So the last experience of England was a 90-minute delay for our ferry and lengthy queues at the Costa cafe, where a lone employee muttered mutinous thoughts as he struggled to take orders, prepare drinks, receive payment and clear up. Our first experience of the Var was a glorious full moon (the one you see above was one I made earlier).
In between, there was a pause in the Sarthois village of Mont Saint-Jean.
La Sarthe is an underrated part of France. The principal town, Le Mans, is Monsieur Salut's city-in-law and has a handsome old quarter, a delightful delicacy (rillettes), a struggling football team and annual car and motorcycle races.
I have no interest in motor sport, in fact not really regarding it as sport at all, but if you venture a little way out of the city, you reach les Alpes Mancelles, a splendid natural beauty with lake, dense woodland and hills.
Mont Saint-Jean lies on the fringe of this area and is home for Tata Simone, a widowed aunt (by marriage) who defies great age - she was recently 90 - to live a sprightly life with daily strolls into the village for her shopping. We spent two nights there, catching up with two of her four children and their partners, before heading south.
The family visits meant two fullish meals on our one full day there. Both were preceded by champagne and followed by ample wine. Even on our arrival the night before, there had been a good selection of apéritifs with Tata sipping her proper share of Muscat.
I do not think I could live in a small French village but if I did, Mont Saint-Jean would be as good a choice as any.
There are thinly populated communities in France that once had their own butcher, tabac, baker, cafe and post office but now have now. Mont Saint-Jean clings to each, even if four of those roles are combined into one.
"Nothing much seems to change here," said another elderly woman who paused to speak as I pointed my camera in the direction of église, boulangerie and tabac-cum-poste-cum-minisupermarché.
The little school - where, in the nearest that passes for local sensation, the canteen cook is an Englishwoman, Kate - proudly announces on its message board that it has 67 pupils (a fact the passer-by had also mentioned as she gave me a brief description of the village). There was also mention of a soirée couscous, though no word on whether Kate was doing the cooking.
There is nothing remarkable about Mont Saint-Jean, unless it has become remarkable for any village shop to withstand the competition of les grandes surfaces; Le Mans and Alençon, easy drives away, have plenty.
But I enjoyed staying there before the long onward slog.
And we ate considerably better than on the ferry (just our luck; the sleek new Spirit of France was in port but going nowhere as we were shepherded on board the more humdrum Pride of Burgundy). "She's on her last legs," confided one of the crew, which may explain why there is no longer a waiter-service restaurant, no free wifi as is found on the new superferries and little to mitigate a general impression of decline.
Which is not to say that all is bliss in everyday France. The motorway tolls seem to grow more ferocious with each return and, of course, it is election time with all the uncertainty that implies. One piece of good news: Sarko says that if he loses, a distinct possibility, he'll choose a completely different life and we'll hear no more of him. That alone sounds like a vote-winner for one François Gérard Georges Hollande ...
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