France-tastic

"How pleasant," thought I when Renée asked me if we wanted to spend the weekend at her boyfriend's house in the country, "how pleasant and civilised."

Instead, within half an hour of Alex and I turning up (hungover and two hours late because we'd missed the train) the said bofriend went running out of the house, gun held high, and I was left looking at the boxes of bullets he'd left in his wake. I shouldn't have been surprised, he is in the army, and there was some sort of a dog-like water rat that just needed to be killed. Luckily for the water rat, the hunting skills need a bit of work, and no killing actually took place over the course of the weekend. Actually, once the panadol kicked in, we did have a very pleasant weekend!

(The panadol is another story... All we saw of the town of Angers- apparently a very pretty town- where we had an hour long wait as we changed trains, was the inside of one pharmacy, as I asked for a box of the good stuff, only to be asked if I wanted ones to swallow or ...[finger points upwards in a poky gesture]!! Seriously. And try that with a hangover!)

Anyway, the weekend brought lots of good stuff besides hunting, like walking in gumboots through squelchy, sloppy, mucky, mud (so fun!), and toasting marshmallows over the fireplace, and drinking lots of local yummy wines! A success on all fronts - except for that damned rat.