Les Lamas de l'Aubaine

When we arranged the furniture removal from Roquetaillade, we had hoped that it could be delivered to our new house on Tuesday – the day after Completion.  But we had once again found ourselves moving in the middle of a period that is full of French public holidays, (there seem to be so many of them), and Les Gentlemen du Déménagement were under a lot of pressure to squeeze a number of cross-country moves into fewer working days than usual. So they had to deliver our furniture on Monday.

We therefore arranged that they would arrive on Monday afternoon, after two-thirty – despite their secretary’s attempt to persuade us to let them arrive in the morning. We pointed out that we wouldn’t actually be in possession of the keys until after eleven thirty, and couldn’t get back to the house from the Notaire’s office until midday at the very earliest, assuming that everything went smoothly. She acquiesced, and agreed that they would arrive at our house after lunch, but we were left with a nagging feeling that this might very well not turn out to be the case.

Following our swift exit from the Notaire, and our dalliance with the Insurance lady, we headed straight to our new abode, with only a very quick stop at the nearest shop to pick up some bread and cheese for lunch. Arriving at the sign to Blanchetière within minutes of the midday hour, we drove expectantly down ‘our’ lane, into ‘our’ yard, and rummaged through the huge collection of jangly keys to find the one that would open ‘our’ front door. It was a lovely moment.

We stood quiet in the unfolding sunshine, transfixed by tranquillity. To my great joy, a euphonious nightingale sang roundly from its perch in the big oak tree on the edge of our front garden just a few yards from where we stood, banishing one of my big fears of Things I Would Miss About Roquetaillade. And in that very moment, before we even stepped inside the house, I knew with utter certainty that I would love this place.

Which was a Good Thing. Because when we did eventually find the key that fitted the lock that opened the door to our future, we were greeted by a house sorely in need of a little tender loving care, and a lot of forgiveness.

The previous owners had indeed taken with them the two horses and Ugly Donkey. They had also taken the nice wood-burning stove that had warmed us so welcomingly during our visit to the house when we all met with the agent to sign the Compromis de Vente. In its place was a rusty old top-loader, badly joined to the existing flue pipe which was leaking melting gunge and tar..

What they had not taken with them (apart from the three ‘farm’ cats and a solitary hen, which they had told us about) was nearly all of their rather rickety furniture, the biggest collection of ceiling and wall-shrouding cobwebs I have ever seen (even Miss Haversham would have been horrified), and two years worth of greasy grime, and collected jars and bottles yet to be recycled. And at some point within the next couple of hours, Les Gentlemen would be arriving with all our wordly possessions, which they would be anxious to unload post-haste.

But I was not about to be down-hearted by this not-entirely-unexpected turn of events. I felt another Aneka-moment coming on. “I guess we’d better shift this lot into the barn.”

We went outside to explore the outbuildings. Unsurprisingly, they were also full of stuff….rubbish, junk or interesting old artefacts, depending on your point of view. Being a well-known hoarder myself, my horror at the piles of stuff confronting us was tinged with glow of excitement at the curious possibilities that might be lurking amongst the detritus. But now was not the time to be entertaining such possibilities. There was an urgent need to clear the house and make some attempt at cleaning it up a bit before Les Gentlemen arrived.

After Simon and I had carried the biggest, heaviest items outside, I set too with the broom and vacuum cleaner (for once we had the right stuff in the right car with us in the right place), while Simon moved the remaining bits and pieces of the past. Trying for once to be practical, I prioritised the removal of the dirt and cobwebs that would be where our bed would be, and tried to clean the bits of wall and floor where the heaviest items of our own furniture would be deposited, figuring that I could clean the rest later.

The cleaning task was made more difficult by the fact that neither the kitchen nor bathroom sink had attached drainage, (both emptied directly into a bucket underneath) and there was no hot water. And wiping the walls down was made impossible by the fact that they had been ‘finished’ in some sort of attempt at ‘authentic’ lime plaster, which actually just flaked off in pieces at the slightest touch.

Luckily, being an obsessive-compulsive with a preference for planning over action, I had spent many rainy hours back in Roquetaillade drawing plans of the new house, and working out how to most efficiently squeeze into it the excess of stuff we would be bringing with us. I knew, to the last centimetre, what would fit where, so I knew where to concentrate my ineffectual cleaning activities.

