Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Madame
decided her point was not yet fully emphasised.
“
Ici! C'est ici!
(Here! It's here!)” she cried.
She stabbed the page several times, grasped the topic and started waving it around in
the air like a tiny flag. Jack was utterly riveted by this altercation.
“Well, if all business meetings in France are conducted like this then I think my busi-
ness years were spent in entirely the wrong country. This is excellent entertainment. Gosh,
I just hope she doesn't get violent. One right hook from that lady and Will's on the floor!
You know, if they'd all acted like that when the Germans were charging towards the Ma-
ginot
speed bumps
, there might have been a different outcome.”
This was a typical comment from Jack who has an unusual slant on World War 2 battle
tactics.
As we continued to spectate, far too British and engrossed to intervene, we noticed
that ItsWill had begun a slow but steady retreat. And quite honestly, who could blame him?
Finally he could withdraw no further and was now well and truly pinned to the bonnet of
his car.
His next tactic was to begin that resourceful Frenchman's affectation of the carefree
'shoulder shrug'. Under any other circumstances this could have been the perfect antidote
to the dramatic map-waving incident. However, it failed miserably. This was because his
shruggings were so violent that he looked as though he was having some kind of an upper
body seizure. It also resulted in his lovely cashmere V-neck sliding off and landing in an
ungainly clump beside him. All of which completely ruined the effect.
He immediately made things even worse by anxiously groping in the dirt around
ma-
dame's Doc Martins
in his efforts to recover and reposition his male equivalent of the
corsage. Fortunately no material or physical harm was done.
Madame
, now fully confident
of victory, mercilessly regarded ItsWill's attempts at regaining his equilibrium with a stony
stare. Then, with a superbly austere peer down her roman nose and an interesting flick of a
digit, she trudged off, troll-like, to commence the challenge of squeezing herself back into
the Peugeot. Poor ItsWill, now visibly wilting, dragged himself over to us.
“It seems that
Madame
Rougé has a new set of directions so I think we might follow
her. I must introduce you but might we do this little later?”
One look at his sagging frame caused us to nod in agreement. We simply didn't have
the heart to put him through another encounter at this stage.
We set off in an orderly convoy.
