As I’ve referred to several times before in this blog, 2nd September 2016 was the day my world changed thanks to being diagnosed with a “Triple A” (abdominal aortic aneurysm – a phrase I have to Google every time.) For the first two or three years that date always made me feel sad and depressed. Like a reverse birthday. Now, seven years on, I don’t give it much thought.
One of the consequences of what
happened was I became disabled. The blood supply to my right leg was interrupted
and I had a deep vein thrombosis. The nerves in the right leg became damaged
and have never fully recovered. Therefore I am left with limited movement in
the right leg. It’s no longer much a of an issue. It was it is.
I now walk with two sticks. Well
I should say when I am out and about. Bearing in mind I can’t walk far anyway,
outside I use two sticks as it feels safer. I can manage indoors with one stick
and this dear reader brings me to the subject of this blog.
We’ve recently been on holiday in
France. We were staying in a lovely house on the Normandy coast near the small
town of Port Bail.
One evening as I was getting
ready for bed, as part of my nightly routine I went to retrieve my walking
sticks. You see dear reader at home I get round the house either with one stick, usually (but not always) leaving the spare stick propped up in the hall.
However, sometimes I can manage without a stick – think of toddlers learning to
walk by moving from one piece of furniture to the other and you get the idea. This
then means come bedtime when I need one stick to go upstairs there can be a
game of “hunt the other walking stick" if I've not left the spare in the hall.
I got into a similar pattern in
France. Therefore, this particular evening heading for bed, I went to retrieve both
sticks to take both with me so I knew where they were. But I could only
find one. I looked around the house in the places I might have left the other
one – the bathroom, the kitchen, on the patio, - and I couldn’t find it. No problem I must have
left it in the car. I remembered helping carrying some shopping from the car
that afternoon. I must have left one stick behind so that I had a free hand,
A beautiful late summer morning
dawned, and I set off in the car to go the boulangerie to get bread and croissants for
breakfast, as you do in France. I opened the car expecting to find the other
stick but it wasn’t there. Mysteriuex (or should it be mysterieuse?)
Coming back to the house I realised
that I must have left the other stick at the Casino.
Now, before you all clutch your
pearls, and have a fit of the vapours at the thought of a Methodist minister
being in a Casino, I should explain. The small super market in Port Bail is run
by a company called Casino. (I think possibly because it’s a gamble whether you’ll
find what you want.) We’d been to the Casino the previous afternoon. I vaguely remembered
leaving stick number 2 at the check out propped up as I helped unload the
shopping trolley.
To my shame, my French is
limited. I didn’t pass O level French. We didn’t speak much with the focus on
reading and writing. Consequently I have quite a good vocabulary and can read fairly
well. But that’s it. As a result I wasn’t sure of the French for “I think I left
my walking stick here yesterday”. Google is our friend and I was told the
phrase is “Je pense que j’ai laisse ma canne ici hier”.
On previous visits to the Casino one of the young men on the checkouts spoke pretty good English so of course I was hoping he’d be there when I went back. Non. There was another young chap. Oh well. “Bonjour monsieur. Je pense que j’ai laisse ma canne ici hier” I proclaimed in my best Officer Crabtree French accent. He looked blankly at me. Resisting the urge to explain very loudly in slow English, I tried again. “Je pense que j’ai laisse ma canne ici hier”. Another blank look. Conscious of the queue of bewildered French people behind me, I showed the young man the screen shot of the phrase on my phone. The light dawned. Une epiphanie.
Off he went to hunt for the
stick. Firstly searching for it under a pile of boxes for customers to use for their
groceries. Then disappearing into a back office. Both with no luck. Oh well. Comme ci comme ca. “Merci for trying”.
But then. What is this sticking
out from a shelf near his checkout? Une canne! Voila! Incroyable!
The young man proudly presents me
with the walking stick. Tears swelling in his eyes. The crowd behind me
applauding! La Marseillaise playing over the Casino loud speaker system.
I don’t have the heart to tell
him – or indeed the French – that this wasn’t my stick. But anyway c’est la
vie. Never mind at least I have two sticks. (And the French stick is
adjustable like my own. It even looks similar.)
But of course now I feel slightly
guilty. What if a French person comes in looking for their stick and I have
taken it? Well it is a Casino. It’s the luck of the draw, la chance de
tirage au sort as I believe they say.
Two days later my wife is hoovering
in the sitting room of the house. She lifts the cover of the sofa and what does
she find? My missing stick. Yes dear reader. It wasn’t in the Casino at all. It was hiding beneath the sofa. Sous la canape. (Who knew the French had taken the word we use to describe little tasty bits of food to describe a sofa?)
Now I have three sticks and even
more guilt. In my mind I see an old French lady hobbling along la rue using
a stale baguette as a stick, accompanied by the music of Jean de Florette.
I must do something. I return to
the Casino.
If my French wasn’t up to asking
if they’ve found my stick, it certainly isn’t up to explaining “I was here a
couple of days ago as I thought I’d lost my stick. You gave me a stick but it
wasn’t the right one. Anyway I now have found my stick elsewhere so I am bringing
the French stick back.”
I hatch a cunning plan. A ruse
du guerre if you will. I will go into the Casino and “accidentally”
leave the French stick behind.
I wander in. “Bonjour mesdames et monsieurs” lifting mon chapeau. I casually approach les fruits et legumes section and browse the selection of pommes and pommes de terre, before nonchalantly leaning the French stick up against the counter. I glance around. No one is watching and I wander off, British stick in one hand, French stick left behind and head for the sortie. Mission accomplie.
NB I know some of the French spelling should have accents. But I'm not sure how to access those on my clavier d'ordinateur
