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A Nibble at Normandy, Part 2

 

For a picture version of this story go to webshots album/binliner

 

We got off to inspect the damage

 

He got off, closely followed by the men, who couldn’t pass up a chance to see this. It was the second option. Bad. Ernest from Scunthorpe pointed out that we had passed what looked like a well equipped garage on the way down the hill, and offered to go and ask someone to come out. Fat Colin declined, explaining that he had everything necessary to effect repairs himself, and didn't mind passing the time in that fashion. The phrase ‘day to day inspections by the driver’ floated into my mind, and I could see Wolfram grinning.

Little lost groups

 

 

‘He daren't take that heap of junk to a garage,’ Wolf said as we moved off, ‘If he did, he’d be off the road and the bus confiscated, like as not’. It was lucky I never go anywhere without maps, they may be expensive, but I regard them as essential. The others were not blessed with such foresight, and although they were all much faster than we were, due to Wolf’s sight and my weight, we kept coming across little lost groups of them. That was until we left the main coastal route and struck inland through byways, along tiny country lanes through quiet, peaceful countryside dotted with apple orchards, where we saw hardly a soul except pretty, brown-spotted cows and curious sheep. 

 

Once, heading uphill to a T-junction, we saw Fat Colin’s bus pass the top of the road, and thanked our protective gods that we were too far back for him to see us!

 

A special kind of spanner

At the pre-dinner gathering, Fat Colin was eager to give us a blow by blow account of his day. 

 

"Lucky you set off back," he said, "I fixed the exhaust by cutting a piece off the end and fitting it to the middle, but when I set off back a tyre blew. I had to nurse her back here on three legs. I’m afraid tomorrow’s trip to the landing beaches is off, I’m going to have to spend all day repairing her."

 

Someone asked, surely he had a spare? Why hadn’t he fitted it? Seemed he had been unable to remove the wheel. We exchanged glances. We knew what that meant. Nuts rusted on. Regularly maintained obviously meant ‘frequently breaks down’. The thing was ONLY maintained when something went wrong. Which it did on a daily basis. Now we knew why he spent the week there. It was the only guarantee the bus would be there to take us back.

 

‘It needs a special kind of spanner,’ he told us, ‘I’ve got the bar staff on red alert, Francois’s very good, I’m sure he’ll come up with something before long’. 

 

Ernest risked his wrath by asking if Colin didn’t have some kind of policy that meant he could get a mechanic out to fix it. ‘It would take a very special kind of mechanic to fix my bus,’ he beamed. 

 

I’m afraid I couldn’t resist it. ‘Yes, he would have to be a Time Traveller, wouldn’t he?’ I said.

 

With a furious glint in his eye, but feeling he should join in the general merriment, he restricted himself to telling us again, as he had told us many times, that his bus was superior to these newfangled coaches because it was ‘paid for’. 

 

How many people own their own bus?

‘How many people can say they own their bus?’ he was fond of asking, ‘The bank owns theirs, I own mine. Come back and criticise me when you can say the same, I say.’  He glared around at us as if expecting someone to disagree with him.

 

These pre-dinner gatherings were getting less well attended, and it was noticeable that we were all arriving at them later and later. This did not work with Colin, he insisted on a ten minute chat to bring us up to date with the bus’s progress before we went in to dinner. The ten minutes started from the time the last one arrived, so there was no getting out of it, other than being extremely rude, and that day was coming dangerously close.

We were getting a little tired of the food by this time, though of course better than anything you would get in England, it was by no means the ‘wonderful culinary experience’ which Colin had described in his brochure. The steak that night was so tough that not many of us had the teeth for it - except Fat Colin, who declared it delicious, and cleaned up everyone’s plates.

 

Reflected in the price

Wolf, enraged at his insistence that the steak was ‘the tenderest he had eaten, and he would like to know where WE all ate back home that we were so choosy......’ asked him if he had donated his old tyre for the meal?

 

Feeling the tide was turning against him, Fat Colin fell silent, turning to the wine for consolation. This came free with the meal, and was no doubt reflected in the price of our accommodation. 

 

Later, Wolf and I went in search of aspirin for my headache, and were directed to the bar, as the only place still open. There was Fat Colin, drinking alone. In spite of our recent sarcasm, his face lit up to see us, but quickly extinguished itself when he realised we were not there to drink.

 

Not good company

Day 3, it rains.

I’m not good company in a morning, I hate the world indiscriminately until I’ve got some good hot black coffee under my belt, and that was not possible in this place. I don’t know when they made the coffee, possibly the night before, as we were always in early and it was always lukewarm and stale, sitting in big vacuum flasks on a white-spread table. This above anything made me miserable. The hotel was in an isolated spot and there were no signs of habitation around, just miles of flat road one side, miles of flat coast the other. Nowhere to go out and buy coffee.

