Friday, 26 May 2017 to Thursday, 1 June 2017
It was just before 09:00 that I started working on the blog with my trusty friend at my side to keep me awake and willing. Adri was still fast asleep, she read into the early hours of the morning so I let her be. There was to be no yoga, only a big breakfast, I needed all the sustenance I could muster for the task ahead. I blogged and I blogged and finally published at 16:30, and yup, it was time for a reward, time for a beer.

We needed a few odds and ends so first walked down to Monoprix. The ferry was in town and the town was swarming with tourists. Most of the shops are now open for the holiday season which is slowly coming to life. Many shop owners make a killing during high season and then close shop for the off season, some of them working probably not more than six months a year.

We loaded odds and ends into our basket and arrived at the checkout counter. Adri dug into her handbag for the portefeuille (wallet) and when she came up for air she came up with nothing. She dug in again and again, then unpacked her bag but nope, no portefeuillein in there. It’s only then that I remembered I removed the wallet in order to pay the last instalment for our Marseille accommodation by credit card. Never put it back. Ouch, a trip in vain. We left our odds and by now sods in the basket by the counter and slowly skulked away… what else could we do?

We picked up the wallet which was oblivious to the chaos it had caused, bagged it and went down to our local for a pint to drown out the noise in my head that just wouldn’t go away. How could I have been so stupid?

But things were about to get much worse. We ordered a beer and lemonade for a shandy and needless to say I needed a second one, a beer that is. As I rearranged the Ipad to get a different angle on the news, it slipped over backwards and sent my brand new beer flying. One good thing came out of this mishap; I proved that my reflexes were as good as ever. By the time I grabbed the now horizontal glass and forced it into an upright position there was still half a beer left in there. Now if it was the lemonade that toppled over, oh la la, I’m not sure whether I could have saved it with such agile speed.

Tonight we once again had perfectly done steak and chips at home with thick slices of Camembert cheese gracing the top and slowly sliding down the sides like lave. Adri had a red and I the last of the white wine, this was great, real great!

We have left the outside shutters of the French doors open as we like to be greeted by sunlight in the morning. Tonight though I decided to close them, and it was only later on the evening that Adri remarked that “The streetlight is out”. Nope, the streetlight that shone in through that door was not out, it was just shut out.

During the night some asshole entered the apartment and put a red hot burning coal down Adri’s throat and Saturday morning she obviously woke up with a sore throat and a fever running rather high. All in all she was not feeling that bad, no flu-like symptoms at all, but she was feeling a bit more than offish after the attack. We could either go to a doctor or a pharmacy, I chose the former, Adri chose the latter, she won, it’s her body.

She took an Ibuprofen 600mg to calm the fever down and 30 minutes later she was smiling, a silly smile, seemed like she was on something stronger, and I guess she was, those Thailand Ibuprofens are strong, very strong.

At midday we took that trip to the pharmacy and after specifying her symptoms she was diagnosed as having had a strong allergic reaction to something, maybe it was me. But nah, it was spring in France and you could knit a pullover from the pollen in the air. She was given a box with seven tablets of which she had to take one a day, and I was again struck by the reasonable price of the tablets. Medication here definitely seems to be cheaper than in SA.

After leaving Monoprix with a few essentials, this after our shopping mishap of yesterday, we headed home where Adri got to pop her first of seven anti-attack tablets. Soon thereafter she was ready to move, anywhere, she was feeling much better. But it was mid afternoon already, I had rugby to catch up on, and it was past lunch in any case, so the lunch we had planned for today would have to be placed on hold.

I watched the Bulls miss so many opportunities against the Hurricanes and then saw the Sharks overcome the Stormers. I watched the FA cup final as well as the French Top 14 semi final; all in all it was a very productive sporting day for me. And Adri was feeling much better for staying at home and recovering.

