9) A very white Christmas

The morning after the night before outside our chambre d'hote in Chartres

We woke up on the morning of our departure for England to find another 6 or 7 inches of snow had fallen overnight.  We checked out the internet and all the areas we had to drive through to get to Calais had been given an orange alert.  The authorities were advising people not to travel, there was ice, snow, blizzards and a general sense of Armageddon.  What a challenge.  We just had to try it and, besides, we wanted to see our girls.

The first challenge was to get the car out of our landlady's drive.  She lent us a spade and soon we'd managed to force open the gate. Georgi was beginning to wonder if this really was such a good idea or if we should follow the advice of  "those who, after all, should know best..." (with the clear, and rather annoying, implication that Meteo France, the Gendarmerie, the French equivalent of the RAC, and the French Ministry of transport all had a better understanding of the situation than I did).  Needless to say we soldiered on.  Once clear of the drive Georgi went on ahead to stop any cars at the "T" junction at the bottom of the road in case we were unable to stop (I didn't want to take any risks).  Luckily, no one else appeared to have ventured out, even though now it should have been the height of the rush hour.  We gracefully slid into the main road, and then after that we were on the flat and cruising.

Melting the snow by means of the headlights

I am a great believer in clearing all the snow before you head off, unlike the car pictured above which we spotted.  What the driver evidently has not realised, is that if he has to stop suddenly, the snow on his roof will slide down over his windscreen to combine with the snow on his bonnet, and suddenly he won't be able to see anything at all. We gave him a very wide birth.  French drivers on the whole (with the exception of French born estate agents) fortunately seem to drive very cautiously in the snow, which is probably just as well if they can't see anything.

The Gendarmerie pull over all the lorries

Once under-way things weren't too bad, if rather slow.  What we did find, though, was that the police pulled all the lorries off the one open lane on the autoroutes and parked them up in the fast lane on the snow.  This was great for us and, at one point we sped past six and a half kilometres of  stationary lorries.  Not so good for the lorry drivers, and we did notice one or two sneaking back onto the carriageway once they thought no one was looking.  Others were simply wandering around in groups looking dark and menacing.  They didn't seem too happy with us more fortunate car drivers, and I thought this is definitely not a good time to break down or slew sideways into a parked camion.

Nobody on the ferry

It took us six, rather than four, hours to the ferry and we had missed our crossing.  Nobody else seemed to have attempted the journey so we drove straight onto the next, almost deserted, boat just before it set sail.  We had a number of commissions for duty free goods (even though they always seem to me more expensive than the equivalent in Fortnum's).  When we got to the shop it was closed.  I went to the information desk to ask when it would be open and was told, with studied disinterest, that it wouldn't be.  On enquiring why not, I was told not enough staff had been able to get into work.  Having trekked through some of the worst driving conditions I have seen for six hours to get to this ferry, I was very unimpressed by both the answer and his attitude.  Luckily, whilst I was still trying to recall the French phrase en avoir plein le cul de, which in my rage I had temporarily forgotten, Georgi  gently steered me away to the other end of the boat.

Au revoir France

The crossing was calm and there were no queues for the loos or anything else that was actually open.

Carols (though three out of five we'd never heard before) on Christmas day morning

We arrived at my brother's without incident but, even in two weeks we had forgotten just how much traffic there is in England, as well as how many speed cameras there are.  We had just three days to do all our Christmas shopping, including both presents and food.  Actually it was a doddle, and we wondered why we normally followed the herd for six weeks prior to Christmas in a frenzy of panic buying and stress.  On Christmas day we went to the lovely old church up the road, close to where we used to live, and where Georgi and I went to be interviewed about the heresies of marrying a Catholic.  At that time, the vicar was the Reverend Musprat.  My father always referred to him as the Reverend Mousetrap. I spent the whole interview trying to avoid calling him Mousetrap and cannot remember a thing that was said.  Goodness knows what we might have agreed to.

A rare example of a medieval doom painting 

I remember a little bit more about the interview with Georgi's catholic priest, Monsignor Slattery, because he had such a silly name anyway.  He, like the Rev. Mousetrap, was a very kindly and wise old man.  Monsignor Slattery, of course, will be having the last laugh as they sit up there in heaven looking down on on their wayward charges.  We are moving to France.

The doom painting above the chancel is supposed to be one of only only six surviving examples in England.  According to Wikipedia, Doom paintings were used "...to keep them [Christians] mindful of sinning by showing in graphic detail the dramatic difference between Heaven and Hell."  I notice that in this example, though, most of the Hell bit has been scrubbed out.  Given that this is one of the wealthiest villages in England, perhaps the local Lord of the Manor at some point had taken to heart the parable about the camel and the eye of a needle, and thought it better simply to show heaven on its own and live in blissful ignorance of things to come.

Snow on Christmas day

Much to our (though not my mother's) delight the snow continued all over the Christmas period and a great time was duly had by all.