Monday

Yes I did have fun yesterday while Pete laboured away in the cabin with mountains of paperwork. When I got back from one of my jaunts at 4.00 I found him sitting with a furrowed brow while JUST outside the window, out of his line of sight, three pretty teenage Island Girls were rehearsing a cute little dance. Oh poor Pete! I think I got all the treats on Sunday. Well no; we both did get the pain au chocolat, which, as I predicted, was not yummy at all. French bakeries in Vietnam are full of delicious patisseries; why not here??

More boats have arrived on the marina…the Grey Nomads are on the move!

I went for two bike rides. The first was through the city streets, which were totally deserted. Like Hobart in the 60s, when I learned to drive in empty weekend streets. Every single shop shut, the Place des Cocotiers full of tumbleweeds. I went (puff, pant,) up a few steep hills, knocking off yet more of the 1,000 Views of Noumea, each very spectacular. At one of my vantage points I could hear music – where was it coming from?? Fun to be had! I tracked it down to St Joseph’s Cathedral, on the next hill along from my last View. It was all go up there! A big sort of jumble sale; dancing girls, food, drink – well cups of tea… I didn’t manage to get one at all – it was all more complicated than it seemed, and maybe I had got there a bit late. The BBQ pits showed signs of recent activity, but really I don’t think I would have liked anything more than my mediocre pain au chocolat – pieds de porc, (pigfeet) anyone?? The food was all gone and I think the urns were empty. I chained up my bike unobtrusively behind a small outbuilding – I felt very bad doing this; other people had left their bikes free and loose. What a nasty suspicious foreigner I was! But…my bike is My Precious!!

I watched some very self-conscious girls doing a PNG dance- or maybe they actually were from PNG, it wasn’t all that clear… And then I saw…Mecca! A stall of second hand books!! It was run by a pod of women who looked just like my Hobart friends. They were happily ensconcing, chatting and – yes, truly, – knitting – behind the stall. I found a box of romans anglais and bought four, for about $1 each… Nothing fabulous – Patricia Cornwall, Jeffrey Archer, that sort of thing, but good cannon fodder.

I went and sat on a plinth with my bac[pack full and watched the next spasm of entertainment – a troupe of men from Lifou who did a very savage hak-type dance with hefty wooden weapons of war. I think the cultural centre, Tjibao, is very sanitised. Not a weapon to be seen…and I am sure the islanders had weapons and thwacked each other and les français with gusto in their time!

It all went on (Pauline will understand…) for a bit too long so I went back to 2XS and unloaded my books and set off for another adventure along the waterfront. In another bay I saw a newly shipwrecked boat, quite big – could it be Black Pearl?? Oh the Schadenfreude… - but no, it was some other boat, red, with people swarming over the sinking hull. What on earth could have happened to make it sink?? People were waterskiing all around, having a good look and being of no assistance, so it can’t have been too dire an emergency.

And does Pete like my wonderful new hi-tech sunglasses? Why no he doesn’t! He shuddered and did a double take when he saw them. He doesn’t think I look Mafia; he thinks I look Space Age, and not in a good way… He offered to fix my old ones, but they are totally smashed; even if he gets the arm back on they will still squash up on my cheek and make me unhappy, whereas my new ones make the world look just too bright and shiny for words.

This morning we watched it astonishment as a HUGE yacht came in – Eagle V. It has two masts, reaching way up high into the sky. Soaring! I think it was at Hamilton Island last year, dwarfing all boats around it. It has moored at the wharf across the way; wouldn’t fit into this puny marina… It only stayed a few hours, then swept majestically away back out to sea.

Pete has been poring over his accounts again and I have been having mild adventures. No music, no dancing girls… I sat, fruitlessly, at le Bout du Monde, and then at Le Quick, unable to connect to WiFi. No point in getting annoyed…this is Island Time and I am on holiday time myself, aren’t I?

