Sunday, November 26, 2006
Friday 10 November 2006
Once back in Paris after the trip to Barcelona there was all the usual catching up to be done, and several phone messages to be dealt with. Before leaving I had checked the messages at LNL, and as well as one from the post mistress about insufficient postage (again!) there were two others, the first from Monsieur P responding to our lunch/dinner invitation, thanking us and saying they would be very pleased to come on Sat 11th for lunch. The second one was from Madame P, saying it was very kind, but that she was going to Morocco then so they were unable to come. I had left dealing with all these until we were back, and on listening to them again found another message, left by our former house agent Monsieur Urset on Tuesday, asking us to dinner on the following Saturday! There was also a message on the Saint-Denis phone from Nigel Palmer, asking if we would like to go and see the film « The Queen » with them on Wednesday.
It took some time to reply to all of these; apologised to M Urset, who said he had passed by the house and it looked shut up, but he would be in contact again; spoke to Madame P and suggested w/e 25/26 November, she said she would ask her husband, and left a message for NP thanking him, saying we had been away, but that I planned to go and see « The Queen » on Sunday, and also thanking him for telling me about the Saint-Denis cinema. N just said « You see? » as he often does, and that he had maintained that it would take at least a year to get to know people. When I went out into Saint-Denis I met NP so was able to relay my message to him in person; just as well as he rang N later to say it had got deleted and was there anything important in it??
I enjoyed « The Queen » on Sunday afternoon - very well made indeed - and enjoyed the cinema even more, having now been in both the different « rooms » and the fact that it is only about 10 minutes walk from the apartment.
N spent the next few days continuing labelling and dusting the books in his library, and finishing off the Lexique so that he was able to print a proof copy. Apart from the cinema, I did enormous amounts of washing and ironing and food shopping. On Monday afternoon we drove into Paris (my final trip in the old car) to the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine to fetch N’s newly stuffed sofa cushions. It was the first time N had been into the workshop - I felt I knew them all as old friends! We carried the very large but wonderfully renovated cushions back to the car, and then drove home by a different route, via the Place de la Nation where I had never been before, and through Vincennes.
N helped me with the cushions up to the apartment, and then went to park the car in the public car park. I arranged them on the sofa and made tea and was just sitting down to it - very comfortably! - when he arrived back and suggested we go and put the old cushions in the bin straight away and get rid of them. We took one large cushion each and quickly crossed over to the rubbish shed without our coats, and then N said « Have you got your key? » and I said « No, you told me you had yours, » and we were locked out.
It could have been a lot worse. The gardienne (concierge) was outside in the courtyard with some Portuguese builders; she unlocked the door to our building, and sent up one of the men with a piece of curved metal. There are two doors to N’s apartment, and fortunately the inner one with the vastly complicated expensive lock had just been left ajar, the outer one was only on the latch, and after some minutes the builder managed to pull the catch open through the letter box. N gave him 20 euros, with which he seemed very pleased, and we heaved a sigh of relief and went in to get warm and drink our rather stewed tea.
N found me an e-mail address for the local Music Conservatoire so I sent a message asking the date of the Chorale Adulte’s Christmas concert, and got a reply from a secretary whose name I didn’t recognise - Wednesday 5 December but no firm venue. If it’s anything like the summer the date won’t be firm either. Currently we’re not due to be in Saint-Denis then, but we’ll see.
We had been waiting to hear from the Renault garage that the new car would be ready for collection on Tuesday as expected, but heard nothing until early Tuesday afternoon; it might be ready on Wednesday but it was not certain. In any case we wouldn’t be able to leave until N had organised the insurance, so I decided to go back by train on Tuesday afternoon. We had been away from Normandy for two weeks, but it felt a lot longer, as there had been two « stays » in Saint-Denis with the trip to Barcelona in between, and I was anxious to catch up with the post and garden and just wanted to get back and see everything! I also wanted to travel back in the new car, but as N said, it could go on for several days being « possibly tomorrow » and there was the added complication of a train strike on Wednesday. I hadn’t got train or bus timetables with me, but was able to find an e-mail I had sent Caroline with details of connections, so got the 17.29 from Saint Lazare, which connected with a bus at 18.35 at Evreux.
Most of the journey was in the dark, which was not ideal, but it all went smoothly; the bus full up for once, mostly with students from the Lycée at Evreux returning home to their various villages. At La Neuve-Lyre the street lights were on and the house seemed very solid and secure with all its new shutters closed. I remembered how to put on the hot water and heating, the latter got going quickly but it took time to warm up; in spite of pyjamas and a hot water bottle I woke up twice in the night with cold head and shoulders. The post included several things for N, who is having his post redirected here again, including a message from the post office about a recorded letter. I had a tax bill for the equivalent of Council Tax, which we had thought I might be exempt from, due to my feeble income, but perhaps next year! There was a phone message from Monsieur P, saying he and his wife would be pleased to come for lunch at midday on Sat 25 November, barring an earthquake. (N said later, what about floods?) I sent them a postcard confirming this.
The next morning it took some time to open all the shutters and inspect the garden - all busy lizzies dead from the cold, but cyclamen doing well, and lots more windfall apples. All the red leaves had fallen off the Virginia creeper along the front railings. Our neighbour Annick brought round a small parcel for N that she had taken in, and said there had been several frosts. I set off for the post office to collect N’s letter and pay my debt to the post mistress (25 centimes) but was surprised to find it full of workmen reconstructing it entirely, and singing loudly a song called « Où sont les femmes? » They claimed not to know anything about current arrangements, and suggested I ask at the Mairie. There I met a man coming out, who said post could be collected there between 9 and 11 every morning; it was then 11.45. So I went on to the cycle repair shop, neither I nor the bicycle lady had been able to find any tyres to fit my bicycle, so I said I would try on the Internet. She had one more dealer to try. I had pickled herrings for lunch (from the traiteur) while watching « Yes, Minister » on BBC Prime.
N phoned and said the new car would be ready at 2.30 that afternoon, he would set off about 3.30 and promised to drive very carefully and not to forget any of the things he was supposed to bring, including the new blinds which had been bought a fortnight ago. I enjoyed baking an apple and cinnamon cake, and making a pork casserole for dinner. He arrived as scheduled at about six, during what I thought was power cut, but later found was a failure of a fuse for the whole house, which N remedied by pressing the appropriate switch.
