It was all going so well.
Brilliant trip down to cousins Karen and Steve (5 stars - Trip Adviser) the heavily overloaded car seemed to shrug off 50 litres of paint on the back seats and boxes of wall tiles in the boot. -Well it did for the first couple of days.
Rachael and David squeaked onto the ferry 20 minutes after official final check in had ended. - Not their fault, the Uno had needed a couple of pauses for breath on the M6 hard shoulder - something it seemed to get to like, so we paused for more breaths on a few French autoroute hard shoulders next day too.
On Sunday evening La Vielle Ferme indulged we four in too many courses of dinner for me to keep count and our little convoy made it into Charente in time for Monday lunch with Jo and Adam. The Gendarmes were eating at the next table and in case you need to know the etiquette - remove your stab vest to make room for onion soup but keep the firearm in place.
A third, brilliant evening of sitting around a table, eating beautiful food, talking with loved ones and drinking too much might have gone to my head.
We bimbled up to the house to remind ourselves of the work ahead, tucked up cars in the barn then back to St Fraigne to pack bags for the airport. At which point we realized that the envelope of boarding cards, two passports and the BMW's V5C had gone awol.
Hmm.
A couple of hours of controlled panic and finger tip searching later, we had to accept they really were gone and agreed to split the party in two. - Those going home to the UK today, and Angie and I. Who weren't.
-What should have followed were; Ryanair customer service hell, frustrating British Consular Service processes, extraordinarily expensive taxi rides and back at home - work and child care mayhem but instead, we had a lovely couple of extra days.
The passports and papers had been picked up in the street, passed through the local grapevine and were back with us a couple of hours later. Two new flights for Thursday were bought for £20 each, Ann and Dennis happily continued to care for Thalia and work didn't seem bothered that we weren't going to be there. It felt even more as though we'd escaped and it felt lovely.
We didn't waste the time entirely. Angie turned a squalid bungalow kitchen into the clean works' canteen - but we forgot to take a photograph. I took out wooden pens from the barn and replaced them with 'the tool store door'. - All carefully laid out for ease of finding:
Cutty things on the left, measurey things at the front, hitty things middle, smoothy things right, etc. - Very satisfying.
Second time around it was a straight forward return home (although we may have accidentally lost the Fiat to Mike the Plausible Limoges Car Park Businessman. -We'll find out if he turns up with it again on 5th March) and thank you to David for driving 'Yoo Hoo' from Nottingham and picking us up from Manchester. A gentleman.
Finally - paint prices in France: Auchan supermarkets sell 5 liters of masonry paint for around £25. We can buy 20 liters of similar stuff for £40 in the UK. -And the price of new dampers for the rear of the paint transport wagon? - £85.
Ho hum.