When I was little we had a holiday home in Picardy. This isn’t as swanky and middle-class as it sounds – if your dad had a brand-new car when you were a nipper, it almost certainly cost more than our ramshackle, wattle ‘n’ daub, three-up-three-down house in Sarcus – but we loved it and, my parents being teachers, we’d spend all of the school holidays there rebuilding bits of it and enjoying a bit of good ol’ togetherness. We’d huddle around the fire for warmth in the winter, and in summer we’d open the doors to all manner of friends and family who were also enthusiasts of very cheap holidays. Chopping wood, bike rides, barbecues, board games, buying dinner from the bread and meat vans, munching on garlic and saying ‘aw-hee-haw-hee-haw’… simple times, simple pursuits.
The four of us were there one harsh winter, along with my uncle Alan and auntie Nicky, doing what you do on holiday when it’s below zero outside and you’re in a house with no TV aerial: playing Trivial Pursuit and drinking vin rouge by the pint. (Well, I wasn’t drinking – I was about six years old.) We were eagerly awaiting the arrival of my uncle Dick, who was due to appear one evening in Boulogne; he was coming as a foot passenger on the ferry and, on the day of arrival, dad and Alan jumped in the car and drove the 100-odd miles to the port to pick him up. It was a late ferry, so my sister and I were sent up the wooden hill to Bedlington while mum and Nicky stayed up playing cards and drinking gin and doing whatever else people did in 1988. Perming each other’s hair, maybe.
Now, my uncle Dick is a bit haphazard, so it wasn’t a total surprise when his ferry came in and he wasn’t on it. These were the days before mobile phones, of course, so dad and Alan had to use their ingenuity a bit. With it being the early hours and the port largely deserted, they enquired at any office or building that had a light on as to whether any other ferries would be arriving. From the various levels of shrugging that were proffered in response, they deduced that the answer was no, that was the last ferry. Dick must be stuck in Dover. They were in for a Dick-less night.
As they drove away from the docks, an idea struck them: Calais was only thirty miles down the coast – was it at all possible that Dick had got on the wrong ferry and somehow ended up there? Sod it, they thought, they’d come this far, they might as well check.
…and sure enough, there he was; looking sheepish, puffing on a rollie and already halfway through his duty free allowance, he’d been tearing his hair out having realised his error. There was no way of contacting the house at Sarcus (it didn’t have a telephone), so his only option would have been to wait until the morning and catch another ferry home again.
There was much rejoicing. The lads piled into the car and headed back south.
They decided en route to stop off for a drink and a bite to eat – it had been a long journey and they were getting peckish, and the stress and confusion required a smidge of pastis to soothe the spirits. Finding a place open in rural France in the early hours of the morning, however, is easier said than done.
As they barrelled along mile after mile of unlit country lanes, a glint eventually presented itself on the horizon; as they neared, it turned out to be a bar and –hosannah! – it was open. The trio thirstily tumbled through the door, eager to refresh. Taking seats at the bar, they were immediately furnished with sizeable baguettes stuffed with gooey local cheeses and home-cured hams, and into their hands were thrust generous measures of pastis. Spirits were high in more ways than one, with the locals boisterously belting out folk tunes to the live band in the corner, the barman freely distributing liquor like it was water. These were the days before drink-driving was bad – everyone was out of their trees, and gladly. They were in the middle of nowhere, pushing on to the dawn in an aniseed haze.
After a couple of hours of merriment, it occurred to dad, Alan and Dick that they hadn’t actually paid for a single drink the whole time they’d been there. Furthermore, most of their beverages were being handed to them by a couple of lascivious gents who were standing very close to them indeed. Uncomfortably close. And they were plying them with enormous measures with rapacious and escalating insistence. The smiles had gone; it seemed more like getting the Brits drunk was a sinister and inescapable game.
It was around this point that they spotted the two chaps at the end of the bar, enjoying a baguette. You know the spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp? Just like that (except that baguettes require rather more chewing, so the effect was much longer and more drawn-out; also they were staring each other in the eyes throughout, which gives the innocent scene a more lustful dynamic).
Realisation dawned. Seemed like maybe they weren’t in for a Dick-less night after all.
The fact that it was a gay bar was neither here nor there really; it’s not like homosexuals are terrifying predators (and the same can be said for Frenchmen)… but a remote clique of chaps who are hellbent on removing all sensibility from some random strangers is an unnerving prospect. Finding themselves in the French wilderness in the dead of night, the wrong side of plastered, heavily outnumbered and unwittingly trading their back-cherries for a couple of litres of Ricard, the Brits felt it prudent to high-tail it out of the increasingly threatening atmosphere before the scene turned into a Gallic Deliverance. Suddenly keen to be back in the warm bosom of the family, they made a run for it; a fistful of Francs on the bar and a cloud of dust in the car park.
Mum and Nicky had been beside themselves with worry; this worry turned to befuddlement as the three men clattered through the door. They’d been gone for twelve hours, they reeked of booze and they kept calling each other ‘Monsieur Ducky’ and giggling uncontrollably.
These kind of stories are common from this era. None of this would have happened if they’d been able to call each other on mobile phones - the spontaneity of yore has been lost in the modern world’s relentless quest for efficiency and connectivity. Remember the days when you’d arrange to meet someone and you’d just have to hang around there until they showed up; if they got detained or lost you’d just do something else? This weekend, why not switch your mobile off and go for an adventure? You might get some free pastis out of it…
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