The following morning we went to seek out the postmistress at the Mairie; N fetched his recorded letter and I paid my debt. She said that when the new post office was up and running (29 November) it would be automated and she wouldn’t be able to contact me about deficient postage, and what we needed was a tariff of postal costs - I said we had a tariff, what we needed was a good pair of scales, like we had in Paris. Watch this space.
Wednesday 22 November 2006
The next day I enjoyed my first outing in the new car, a trip to the supermarket at Bernay. Apart from the smooth ride and the newness of it all, plus numerous places to store things, the most entertaining thing was the inbuilt satellite navigation - a sophisticated French female voice telling us when to turn and uncannily letting us know when roundabouts were coming up. On Sunday we set out for a longer journey to somewhere we didn’t know as well - Lisieux - in order to test it. We intended to go to an antiques fair, which despite posters every few metres, we failed to find, but visited the town’s main attraction, the Basilique of Saint Thérèse.
It was very large and quite unlike anything I had seen before; early twentieth century architecture with the life of Saint Thérèse in pictures around the walls; particularly vague, I thought, as to her qualifications for sainthood, but with many comments and blessings from other well-known visitors.
We also finally fitted the concertina fabric blinds bought at Leroy Merlin some weeks ago; a wide cream one for the glass panelled front door, and two red ones side by side at the kitchen window over the sink which looks out into the verandah. It’s good to be able to shut the dark out, but takes a very long time each morning and evening to open and close them and wind up all their little strings.
The few days before going back to Paris on the Wednesday were filled with clearing and tidying the house ready for the visit of daughter Madeleine the week after. I also spent a lot of time proof-reading the copy of the Lexique which N had printed out, finding quite a few typing, punctuation and spacing errors. On Tuesday afternoon we had a visit from a water purification expert who analysed our tap water and found it to be full of lime scale and other impurities, no surprise to us as we have been fighting the dreaded local « calcaire » in the washing machine, dishwasher and bathrooms ever since we arrived here. He proposed selling us a very expensive purifying system, including filtered drinking water, which N surprised me by accepting. The following morning at the hairdressers, while chatting with his stylist N discovered that she had had a similar system installed by our regular local builder Monsieur A, for about half the cost! After having discussed all this (which the water purification expert hadn’t really given us a chance to do) we decided to cancel the original agreement quickly and ask Monsieur A round to give us an estimate.
We drove back to Paris on Wednesday afternoon in beautifully unseasonable sunshine - at one stage the new car’s information system showed 19 degrees! and the weather forecast the night before had talked of all-time temperature records for November nights. Almost as soon as we arrived N had a phone call from the editor of the Lexique; the remaining 200 odd copies of the first edition had just been bought up, and could they have the revised version as soon possible. Fortunately he was in a position to say we would send it straight away, and after a final read through - both of us checking it on screen and altering the spacing as required, I updated the covering letter and on Thursday the disk was posted.
This was well timed, as on Thursday evening Madeleine arrived to spend six days with us; three in Paris and three in Normandy. She and I had two days out in Paris together, the day first shopping at the Grands Magasins in the Boulevard Haussmann, looking at the Christmas lights and shop windows. These seemed strangely inappropriate, as the sky was bright blue, the sun shining and it was not at all cold; we hung round until it was dark (about 5.30) so that we could see them properly. The restaurants in Galeries Lafayette were all crowded and expensive, so we lunched in a little brasserie in a side street, and had mid-afternoon hot chocolate in the Swiss House in the GL interiors department over the road. On Friday we visited the Passages Couverts, aided by all my new knowledge gained during the Journées du Patrimoine. As I anticipated we spent a lot of time in a traditional toy shop and a kitchen shop in the Passage Jouffroy, and at lunchtime set off to look for a lovely old-fashioned restaurant which N had taken me to several years ago, and supposedly nearby, called Chartier. We walked a very long way in the wrong direction - but a nice walk past interesting shops in the sunshine; unsure whether the restaurant was in the rue Montmartre, the Boulevard Montmartre or the rue du Faubourg Montmartre. I still can’t remember, but we found it eventually, and I could now find it again from the metro Grands Boulevards.
It had opened in 1896, and apart from the addition of electricity at some time, hardly anything seemed to have changed. There were clusters of globe-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, brass rails over the tables to store coats and bags, and even little numbered drawers where the original customers had kept their personal table napkins! The idea had been to feed them cheaply and well, and prices were still low, bills were written out on the paper tablecloths, and the waiters still wore long white aprons and traditional waistcoats with lots of useful pockets. It was very crowded and we were allocated a little table with two other ladies. Food was very meaty and traditional, and the half-bottle of vin ordinaire for about 2 euros was very good. Over lunch we discussed what to do next, and decided to go up towards Montmartre, which turned out to be rather a mistake - all the weekday afternoons I had been there last winter looking for curtain material it hadn’t been crowded at all, but Saturday afternoon was something different! We ended up spending a long time in Tati and similar shops, buying Christmas decorations and wrapping materials.
Sunday 26 November 2006
Last Sunday afternoon we all drove back to La Neuve-Lyre; the house warmed up slowly, we lit the fire and took out of the freezer some wonderful pot-au-feu N had made earlier. M and I made an experimental rhubarb cake using apples instead, as a trial run for next week’s lunch party; it worked very well. She and I went to the local market on Monday morning, and in the afternoon we drove to Bernay; N kindly offering to sit in the car park playing with the gadgets in his new car while M and I went shopping in Casa; more Christmas items for M and new wineglasses for me, also for the lunch party. (When we got back he had managed to get the voice on the navigation speaking in Italian; very strange as we went through the Norman countryside.) We then went on - in heavy rain; proper November weather seemed to have arrived at last - to the supermarket Intermarché and the garden centre. The latter was full of the most amazing Christmas decorations and effects, far more than when we had last been there. There were nativity displays with the traditional French « santons » (all kinds of different merchants and characters) colour themed areas, animals, snow scenes and even a waterfall. N ordered three fruit trees; two different kinds of plum - quetsch and reine-claude - and an apricot to replace the one that died, which were delivered a few days later. And right at the end we saw the resident black cat, asleep in her basket by the till; M had been most anxious to see her.
