! - there’s still loads to be filmed and masses of leaving stuff to sort out (like reselling the police car!) and I’m coming up to the one year mark for starting this blog which was only intended to run for the duration of this project...

French Farce

1st May
I’m not readjusting well to being back. Yesterday morning, I completely forgot that I was supposed to be collecting Spider Man* from the station, he called to see where I was just as I’d started washing my hair in the shower, so I had to do all that cartoony hopping around with an arm in one sleeve while trying to get my shoes and pants on at the same time and soaking myself with my own hair.

I was still trying to get an arm through the other sleeve and do my zip while backing the car out of the drive and I failed to put a mobile phone in my bag. Spider Man meanwhile had decided to get on another train, I arrived at a deserted station and then had to work out where to get a phone card and the matching call box to find out where he’d got to.

We have recently acquired an old blue Laguna that used to belong to the police (gendarmes), while I was running around after Spider Man it ran low on diesel so I stopped at an unmanned fuel station - I hadn’t refuelled this car before. I'd spent a full half hour hunting for a release button to open the petrol flap by the time a passing gendarme found me frothing at the mouth trying to forcibly prise the wretched thing off with my finger tips, he kept his distance and pointed out that I had to turn off the central locking to get at the petrol tank.

*Spider Man comes and stays for a few days now and then while he logs our material, he is French and unnaturally fond of spiders