It’s Official;

Les anglais sont bougres paresseux

You can translate that one yourselves, suffice to say the last word is lazy and the one preceding it, which in translation would in fact follow it, sounds quite similar to the English if you say it slowly!!

It’s some time ago now, indeed before Christmas which will become apparent later, but I was up at a early hour and sorting out a few things, like emptying the dishwasher and making some bread for lunch, to go with the homemade cheese I had made the day before – impressed or what, but I expect more likely to illicit snide comments like – “Well you’ve got all the time in the world now you’d retired!!”  But, actually it doesn’t particularly feel like that at times, and it’s very true what people seem to always say when they have retired, that they never know how they ever found the time to go to work.

Indeed, having just spent the first two nights in our caravan for over two years, we realise just how busy we have been.  We even felt that we had convinced the neighbours (a supercouple, as in superman, in their late seventies who rarely seem to pause for breath, except when they are shouting at each other, they’re both a little hard of hearing.), with all the initial work in the garden and subsequent house renovation that we were at least trying to keep up with the Joneses!!  Madam had even stopped pointedly quipping, so often, about le petit pause’s or coffee breaks we would have sitting outside in the sunshine between coats of paint or rolls of insulation (although these were as much a case of coming down for air as having a break, but that’s a story told elsewhere!).

Well, there I was flour in my hands when there came a knock on the door, and there was Madam carrying what in this season of goodwill to all men, could only be a Christmas card, complete with English stamp.  Now as the French don’t particularly send Christmas cards, I assumed that it must be a card for us that had been mistakenly put into their letter box and she was giving to its rightful recipient.  But no, their followed a fast piece of one-sided dialogue, which almost had me flummoxed at this hour, but the envelope was clearly marked for our neighbours and somewhere in her rapid delivery was mention of a Nancy and Tony.  Getting rid of the flour from my hands and giving myself time to process the conversation, I realised that the card had come from an English couple who had for many years lived in one of the houses in our hamlet, just behind our house, but who had a couple of year’s previously moved back to the UK.  What I was actually being asked to do was to “translate” the address on the back of the card, written in a very small spidery hand and with an English style address, which like all things English, Madam doesn’t understand and that probably goes for us too!!

With the aid of a magnifying glass that she had kindly thought to bring, I was able to write the address of their new house in deepest Norfolk, with some quite odd sounding names, and we the passed the time of day about whether I had known Tony and Nancy and how she was wanting to sent a reply. 

I then thought I better explain the flour, which I think I failed to mention above was actually in a Tupperware container, not spread over a board and up to my elbows as I manually kneaded the dough.  I was in fact adding the ingredients to the tin before popping it into the machine which would then do the rest.  Initially, Madam was suitably impressed by the fact I told her I was making bread, until I showed her that really a machine was doing all the hard work, at which point she began to look decidedly luddite in her appearance, the look heightened as she turned around and noticed the half emptied dishwasher. 

Collecting herself just in time, she cheerily thanked me for my help and went on her way.  I was only grateful she hadn’t asked after Linda, who I would normally have called to help with the translation should I have needed it.  If she had realised she was still in bed that would have been even more evidence of us being bougres paresseux!!!