Which was another Good Thing. Because about half an hour into the cleaning-up operation, a Very Big Lorry loomed down the lane. Not yet one o’clock , and Here They Bloody Well Were, out of the front cab and already being Gallicly grumpy about the impossibility of turning the lorry round to make good their escape at the end of the unloading.

There were only two of them again – one who had supervised the loading (unfortunately the unsmiling, least communicative of the two that we had met the previous Thursday), plus a young lad who looked as if he could hardly lift a table. I thought it was going to be a Long Afternoon. I wondered what the first guy would be thinking about our move – whether he would be wondering why we had moved from such a lovely comfortable house in a beautiful sunny South of France village, to a hovel in the middle of rainy nowhere. I wondered what he would think when he asked to use the toilet, and found that there actually wasn’t one. And I wondered if he would ever smile.

Simon pointed out to them that if they continued down the grass-covered track at the side of our land they would reach a road that would take them back to the road they had come in on. Looking a little sceptical, Monsieur No-Smile grumped off down the lane to check it out, leaving his young comrade skulking awkwardly in the back of the lorry, clearly unsure of how to fill his waiting moments. A little later No-Smile returned, grudgingly acknowledged that it was ‘Bien’, and proceeded to issue unloading instructions to his young colleague.

As the furniture began to come off the lorry, I noticed something was not quite right. “Oh My God, Simon…that’s not our stuff!” And indeed it wasn’t….but it had to be unloaded nevertheless, because all our stuff was loaded behind it, in the front of the lorry.

So an hour or so passed in which Someone Else’s Wordly Goods were stacked haphazardly in the lane, (even though it looked as if it would rain at any moment). I couldn’t resist looking at it (and yes…I admit it…passing judgement on it) and wondering about the people who owned it.  And then suddenly I thought…”hey, we’ve got one just like that”, before I realised that they had at last reached Our Stuff, and now they wanted to know where it all should go.

It is an uncomfortable feeling, having strangers parading bits of your life back and forth, and not being able to enter into light-hearted explanatory, apologetic conversation about all the crap you are asking them to bother to carry up a steep flight of fourteen steps, through two very low doors, to deposit randomly in the middle of a mouse-dropping-and-cobweb infested attic. But as the afternoon wore on… and on…. and on….my sense of embarrassment began to fade, and my task-oriented, ‘for-god’s-sake-how-much-longer-is-this-going-on?’ impatient nature came to the fore.

As the items came out of the lorry, I barked monosyllabic instructions to Les Gentlemen to tell them where to put them – always with a smile of course. When Monsieur No-Smile took issue with my instructions, believing that the sofa or the kitchen unit would not fit where I told him to put them, I persisted, safe in the knowledge that I had measured everything and knew what I was talking about. Eventually, a grudging respect crept into his shrugs and he ceased to question my directions. Eventually, he actually smiled once or twice. And when the time came that I had just-about-had-enough of this tedious business, and I started to climb on to the lorry to unload things myself, I think we had reached an Understanding. All that mattered was that the job should Get Done, and they should Get Gone, roles and professional relationships be damned.

And eventually it did, and they were. And we were left alone with another godawful mess, but with Loads of Time to sort it all out. We drove over to Mike and Sue’s to pick up the horsebox and the other car with the trailer and bike, and to pick up Max, our faithful hound, who had spent a very unusual day in the company of six border collies and a cat. We said goodnight to our chickens, and promised to return to pick them up too, just as soon as we had made a fox-proof chicken-run of our own.

Back at Our House, we ate the remainder of the sandwiches we had made for the journey up from Roquetaillade – my God, was it only yesterday? – and tumbled into a hastily-made bed, in a black-dark, totally hum-free silence. There is a lot to be said for the absence of electrical equipment.

We awoke the next morning secure in the knowledge that we had Made It, and that – apart from the pressure to make a chicken pen and get the fields fenced, so we could relieve Mike and Sue of their chicken-and-llama-sitting responsibilities – we really, really did have Loads of Time to do all the things that now needed to be done. We had All the Time in the World.