On Tuesday M and I took the bus to L’Aigle market, a little disappointing as there were far fewer stalls than usual, perhaps after the bad weather day before, or perhaps they slacken off before the lead up to Christmas. All the villages we went though on the bus now had their Christmas decorations up, including La Neuve-Lyre where there are some rather sophisticated shooting stars. It was cold and windy and we were glad to be home again in the warm by lunchtime. Monsieur A came to give us an estimate for the water purification system - less than half of the original one - he suggested we have it in the corner of the verandah behind the sink rather than under it, easier to start with and certainly easier in case of any future leaks. It will be nice to have Guillaume and Emanuel working here again, rather than a new engineer we don’t know.
M left on Wednesday morning; we drove her to the station at Conches, nearer then Evreux, and where the ticket office opens just in time for each train - most trains to Paris go straight though Conches without stopping, so we were lucky to find one that connected well with her Eurostar. N was amazed at the weight of her very big suitcase filled with Christmas shopping.
Since finishing the Lexique N’s latest project is the history of La Neuve-Lyre and La Vieille-Lyre, which have apparently had these names since at least the fourteenth century. La Vieille-Lyre was the site of a very large and important abbey, entirely destroyed in the Revolution. He has found a website of a young history graduate in LVL also writing his own account of the village; N has sent him a message but received no reply so far. There are also many history books on the subject which N is in the process of buying over the Internet; the postman calls frequently these days. I am more interested in learning more about the area as it is now, and am looking forward to a visit to Evreux once N is ready to visit libraries and archives. Apart from our very first visit there at the start of house-hunting, and the day of the house sale signature, all we do is go through the outskirts of the town and past the station on our way to and from Paris. N has also discovered the existence of a film made in La Vieille-Lyre in 1952 called « Le Trou Normand », memorable for possibly being Brigitte Bardot’s first film, also starring the French comic actor Bourvil. We have ordered a copy on DVD, and are looking forward to seeing it once it arrives.
Once back in Paris after the trip to Barcelona there was all the usual catching up to be done, and several phone messages to be dealt with. Before leaving I had checked the messages at LNL, and as well as one from the post mistress about insufficient postage (again!) there were two others, the first from Monsieur P responding to our lunch/dinner invitation, thanking us and saying they would be very pleased to come on Sat 11th for lunch. The second one was from Madame P, saying it was very kind, but that she was going to Morocco then so they were unable to come. I had left dealing with all these until we were back, and on listening to them again found another message, left by our former house agent Monsieur Urset on Tuesday, asking us to dinner on the following Saturday! There was also a message on the Saint-Denis phone from Nigel Palmer, asking if we would like to go and see the film « The Queen » with them on Wednesday.
It took some time to reply to all of these; apologised to M Urset, who said he had passed by the house and it looked shut up, but he would be in contact again; spoke to Madame P and suggested w/e 25/26 November, she said she would ask her husband, and left a message for NP thanking him, saying we had been away, but that I planned to go and see « The Queen » on Sunday, and also thanking him for telling me about the Saint-Denis cinema. N just said « You see? » as he often does, and that he had maintained that it would take at least a year to get to know people. When I went out into Saint-Denis I met NP so was able to relay my message to him in person; just as well as he rang N later to say it had got deleted and was there anything important in it??
I enjoyed « The Queen » on Sunday afternoon - very well made indeed - and enjoyed the cinema even more, having now been in both the different « rooms » and the fact that it is only about 10 minutes walk from the apartment.
N spent the next few days continuing labelling and dusting the books in his library, and finishing off the Lexique so that he was able to print a proof copy. Apart from the cinema, I did enormous amounts of washing and ironing and food shopping. On Monday afternoon we drove into Paris (my final trip in the old car) to the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine to fetch N’s newly stuffed sofa cushions. It was the first time N had been into the workshop - I felt I knew them all as old friends! We carried the very large but wonderfully renovated cushions back to the car, and then drove home by a different route, via the Place de la Nation where I had never been before, and through Vincennes.
N helped me with the cushions up to the apartment, and then went to park the car in the public car park. I arranged them on the sofa and made tea and was just sitting down to it - very comfortably! - when he arrived back and suggested we go and put the old cushions in the bin straight away and get rid of them. We took one large cushion each and quickly crossed over to the rubbish shed without our coats, and then N said « Have you got your key? » and I said « No, you told me you had yours, » and we were locked out.
It could have been a lot worse. The gardienne (concierge) was outside in the courtyard with some Portuguese builders; she unlocked the door to our building, and sent up one of the men with a piece of curved metal. There are two doors to N’s apartment, and fortunately the inner one with the vastly complicated expensive lock had just been left ajar, the outer one was only on the latch, and after some minutes the builder managed to pull the catch open through the letter box. N gave him 20 euros, with which he seemed very pleased, and we heaved a sigh of relief and went in to get warm and drink our rather stewed tea.
N found me an e-mail address for the local Music Conservatoire so I sent a message asking the date of the Chorale Adulte’s Christmas concert, and got a reply from a secretary whose name I didn’t recognise - Wednesday 5 December but no firm venue. If it’s anything like the summer the date won’t be firm either. Currently we’re not due to be in Saint-Denis then, but we’ll see.
We had been waiting to hear from the Renault garage that the new car would be ready for collection on Tuesday as expected, but heard nothing until early Tuesday afternoon; it might be ready on Wednesday but it was not certain. In any case we wouldn’t be able to leave until N had organised the insurance, so I decided to go back by train on Tuesday afternoon. We had been away from Normandy for two weeks, but it felt a lot longer, as there had been two « stays » in Saint-Denis with the trip to Barcelona in between, and I was anxious to catch up with the post and garden and just wanted to get back and see everything! I also wanted to travel back in the new car, but as N said, it could go on for several days being « possibly tomorrow » and there was the added complication of a train strike on Wednesday. I hadn’t got train or bus timetables with me, but was able to find an e-mail I had sent Caroline with details of connections, so got the 17.29 from Saint Lazare, which connected with a bus at 18.35 at Evreux.
Most of the journey was in the dark, which was not ideal, but it all went smoothly; the bus full up for once, mostly with students from the Lycée at Evreux returning home to their various villages. At La Neuve-Lyre the street lights were on and the house seemed very solid and secure with all its new shutters closed. I remembered how to put on the hot water and heating, the latter got going quickly but it took time to warm up; in spite of pyjamas and a hot water bottle I woke up twice in the night with cold head and shoulders. The post included several things for N, who is having his post redirected here again, including a message from the post office about a recorded letter. I had a tax bill for the equivalent of Council Tax, which we had thought I might be exempt from, due to my feeble income, but perhaps next year! There was a phone message from Monsieur P, saying he and his wife would be pleased to come for lunch at midday on Sat 25 November, barring an earthquake. (N said later, what about floods?) I sent them a postcard confirming this.
