It Came from Outer Space

What the hell IS that?

We had friends round for a meal at the weekend – lovely friends who laughed heartily when George burnt the rice, and chewed stoically on my resistant lumps of Pork-in-Ginger with nere a grimace.

These are friends for whom the getting together is paramount rather than the food offerings (mercifully), and who I’m almost certain will not mind when I say that Picards Freezer Emporium is their own market of choice.

So this weekend they brought their fun and frivolity, a superb bottle of wine and… a Thing - the like of which we’d never seen before! (I shall attempt further down to display a photo). But to try and describe it…

It’s about 30cm tall and comes in two parts. One’s a knobbly stick with a pinkyorangeyfurry tennis ball on top, covered in many yellow arrow-headed fronds.

The other part is a flat green stick with a corrugated heart-shaped fan. Beautiul… but what is it for? You could possibly plunge the sink with the tennis ball… despatch tenacious cobwebs, stick it behind your ear while fanning yourself with the other bit…

Alarmingly, Mélanie grabbed The Thing while George and I were still coming to terms with it, and ran with it to the sink – for it's actually Alive! They insisted it came from a flower shop, so now it’s in a vase and yes, it’s drinking the water! I’d say it’s grown twenty feet since Saturday. Ah-hah - Could it be a beanstalk?

The tennis blob has a delicate aroma redolent of cauliflower, yet bizarrely aromatic. We've noticed the cats aren’t keen at all. In fact I suspect that they, like me, think it sometimes moves its fronds. And I could swear it just turned to watch as I walked past.

So, is it trying to communicate? Will it start singing those irritating five notes from 'Close Encounters'? Or will it suddenly leap Triffidly out of its vase and whack us with its fan?

Mélanie, Eveline and Ignace say that they'd never seen one before either, and had gone into the shop to buy an orchid. There was just something about it that made them choose that instead...

It's Just The Beginning...

The Tour de Paris-Tours

Pchaw to the Tour de France – we have a better Tour, one that goes right past our front door! Last weekend, 155 riders set off from Paris (or Chartres, fairly nearby) on the gruelling 230km ride to Tours.

It was won by the Belgian Philippe Gilbert thanks in part, it must be assumed, to his attention to vital details such as choosing the perfect rider to get into the slipstream of on the home strait. The runner-up, Tom Boonen, was most disheartened by his own mistake there... (What about the very kind Exuder of the Slipstream, I'd like to know)…

For I understand little of this kind of stuff – what’s most memorable for me is the joyful gathering of neighbours to watch the race whizz past our very pavement, with the sharing of Almost-Champagne and Nibbles.

We gathered last year too, but made the mistake of not realising that the riders came in two chunks – not only the Elites (or Proper ones)... (I don't mean that, I mean Super-Experienced ones), but also the Espoirs (Aspiring Star ones). The Espoirs race an hour before the others and last year, we all thought that was the end. They were Going Like the Clappers, after all…

It was only when George put the TV on later, that he noticed something very like Our House on the live coverage of a bike race. Sure enough, a quick peer out of the window found a helicopter circling, closely followed at ground level by the Whoosh of a second clutch of racers.

Well? Everbody else was fooled, too…

This year, George took up position at the top of the slope well in advance and armed with super-charged video camera, while I popped down to banter gaily with the other spectators. They’d been there since before the Espoirs, and were suitably merry.

If my French were more equal to the multi-dialect SpatterChat that is a street gathering, I’d have gone out earlier too. As it is, twenty minutes of vague nodding and slipping in the odd completely inappropriate sentence, is enough. For everyone…

The ambience, though, is convivial and patriotic, with yells of “Vive l’Angleterre aussi!” generously tucked in. There were about twenty of us, and it was a great chance to cement relationships with, for example, the couple who’d only moved in a week before (I’d launched myself at them while walking past one day, but this time they showed no anxiety whatsoever).

There were two wise-looking elders in the best seats (cushions on their picnic chairs), and various people of the vicinity. We discovered that the horrid, rotund neighbour who drives right up our exhaust is, in fact, quite a nice person, as are the gang of shady-looking second-homers who were leaning on the fence opposite (keeping it between them and us).

In fact, when retired Hélène impressively caught the water bottle flung to the crowd by one of the Elites, she took it across to the ten-year-old. (She may have suddenly realised it had been heavily dribbled-upon)…

Disappointingly, that was the only Present flung this time. Usually the very long publicity caravan has staff chucking tee-shirts, caps and sweets into the excited masses, and there is much gnashing of teeth and elbows to grab a prize.

A few years ago, George and I went to see the Tour-Tour de France, but in the galaxy of delights raining down, all we managed to catch was a wizened bit of dried sausage. And I had to really shout at that evil little child, too… Wasn’t his Puncture Repair Kit Enough?

We don't know if the Paris-Tours will happen again next year - there are rumours it will go a different route. How we'll miss the flashing lights, the motorbikes, the smiling, waving policemen and the loud hailers screaming: "Get Out of the Waaaay!"