Monday arrives too soon, in a haze of early morning mist. From the window of the guest bedroom in Mike and Suzanne’s house, we can see the lovely sight of many llamas, including ours, grazing on the lush green grass. For once, it is not raining.

There is no time to waste. We dress hurriedly and head outside to see if the chickens have survived their long journey and many-hours-long incarceration in their house in the horse-box. After unloading a muddle of damp miscellany onto a tarpaulin on the wet ground, we gain access to the door of the chicken house. With the cage at the ready, Simon opens the door and peers into the chickeny gloom. One, two…three……..four! All present and correct and, much to our relief, still alive. With the air of an expert chicken-handler (the lack of tentativeness actually resulting from a lack of time), Simon ‘encourages’ the little flock into the cage and carries them to the waiting chicken pen, that Mike and Sue had, very luckily-for-us, constructed at the same time as getting their llama fields fenced, in early readiness for the one-day when they would get their own chickens.

While the bleary-eyed poultry explore their temporary new stamping ground, we once again dismantle the house and carry its cumbersome parts to the pen, where it is swiftly re-erected, and immediately becomes an object of fascination for Mike and Sue’s curious puppy. And as soon as we have assured ourselves of the chickens continued well-being, reloaded the horse-box, reorganised the crazily-loaded car (so that there is actually room for me in the front passenger seat) and downed a hasty cup of coffee, we are off again, heading towards Moulins and the Moment of Commitment to Our New Life.

Convinced that we need to have arranged house insurance before the purchase transaction can be completed, Simon has already researched possible Insurance Agents in Moulins, and entered the address of his preferred option into the GPS. We have about an hour in which to drive the 40 kilometres to Moulins, find the place, sort the insurance and then get ourselves to the Notaire’s office in a different part of town, for 10.00am.

The drive to Moulins is lovely. Endless green, tree-speckled vistas open up on either side of us as we glide along the main-but-amazingly-quiet road. I wonder out loud whether any of the previous owners’ animals will still be at the house. We expect the horses to be gone, because the couple will need them to pull the horse-drawn caravan they are planning to live in. But what about the donkey? “If the donkey’s still there, will we keep it?” I ask Simon. “We don’t want a donkey! ” he snorts, “And, anyway,  it’s such an ugly donkey.” I imagine the bedraggled Eeyore-like figure, standing in the rain, abandoned and unwanted outside the closed barn door. “Ah, now you’ve said that, we’ll have to keep it. How can you say that? Poor Ugly Donkey…nobody wants him…”

We arrive at the bridge over the Allier with twenty-five minutes to spare. Loads of Time.

And just as I think that thought, a massive hit of dream-like deja-vu kicks in. Bizarrely, there seem to be no satellites over Moulins today! The GPS goes down, just as we approach the town, leaving us with no idea where we are or where we need to go. And twenty-five minutes suddenly feels like a very-short-amount-of-time-indeed.

But there comes a point in Life, when there seems to be no point in worrying any more. There has been so much to worry about over the last few months – so many things that could have gone terribly wrong. And yet, somehow, in a way that seems barely possible, we seem to have arrived safely in the Allier along with all our llamas and chickens. I can’t help feeling that this is the way things are meant to be, so of course everything will be ok. And seriously, I really am too damned tired to worry any more.

So we let the Universe take over, and end up quite quickly stumbling across the Insurance Agent we are looking for, and there is even a free parking space outside it. Grinning complacently, we take our place in the small queue of People Waiting to be Insured. Our turn comes around. The Man is very smiley and helpful, and his French is very easy to understand. Simon capably answers his many questions as he completes the on-line forms. And then we hit a snag. It seems that our house is not a house. It is a farm. And it seems that this Insurance Company doesn’t insure agricultural buildings. “Mais, non, Monsieur!” We will have to go elsewhere.

The hint of a momentary panic flutters at the edge of my brain, but I look the other way. The Man suggests another place to try. He thinks it is on a road near the station. We sprint back to the car, and as I hurl myself into the passenger seat, slam the door shut (Simon winces), and shout “Go!”, I am reminded of how, once upon a time, I used to fantasize about being Aneka Rice.