 

He shot across the room

 

By Day 3 I had had enough of Colin and suggested to Wolf that we sit at another table instead of with the group. Unfortunately my back was to them, so I missed the start of what occurred next. All I knew was that Fat Colin suddenly shot past us like a projectile, sprinted the length of the room, wrenched open the French windows and disappeared into some bushes. I thought he had spotted someone with the right size spanner, but no, the bushes parted, and there he was heaving up in them. When he returned, white-faced, he and Esmerelda disappeared to their quarters, leaving some very grim faces at the breakfast table.

 

Nothing like Bolero!

Now the troops were definitely on the brink of mutiny. None of us had voiced our fears or opinions to the others  up to this stage, but we were all seriously worried. Bert from Newcastle spoke first.

‘When ah saw that bus,’ he said, ‘ah thowt worrisit? Ah said to im, it’s nuthn like Bolerooa mon! Yer knooa worri said? E said, ‘did onyone tellyer tharrit wor?’ Ah said, ‘nooa, tha diden’. Then he said, ‘ah tooald ya it worra 1986 Mercedes’ an ah said, ‘aye, but tha diden tell us it wor carbon dated!

 

Ernest and his wife Muriel were all for reporting him to the Cyclists’ Touring Club when we got back - why, what had they got to do with it? I asked.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Muriel said, ‘he goes round to CTC events advertising his business. I’m going to get that stopped! It’s sheer misrepresentation what he’s doing’.

 

Not telling lies

In spite of the way the holiday was going, or perhaps because of it, (it was, after all, excellent comic material) I had by this time a soft spot for Fat Colin. I pointed out that he had not actually told any lies, the bus was what he said it was, a 1986 Mercedes, and that the accommodation was up to scratch. I said he wasn’t an out and out conman, if he was he wouldn’t be sitting with us every night trying to get us to believe in his delusions, he would be much more hardfaced about everything. I said he was as much a victim as we were. This drew some hostile glances!

 

‘Look,’ I said, ‘the guy is desperately lonely, he has no friends, an unhappy home life and an alcohol problem. The mother in law is here to keep an eye on him.’

 

’Do you know him personally?’ Muriel asked, as though all this wasn’t shriekingly obvious. I shook my head. ‘Well, I’m not sorry for him,’ she said, ‘I’m beginning to wonder what that insurance policy we paid for is worth. Probably nothing. I’m seriously worried whether he can get us home.’ 

 

That was certainly something I hadn’t thought of.

 

Tim and June sat and said nothing. Perhaps they were ashamed. They had been with Fat Colin before. What kind of idiots would book for a return match?

A press statement

Later, Esmerelda issued a statement purporting to explain what happened at breakfast. Colin, it seemed, had a nosebleed in the night and swallowed a lot of blood. This was the red stuff he was sicking up in the bushes. Definitely not a surfeit of red wine. Oddly, the fact that they issued a coverup I found more worrying than the occurrence itself. It was like Fat Colin having a press office.

 

As it was raining heavily, Wolf and I made our way to the sports hall for the morning, to play table tennis. How do you play table tennis with a blind person? Well, you have to have the table right in the middle of the floor with a good deal of space around it, and you have to be prepared to run a long way fetching the ball. However it’s worth it to see the grin on his face as he whams the ball way out of reach, and all that running and bending is good for the figure. 

 

After a while I went to the toilet and when I came back Wolf had found his way into a cupboard where the archery equipment was kept. We fully explored all the possibilities of that, made a lot of holes in the woodwork, and returned to the main building to find Fat Colin had recovered enough to arrange lunch. We declined, having had enough of mechanical bulletins.

 

A bracing walk along the beach

As we got up to leave the bar, we noticed Ernest and Muriel walking past the windows. It was still absolutely heaving it down, and we couldn’t believe anyone would be mad enough to go out in it.

 

"Didn’t you tell them about lunch?" I asked, preparing myself to run after them.

 

"Yes, but they said they would rather get lunch in Agon," he explained.

 

‘They’re not walking there!’ I said. It was at least two miles.

 

‘Apparently,’ shrugged Colin.

 

‘They must be some of those ‘fixed’ people.’ said Wolfram, ‘have to have their meals on time’. 

 

And we both knew why they didn't want lunch there. Same reason we were going to our room to eat the health food crunch, nuts, dates and rice crackers we had packed for the journey and not entirely eaten.

 

Determined to have him banned

What we didn’t know, but found out later, was that they had been misguided enough to ask Fat Colin if it was possible to walk to Agon along the beach!