It’s only later on in the afternoon that I realised that France will be playing two rugby tests in SA in June, the first being on 10 June. And that just happens to be the same day that Didier and I had arranged to get together for a few drinks while his sister teaches Adri the fundamentals of lace making, she is an expert and tutor at that fine art. I’m afraid those few drinks will turn into many more, it’s going to be a long afternoon… And you may be wondering who I will be supporting? I’ll tell you after the game!

Sunday morning, with a spring in our step and a “Yo ho ho, it’s off to lunch we go” in my mind we went in search of summer, sun, sea and sand… and lunch at Mareillan Plage. We slowly hurried down to Les Penitents bus station and while waiting for the bus we noticed a photographer that had an exhibition in the building right behind us. We popped in for a quick look around, all the while keeping my left eye stretched out the door and around the corner to witness the imminent arrival of our bus.

All the pictures were in black and white and of fishermen and their trade, and mostly close-ups, taken by the photographer Gérard Clément. Each picture had a very real and honest story to tell, this was not photography, this was art, all were simply amazing. Adri asked whether he might have been a fisherman as well, judging by his apparent knowledge of the subject, to which he smilingly replied “Definitely not, that is hard work!”

It was hot out; the French think we’re experiencing a heat wave… heat wave, what heat wave? Yes, it was hot but nowhere near Thailand hot, so to us the weather was just great! And of course I was back to Thai style wearing shorts, short sleeve shirts and sandals… heaven!

We arrived in Mareillan Plage and the streets were hot and bothered, people were milling up and down Avenue de la Mediterrenèe, either going to or returning from the plage (beach). We reached the beach not really meaning to go there, we were here for lunch.

 

 

It was just past 12:00 when we started checking out the restaurants set a bit back from the beach. It did not take us long to make up our minds, we settled at La Pizzetta, again not sure whether the English subtitles on the menu had anything to do with it, but it’s always nice to know for certain what you’re gonna get.

Of course we took the menu du jour (Menu of the day) as everyone else did, when in France you do as the French do… or was that Rome and Romans? Anyway, for starters I had the baked Camembert with jambon (ham) with a green side salad, Adri had the parma ham green salad; both were great. For main course I had the squid in a wonderful creamy tomato based sauce – traded in the rice for chips – Adri had the king prawns with rice, all rather remarkable. My dessert was a panna cotta with a fresh strawberry and its sauce, Adri had a soft cream cheese with honey… Wow!

The service was exemplary, English was widely spoken, everything was more than just pleasant, it was great! Unbeknownst to us it was Fête des mères (Mother’s day) in France so Adri received not one, but two, beautifully rosy cheeked roses. That was a nice gesture.

 

 

We took a walk back to and along the beach towards the little marina and its lovely restaurant right on the beach, the only one with that luck. Adri was keen to have a rest, either a lie-down in a park or a drink in a pub, whichever came first.

Searched as we did, there are no green spaces that we came across in this town so we settled on a pub, my first choice in the first place. At least the benches at Le New Orleans had green coverings.

 

 

 

Adri got the sangria grande, I got the Heineken bière pression petite, not sure why I had to settle for the petite. We sat there for a long while, enjoying the cool breeze blowing down Avenue de la Mediterrenèe, and people watched. A guy walked by with a t-shirt that had two arrows, one pointing up and the other one down. The arrow pointing up to his face read “Un homme” (a man) the arrow pointing down read “Une légende”. That was pretty cool.

A group of four walked in sharing an e-cigarette, like it was a joint, and it seemed like it was indeed something stronger. When the inhaler exhaled there were billowing clouds of smoke that enveloped the group, seemed like that puppy had blown a head gasket.

There was a family sitting a short way from us, and we could hear peals of laughter coming from there as the grandfather regaled them with his sinful stories. There was something oddly familiar about this scene… the old guy looked, behaved, laughed and spoke just like Oom Log of Tannie Rita, he even had his mannerisms and bad cough. Man, I’m sure the two of them would have gotten along like a house on fire despite the language barrier.

It was early evening when we made our way home after a truly relaxing and enjoyable day. We need to go back there; we need to try out that wonderful white sandy beach.