Still no satellites over Moulins, so we revert to instinct and intuition. Simon has a vague mental recollection of an outline map of the town, and thinks he might know roughly where the station is. Except that we don’t know where we are now. So he just drives, and I just search for clues, and somehow we end up near the station, and “Jackpot!” there, up ahead of us on the right of the long, wide street,  is a Groupama sign, jutting treasure-like into our field of view. But…

But it is not the right place. This is a head office – a centre of administration. It is very swanky, and plush and very alluring, but it is not a place where one can actually get insurance. That is in another building, in another street, in another part of town, in another Universe, where there is more time and a street map and a working GPS. And we are not there. We are here, with only ten minutes left till we are due at the Notaire’s office. And we don’t know where that is either.

“Ah, Sod It!” Simon exclaims, resigning himself to the insurance-free nature of our current situation. “I’ll just tell them I’ve done it on-line, and hope they don’t ask for proof”. Back in the car, we switch on the intuition radar again and head in a hopeful direction. Although I don’t really feel worried, I am aware that my heart is beating rather rapidly. I scan the passing street names for something resembling the one we are looking for.

“Damn It!” A red light stops us at a cross-roads that we were intent upon crossing. During the enforced moment-or-two’s wait, we glance about us. We see a hippy-looking couple crossing the road, carrying strangely-shaped instrument cases on their backs. Hang on a minute……. “It’s them”!” It is indeed the couple whose house we are, hopefully, about to buy. They spot us gawping stupidly at them out of the car window and wave to us. We look down the road they are heading towards and discover with glee that it is the street in which the Notaire’s office supposedly resides. So we turn right and drive into the first available parking space which just happens to be opposite the entrance to the office of Maitre Michel Vivier, Notaire.

We wait for our accomplices to catch us up, and enter the building en masse. We have arrived at exactly 10 o’clock. But this is France, and Me Vivier is a Notaire, so of course we have to wait. And while we wait, Simon asks the couple all the questions that have been on our minds over the last few days. What is the ‘puissance’ of the electricity supply to the house? Is is single or three-phase? Have the horses and the donkey gone? What are the rubbish-collection arrangements? Is the water supplied by a water company or the commune? And one other question that never gets asked….Where have you been emptying the composting toilet?

The couple happily answer all our questions, and pass on a few more bits of information. The three cats are still at the house. They are all female, and, no, they have not been neutered. There is one chicken still there – well, at least she was there last night. The others have all been eaten by a fox. The kitchen sink is disconnected from the drainage pipe because it is blocked. The hot water tank is switched off because the pressure-release valve leaks constantly. The phone is still connected, even though they have written a letter to say they are moving.

And just at the point where we have run out of questions and they have run out of answers, and the far-from-fluent conversation is grinding to an uncomfortable halt, Maitre Vivier appears, preceded five steps ahead by his vast ego.

Maitre Vivier is a tall, smartly-dressed man with a vigorous handshake and a lot of Presence. He is an Entertainer. He is a Showman. He loves to hear himself make witty and astute comments in perfectly-enunciated regulation French. He takes great care to appear off-hand. He is painstakingly relaxed.  He ushers us into his neat and well-organised lair with vivacious gesticulations. I think fondly of Maitre Isard, and of our former dealings with a Notaire of Some Character. I suspect that this morning’s transaction will be completed with a qualitatively different degree of idiosyncrasy, and a far greater degree of alacrity. It will be swifter but nowhere near as charming.

The meeting progresses and I am struck by the fact that it seems to be impossible to generalise about the French process of buying and selling houses. Every such transaction that we have experienced has been different in so many ways from the previous one. I begin to wonder if there actually are any rules at all, and whether Notaires across the country make it all up as they go along. I am also struck by the fact that the Estate Agent has slunk into the room somewhere in the midst of the busy proceedings, and is now skulking in the chair on my right, smiling silently in anticipation of the Big Cheque that we are about to hand over to him for his disproportionately tiny contribution to the whole caboodle. I wonder briefly how he sleeps at night, and whether he has the capacity to feel embarrassment.