The next morning it took some time to open all the shutters and inspect the garden - all busy lizzies dead from the cold, but cyclamen doing well, and lots more windfall apples. All the red leaves had fallen off the Virginia creeper along the front railings. Our neighbour Annick brought round a small parcel for N that she had taken in, and said there had been several frosts. I set off for the post office to collect N’s letter and pay my debt to the post mistress (25 centimes) but was surprised to find it full of workmen reconstructing it entirely, and singing loudly a song called « Où sont les femmes? » They claimed not to know anything about current arrangements, and suggested I ask at the Mairie. There I met a man coming out, who said post could be collected there between 9 and 11 every morning; it was then 11.45. So I went on to the cycle repair shop, neither I nor the bicycle lady had been able to find any tyres to fit my bicycle, so I said I would try on the Internet. She had one more dealer to try. I had pickled herrings for lunch (from the traiteur) while watching « Yes, Minister » on BBC Prime.
N phoned and said the new car would be ready at 2.30 that afternoon, he would set off about 3.30 and promised to drive very carefully and not to forget any of the things he was supposed to bring, including the new blinds which had been bought a fortnight ago. I enjoyed baking an apple and cinnamon cake, and making a pork casserole for dinner. He arrived as scheduled at about six, during what I thought was power cut, but later found was a failure of a fuse for the whole house, which N remedied by pressing the appropriate switch.
The following morning we went to seek out the postmistress at the Mairie; N fetched his recorded letter and I paid my debt. She said that when the new post office was up and running (29 November) it would be automated and she wouldn’t be able to contact me about deficient postage, and what we needed was a tariff of postal costs - I said we had a tariff, what we needed was a good pair of scales, like we had in Paris. Watch this space.
Wednesday 22 November 2006
The next day I enjoyed my first outing in the new car, a trip to the supermarket at Bernay. Apart from the smooth ride and the newness of it all, plus numerous places to store things, the most entertaining thing was the inbuilt satellite navigation - a sophisticated French female voice telling us when to turn and uncannily letting us know when roundabouts were coming up. On Sunday we set out for a longer journey to somewhere we didn’t know as well - Lisieux - in order to test it. We intended to go to an antiques fair, which despite posters every few metres, we failed to find, but visited the town’s main attraction, the Basilique of Saint Thérèse.
It was very large and quite unlike anything I had seen before; early twentieth century architecture with the life of Saint Thérèse in pictures around the walls; particularly vague, I thought, as to her qualifications for sainthood, but with many comments and blessings from other well-known visitors.
We also finally fitted the concertina fabric blinds bought at Leroy Merlin some weeks ago; a wide cream one for the glass panelled front door, and two red ones side by side at the kitchen window over the sink which looks out into the verandah. It’s good to be able to shut the dark out, but takes a very long time each morning and evening to open and close them and wind up all their little strings.
The few days before going back to Paris on the Wednesday were filled with clearing and tidying the house ready for the visit of daughter Madeleine the week after. I also spent a lot of time proof-reading the copy of the Lexique which N had printed out, finding quite a few typing, punctuation and spacing errors. On Tuesday afternoon we had a visit from a water purification expert who analysed our tap water and found it to be full of lime scale and other impurities, no surprise to us as we have been fighting the dreaded local « calcaire » in the washing machine, dishwasher and bathrooms ever since we arrived here. He proposed selling us a very expensive purifying system, including filtered drinking water, which N surprised me by accepting. The following morning at the hairdressers, while chatting with his stylist N discovered that she had had a similar system installed by our regular local builder Monsieur A, for about half the cost! After having discussed all this (which the water purification expert hadn’t really given us a chance to do) we decided to cancel the original agreement quickly and ask Monsieur A round to give us an estimate.
We drove back to Paris on Wednesday afternoon in beautifully unseasonable sunshine - at one stage the new car’s information system showed 19 degrees! and the weather forecast the night before had talked of all-time temperature records for November nights. Almost as soon as we arrived N had a phone call from the editor of the Lexique; the remaining 200 odd copies of the first edition had just been bought up, and could they have the revised version as soon possible. Fortunately he was in a position to say we would send it straight away, and after a final read through - both of us checking it on screen and altering the spacing as required, I updated the covering letter and on Thursday the disk was posted.
This was well timed, as on Thursday evening Madeleine arrived to spend six days with us; three in Paris and three in Normandy. She and I had two days out in Paris together, the day first shopping at the Grands Magasins in the Boulevard Haussmann, looking at the Christmas lights and shop windows. These seemed strangely inappropriate, as the sky was bright blue, the sun shining and it was not at all cold; we hung round until it was dark (about 5.30) so that we could see them properly. The restaurants in Galeries Lafayette were all crowded and expensive, so we lunched in a little brasserie in a side street, and had mid-afternoon hot chocolate in the Swiss House in the GL interiors department over the road. On Friday we visited the Passages Couverts, aided by all my new knowledge gained during the Journées du Patrimoine. As I anticipated we spent a lot of time in a traditional toy shop and a kitchen shop in the Passage Jouffroy, and at lunchtime set off to look for a lovely old-fashioned restaurant which N had taken me to several years ago, and supposedly nearby, called Chartier. We walked a very long way in the wrong direction - but a nice walk past interesting shops in the sunshine; unsure whether the restaurant was in the rue Montmartre, the Boulevard Montmartre or the rue du Faubourg Montmartre. I still can’t remember, but we found it eventually, and I could now find it again from the metro Grands Boulevards.
It had opened in 1896, and apart from the addition of electricity at some time, hardly anything seemed to have changed. There were clusters of globe-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling, brass rails over the tables to store coats and bags, and even little numbered drawers where the original customers had kept their personal table napkins! The idea had been to feed them cheaply and well, and prices were still low, bills were written out on the paper tablecloths, and the waiters still wore long white aprons and traditional waistcoats with lots of useful pockets. It was very crowded and we were allocated a little table with two other ladies. Food was very meaty and traditional, and the half-bottle of vin ordinaire for about 2 euros was very good. Over lunch we discussed what to do next, and decided to go up towards Montmartre, which turned out to be rather a mistake - all the weekday afternoons I had been there last winter looking for curtain material it hadn’t been crowded at all, but Saturday afternoon was something different! We ended up spending a long time in Tati and similar shops, buying Christmas decorations and wrapping materials.
