Anecdote – Hitch-hiking in France without the Hitch-hiking

Hitch-hiking in France without the Hitch-hiking

It rapidly became apparent that we had most of the things we needed. Life was idyllic. We had great food, wine, facilities, music and French culture. All we lacked were girls.

Fortunately there were girls. The town was full of them and so was the Hostel. There were German girls, Yugoslavian girls, French girls, Czech girls, Austrian girls and even a Scottish girl. Not only that but they all seemed to like long-haired English boys.

After two days of consuming bread, cheese, wine and beer, playing table football (and being thrashed by the French youth who seemed to have devoted their lives to mastering it like exponents of Zen), sitting in the shade under the trees, showering and learning more rude French terms than I thought possible (The French language is so expressive) we decided to have a conflab concerning our departure and future travel plans. We weighed up the advantages of staggering down French roads under heavy rucksacks to the sound of rapidly receding cars, with the obvious horror of putting an end to our dream and staying put. It wasn’t a long discussion. We decided that it was perhaps better staying in the tent rather than lugging it about in the heat and that it might be a great idea to expand our vocabulary even further and get to know some of the girls a little bit better – in fact a lot better (especially as they seemed so keen it seemed almost churlish to deny them the opportunity).

The summer began to assume a pattern.

I would get up fairly early considering. The heat made it difficult to lie in too long, besides the early mornings were zinging with that electric summer air of expectancy.

I would saunter into the village and get some shopping. This always proved challenging. The French shopkeepers were friendly and amused by us but rarely helpful.

At one shop I spied some porridge oats and decided that might do for breakfast. I conferred with the bemused shopkeeper who could not seem to understand any of my many different French pronunciations of Quakers porridge oats. In the end I took him outside and pointed, to which he responded ‘Ah Quakers porridge oats’ in extremely clear English. I think he was having me on.

I’d discovered this new wonder food called yoghourt. They did it in a series of flavours so I decided to try them all. I bought eleven pots of the wonder food but I had no bag to put them in. I could not seem to get the shopkeeper to understand this and provide me with one. He seemed to deliberately misunderstand and was determined to watch to see how I was going to manage the feat of carrying eleven pots of yoghourt home. It must have made his day. In the end I scooped them all up in my arms and set off. I only dropped two.

At the greengrocers I went in to buy an onion so that I could cook some spaghetti. I only wanted one onion but as they were mere centimes for a whole kilo the shopkeeper was totally bemused by this. It took me ages to convince him I only wanted one. He roared with laughter. After that, every time I walked past the place he’d rush out into the street and run after me with an onion.

‘Monsieur, monsieur – un onion.’

Fortunately the girls at the hostel took to feeding me or my diet might have been a bit limited and we rapidly gained skills at the Football table and mastered the art of spinning!

One interesting thing we discovered was that the courtyard was infested with large rats and as our tent had no front they came to visit in the night. After being disturbed by tiny scampering feet on the first night Foss hatched a plan. He got his sheath-knife out and we sat poised with the knife up in the air ready to sweep down on the unsuspecting rodent (the size of elephants – well cats then). We waited hours but none came. In the morning Foss found the razor-sharp knife in his sleeping bag. But fortunately all his bits were intact. After that we decided it was best to ignore them. We developed a policy of mutal respect. As long as we did not leave food in the tent they wouldn’t bother us so we did not bother them. We got used to the scampering.

Life was extremely pleasant chez nous.