The point of similarity between this and every other French legal transaction in which we have previously been involved becomes immediately apparent at the point of the Signing. As always, Everybody has to sign Everything on Every Single Page. But Mr Entertainer is well-prepared for this part of the Show, and the papers fly in a perfectly-timed flurry of coordination, as Maitre Vivier uses both perfectly-manicured hands to prestidigitate the many-paged documents between the breathless members of his captive audience.

And then suddenly, it is All Over bar the shouting. No encores. No bows. Twenty minutes of hardly-noticed business, masquerading as a matinee performance. We pay the money and we get the keys. We all wish each other well and go our separate ways. No one notices the Estate Agent’s departure.

The house insurance turned out to be a non-issue, but we decide to look for the correct Groupama office anyway, and sort the deal before vacating the town. We are rewarded with an unbelievably low quote, and leave Moulins just as it is closing for lunch, with a folder full of Very Important documents, a pocket full of the biggest bunch of keys we have ever seen, and a car full of Thoughtful Anticipation.

As we drive back into the Green and Empty, the realisation hits us. We are Going Home.

I dream a lot.

I don’t mean dream, as in fantasize about grand plans or happier futures (although I evidently do that quite a lot too). I mean dream, as in fall asleep and slip into a different world where my randomly-firing neural networks conspire with my subconscious to create alternate realities where things are just plain weird (once I wake up and reflect on them, that is …..at the time they seem perfectly normal).

Sometimes the impending weirdness and vividness of my dreams can actually put me off going to sleep at all. And sometimes, the boundary between my dreams and my ‘real’ life gets a bit blurred, and I find that I have memories of things that never really happened. It can be a little disconcerting.

But the thing I dislike most about my dreams is that some not very pleasant ones recur with a depressing degree of regularity.  And up there, ranking in frequency alongside the common-or-garden ones where I desperately need a wee but can’t find a toilet that isn’t broken/on public display/dangerous, or where all my teeth fall out, is the one that has come to be known in this household as the ‘Frustration Dream’.

In my Frustration Dream, the setting and the content may differ but the theme is always the same. I have to get somewhere within a deadline to do something very important, but I have lots of things I need to do before I can set out on the journey, or before the event occurs. And in the course of doing these necessary things, stuff happens to delay me. If I need to pack a bag, the bag will be too small, or fall apart, or turn into something else. If I need to make a phone call, the phone will not work or I will endlessly dial the wrong final digit at the end of a very, very long number. I will get on a wrong train, or into a wrong car, or it will break down, just far enough away from my destination to make it impossible for me to get there on time. Or just as I approach the destination, I will remember that I have forgotten something very important and I will have to turn round and run back to the start. And however hard I try to run, I can barely move more than a few steps, or the ground beneath me moves away, so that I am running to stand still.

Always the dream is suffused with a sickening sense of the urgency of the situation, and threaded through with mulitifarious things that stop me from achieving what I feel driven to do. It is always SO FRUSTRATING.

Now, the reason I am telling you this, is because the final day of our move from Roquetaillade was so much like the Frustration Dream, that I seriously began to wonder if I was actually awake at all.

Most of our worldly possessions had disappeared into the sunset on Thursday afternoon, aboard a Very Large Lorry, in the capable hands of Les Gentlemen du Déménagement (seriously….that’s what it said on the side of all the boxes). So, we had Thursday evening, and two more whole days left in which to thoroughly empty and clean the house, and pack our remaining bits and pieces into the cars and horse-box. Loads of Time.

As the lorry trundled slowly off down the rue du Chateau, leaving small pieces of an overhanging Judas Tree in its wake,  we sat on the stone wall at the end of the road, outside our echoingly empty house, basking in the sunlit view across the pink-tinged valley, and remembering our love-at-first-sight of the house seven years earlier.  It was a beautiful, warm, still, sunny South-of-France day. Just the perfect sort of day to make us wonder why on earth we were moving away from such a wonderful place, and such a lovely climate.

We reminded ourselves What It Was All About, and decided to take a final walk down to the Fairy Wood to proffer our thanks, bid our sad farewells, and take a final look at the stones and trees, and vines and vistas that we had come to know and love during our happy days in Roquetaillade. We went to sleep that night in a wrong room in a wrong bed, in a silent, sombre mist of thoughtfulness, such as accompanies any Big Change.