Sunday 26 November 2006
Last Sunday afternoon we all drove back to La Neuve-Lyre; the house warmed up slowly, we lit the fire and took out of the freezer some wonderful pot-au-feu N had made earlier. M and I made an experimental rhubarb cake using apples instead, as a trial run for next week’s lunch party; it worked very well. She and I went to the local market on Monday morning, and in the afternoon we drove to Bernay; N kindly offering to sit in the car park playing with the gadgets in his new car while M and I went shopping in Casa; more Christmas items for M and new wineglasses for me, also for the lunch party. (When we got back he had managed to get the voice on the navigation speaking in Italian; very strange as we went through the Norman countryside.) We then went on - in heavy rain; proper November weather seemed to have arrived at last - to the supermarket Intermarché and the garden centre. The latter was full of the most amazing Christmas decorations and effects, far more than when we had last been there. There were nativity displays with the traditional French « santons » (all kinds of different merchants and characters) colour themed areas, animals, snow scenes and even a waterfall. N ordered three fruit trees; two different kinds of plum - quetsch and reine-claude - and an apricot to replace the one that died, which were delivered a few days later. And right at the end we saw the resident black cat, asleep in her basket by the till; M had been most anxious to see her.
On Tuesday M and I took the bus to L’Aigle market, a little disappointing as there were far fewer stalls than usual, perhaps after the bad weather day before, or perhaps they slacken off before the lead up to Christmas. All the villages we went though on the bus now had their Christmas decorations up, including La Neuve-Lyre where there are some rather sophisticated shooting stars. It was cold and windy and we were glad to be home again in the warm by lunchtime. Monsieur A came to give us an estimate for the water purification system - less than half of the original one - he suggested we have it in the corner of the verandah behind the sink rather than under it, easier to start with and certainly easier in case of any future leaks. It will be nice to have Guillaume and Emanuel working here again, rather than a new engineer we don’t know.
M left on Wednesday morning; we drove her to the station at Conches, nearer then Evreux, and where the ticket office opens just in time for each train - most trains to Paris go straight though Conches without stopping, so we were lucky to find one that connected well with her Eurostar. N was amazed at the weight of her very big suitcase filled with Christmas shopping.
Since finishing the Lexique N’s latest project is the history of La Neuve-Lyre and La Vieille-Lyre, which have apparently had these names since at least the fourteenth century. La Vieille-Lyre was the site of a very large and important abbey, entirely destroyed in the Revolution. He has found a website of a young history graduate in LVL also writing his own account of the village; N has sent him a message but received no reply so far. There are also many history books on the subject which N is in the process of buying over the Internet; the postman calls frequently these days. I am more interested in learning more about the area as it is now, and am looking forward to a visit to Evreux once N is ready to visit libraries and archives. Apart from our very first visit there at the start of house-hunting, and the day of the house sale signature, all we do is go through the outskirts of the town and past the station on our way to and from Paris. N has also discovered the existence of a film made in La Vieille-Lyre in 1952 called « Le Trou Normand », memorable for possibly being Brigitte Bardot’s first film, also starring the French comic actor Bourvil. We have ordered a copy on DVD, and are looking forward to seeing it once it arrives.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Saturday 4 November 2006
On Tuesday morning we set off south for Orly Airport to catch our plane for Barcelona, taking two RER trains through Paris and then a little electric driverless train into the airport itself. When I lived in France in 1970 I had visited Orly often as it was so near, and hoped to recognise it, but too much had changed. The flight was smooth and straightforward (apart from some nasty popping in my ears) and as we came out of the cloud covering most of France we were able to see the Pyrenees in bright sunlight. Once out of the airport we were in a wide avenue with palm trees and blue sky and 26 degrees, and on the airport bus I realised we were the only people clutching raincoats. The journey into the city took us past an industrial area with lots of construction going on and then slowly into shops and apartments and the Plaza de Cataluña in the centre of the old city. It was a short and entertaining walk along Las Ramblas to our hotel, past flower and bird markets and street entertainers in the form of "living statues".
The hotel dated from around 1890, as did most of the surrounding buildings, and our room looked out onto an internal courtyard with narrow balconies round the edge. It was by then about 2 pm – just right for a Spanish lunchtime, we thought – and we set off down Las Ramblas again this time towards the sea, hoping to find the aquarium. We didn't find it till much later, after having walked a very long way and having found an interesting restaurant overlooking the harbour where N managed to order food and drink including a new (to us!) and exciting dish called Patatas Bravas – pieces of potato fried crisp like chips, covered with a thin spicy mayonnaise. There was also a tall column with a statue of Christopher Columbus at the top; like Nelson he had lions guarding him at the base, but far more, about ten I think.
The last time we had seen a harbour full of sailing boats was at Deauville, but this was on a much larger scale. The aquarium was very impressive; apart from many tanks full of smaller fish, all very well documented in Spanish, Catalan and English (we got used to this) there were tanks stretching right up overhead, which we observed while going along slowly on a moving walkway, so that it was almost like being in the sea along with the fish. The biggest ones were sharks about four foot long, their teeth clearly visible from underneath.
By the time we left the aquarium it was about 6.30 and dark, which was strange as it was so warm and so many people were still sitting around outside in cafés. That first day it was between 21 and 26 degrees; by Friday it had dropped to 17, and most of the time I walked round in a long-sleeved T shirt and jeans and was neither too hot nor too cold. An ideal time of the year for sight-seeing. We walked up to the old streets around the cathedral and looked at shops and markets and restaurants, eventually eating strawberry tart at somewhere called Café Moka, which I was surprised to find mentioned in "Homage to Catalonia" once we were back at the hotel and I opened the book again. Apparently it was the scene of some fierce fighting in the war in 1936.
Barcelona was full of foreigners; I heard voices speaking English, American, Scottish, French, German and Italian, not to mention a young Portuguese couple we met and several Scandinavian and Eastern European languages I couldn't identify. And then of course there was the Spanish and Catalan. Part of the difficulty we had with Spanish – of which N had studied far more in recent weeks than I, and apart from the fact that we kept sliding into Italian – was the fact that everything was written in the two languages and that they looked so similar, and both were understandable. N said it was no good coming to Barcelona to learn Spanish; it was like trying to learn English in Wales. My favourite Catalan word was Dilluns (= lundi = Monday.) I was also interested to learn that the Spanish word for croque-monsieur was bikini; must lead to some confusion.
