Another slightly condensed exclusive from Peter Burleigh under his topical heading . It is out of sequence , but then this entire blog is out of whack. So as not to upset dog lovers , we deleted the part which revealed that to sell his house in Australia before fleeing to France , not only did he throw in all the furniture, fittings, pictures and his many framed glowing references from multi-national corporations , he included faithful fido . (No mention was made to the buyers about the black snakes which have invaded the house in the past .)
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House trained French snake by Pierre Roy
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At last, contact from an alien (OK,
me)! I haven’t written in weeks because I couldn’t think of an excuse why I
haven’t written. So I gave up and am writing. My
weeks of email silence have been dominated by the hot weather – at least three
heatwaves have beaten us down.
Days of over-30 degree heat with the boat in the sun (it’s a lot harder to find a boat-friendly shady spot on a canal or riverbank than you might think, and you are moving en soleil pretty much every day.) Our most recent onboard guest has returned to Lyon after a week of trying to improve Judi and my French with mixed results. I did learn that the French word ‘salade’ means ‘lettuce’.
Days of over-30 degree heat with the boat in the sun (it’s a lot harder to find a boat-friendly shady spot on a canal or riverbank than you might think, and you are moving en soleil pretty much every day.) Our most recent onboard guest has returned to Lyon after a week of trying to improve Judi and my French with mixed results. I did learn that the French word ‘salade’ means ‘lettuce’.
Our English BBQ (inherited with the
boat) finally died so we have imported one from Germany via the Internet. As
you might expect, the German version works far better and now we can cook Duck,
Guinea Fowl and Lamb without the surrounding environment exploding in
flames.
We have once again returned to our
‘home port’ of St Jean de Losne as our replacement stern thruster – one of the
boat’s most vital sexual organs – has arrived from Holland. It was originally
delivered somewhere in the south of France.
They sent it back again, then re-sent it to the same wrong address. No one knows where it's gone (true!) Our marina ordered another one. After a false alarm or two the new one has arrived, so we expect our boat to be craned out of the water tomorrow and the thruster fitted, ‘expect’ being the operative word. At least this location has Internet of a kind, crippled but still dragging itself along by the knuckles.
They sent it back again, then re-sent it to the same wrong address. No one knows where it's gone (true!) Our marina ordered another one. After a false alarm or two the new one has arrived, so we expect our boat to be craned out of the water tomorrow and the thruster fitted, ‘expect’ being the operative word. At least this location has Internet of a kind, crippled but still dragging itself along by the knuckles.
In a few days we hope all will be
well, and we can head up the Doubs River to Dole and Besancon, both spectacular
cities and meccas for good food and grog, and perhaps go as far east as
Montpellier before we reach the edge of the world. We’ll meet friends from London
and Canberra and cruise for a couple of weeks. Lucky our livers have been in
training. Besancon is the site of a spectacular military citadel perched on top
of a rock similar to Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf. Maybe I won’t send you an email
about it.