The gap between our furniture leaving, and our intended departure on the Sunday, meant that, in addition to the many items we had cavalierly told the Gentlemen du Déménagement to “laisser” (because, actually, there was no room left in our allotted space in the lorry anyway), we also needed to hang on to various items necessary for our camping-style sojourn in our erstwhile home. And of course it also meant that, since cooking would be so cumbersome without all our stuff,  we would take up my sister’s offer of a Farewell Meal on the Friday. Which of course turned into a long, half-day visit … because, it was just so nice to sit in the sunshine and relax; and because, after all, “we had been very busy lately and deserved a break”; and because we wouldn’t be seeing them again for a long while; and because, anyway, we still had plenty of time left for everything we needed to do.

We still had all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. We still had Loads of Time.

Saturday morning we went to do a little bit of shopping (we would need travel food on Sunday), and then took a few car loads of rubbish to the dechetterie. Then we went to our fields to retrieve our valuable gates and a few solidly-constructed catch-pen tying-up posts, (which took longer than we expected to dismantle), and to wallow in our memories of all the work we had put into clearing and fencing the land, and building the beautiful (if somewhat idiosyncratic) field shelter that now stood bereft and forlorn in the empty field, like a memorial to llamas and days gone by. Reminiscing so drains the energy, (and the precious minutes).

Saturday afternoon, as a slight sense of the impending undeniability of our situation began to dawn on us, we started to think about loading things into the trailer, and to prepare our many vehicles for the journey ahead. We spent some time getting the bike strapped on to the bike trailer, and clearing the llama-travelling straw out of the horse-box, and wondering, with a sinking sense of impossibility, just how all this stuff we had left, plus the chicken house and the big terrace plant pots, was Ever Going To Fit!!

And of course the weather had turned. And we kept putting things off, waiting for a gap in the rain. And we couldn’t load the trailer in the gale-force wind because the heavy ramp kept blowing shut. And we couldn’t clean the rooms until they were empty. And the rooms wouldn’t be empty until we’d loaded the cars and the trailer. And we couldn’t load the cars in the rain and the wind……

But it was ok, because we still had all of Saturday evening and Sunday morning. We still had Loads of Time.

But it was not ok, because we had run out of boxes and there were still various, disparate collections of bits and bobs that needed to be packed somewhere, somehow. And suddenly Time had Marched On, and the place was still a godawful mess, and damnit, we’d forgotten about all that gardening stuff stored under the balcony, and it was BLOODY RAINING AGAIN, and we really needed to get a bit of sleep before the Big Day Ahead.

Sunday morning.

Sunday morning and it was still raining, but at least now we could pack the bedding, and all the overnight stuff (if only we could find something to put it all in). But when should we pack the Chickens? Better wait till they had all had a chance to lay their eggs, and had a good wander about, and a good feed. But we could at least dismantle the ridiculously heavy chicken house, and carry its ridiculously heavy constituent parts up the treacherously slippery slope, and up the treacherously slippery steps, and up…up…(groan, strain, curse) up and over the stupidly high gate posts , and up the annoyingly unstable ramp into the improperly packed trailer (“the weight should really be over the axle you know!”).

And bloody hell, it’s ten o’clock already, and we wanted to be gone by midday, and where does the time go, and why is is STILL BLOODY RAINING?

And how can I pack all these stupid house-plants into such a full car? And now the dog bed won’t fit. And you’ll need that car jack in the Land Rover won’t you? But I might need it in the Omega. Which is most likely to break down? And where’s the dog? Get out of the car…we’re not going yet you stupid animal. Can’t you SEE how much stuff there is left to pack? And no we can’t put the chickens in yet – we’re nowhere near ready to go. And I can’t clean the stupid floor if you keep walking in and out with wet muddy shoes. And no you can’t have a cup of tea cos I’ve packed the kettle. Somewhere. I think.

And what shall I do with all this rubbish? The street bin is already full. And what shall I do with all this stuff? The cars are already full. And have you read the meters? No I don’t know where there’s a pen. And damn, damn, it’s eleven fifty-five and we haven’t even started cleaning yet. What do you mean you’ve packed the mop!