Monday this body was sent to the body shop for repairs, or at least for a valet; a haircut, beard trim and general maintenance were sorely needed and thereafter I felt like a brand new puppy. After an uitsmijter breakfast (fried eggs with cheese and ham on bread) I had to make an admin phone call to the UK but, oh dear, today was the 29th of May and their Spring bank holiday. And so my best laid out plans came a cropper, one can only plan so much.

I decided to concentrate on getting the documentation ready for the Carte Vitale application instead. It’s not such a big issue but it does take time with Google Translate to ensure that you understand the forms and its requirements 100%.

And with the right tools you can make life really simple. Documents and/or forms can be scanned into a pdf using Adobe on the Ipad from where they can be completed and signed using the Fill In And Sign app, while Word and/or Excel documents can be converted to pdf via the print option in Microsoft.

There is really no need to ever print out a document unless of course you have to hand in the physical documents as we had to for the Society Sociale l’Assurance Maladie. All required documents were created and completed using the above methods, signed electronically, copied onto a memory stick and voila, we were ready for our trip to the copy shop and the Society tomorrow. And so another day of admin came to an end.

Supper tonight was spaghetti Bolognaise, or rather fettuccini Bolognaise, with ample finely grated pecorino cheese sprinkled over it. When the grated stuff proved to be not enough, the grater was not close at hand so we sliced thin slivers from the block, dumped them over the food and watched them slowly melt away into the deliciousness of the dish. This was great, but oh la la, I ate far too much.

It was still relatively early so we settled down for a few episodes of The Americans, and the story was by now starting to unravel, fast. We were now on the third season and I have come to realize that movie studios should stop a series at the second season… that should be the rule. From the third season on they start to waffle and watching becomes painful. And heaven forbid, there’s still a fourth season of this one! If the story does not pick up soon we will definitely stop watching it even though the first two seasons were rather good.

It was Tuesday and time again to face officialdom. It was just after 14:00 when we left home to face our local branch of Society Sociale l’Assurance Maladie. Our experience with them last week was great, we did not know what we would find today though. We stopped off at our copy shop and had copies printed of all the documents that I so painstakingly produced yesterday. After all the copies were made I put them in the same sequence as requested on the form, one complete set for each of us. Rather too many copies than too few was the motto.

We entered the Society’s offices just before 15:00 and noticed the lovely lady that assisted us so well last week, but she was busy… bummer, we were hoping to get her again. Another lady approached and after asking whether she speaks English she burst out laughing saying “oh la la, very little, but I’ll try”, ushered us to her desk and took the by now crinkly envelope from my sweaty palms.

First out of the envelope were the two spare empty application forms that in hindsight probably should not have been there. A painful look washed over our lady of friendliness, I thought the spell was broken, but the pain disappeared from her face when I removed those errant forms from her hands and motioned for her to dig deeper. She paged through each set of documents finding exactly what she wanted and exactly where she expected them, all there in the right sequence. Victory, she was over the moon with our effort and so were we.

We left receiving a hearty goodbye from all the staff in the vicinity who had witnessed this procedure; even the customers in line gave us a friendly au revoir (goodbye) as we left. If all goes as well as it did today we should receive our Carte Vitale within a month or so.

We entered Carrefour across the road for cacahuètes (peanuts, pronounced ka-ka-wet) and left with a bag of things too heavy to mention, it was cutting into my fingers with intent, I was wishing I could carry it by my wrists. And that’s when those errant application forms came in handy. I folded them a few times over, wrapper them around the bag’s handle, and Bob was my uncle.

Ever heard of the wine glass that broke twice? Me neither, until today… Being a klutz the other day I knocked one of our wine glasses over, luckily it was empty at the time. It cracked all over but it was mostly intact, it looked like the nervous breakdown it was having. Adri was going to throw it away but somehow it was left untouched at the far end of the kitchen counter where it was trying to keep the fruit bowl sane.

