Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Daddy says we can't smash open the hens to get their eggs,' Maurice replied.
'No,' I said, feeling defeat coming on swiftly. 'No. Look at Toby,' I pointed out into the
garden, without actually looking it has to be said. 'All day he's just been sitting there by the
chicken run, staring at a piece of old baguette.' He had too; he'd maintained a kind of con-
centrated vigil, like the fabled dogs who wait for their masters to return from war. 'He hasn't
moved, but he's been very patient, he's been very good.'
Just then Toby came bounding up to the large window, his muzzle covered in mud, the
longed for bread hanging out of his mouth and followed nervously by the newly freed hens.
Natalie's second argument was that actually their run and dislocated coop wasn't ideal for
creating the sense of tranquillity and stability that they needed. It was difficult to disagree
with this. Every morning one of us would take them from their coop, which actually was
more like the cooler from
The Bridge on the River Kwai
, and carry them in the box they had
arrived in to their 'run', where they were gawped at all day by either the cats or the dogs. Like
hopeful parents-to-be being told the best conditions in which to conceive, we were obviously
going to have to get this right or forever have barren hens.
As usual Natalie was on the case. 'I've found the ideal coop!' she said triumphantly. 'It's three
hundred euros and...'
'Three hundred bloody euros! How many eggs do they have to lay before we make that
money back?' This seemed to be the case with all the animals. I'm given a load of hogwash
about them really not costing much and before you know it I'm mucking out a stable with a
golden shovel.
'It's too much,' I said, 'we'll just have eggless hens. Or take them back, get ones that work.'
'Finished?' Natalie asked, used to having to let my initial outburst subside. 'Right,' she con-
tinued. 'The same coop is less than half the price in England and you are picking up the new
car next week. You can bring it back then. OK?'
Seriously, why she can't just give me all of the relevant information from the start rather
than letting me go off half-cocked every time is utterly beyond me.
We had bought a car - a Citroen C4 Grand Picasso seven-seater people carrier. Not exactly
the car of my dreams. The mistake, though we didn't know it yet, was buying it in England
and importing it back to France; not that we wanted to, we wanted to buy from our local
garage, but it was £5,000 more expensive to do so. We went to see our local
garagiste
and I
showed him a price list from the UK and he nearly burst into tears reading it, and yet a few
months later we were the ones at a low emotional ebb; we should have just stumped up the
extra five grand.
Even if you have never had to deal with 'French Bureaucracy' just the term will probably
strike fear into your heart, as it seems to have become synonymous with a lot of the antipathy
that some English reserve for the French. But bureaucracy is a blight everywhere, this isn't an
anti-French thing. Let me try and get a few things straight. In my opinion, the French can be