On Wednesday morning we visited the Cathedral, (memorable for the geese in ponds in the cloisters) around which there were several guitarists playing in the streets, then looked at a covered arcade of shops, wondering why they were all closed until N remembered it was 1 November, a national holiday as in France. We found a lovely little "artisanal" food market N knew from a previous visit where we bought honey and local chocolate; memorable as the stallholder automatically addressed N in English, and then asked me "Catalan?" which I considered quite a victory, I don't know why.
At 12.30 N's Spanish colleague Marie Carmen came to meet us at our hotel. We spoke in French; she said hers was very rusty, but she was easy to understand and a mine of information on her native city. N did most of the talking as they caught up on mutual acquaintances; whenever I spoke to her I was surprised how French and un-Spanish I sounded. It was wonderful to have so many buildings identified and pointed out to us as we walked along – she took us on an interesting route to pick up the metro, our first experience of it. It was shabbier and more modern than the Paris metro, but easy to follow and the trains were pleasantly air-conditioned. The strangest thing was the way the metro map included the sea; I have never seen a metro at the seaside before!
Once outside again there was more fast walking until we reached the restaurant, an authentic one where MC seemed to be well known. N and I agreed afterwards that we – or for that matter any tourists – could never have had such a meal without a native to help. We were first of all given a plate with tomatoes, slices of bread, and cloves of garlic; MC showed us how to peel the garlic and rub it on the bread, cut the tomato and rub the bread with the cut side, and sprinkle with olive oil and salt before eating, rather like a do-it-yourself Italian bruschetta. She then ordered an excellent Rioja and asked for several small Tapas, of which my favourite was tiny green peppers fried in oil and tossed in coarse salt. The others were thin slices of Iberian ham and small smooth-breaded sandwiches filled with cooked vegetables. Then came small pieces of octopus on a layer of potato (N wasn't very keen on these) before two kinds of cake; one of which came with tiny glasses of what looked like communion wine to throw all over it. Just as we were thinking we couldn't possibly manage anything else she suggested coffee and a local liqueur, yellow like Chartreuse, and we somehow found room for these as well. During the course of the meal we were introduced to several members of the restaurant staff, and were given cards.
We got up from the table at about half past four in true Spanish style, and after many thanks and hugs goodbye we parted and N and I set off up hundreds of steps up to the museum of art; MC said she thought it would be open even though it was a holiday, as there were lights on at the top. It wasn't. There was an excellent view however, and we then went down the long way round by road, which reminded me of getting lost walking back from the Vatican into Rome. In fact Barcelona made me think of several other cities; the palm trees were like Nice and San Remo, the large impressive buildings and the umbrella pine trees like Rome, and the little narrow old streets like Florence and Lucca. Back at the hotel we watched TV; MC had taken us to see a polling station as there was an election in Catalonia that day; Professor J had told us about it last week. It was strange to look up from reading "Homage to Catalonia" full of political parties called by different acronyms to see a whole lot of other parties called by other acronyms still arguing it out today!
After a long rest we set out late for more Tapas, a very small amount (although a little too much meat for me) in a nice modern little restaurant not far from the other side of the Ramblas. In spite of our long acquaintance with French and Italian cuisine, we were both surprised to find many Spanish dishes swimming in olive oil and large slices of garlic, which must come as a shock to the average British stomach. Breakfast in the hotel was fairly international – both the clientele and the food & drink – and took place in a wonderful room where the bottom of the walls were decorated with criss-crossed wood panelling filled in with dome-shaped blue and white tiles, and the top with a mural rather like the aquarium except that with the fish it included some unusual mermaids, with fins from the knees downwards.
On Thursday our main aim was to visit the temple of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family); the guide book said that if you saw only one thing while in Barcelona, this should be it, and its distinctive shape seems to have become the emblem of Barcelona. It is a strange and unusual cathedral, begun in 1896 and still in the process of being built; at this rate it should be finished in 2040. As N says, it is a rare chance to see how a large cathedral is constructed, still full of scaffolding and workmen and hammering, and windows yet to be filled with glass. The main architect was Gaudi, until his death in 1926; and one cannot be long in Barcelona before becoming acquainted with his work. There were wavy curved emblems of trees and fruit everywhere in the cathedral; two main façades full of statues (The Nativity and The Passion) and several tall thin towers – George Orwell who visited it in 1937, when it was even more unfinished, said they are exactly the shape of bottles of Hock, and I see what he means. Carved into the stone are Biblical references to the scenes depicted. We queued to take a lift up one of the (very thin) towers, and after some frightening views which I photographed very quickly, went down again on foot; spiral stone staircases just like in a Gothic cathedral. (Apparently when Gaudi was asked why he put such ornate decoration so high up out of sight, he said "The angels will see it".)
After spending some time in the shop and the museum, and resting our feet while watching a little film about the history of the construction, we set off for the other main Gaudi work, the Parc Güell. This is on a hill towards the north of the city, and reaching it was rather like walking up to Sacré Coeur in Paris. (With no funicular railway…) The first thing we did on arrival was to stop and have a couple of excellent ham & cheese sandwiches in an outdoor café in the sunshine. At the gate were two little houses covered in coloured mosaic; the guide book likened them to something from Grimm's Fairy Tales. We walked up yet more steps and along paths still filled with green lawns and beautiful flowers in bloom - I thought of the garden at La Neuve-Lyre covered in leaves where the last flowers had finished weeks ago. There was a large sanded area bordered with mosaic-covered benches where lots of people were admiring the view over the city or just sitting in the sun; N said we should enjoy it as it was probably the last warm sun we should see this year; it was difficult to imagine that it was already the 2nd of November.
We also visited Gaudi's house in the park; everything designed in his own unmistakable style from doors, lamps and garden chairs right down to his toilet seat! The walk down into the city again was easier, although just as noisy, and I stopped at a souvenir shop I had seen on the way up and bought myself a wonderful red and black apron designed like a flamenco dancer's dress, which should brighten up the kitchen chores at LNL. We called in at a very modern café and had tall ice creams while sitting on tall stools at the bar, and then had a brief look at El Corte Inglés; an enormous department store which MC had told us was the Galeries Lafayette of Barcelona. N bought a brown leather belt to replace an old one he had got in Spain years before.
