French Chronicles – II

At the time of the first joint holiday mentioned in Part 1 of these Chronicles, we owned a caravan and had travelled to France with it a couple of times already. The day we were due to set off for Portsmouth for the evening ferry, it was packed to the hilt (do caravans have hilts?) and strenuous efforts having been expended to wash it as well, equal quantities of sweat and soapy water were now swirling about in our section of New Forest District Council's drains. Further stress was imminent; upon connecting the caravan's electric hook-up to the car, the car's rear fog lights immediately came on and determinedly stayed on. I had not the remotest idea what was causing this but had no time to investigate. We therefore set off. We arrived at Portsmouth without further incident - but with fog lights blazing - at about 6.10 p.m. Nothing much of note happened during our seemingly interminable wait to board other than the man in front of us in the queue for the ferry continually going in and out of his caravan (we never did work out why), all the while making a noise like a trombone: normal people just hum or whistle. The other (slightly more worrying) thing was, inevitably, another caravanner asking me if I knew my rear fog lamps were on. I said I did and (as authoritatively as possible) that there was a short in the electrical system which I intended to repair once settled in France. My fellow traveller seemed satisfied with this totally disingenuous explanation and I fervently hoped he was not going to the same camp site. Some drivers seem incapable of following the simplest of instructions and, while we were following the activities of Mr Trombone Man, one of these drove past the multi column line of vehicles in a large white Citroën, towards a non-existent embarkation point, chased (on foot) by a clipboard-waving Brittany Ferries official, yelling at him to stop. No doubt the stupid idiot wondered what all those cars were doing parked on the quayside when the ferry was parked in the water. As the crossing to St Malo took about 10 hours, we did have a good chance of actually sleeping for a reasonable period; there is little doubt, though, that beer does help.