 

"Why, certainly!," he told them with a wave of his hand. A glance at a map would have shown him, or them, that this was not so. A narrow spit of land reached out from our village, as did one from Agon, but in between was a few miles of sea and an inhospitable marsh.

 

Ernest and Muriel returned hours later, lunchless, very wet, seething with anger and more determined than ever to have Fat Colin banned from every cycling organisation known to man!

 

An amazing sight

 

Day 4, The Mont at last

The bus mended, the rain stopped, no one fancied the landing beaches, so we set out for the Mont again. Instead of getting out halfway and cycling, Fat Colin gave us the option of staying on all the way. Wolf said  this would be a good idea, as our progress is slower than the others, and it would give us more opportunity to look round. I watched with some regret out of the back window as the others got ready to ride. I knew it was a beautiful route along a narrow coastal path, and that the views of the Mont on the approach would be spectacular. 

 

Colin dropped us at a roadhouse a mile or two from the Mont, so we could ‘stretch our legs’, but I expect he and Esmerelda had some nefarious business of their own in the area. It immediately became apparent that the reason Wolf wanted to stay on the bus was because he had run out of tobacco. This proved unbelievably difficult to get, there being only large hotels at the approach to the pavement going out to the Mont, none of which sold tabac. In the end we had to cycle four miles inland to the nearest town, where things were more normal. An enchanting little creperie caught my eye, and I was hungry, so we stayed an hour or so over an excellent lunch, and didn't have that much time for the Mont after all.

 

 

It was an amazing sight, sticking up out of the sea at the end of the pavement that drove straight as an arrow towards it. It wasn’t until we got nearer that we realised it wasn’t just a town perched on a rock, that at least half of it was occupied by the massive Abbey. By now the others had arrived, fuming at some wrong directions Fat Colin had given them. They weren’t too pleased to be stopped halfway by the Abbey gateway, and they didn't like the entrance fee. I didn't like it either, but as Wolf said, it’s not as if we’ll ever be here again to think about it, so we should do it while we have the chance. An apt motto for life, really.

 

We wandered through cold stone passages, looked through openings at stunning views out to sea, and breakneck views back down the rock. We clambered as far up as we were allowed, walked in an incredible garden perched near the highest point, and bought two golden bees in the gift shop. One for me, one for my daughter.

‘One thing about Fat Colin’s bus,’ I said to Wolf, as we peered over the rampart, ‘it’s easy to pick out in the car park’.

"Sont-ils mort?"

Day 5, the Last Day

We felt we got a lot out of the holiday. We had been out in the fresh air every day, we had explored the lanes and found two delightful chateaux. The day of the abortive Mont visit we had found a farm that sold excellent cider, and drunk some in a churchyard with bread, cheese, sausage and olives. We had seen the full moon from the beach, explored the fishing village, seen the major town - even though everything was closed.

 

Having the morning free, we decided to stay close to home and visit some of the villages we hadn’t seen. We very much liked the look of a creperie in an old forge not far from the hotel, and planned to have a quick lunch there on the way back. That was before we ran into the country market in the next town. They had everything, even live crabs writhing in pots. They were not moving when we first walked up, and I asked ‘Sont-ils mort, Madame?’ ‘Mais non, Madame,’ she replied, poking them with a stick and making the poor things jump.

 

Among the many craft stalls was one selling honey and honey products. I bought candles in delicately shaped beeswax, some candle-shaped with a bee and flowers on the sides, others shaped like small elephants. I love ironmongers shops, there was one down a side street, and I bought some useful knives, and pea, bean and gherkin seed to grow back home. We couldn’t resist the charcuterie and the boulangerie, and loaded the bikes with bread, cakes and cooked meats, which we ate in a small orchard beneath the cider apple trees, still in flower in May, and I picked roots of white flowered and rosy red flowered comfrey to add to the collection I am building.

 

We were too full to eat at the creperie, but we went in and had superb hot coffee - first of the holiday! - in front of a roaring fire. This used up our remaining francs and seemed a fitting end to the trip.

Come again soon!

The Return Journey

By this time everyone hated Fat Colin, and it was noticeable that at our many motorway stops no one ever sat with him and Esmerelda. At the last of these, I said to Wolf I was sorry for Colin and that we should go sit with him. 

 

On an impulse, seeing he looked so dejected, I turned to him and thanked him for my holiday. He gave me an incredulous look. 

 

‘Have you REALLY enjoyed it?’ he asked, as if he couldn't believe his ears. 

 

Yes,’ I said, ‘it was funny.’ 

 

"Oh well," said Esmerelda, who had missed the last remark, "perhaps we'll be seeing you again!"

 

 

For a picture version of this story go to webshots album/binliner

 

 

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