Once again we needed a rest back at the hotel; I wrote postcards while N spent a lot of time with the map and guide book trying to locate the Post Office, as we had been unable to find stamps anywhere, including the hotel. According to the book it seemed to be open until 9 pm, it must take everybody a long time to find it. We walked through several streets and eventually discovered it, an extremely large imposing square building, with Correos and Telegrafes in large letters on the front. Inside it was just as grand, with murals of naked nymphs on the walls and ceiling, and N duly took a numbered ticket from a button labelled in English "All kinds of sendings" and waited until it was his turn to ask for stamps. At last he got them, stuck them on the cards and posted them, and we felt a great sense of victory, and went off in search of dinner.
Dinner was in what we thought was probably a Basque restaurant, near the hotel, at a tiny table squeezed in beside two English women catching up on gossip. We had Patatas Bravas again; N had chicken and I had a huge vegetable paella, mostly carrot.
On Friday morning we just had time to visit a colourful covered market in Las Ramblas, one we had seen the first evening still open and trading at 8 pm, with all kinds of fish, hams, fruits, vegetables, flowers, piglets and skinned sheep heads. There was not room for much in the suitcase; so we bought a very flat packet of ham and some nuts, Brazil nuts and an aperitif mixture. We walked slowly to catch our bus for the airport, looking at the markets and "statues" along Las Ramblas and large buildings including another Gaudi-designed house on the way.
We enjoyed our time at Barcelona airport, where we had a quick lunch and N bought Rioja to take home. The flight was a little delayed, but as before the journey seemed to pass very quickly and smoothly and we were in Saint-Denis by about 6 o'clock, having bought our baguette on the way home just as if we'd never been away!
On Tuesday morning we set off south for Orly Airport to catch our plane for Barcelona, taking two RER trains through Paris and then a little electric driverless train into the airport itself. When I lived in France in 1970 I had visited Orly often as it was so near, and hoped to recognise it, but too much had changed. The flight was smooth and straightforward (apart from some nasty popping in my ears) and as we came out of the cloud covering most of France we were able to see the Pyrenees in bright sunlight. Once out of the airport we were in a wide avenue with palm trees and blue sky and 26 degrees, and on the airport bus I realised we were the only people clutching raincoats. The journey into the city took us past an industrial area with lots of construction going on and then slowly into shops and apartments and the Plaza de Cataluña in the centre of the old city. It was a short and entertaining walk along Las Ramblas to our hotel, past flower and bird markets and street entertainers in the form of "living statues".
The hotel dated from around 1890, as did most of the surrounding buildings, and our room looked out onto an internal courtyard with narrow balconies round the edge. It was by then about 2 pm – just right for a Spanish lunchtime, we thought – and we set off down Las Ramblas again this time towards the sea, hoping to find the aquarium. We didn't find it till much later, after having walked a very long way and having found an interesting restaurant overlooking the harbour where N managed to order food and drink including a new (to us!) and exciting dish called Patatas Bravas – pieces of potato fried crisp like chips, covered with a thin spicy mayonnaise. There was also a tall column with a statue of Christopher Columbus at the top; like Nelson he had lions guarding him at the base, but far more, about ten I think.
The last time we had seen a harbour full of sailing boats was at Deauville, but this was on a much larger scale. The aquarium was very impressive; apart from many tanks full of smaller fish, all very well documented in Spanish, Catalan and English (we got used to this) there were tanks stretching right up overhead, which we observed while going along slowly on a moving walkway, so that it was almost like being in the sea along with the fish. The biggest ones were sharks about four foot long, their teeth clearly visible from underneath.
By the time we left the aquarium it was about 6.30 and dark, which was strange as it was so warm and so many people were still sitting around outside in cafés. That first day it was between 21 and 26 degrees; by Friday it had dropped to 17, and most of the time I walked round in a long-sleeved T shirt and jeans and was neither too hot nor too cold. An ideal time of the year for sight-seeing. We walked up to the old streets around the cathedral and looked at shops and markets and restaurants, eventually eating strawberry tart at somewhere called Café Moka, which I was surprised to find mentioned in "Homage to Catalonia" once we were back at the hotel and I opened the book again. Apparently it was the scene of some fierce fighting in the war in 1936.
Barcelona was full of foreigners; I heard voices speaking English, American, Scottish, French, German and Italian, not to mention a young Portuguese couple we met and several Scandinavian and Eastern European languages I couldn't identify. And then of course there was the Spanish and Catalan. Part of the difficulty we had with Spanish – of which N had studied far more in recent weeks than I, and apart from the fact that we kept sliding into Italian – was the fact that everything was written in the two languages and that they looked so similar, and both were understandable. N said it was no good coming to Barcelona to learn Spanish; it was like trying to learn English in Wales. My favourite Catalan word was Dilluns (= lundi = Monday.) I was also interested to learn that the Spanish word for croque-monsieur was bikini; must lead to some confusion.
On Wednesday morning we visited the Cathedral, (memorable for the geese in ponds in the cloisters) around which there were several guitarists playing in the streets, then looked at a covered arcade of shops, wondering why they were all closed until N remembered it was 1 November, a national holiday as in France. We found a lovely little "artisanal" food market N knew from a previous visit where we bought honey and local chocolate; memorable as the stallholder automatically addressed N in English, and then asked me "Catalan?" which I considered quite a victory, I don't know why.
At 12.30 N's Spanish colleague Marie Carmen came to meet us at our hotel. We spoke in French; she said hers was very rusty, but she was easy to understand and a mine of information on her native city. N did most of the talking as they caught up on mutual acquaintances; whenever I spoke to her I was surprised how French and un-Spanish I sounded. It was wonderful to have so many buildings identified and pointed out to us as we walked along – she took us on an interesting route to pick up the metro, our first experience of it. It was shabbier and more modern than the Paris metro, but easy to follow and the trains were pleasantly air-conditioned. The strangest thing was the way the metro map included the sea; I have never seen a metro at the seaside before!
