Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Feeling a Little Chaton
If I have garnered a well-earned reputation for being a little gauche socially, then it's fair to
say that Natalie has earned an equally justified renown of her own. Where animals and their
welfare are concerned, she is a soft touch.
As usual for a Sunday I had got home at about three in the afternoon, following the customary
harrowing journey home. Though I was no longer driving nearly as much, I usually had to skip
sleep on a Saturday night to try and meet all my travel connections. I had been working in
Leeds the night before and in order to make my earlyish flight from Stansted Airport to Tours
I had had to take an all-night coach from Leeds to Stansted. If ever you feel like you may be a
winner in life and that maybe you just need bringing down a peg or two, I can heartily recom-
mend an overnight National Express coach. As is often the case, I was the only one on the bus
(going via London) whose belongings weren't in a black bin liner, and as usual the only one
wearing a cravat. The overnight coach is undoubtedly convenient, as trains don't run through
the night, but they are uncomfortable, generally crowded and sometimes quite menacing; they
are not for the faint-hearted, though it has to be said, arguably preferable to the brutality of the
budget airline flight that follows.
The drive home from Tours Airport through the vineyards and rolling fields via Amboise and
Montrichard acts as my decompression chamber, before the boys quite rightly demand atten-
tion; though it's fair to say that I'm quite often in a fragile state having not slept for twenty-four
hours. The boys, however, were playing their own games this time when I got back, so I was
allowed to grab a cold beer, lie on my under-used hammock in the orchard and enjoy the late
autumn sunshine.
Natalie was out at the front of the house walking Ultime (who appeared to be dealing stoically
with her STD) up and down the verges on the roadside so that she could eat and cut the grass.
I began to doze off, the soporific rural idyll washing the bestiality of my flight and all-night
coach journeys out of my system. Five minutes I had. Five minutes, then reality came stomp-
ing through the grass and poked me in the eye with the pooey end of a stick.
Natalie was deep in conversation with a couple I didn't recognise, who had stopped by with
some news. Now wide awake I wandered over, sensing trouble.
An old woman who lived a kilometre or so down the road had had a stroke and died. All very
sad, obviously, and this particular woman was something of a character. She'd lived on about