So I went for a little stroll, to see, amongst other things, how Hervé was going with the gas bottles. Oh, quelle surprise, his cabine is not open… I was enjoying my stroll around the streets, just pootling, when I felt an unpleasant sensation around my feet – oh dear and OH NO, one of my Ecco sandals had ripped… I asked, in some panic, if there was a shoe repair anywhere nearby, and was directed to one in the Victorie arcade. A lovely French cobbler, who gazed at my sandal and said he was desolé but…it is kaput, unfixable. He thanked me very much for thinking of him but…I had better go and buy some new ones. But where?? I am sure there isn’t a Birkenstock shop in Noumea… (In defence of my sandals…they have been through thick and thin, wet and dry, rock and sand and salt, since 2005. And when we were in Vietnam some enterprising young blokes on the street took them away to clean them and did some unwanted stitching around the edges…I think this weakened them. Maybe I will go back and sue!!)

On the way back to the boat I went to a tobacconist to buy stamps – I am getting to know who to see, where to go! A lovely young French girl welcomed me politely. But…she only had 8 110 franc stamps for postcards and if she sold them to me…she wouldn’t have any left! “Desolée, madame!” she said, as I left empty handed.

I stayed on 2XS for an hour or so, with one of my (very dirty ie soiled) books from St Joseph’s Cathedral jumble sale before setting out for my second excursion of the day.

I was nearly successful with all of my missions.

Firstly, I found a lovely stationery shop and bough a two-hole punch for Pete, who has been making holes in his many reams of paper with a nut & bolt arrangement which is less than satisfactory.

Then I went to every outdoor shop and shoe shop in Noumea, with my broken Ecco sandal, trying to find a replacement. Oh yes indeed, I found a shop which stocked beautiful imported sports sandals…for men… Not a one would fit my puny girly feet… In the end I paid about $20 for some truly horrid velcro-ed sandals which will cause me much grief I am sure. They are not all that uncomfortable – yet – but they are very ugly. Bright white plastic with lilac linings. They were the only sandals in Noumea which I could buy to fit me which did not have high heels…

In the morning I had accosted a nice looking (older) French woman in the street and asked her if she could recommend a hairdresser. “Mais oui!” she said. “Just around the corner there is a perfectly good one. Try there.” I made an appointment for 1.00 and finally managed to get into a salon chair at 2.30. (Island Time...) I was quite happy waiting. I had an iced tea to drink, (pêche, this time,) magazines to read – very interesting, to see stories about Brangelina and Jennifer Aniston interspersed with stories about Mylene Demongeot and Carla Brunei.

And did I enjoy my salon experience? Yes very much, although I came back to the marina needing to go straight to the shower block to wash out the many layers of product – mousse, gel, hairspray, more and different and smellier hairspray… The salon owner, Brigitte, did everything – washing hair, keeping the till, answering the phone, sweeping the floor, cutting, colouring, straightening, as well as chatting with all three of her customers at once. She was a delightful blonde French woman, about my age. She was thrilled that I spoke French and laughed with joy when I said my hair grew like a weed (une mauvaise herbe) in the tropics. Ho coem I knew such colloquialisms?? When I first walked in she said, “Be careful” and I said, “It’s Ok, I understand French, so she said, “Faites attention” and I neatly tripped up the step she had been warning me about. All the customers were highly amused. My companions in the salon were having different processes. A thin young Melanesian girl was having her short curly hair coloured very black. She was a pastry cook and told me, shyly, that the shop wasn’t in Noumea, it was in Mont d’Or. Well, the next little town, Robinson, actually. Yes opposite the pharmacy! She was very happy when I told her that was exactly where we had bought our lunch on our way to Yaté. The other customer was an older larger lady wearing a very bright muumuu. Her husband had accompanied her; he too was large and imposing. He sat on the spare chair and drifted off to sleep, occasionally emitting a gentle snore. She was having a very lengthy and laborious procedure done to her hair, to straighten it. Very many smelly chemicals. So Brigitte could mostly devote herself to me while the other two steeped. Snip snip snippety snip she went. I don’t think it has been as short as this for many years. When I left, all coiffed and upswept and sprayed, she said, firmly, “Pas de chapeau!” and made me put my Tilley hat in my bag. (It went back on my head as soon as I was round the corner…) She also said I could come in for a blow-dry and comb up, for free, any time I wanted. Does it look OK? Who knows…all I know is…it grows like une mauvaise herbe so it doesn’t really matter! (I think it is probably fine now I have de-bouffed it...)