April visit 12

Parting is such sweet sorrow…

I’m not convinced I understand that quote! All I do know is that it gets harder to leave the house, and I’m less inclined to do it; I haven’t yet dropped to my knees pleading to be allowed to stay, but I can imagine it coming to that if I don’t pull myself together! I can foresee that when the place is dust-free (what M. Boyer is promising us as the goal for the end of Phase I), I shall be even worse! Oh well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Driving back up to Calais, it really came upon me that summer was fully here – at least a month too early, according to the neighbours. The grapes are where they should be late May/early June (I’m sure that’s summer?). All the trees were fully out (when I’d come down, a few were just starting) and it felt so warm. We even used the air-conditioning! OK, so most of that is to do with motorway speeds and the need to use the A/C regularly, but still!

David had booked us on the 9.50pm shuttle, knowing that if we missed that they were every half-hour until just after midnight. So we took advantage of the late start to finish off the last bits in the garden/tidy the house/wash up/have a shower, etc. etc. etc. That’ll learn us! We got to the shuttle terminal at 10.20pm to find that the next train was 1.43am… Hmmm! We got to the pizza place just before it closed its doors and had a couple of slices of surprisingly nice pizza, and sat to wait in the car (it was warmer than the terminal building). They unloaded the shuttle before ours (we saw all the cars coming the “wrong” way through the barriers, and they had the previous letter on their tickets), so at least we hadn’t had that happen – I think I would have been much more cheesed-off if we’d been that close to going home & had it snatched away!

Finally got to bed at 3.30am, but slept easily in the absence of weed-filled nightmares!
I’m hoping to spend a few weeks getting on top of the weeds/garden, and David will come down with me and come back by train to work and return the following weekend, so all I need to do now is master by fear of driving so that I can run him to the station/collect him rather than using taxis! But that is another story…!