And please God let it stop raining. And please God, let me wake up.

Time for a last phone call to my sister before we pack the phone. Not enough time for tears.

Time to text my children to tell them I love them (in case I die in a car crash on the journey). No time to worry about the lack of response.

Time to update my Facebook status….how to express what I’m feeling right now? “Val Longley thinks that today will go on forever!”

Time for a last email-check before we disconnect the internet.  Not enough time to send any. Only one new email….a Facebook Notification – “Gilles Jaulet commented on your status – SSSSSnifffff, bye bye nice neighboors!!!”

Still not enough time for tears (but getting dangerously close).

Time for Simon to try to catch the chickens. Easy except for Pretty. “She’s getting a bit wary these days”.  Now to get them from the cage into the re-mantled hen house in the back of the packed horse-box. A flurry of feathers and obscenities. Angry thoughts of divorce fade as the door is closed triumphantly on the last one.

Pressured thoughts of deadlines explode. We HAVE to get a move on. The chickens can’t stay in there all day and all night without food and water. We have to get to Mike and Suzanne’s before dark. “How long did you say it will take?”
“The GPS says seven hours….not including breaks”
“WHAT?”
But it’s two-thirty already. And we haven’t finished packing. And we haven’t done the cleaning. And these stupid terrace plants take up too much room. And WHY do you need to take a half-used bag of cement? And where are those CDs I left out for playing on the journey? I can’t believe you packed them!! Now I’ll have to listen to Bob Dylan over and over and over again all the way. Or (even worse) French radio. “Nostalgeeee”. Wonderful!

And you know I can’t see in the dark. And I’ll die, and the chickens will die  if it gets dark before we arrive. And I can’t find the dog’s lead – I had it in a bag with his food. Oh my god, I think I must have put it in the stuff you took to the tip earlier. And now I have no lead for the dog! And how can I take him for a wee at a service station, without a lead…and (sniff) this is horrible, and (sob) this is like a bad dream, and (scream) where’s THE BLOODY LEAD?

Time for Simon to calmly consider the mental state of his ranting wife, and the necessity for decisive action to ensure that an untimely slide into complete insanity does not ensue at this inopportune moment. Avoiding the widely accepted (but risky) cure for hysteria, Simon instead holds me firmly by the shoulders and tells me to take a deep breath. “This is not good. I’m worried about you. Why don’t you start off now, and I’ll catch up with you on the journey?”

“But…”
So many buts…..
But I can’t leave you to do all the cleaning. It’s not fair. But suppose you break down after I’ve left? But suppose I break down? But where shall I meet you on the way? But how can I answer the phone when I’m driving. But what if the bike comes off the trailer? But how will I take the dog for a wee without a lead? And where did I put that BLOODY LEAD?”

But eventually Simon and Good Sense prevail, and I cram a last few things into the car, along with the very patiently waiting dog, and leave. No time for sentimentality. No time for last-looks-over-the-shoulder at the House-of-Our-Dreams-That-Was. Time for one stop, as per instructions, about five minutes down the road, to check that the straps holding the bike to the trailer are still tight

And then, Time warps again.

The long, long journey that I invariably detest as a passenger puts on a new dress. It is not dull and grey and boring. It is peaceful and creamy, and pink and easy and…well…sort of dream-like. The bike-trailer floating along behind me is insignificant, save for the unexpected benefit it provides in obscuring my vision of any tail-gating drivers irritated by my slow progress. I feel no need to drive fast. I will just drive and get there when I get there. Momentary worries about how Simon is progressing with the cleaning up, and whether he has left yet, subside beneath the calming drone of Bob intoning the impending Fall of Hard Rain. My autopilot kicks in, and my agitated consciousness kicks off its shoes, puts its feet up and takes a break.

I know the way without thinking about it. The road unwinds ahead of me, leading me fluently though the steady swish of rain and the sweeping curves of the long ascent to the high fog-snuggled plateau of the Grandes Causses. Time is timeless. Concentration is effortless. I am in the Zone and All is Well with the World.

