Monday 23^rd July

Chris and Angela are back from Abroad, where they had an inordinate amount of fun.  They came back glowing and…exhausted!

They thought France was absolutely beautiful – we know this; we have been watching Le Tour!  Their weeks on the Canal du Midi were memorable and pleasurable, ambling down the waterway, eating and drinking very merrily with their friends.  One big BUT…none of the canal boats have holding tanks.  This means that…all of the toilet waste goes straight into the canal.  It wasn’t particularly stinky, they said, but it was very dirty indeed.  They were told to be very careful not to fall into the water.  And if anyone did fall in, to make sure not to ingest any of the canalwater.  Totally yuckypoo nd full of toxic diseases!  And of course…their friend Liz did fall in… She managed not to breathe and therefore is still alive and healthy, but she did batter and bruise herself quite badly in the process.

I am going to have to ask them a lot more about France.  After three weeks of following Le Tour, Pete and I are quite exhausted, and also very impressed, yet again, with the extreme beauty of the French countryside.  And all of those glorious little towns and villages, with their beautiful soft colours – grey, ochre, beige.  Not a hint of garish advertising, all totally TidyTown.  James Headlam is bewildered by all of this.  He scans the rural landscape with an experienced farmer’s eye and says to Pete, in his inimitable fashion, “OK Dad, where are all the shitters?”  And indeed where is the crappy housing?  The outskirts of these towns are pristine; no shabby (shitter) houses with saggy old brown couch on the veranda, no beaten-up cars rusting in the fields.  No bogans, no poverty, no advertising, no discordant architecture, just gentle, lush prosperity.  Another world altogether!