When we came home from our Carrefour excursion I elected to do the unpacking, I shouldn’t have. We have this very nervous springy type of a fruit bowl which overreached its equilibrium when I threw in the second grapefruit. The grapefruit jumped in and with the assistance of that spring jumped right back out and onto the already broken wine glass, breaking it again, this time into a zillion plus pieces. Some you win, some you lose, this one I apparently lost.

I wanted to clean up but Adri admonished me to stay away, I might break it more. I found solace on my puny porch with my trusty ice cold Heineken at my side and did a spot of blogging, while drinking in my sliver of a sea view. It was just before 18:00 when I remembered that we had date to go drinking again, upstairs at Renate’s.

When we met Renate a while back she could not fathom how to pronounce my name and when that happens, as it often does, I relent and say “Just call me Terry”, and that seems to settle the debate. In fact, during my childhood I was called Terrie, the Afrikaans equivalent of Terry, and many friends still today call me Terry, or Terrie. But Renate brought another twist to the tale when, wanting to get the pronunciation just right, she spelt it out as T.h.i.e.r.r.y, a well known first name in France. Who can forget that great French footballer Thierry Henry? Okay, so now I have a French version of my name in the arsenal as well, I am sure this one will come in handy here.

We crept upstairs and settled down with red wine and beer, once again drinking in that wonderful sea view from Renate’s patio; I could sit there all day every day. We have not yet heard all the seasons and episodes of Renate’s life but again tonight she deflected from herself, she wanted to know more about us and our history and about South Africa, this fascinated her. By the time we left she still had us talking, the wily old goat.

There was a documentary on French television tonight about Lyme disease, something that Renate is burdened with. Even tonight at some point she just went quiet for a while, nearly started crying, the pain in her legs were unbearable. The pain seems to come and go and after a minute or so she was just fine again, or pretending to be, methinks the red wine helps to lessen her load.

She of course could not miss this documentary and we left her at 08:45 as the TV came to life. The sad thing about Lyme disease is that there does not seem to be a known cure for it and pharmaceutical companies are not spending much on research as it probably won’t be a money spinner for them. There are other diseases that are more common where they will make much more money… sad but true.

As we left her apartment I noticed a seascape painting on her wall and somehow, some connection was made in my mind, but I had no inkling what it was. Asking about the painting we were told that an artist friend of hers, which was quite well known in the Montpellier area, painted that painting right there on her patio where we had just finished our drinks. The seascape was the view towards the harbour from up there. Lovely!

It was just before noon on Wednesday and we were in a hurry, we should not have been though. We dawdled all morning over news and yoga and breakfast, knowing full well that we had to get to the pharmacy before noon to pick up the tablets we had ordered and paid for yesterday. And of course 12:00 is that bewitching hour that all closes around one, even the pharmacy. And this was the reason Séte saw us doing our brisk walk across the first canal and we entered our destination as the doors engulfed us… we had just made it.

There is always a buzz around Séte on market day and of course that is helped along by the ever-present passenger ship or ferry on a Wednesday. We were not in need of anything but we did stroll past a few stalls and feigned interest, but there was none. We were ready to go home but decided at the last step to have an espresso at the restaurant on the square. The place was buzzing with people ordering their plat du jour (dish of the day) which looked amazing, pasta with a tomato based sauce with meatballs and pieces of sausage, the plates piled awfully high and looking delicious. We had just had petite déjeuner (breakfast) a short while ago and wasn’t at all hungry, which was a pity.

We sat sipping our espressos and people watching, listening to the sweet sounds from the accordion player behind us… Magic! It was just before 14:00 when it was time to pick up the bods and saunter home, but just then an army of white trucks appeared. It was the cleanup brigade getting ready to mop up after the mess of the market.

 

 

Every Wednesday at noon a siren goes off, a hellishly loud one at that, which is the cue for the stall owners to slow down on the selling and start stowing their stuff. Some linger longer than others but the general consensus is that they must at least look like they intended packing up. By around 13:00 the trucks and vans start lining the street into which goods disappear with surprising speed. At around 13:30 the friendly police start walking the street just to make sure all the stall owners abide by the rules of making themselves disappear. By 13:45 the army of white trucks congregate at the square where we were now watching them, getting ready for the big onslaught to come.