Until I reach our agreed Meeting Place. The first aire-with-facilities after the Millau Bridge. Where, bizarrely, after driving around the whole layout twice, trying to find a good car-and-trailer parking spot close to the ‘facilities’ (it is still raining), I open the car door and step out to be greeted by Simon who has just that second pulled up beside me. What are the chances of that?

He is Very Pleased to see me. He has been Really Worried about me. I realise I must have been driving very slowly. Or he must have been driving very fast. We have (caffeinated) coffee to wake up our snoozing consciousnesses, and Simon phones Mike to tell him how late we will be. My heart sinks when I hear the numbers of our predicted time of arrival.

Back at the cars we say affectionate goodbyes, and I promise to stay within viewing distance of Simon following me. This of course means that I will have to drive the rest of the way with one eye on my wing mirrors to check Simon’s whereabouts. And just as I am about to drive out of the car park (past an inexplicable No Entry sign) Simon flashes his lights to stop me. The number plate is falling off the back of the bike trailer and nearly dragging on the gound. We pull over to the side of the exit road and he Fixes the Problem. It is a ‘good thing’ he was behind me to notice.

The break has rested my stiffening limbs but ruined my Flow. Anxiety crept back into the car when I was busy giving the dog a drink, and now it is sitting heavy on my aching shoulders and and whispering not-at-all-sweet nothings into my all-too-easily-worried ears. I am torn between getting as far ahead of Simon as I can, so that I can be alone again in that place where all I have to worry about is Right Here, and staying as close to him as possible, so that I will know if he has a problem, and he can help me if I have one. But I know that Simon is worried about me (and the bike on the trailer), and that if I disappear into the foggy sunset ahead of him, he will have a thoroughly anxious journey.

The next million hours pass in an endless series of wet and miserable ups and downs, where I lose sight of Simon on the uphill stretches where the weight of the fully-laden horse-box drags him down, and then spoil his speeding-up descent by slowing down in front of him to make sure he is still there. As the night-time darkness slides in to thicken the already dark wetness, it becomes harder and harder to see where I am going and where I have been. Familiar milestones postpone themselves eternally. Everything is much further than I remembered. Time drags oppressively but passes too quickly. It is getting later and later but I don’t seem to be getting any nearer our destination.  However fast I drive, the road moves faster in the opposite direction. I make no headway against the dark waves of heavy rain that obscure the lights of overtaking cars as they speed happily away in front of me towards other futures. There is no sign of any lighthouse. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is no end to this tunnel of dark, wet Time that keeps me struggling onwards to nowhere in an endless present of tiredness and worry.

Often at such a point in my recurring dreams, Simon, disturbed by the groans and whimpers I apparently utter in my restless sleep, will shake and wake me up, so that we can both return to a better rest.  I wish that I was dreaming this journey. I think that maybe I am.

Suddenly the road ahead becomes wide and bright, and full of booths and barriers. I pull up alongside a payment machine and step out into the night to walk round to the French side of the car, and put my card in the machine. Simon pulls in at the adjacent booth. He smiles big and wide, and asks how it’s going. He doesn’t need me to answer. He agrees to go in front for the rest of the way because I can’t see a bloody thing, and I have no idea where to go when we get off the motorway.

Simon pulls out ahead of me and I slip into the shelter of the furrow he ploughs in the sodden blackness ahead of us. Once again the drive becomes easy. All I have to do is follow the two red lights glowing like little beacons of hope at the back of the horse-box.  It is easier to keep up a steady speed, with a safe focus to follow, and Time becomes Normal once again.

When we eventually reach Mike and Suzanne’s it is far too late to think about getting the chickens out, dismantling their house to get it out of the trailer, reassembling it within the waiting confines of Mike and Suzanne’s pristine chicken pen, and putting them back inside it for the rest of the night. We figure that by now they are either asleep or dead. Either way, they can wait till the morning.

It is too late to eat. It is too late to be sociable. We have to get up early to get the chickens sorted before heading off to Moulins to arrange insurance on the House-of-Our Dreams-To-Be, and to get to the Notaire in time for the Big Signing Event. It is too late to do anything other than head towards the waiting bed, and pray to the god of Restful Sleep that I might be able to make it through just this one night without any dreams at all.