Due to the high numbers of rich tourists
here all with cars, the tourist attractions really know how to rip you off with
parking. There is a famous bridge near here and no joke they want €18 to park
there whether you stay for ten minutes or the whole day. I of course refuse to
ever pay an unnecessary cost so spend most of my days looking for random places
to park the car. The other day this involved a field quite a bit away from the
Bridge I intended to visit. I thought I would be really cunning and take a short
cut down a path with an interdit sign on it (I thought I could just pretend I
didn’t understand it). However soon the path turned into a jungle and I found
myself in the middle of rose bushes and very sharp jaggy plants. After
eventually finding my way out (for a brief moment I genuinely thought I was
going to die there) I appeared in a clearing surrounded by tents which I
quickly realized was a scout summer camp (the neck ties, campfire, guitars, and
silly uniform gave them away). By this point I was looking pretty bedraggled
and my arms and legs were covered in scratches and bleeding a bit. They all
stared at this creature who had appeared before them, then asked me where I
wanted to go, to which I replied Pont Du Gard (the famous bridge). They obviously
realized I wasn’t French (Scottish accents are hard to cover up) so asked where
I came from to which I replied Scotland. Bemused they gave me directions. Only
now I realize in my bedraggled appearance they were probably wondering if I had
stumbled all the way from Scotland only to appear in their scout camp. Maybe
I’ll just pay the parking fee next time and save any future hassle or
embarrassment.
To thank my family for all the meals they
had made me, I decided to make a ‘British’ meal one night. This naturally
sparked a lot of debate as to what exactly classifies itself as a British meal.
So in the end I decided on ‘bangers and mash’, fish pie, and apple crumble. I
understand that the fish pie and bangers and mash don’t exactly go together but
since I was trying to please six people between the ages of four and forty two,
I figured variety was never a bad thing. For the bangers and mash, due to a
lack of gravy granules in the supermarkets here and since I had never made
gravy from scratch, it was a bit of a gamble. But luckily my audience was also
a bunch of people who had never tasted gravy before! My gravy was made with
meat juices from the sausages, butter, flour, and meat stock and was a sort of
oily, gloopy, brown sauce. I had also never made fish pie before but it turned
out to be not so difficult. Then I also decided some Yorkshire puddings never
go a miss. Then crumble I had made before and thanks to an abundance of apples
here wasn’t too tough.
So the result of my attempts! The Yorkshire
puddings never worked out, god knows why but they became kind of a gloopy mess
in the oven. When the family saw them I attempted to explain what they were
meant to be but the family just heard pudding and presumed it was my attempt at
making a dessert. I fed them to the dog. The mash, which here is referred to as
pomme de terre puree, went down well but to be honest if I had ruined that at
the age of twenty I have issues. The sausages intrigued them as they were made
of pork and most sausages here are made of red meat. The four year old goes mad
for sausages though (which he cutely calls saucissons) so he was happy! But the
gravy was a complete success bizarrely! The French do love meat sauces but they
could not get enough of the stuff and the Mum wants the recipe which is a bit
awkward as I sort of made it up. The fish pie in my opinion was pretty damn
good so I ate lots of that but the children weren’t so keen and just ate the
gravy. Then the crumble again failed a wee bit as I turned on the grill instead
of the oven so the whole top just burnt then I didn’t put it in for long enough
so it was a bit gooey and the apples a bit hard but the Mum loved it (children
not so much).
I also wanted to play the game when you put
the name of a celebrity on your head and you ask questions to discover who you
are. I quickly realized that this was not going to be an entertaining dinner
game as trying to find celebrities who I knew, my rural French family knew, and
a group of people ranging from the ages of four to forty two was going to be
nearby impossible. The only person really is God.
For my last weekend here on the Saturday, it
was the third birthday of the cousin of the children. During the day we all
went off to ‘Toys R Us’ to buy her a present. In my opinion taking four children
to Toys R Us is pretty much like taking a cat to a shop full of fish or a mouse
to a shop full of cheese. The children of course went absolutely mad for all
the toys especially the four year old who couldn’t believe so many cars,
trains, and tractors existed. There was a very elaborate train set behind a
glass cage and the four year old got very angry insisting that the shop was not
kind for not allowing him to play with it. For the birthday girl we were buying
a Barbie, however, and my God there was a lot of choice. You can buy Barbie
everything these days, for example if you want a new dress for your Barbie then
one is yours for a mere €8 (I can buy clothes for myself cheaper than that). In
the end we settled for a very elaborate Barbie complete with a whole wardrobe
of clothes and of course the four year old left with a new little police car,
and a remote control Jaguar. When/if I have children (and after the last six
weeks it is definitely an if) I am never taking them to a toy shop!
With our gift purchased in the evening, we went
off to a party. I was looking forward to it as it meant good food and cake but
also dreading it as small talk is difficult at the best of times but small talk
in a language you barely speak is a whole other challenge! For the adults there
I was quite a novelty as the Scottish person and everyone enjoys asking me
questions about the weather, the scenery in Scotland, what coffee we drink, and
what we eat (in rural France I am exotic!). The other children there, however,
were a bit confused as to who I was and my children seemed to quite enjoy
introducing me around as their fille au pair like some kind of show and tell at
school. The French Nanny of the cousins was also there and was absolutely
hilarious. She proudly told me that she was nearing seventy and genuinely this
women did not look it! She went on, however, to lift up her skirt so I could
see just how amazing the skin on her upper thigh was. Before launching in to a
description of all the exercise she does and everything she eats so that I too
can look that amazing at her age. She made me feel a pretty inadequate child minder
by scowling at my beer and insisting she never drank and then showing me all
the activities she has done with the children. This women also had on the most
eccentric mix match long skirt and floral shirt combo and smiled like a mad
person. Yet I was the only person who seemed to think she was even slightly
peculiar.
Most of my evening I spent with the three
year old playing with her numerous new Barbie dolls (it is far easier to speak
with a three old in French than grown adults as no one really understands what
she says) and these days there are a lot of barbies. She had also received a
lot of new clothes for her Birthday and devised a new game where I could be her
real life Barbie so held up all her clothes to me to see if they fit (obviously
they didn’t). This for some reason was incredibly enjoyable for her and very
amusing and when everyone realized that she was trying to dress me slowly all
the family gathered round me to take photos and aah at the cuteness of this
three year old.
At least some of the family members like
me! And only two more days!
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