Stall owners pile empty cardboard boxes high along the street but there are invariable plenty of stuff lying around once the stall owners leave. The dump truck leads the procession and all the cardboard boxes and big stuff are loaded up and crushed.

 

 

 

Then comes two water trucks with two guys attached to its high pressure hoses, one to the left and one to the right of the street, spraying the pavements clean with any debris now moved by water pressure into the middle of the road.

 

 

 

Lastly the two sweeping trucks come by with rollers and washers and what not underneath it brushing and rolling and cleaning the street and sucking up all debris that is still left there. The first of the sweeper trucks concentrate its efforts on the right side of the street and the second one on the left, or so it seemed. Once those trucks had passed I would have gladly eaten my plat du jour off that street, it was super clean. And next week the same process starts all over again.

After all the briskness of the morning I was not feeling very frisky and I fell into a short but deep snooze after which I could face my electronic equipment yet again. While Adri was entertaining family on the phone I was again checking out rental cars. I was disgusted to find that the monthly rental rate had now gone up by about €90 since yesterday, for the same rental period. For interest’s sake, I checked the rates for July and my heart stopped beating for a heart stopping moment, the price was fourfold than what I was quoted for June… high price for high season you see.

We had a readymade lasagne dish from Carrefour tonight, this stuff is amazing! The dish weighs in at 1kg and there is no way the two of us can finish all of that in one sitting, so we split it in half. I’m already looking forward to supper tomorrow evening. Adri made a huge fresh green salad and of course I had discs of baguette with thick creamy butter… as I said, I’m already looking forward to supper tomorrow evening.

I only shut down my system at around 01:30 Thursday morning so you can imagine my dismay when I received coffee in bed at 09:00. I snorted and struggled to right my body and brain into an upright position, I could not take this waking up thing lying down. Fortunately Adri sweetened the bitter pill, I was presented with the latest addition to our coffee collection, a Seafredo Espresso. This one was the best thus far, strong and robust, just like I like it, not like the French like it. That part of me is definitely not French.

Adri yesterday mentioned something about 10:00 today but I did not fully recognise the extent of the mention. It was just after 10:00 when we walked down to one of the myriad estate agents in town. Not that Adri wanted to buy a property, but she walked past this agent and on the spur of the moment went inside and asked the lass to show us a few houses in the area this morning. I must stop letting Adri roam the streets on her own.

A lovely young lass called Jennifer escorted us on our sojourn around centre ville and showed us six properties. Some small, some old, some new, some skew, some noisy, some… you get my drift. They were all very different but the one thing they had in common was the price, all were between €2000 and €3000 per square metre. Now that is not excruciatingly expensive in terms of Europe, but in terms of SA that is rather steep.

 

We left Jennifer after viewing the last property and made our way towards the train station to the Europcar rental agency situated just opposite the canal from the station. It was now around 13:00 and of course it was closed, so we made ourselves cosy around the corner at the Brasserie le Vauben. Adri wanted an espresso, I needed a beer. It was just past 14:00 when we found Europcar open, received a quote for a month’s rental and departed; I could get a better rate online at Hertz.

We walked all the way to Monoprix when I remembered that there was an Avis right next door to the train station. Adri was not about to walk all the way back there so she went shopping, I went walking, again. And to my dismay, Avis had closed those doors, seemingly for good. Just as well Adri did not tag along, she would have been pissed, probably more than what I was.

After getting home and after a snooze, a siren went off, one of those that make you want to run for cover. We’ve heard this siren before and were not sure what it was, but our local knowledge base living right upstairs from us, Renate, would later clarify matters when she came down for a chat. The siren goes off at noon every first Wednesday of the month, not sure why, it just does, with six wails in total. If it goes off at any other time, depending on the number of wails, it is a sign that there is a problem at sea; either a ship or a boat or man in or on the sea is in trouble. Wonder what troubles there were today?

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