Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
it seems, is ever thrown away and it's usually my 'workshop' (there is a bag of rusty tools in
there) that it gets dumped in, the logic being that I'm rarely in there. On this occasion I had
collected up quite a bounty: a fridge/freezer, a television, a rug, a goldfish bowl and a set of
mouldy luggage being just a selection of the rubbish we'd accumulated. It looked like a haul
from a 1970s game show, cuddly toys included.
But Manuel wasn't keen to lend me his
remorque
. His opinion of me is so low now that
he actually follows me around my own property making sure I don't break anything or come
to harm. As usual, then, we came to an arrangement: we'd load up his trailer, putting all the
dirtier boxes in my car, and go together to the local tip, in convoy. It was his idea, and the
only one on the table.
I love the fact that the refuse tip, the civic dump, in France is called the
déchetterie
. Of all
the vocabulary that I have had to learn,
déchetterie
is the easiest; it's the closest to nominat-
ive determinism I think the French language gets:
déchetterie
to me is 'de-shittery', as good
a description of a clear-out as I can think of. But that makes light of the place and you can't
do that, it's a very serious business indeed. When I first visited the tip there were just two
skips, and when one was full you'd just chuck stuff in the other. It was a simple system, run
by a lovely woman, Elisabeth, and it worked. Now, though, there are twelve skips, a sinister
underground 'oil recycling' bunker, more rules than cricket and Elisabeth herself has been re-
cycled and replaced by more evangelical recyclers.
But first we had to get there, and Manuel was clearly uncomfortable with me leading our
convoy, presumably feeling that I could barely get to the
boulangerie
without then request-
ing the assistance of a search party. Now I like driving, when it's not for work, but I hate the
boredom of regular routes - I need 'long' cuts, gear changes, junctions, back roads and new
sights. I guess it's all to do with the amount of travelling I do, but I have to make even the
shortest journey more interesting. I go where I want. I'm a free man.
I decided to take a circuitous route, much to Manuel's annoyance, and by the time we arrived
at the
déchetterie
he was furious.
He didn't actually say anything, but I could see he was riled and he avoided eye-contact as
we began to empty the rubbish. Coping with a truculent Portuguese man is one thing; adding
an equally hostile Frenchman into the mix is trying in the extreme, and Elisabeth's replace-
ment was in a cantankerous mood. It was after lunch and as he leant in close to explain yet
another change in the skip system, he smelled of wine and
saucisson
and his obviously now
extinguished cigarette, possibly reclaimed from one of the skips, was still stuck to his bottom
lip. It may have been there for months for all I know, it was shorter than his stubble. I took
a step back from his breath and threw a box of assorted rubbish into the designated 'assorted
rubbish' skip. His cry was gutwrenching.
'Argh! Non! Qu'est-ce que vous faites? Mais non, Monsieur!'
