We’ve just had some delightful friends stay with us for the last few days and we genuinely could say, “Well, you brought the good weather with you” in that time-honoured British way. As a matter of interest and by the way, it’s also said here in France, so we British don’t hold a monopoly on banal and semi-sincere greetings.
Before I tell you about the weather here, let’s do the cartoon thing, where you see three strips that you’ve already seen and the last one is new, keeping the narrative on its roll.
Ross and Janet Bring The Good Weather
Back in the days before people started saying “back in the day”, I was the founding partner in a business dealing in direct mail. One day, my colleague and business partner Bernie took a call from a salesman called Fred. Fred wanted to know if we wanted any cars. Just like that. No guile or elaborate sales pitch; just a simple, cheerful enquiry.
As it happened, we did, so Bernie said something like, “What have you got?” There was a bit of discussion which involved Bernie explaining that we were a new company of two blokes who had made enough money to get ourselves a company car each. That covered, Bernie, ever the opportunist, said, by way of witty repartee, “Do you want any direct mail?”
Ross, who was Fred’s employer, must have been sitting quite close to Fred in their far-off office in the midlands, as he appeared to have overheard the question and called out, “Yes, I do!”
It was a happy circumstance which led to us getting our first two company cars and Ross getting a nice mailshot targeting electricians, allowing Fred to phone people who had responded to it.
Yes, I know, it’s not the most scintillating of tales with which to regale you but it shows how happenstance and serendipity can work. Or more accurately, just happen. (I won’t go into the fascinating world of chance but I will point you in the direction of a great book on that very subject.)
Nearly twenty years later, Ross was still supplying us with cars, which we changed every three years or so. Sometimes, I’d drive up to the midlands and exchange the old one for the new one and would stop over, enjoying a night in Ross’s village, enjoying a beer or two and steak and chips at the charming local pub. When I did, Ross would ensure that his charming and cheerful wife Janet would join us. A very convivial relationship, I’m sure you’ll agree.
I leapt off the hamster wheel nearly five years ago and so that happy business arrangement came to an end. As I was about to trot out the door for the last time, tasting the sweet air of a freedom not known since childhood, I decided to make a couple of calls to say goodbye to one or two contacts. Ross was one, as you can imagine, and I said that I was going to live in France and wouldn’t it be nice if he could visit one day, if he fancied the trip.
It’s the kind of thing you say in good faith but you wonder whether it might ever really come to pass, since we all too easily forget to keep in touch with folk we don’t see or talk to regularly.
A few years went by and one evening, as I sat toying with a bottle of something, I thought, I wonder what Ross is doing. He had spoken of retirement some time back and so he may now be free to make that trip that we’d touched upon so lightly five years earlier..
Ever since about last October it has been raining here in France. I gather it’s been similar in England, too.
But when it rains here, people laugh and sneer at you if you say it was ‘biblical’, jeering at such a feeble description as steely shafts of water are hurled down as though by enraged gods of yore, the heavens growling and shrieking in hideous bursts. Streets become torrents and fields become sodden to overflowing in minutes. Hailstones like tennis balls thrash into car bodywork to the glee of garage owers across the land, smashing greenhouses and crops into unrecognisable piles of sogginess.
Came the last week in June and Ross and Janet stepped off the plane at Limoges, to be greeted by a sultry but bright and dry day, the mercury hitting above 30 for the first time this year. Their plane had come in early and so it was a swift pick-up and a run home, stopping at the pretty town of Confolens for a coffee. We were glad of the climate control in the car, you can be sure.
They stayed with us for four days and I thought that the sun was with us for the duration. Oh, foolish chap!
We had fun on a picnic (during which I cut most of the way through a finger in the stupidest way possible, trying to slice open some bread held in my palm) and a trip to the seaside and then just as it was all going so well, the air, frowning like a deep blue demon from a norse monster story, gathered above us in threatening and angry fashion. It seemed to be brooding and waiting for the best moment.
And then..
Once more, the pitiless downpour was under way, the sky indigo dark with clouds and water. Vast rivers fell from the rooves around us, the guttering standing no chance of channelling the deluge, throwing out huge and violent cataracts that engulfed pavements and gardens alike.
We were spared the hailstones but that was small comfort. And it went on for hours..
Ross and Janet enjoyed their stay with us and it was a pleasure to get to know them just a little better. When we go to live in Yorkshire some time next year, we’ll be within visiting distance, so we’ll see what happens.
Today is bright and clear and the local forecast service, Meteo France, says it should be decent for a while but I don’t trust it.
The weather, I mean.
It’s a wild and raging beast that’s just taken a breather, in my opinion, and it’s just waiting.