A Copdologists Holiday in France

The worst part of our summer holiday abroad was making sure we had everything we needed. Apart from the tools of my trade like inhalers, nebulisers, drugs, European health cards and emergency phone numbers, we had to remember that in France shopping is different. It's rumoured that they eat many strange foods for breakfast like frogs and horrible dirty black toadstools called truffles. We were advised to bring sensible items like lean bacon, wholegrain brown bread and marmalade - things that keep Anglo-Saxons alive in difficult circumstances. But beware, at one port some friends had been stopped and their car searched by armed men looking for English cheese. During and after the mad cow disease scare it was illegal to bring in any meat or milk products. 

Catching the ferry at Dover was the next problem. At the port you think you are going to be ushered by charming uniformed ladies straight on to a waiting boat, but no such luck. There was near chaos. On several gigantic concrete waiting areas each nearly as big as the Red Square in Moscow, there were more than 200 different queues of waiting cars to choose from. Hundreds of mystified drivers were milling around. It was like trying to find one's seat at a celebrity wedding. If like me, you can only count up to a hundred (on a good day) and accidentally get into the wrong stream in the port, you could easily wake up next morning freezing in some Norwegian fiord. Once on board the boat there is no turning back. We made two mistakes but discovered our folly in time. It was a smooth crossing. No need to lean over the taffrail; Meg's magic wrist bands did the job well. It's all in the mind anyway.Our destination was 500 miles away - two day's worth of pushing - well, actually the accelerator not the whole car.

The first night we stopped at a small B&B hotel called Campanile. Its only toll was a noiseless bill for eighty Euros. Breakfast consisted of treacly coffee, good luck horseshoe-shaped flaky pastries called brioches and uncooked unchewable slices of pig disguised as ham. The 'piece de resistance' was tasteless apricot jam. It went all over the tablecloth when squeezed by a dispractic geriatric from a totally unmanageable sort of toothpaste tube. I think our hosts probably gave us a score of one out of ten for quality of behaviour, maybe two for courteousness and certainly zero for prestidigitation. Reluctantly they accepted our booking for the return journey. The beds were out of this world.

Our holiday 'gite' in the Lot valley was the best we have ever found, as were our kind hosts Eddie and Michele. It was a ground floor flat beside a tributary river in what must long ago have been a rich merchant's house in mid-village. A century past there had been a small thriving community based on its mill. Now five tiny shops. Nearest mall 10 miles. Very peaceful except that at 6.0 a.m. each morning the municipal trash lorries were loaded from the large bins across the river. Being deaf I could sleep through the clatter, but poor sharp-eared Meg lay twitching with temporary annoyance - though magically she was always fast asleep at a later hour when I delivered her morning cup of tea!

A short walk away was a delightful lake full of reeds; ideal for fishermen, picnickers and paddlers, but it did look dangerous for swimmers. An ornate cemetery lay nearby - was it lying in wait for the unwary ones perhaps? A new French law requires all swimming pool owners to fit childproof fences or alarm systems to prevent accidents - helicopters are used to check compliance. The law does not seem to apply to lakes. 

On the thirteenth day in early afternoon Meg was in the bedroom changing. I was snoozing in the sun at the end of the magnificent garden, but was woken by her shouting from within the flat. I dashed in to be told that she had seen a small black snake and that it had disappeared under her bed. Having spent some time in India I should have remembered the basic drill. All doors and windows shut, wellington boots afoot, soft broom in hand. By the time I was kitted out I suddenly ran out of steam. Hunting serpents in the heat of the day in a foreign country had not been on my COPD Rehab exercise agenda. Fortunately our hosts came rushing down to help. We turned that room upside down but found no snake. Then, as a joke Eddie asked Meg whether she had enjoyed any wine at lunch. "Well just one glass, maybe two, but honestly, Eddie, I am stone cold sober". "Yes, of course", he said with a knowing smile and walked quietly away. 'La politesse' still thrives in France.

By David