Once outside again there was more fast walking until we reached the restaurant, an authentic one where MC seemed to be well known. N and I agreed afterwards that we – or for that matter any tourists – could never have had such a meal without a native to help. We were first of all given a plate with tomatoes, slices of bread, and cloves of garlic; MC showed us how to peel the garlic and rub it on the bread, cut the tomato and rub the bread with the cut side, and sprinkle with olive oil and salt before eating, rather like a do-it-yourself Italian bruschetta. She then ordered an excellent Rioja and asked for several small Tapas, of which my favourite was tiny green peppers fried in oil and tossed in coarse salt. The others were thin slices of Iberian ham and small smooth-breaded sandwiches filled with cooked vegetables. Then came small pieces of octopus on a layer of potato (N wasn't very keen on these) before two kinds of cake; one of which came with tiny glasses of what looked like communion wine to throw all over it. Just as we were thinking we couldn't possibly manage anything else she suggested coffee and a local liqueur, yellow like Chartreuse, and we somehow found room for these as well. During the course of the meal we were introduced to several members of the restaurant staff, and were given cards.
We got up from the table at about half past four in true Spanish style, and after many thanks and hugs goodbye we parted and N and I set off up hundreds of steps up to the museum of art; MC said she thought it would be open even though it was a holiday, as there were lights on at the top. It wasn't. There was an excellent view however, and we then went down the long way round by road, which reminded me of getting lost walking back from the Vatican into Rome. In fact Barcelona made me think of several other cities; the palm trees were like Nice and San Remo, the large impressive buildings and the umbrella pine trees like Rome, and the little narrow old streets like Florence and Lucca. Back at the hotel we watched TV; MC had taken us to see a polling station as there was an election in Catalonia that day; Professor J had told us about it last week. It was strange to look up from reading "Homage to Catalonia" full of political parties called by different acronyms to see a whole lot of other parties called by other acronyms still arguing it out today!
After a long rest we set out late for more Tapas, a very small amount (although a little too much meat for me) in a nice modern little restaurant not far from the other side of the Ramblas. In spite of our long acquaintance with French and Italian cuisine, we were both surprised to find many Spanish dishes swimming in olive oil and large slices of garlic, which must come as a shock to the average British stomach. Breakfast in the hotel was fairly international – both the clientele and the food & drink – and took place in a wonderful room where the bottom of the walls were decorated with criss-crossed wood panelling filled in with dome-shaped blue and white tiles, and the top with a mural rather like the aquarium except that with the fish it included some unusual mermaids, with fins from the knees downwards.
On Thursday our main aim was to visit the temple of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family); the guide book said that if you saw only one thing while in Barcelona, this should be it, and its distinctive shape seems to have become the emblem of Barcelona. It is a strange and unusual cathedral, begun in 1896 and still in the process of being built; at this rate it should be finished in 2040. As N says, it is a rare chance to see how a large cathedral is constructed, still full of scaffolding and workmen and hammering, and windows yet to be filled with glass. The main architect was Gaudi, until his death in 1926; and one cannot be long in Barcelona before becoming acquainted with his work. There were wavy curved emblems of trees and fruit everywhere in the cathedral; two main façades full of statues (The Nativity and The Passion) and several tall thin towers – George Orwell who visited it in 1937, when it was even more unfinished, said they are exactly the shape of bottles of Hock, and I see what he means. Carved into the stone are Biblical references to the scenes depicted. We queued to take a lift up one of the (very thin) towers, and after some frightening views which I photographed very quickly, went down again on foot; spiral stone staircases just like in a Gothic cathedral. (Apparently when Gaudi was asked why he put such ornate decoration so high up out of sight, he said "The angels will see it".)
After spending some time in the shop and the museum, and resting our feet while watching a little film about the history of the construction, we set off for the other main Gaudi work, the Parc Güell. This is on a hill towards the north of the city, and reaching it was rather like walking up to Sacré Coeur in Paris. (With no funicular railway…) The first thing we did on arrival was to stop and have a couple of excellent ham & cheese sandwiches in an outdoor café in the sunshine. At the gate were two little houses covered in coloured mosaic; the guide book likened them to something from Grimm's Fairy Tales. We walked up yet more steps and along paths still filled with green lawns and beautiful flowers in bloom - I thought of the garden at La Neuve-Lyre covered in leaves where the last flowers had finished weeks ago. There was a large sanded area bordered with mosaic-covered benches where lots of people were admiring the view over the city or just sitting in the sun; N said we should enjoy it as it was probably the last warm sun we should see this year; it was difficult to imagine that it was already the 2nd of November.
We also visited Gaudi's house in the park; everything designed in his own unmistakable style from doors, lamps and garden chairs right down to his toilet seat! The walk down into the city again was easier, although just as noisy, and I stopped at a souvenir shop I had seen on the way up and bought myself a wonderful red and black apron designed like a flamenco dancer's dress, which should brighten up the kitchen chores at LNL. We called in at a very modern café and had tall ice creams while sitting on tall stools at the bar, and then had a brief look at El Corte Inglés; an enormous department store which MC had told us was the Galeries Lafayette of Barcelona. N bought a brown leather belt to replace an old one he had got in Spain years before.
Once again we needed a rest back at the hotel; I wrote postcards while N spent a lot of time with the map and guide book trying to locate the Post Office, as we had been unable to find stamps anywhere, including the hotel. According to the book it seemed to be open until 9 pm, it must take everybody a long time to find it. We walked through several streets and eventually discovered it, an extremely large imposing square building, with Correos and Telegrafes in large letters on the front. Inside it was just as grand, with murals of naked nymphs on the walls and ceiling, and N duly took a numbered ticket from a button labelled in English "All kinds of sendings" and waited until it was his turn to ask for stamps. At last he got them, stuck them on the cards and posted them, and we felt a great sense of victory, and went off in search of dinner.
Dinner was in what we thought was probably a Basque restaurant, near the hotel, at a tiny table squeezed in beside two English women catching up on gossip. We had Patatas Bravas again; N had chicken and I had a huge vegetable paella, mostly carrot.
On Friday morning we just had time to visit a colourful covered market in Las Ramblas, one we had seen the first evening still open and trading at 8 pm, with all kinds of fish, hams, fruits, vegetables, flowers, piglets and skinned sheep heads. There was not room for much in the suitcase; so we bought a very flat packet of ham and some nuts, Brazil nuts and an aperitif mixture. We walked slowly to catch our bus for the airport, looking at the markets and "statues" along Las Ramblas and large buildings including another Gaudi-designed house on the way.
We enjoyed our time at Barcelona airport, where we had a quick lunch and N bought Rioja to take home. The flight was a little delayed, but as before the journey seemed to pass very quickly and smoothly and we were in Saint-Denis by about 6 o'clock, having bought our baguette on the way home just as if we'd never been away!
