Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lish) to her own back injury. Then Bill told us that had made his name in jam which was
'champion stuff' he assured us. He owned a jam-making factory in Yorkshire and, now
semi-retired, was gradually relinquishing the management reins to his sons. Recently di-
vorced, he had met the widow Gabrielle on a cruise where their '
affaire de coeur
' (affair of
the heart) began.
As is often the case where new-love is found in life, the couple in question were keen
to recount their first heady encounters and the way in which the relationship gradually blos-
somed. Thoroughly infused with Provençale relaxant, they were happy to impart all.
Jack is the perfect antithesis of a 'now tell us all about yourselves' person. Unless it's
a tale involving engineering, hunting or wars, he has absolutely no interest in people's life
vignettes. And when he hears one arriving he seems to wander off into other thoughts, pre-
sumably dealing with fuel injection systems or similar.
On this occasion even the ever-accommodating Harry was becoming acutely embar-
rassed, which was clear since his face flushed brightly and began to clash horribly with his
hair colour.
As the familiar signs of detachment spread across Jack's face, I quickly interjected as
sensitively as possible. Relying on the old looking-at-my-watch-in-horror trick, I expressed
our regretful need to leave. Fortunately the love-birds, who had completely forgotten that
we hadn't viewed their land, didn't seem to mind a bit. They looked set for the night in
their nook and accepted our apologies for an early departure with an easy grace.
We quickly gathered the dogs and as we made our exit,
madame
, now completely flat
on the steamer, was nevertheless still able to waft a heavily bangled arm in our general dir-
ection. Bill struggled to his feet.
“Cheerio then,” he shouted, as he tottered to the edge of the pool. “'Appen yew'd like
it 'ere. We doo!”
“Good God!” exploded Jack as we sped down the A7 towards our next destination.
“Why on
earth
do people have to share their life-stories? The whole thing makes my
bloody toes curl. It's bad enough having to walk around a cowshed filled with incendiary
devices without having to endure the gruesome details of their bloody love-life. I just can't
believe
it.
Urgh.
”
“Yes, I know, but we were never sure that the property would be suitable to begin with
and at least we can now definitely rule out any other
domaines
with less than fifty hectares
of land. That we
do
know. So the whole afternoon has turned out to be a very helpful exer-
cise.”
“Helpful? That's a bit like saying it would be helpful to drive to the Kalahari to check
if we could cope with a shortage of water. Even you should be able to have a go at estim-
ating what a hectare looks like. But just in case you can't, a hectare is two and a half acres.
An acre is a football field. One hundred hectares is therefore 250 football fields. And that's
the minimum we need for an adequate wildlife population. Got it?”
