Empty your Attic!

It's Vide Grenier day. At 4.30 am cars and vans pull up outside the house and start setting out tables. BF wakes me up and says better get out there and grab your space, I've already sent a few packing. Small Daughter and I stumble sleepy eyed into the chilly darkness and start our own stall, hugging mugs of chocolate and coffee.

Starting in the spring, there's at least one Vide Grenier every weekend in the surrounding villages, and today it's our turn. Literally, 'Vide Grenier' means 'empty loft', and it's a bit like a car boot sale. We're excited because Small is selling lots of old clothes and toys, and she loves selling. I'm selling homemade lavender bags, and bits of fabric, and anything else I can find, but my stock is limited because I'm a hoarder and I usually buy at these markets - large green bottles, jugs and shapely brown carafes, antique French linen sheets, candle stick lamps, plates, a travel cot for the gite, a good quality coffee maker. Sometimes you get lucky and buy great stuff at bargain basement prices, sometimes you accidently buy junk, and other times you just marvel at the stuff people try to sell, and the chap who turns up at every vide trying to sell an old wire table - very pretty - at a mamothly huge (for here) price of 400 euros. But this weekend it's our turn, and as we get everything out, (Small has this all planned, it's a military operation) stamping our feet, we feel like proper market traders in our woolly hats, jackets and hefty boots.

Our boat friends come over and set up their stall next to ours and we make signs, hang things up, make more coffee. Gradually it gets light and people start arriving, This Vide is huge - running a mile each way on both sides of the canal, and we have high hopes. But Small quickly gets bored and wanders off giggling in French with her mates, boat friend has hangover and disappears to look round, and I am left sitting on the cold wall, smiling at the world going by, but selling nothing. Gradually though, as I sit there, the sun comes up and it gets warmer and warmer until it's t shirt and dress weather, and then all of a sudden, at lunchtime, it's boiling. We sustain ourselves with glasses of chilled rose (well, someone has to do it), and then in the afternoon the market really hots up, for Small at least, and things start selling. Suddenly she's sold her huge toy oven (thank goodness - a space in our junk room), and then there's no stopping her. While all the other stall holders complain, Small racks up a good 60 euros, I get 17 euros (but spend 30) and boat friend gets 40. Too big say the French traders, tout le monde est ici, too many people, too many stalls, shrugging grumpy gallic shoulders.

At the end of the day it's bargain time, as everyone sells off really cheaply rather than pack stuff back in their cars, and then gradually, at about 6.30 the place clears out and calms down until all that is left are the chalk marks on the roads marking out the pitches, and some people having aperetifs at the restaurant opposite.

BF and the Gendarmerie

Bf arrives home shaken and stirred, the car rattling as he pulls up. I need a hug he says, and hugs me. Oh my god, I think, must be bad. It turns out that BF has had an accident dans la voiture.He's pulled out, slightly and slowly, easing out, straight into a car driven fast by a stunning woman. To make matters worse, he's done it in front of a car full of three policemen who quickly make it clear that not only is it all his fault,but that he is obviously an oik who who has driven on purpose into the car of a beautiful, probably helpless, woman.

When they find that, inexplicably, we have the wrong insurance document on the screen of the car they ask if he is also a homeless oik (do you live on a boat, a bateau, on the canal, they ask) after they have finished ignoring him entirely whilst they check the well being of the lovely girl, casting more malevant looks in his direction as they do.

Things get worse when her friend turns up to help speak English, and it turns out she is more beautiful and more perfectly breasted even than car crash girl. All police eyes swivel to her as she swings out of her car, leaning on the bonnet to help them check their notes.

All of this gives us the opportunity to realise that we have neglected to make sure that the right papers are in the car. For some reason the insurance that appears on the little green document is out of date, the carte gris isn't in the glove compartment, and BF hasn't got his little bit of paper with the insurance numbers on - a bit of paper he has carried virtually every day until now. I feel a bit panicked and drama-queeny, as if we are lurching from crisis to crisis, as if it is all slightly out of control, all slightly on the edge of my lack of understanding of France and the language.

Are we insured then? (yes, according to the broker), does the car need it's French MOT? We check, going through everything feverishly - no it doesn't. All is in order, but just not in the car when BF needed it. Are you employed? the gendarmes ask, writing him every kind of ticket and fine you can think of. The copper barely comes up to his chest, and BF mainly wants to deck him, but instead practises his French instead, to no avail and no sympathy. So we've ended the day considerably lighter in the pocket, BF couldn't even get the things he was out driving for, as it's a monday, so (obviously) everythings shut, and we haven't had any fun.

At the moment it feels as if that is the life en France - the sun isn't shining, it's all grey cloud and cold drizzle, a bit like England in fact. I've had enough of France I say. Where do you want to go then, asks BF, England will do, I say, and mean it. As long as I have a horse.

May 09