Tony in France 2

The girl quickly explained that she was Madam Rougierre's daughter and that Madam had left for work early this morning.

Using a convoluted mixture of garbled English, his own pigeon French and a lot of hand gesticulations Tony managed to establish that he had been brought to Madam Rougierre's house last night    Apparently, the Calvados had had such an impact on him that he had finally passed out in the bar and had been carried here by a combination of the gendarmes and a couple of other people from the bar.  On arrival at the house, they had simply put him to bed.

Tony realised his head was pounding and looked around to see what was hitting him, only, sadly, to discover that there was nothing externally wrong and that the banging was entirely internal.   As he discovered this fact, he also realised that the effort of simply looking around had impacted even more on the gargantuan headache that had now descended on him causing it to grow with alarming speed.

By now, he  had finished his hot chocolate and was trying to find out where he was....

Unfortunately for Tony, the girl had decided that this was an awful lot more fun than she was used to and so was not, exactly, helping him.  Eventually, he established that it was about a 45 minute walk back to the port where his boat was.

Tony studied the girl for several moments  after she had delivered this piece of news until eventually, the girl noticed and started to study him as well;  neither quite sure what the other was thinking.... and both failing completely to find words in each other's language to help.

Eventually he decided he better make his way back to the boat and indicated that he would be leaving now, asking, or at least trying to ask, if he could take Madam Rougierre's name and address so that he could write and thank her.

At the mention of Madam Rougierre's name,  the girl suddenly sat bolt upright. and started to rush around clearing Tony's breakfast away.  Tony looked bemused, not quite sure what had happened.

She explained, as best she could, that he had to be in Madam Rougierre's office at 11.30.   This caused Tony to check his watch to find it was only 10:30.   He had absolutely no idea why the girl was rushing so.  She was, by now, pushing him into his coat and out of the kitchen,towards the door.

Tony eventually caught his breath, summoned his best French, and tried to explain that he had almost another hour before he needed to be at Madam Rougierre's office for the meeting.

The girl stopped for a moment, took in what he had said and then simply shook her head.   No  - the meeting was right now.  Tony puzzled a bit more, checked the time on his watch 10:32 confirmed with her the time of the meeting 11:30 and also confirmed that Madam Rougierre's office was in the town, not far away.

He failed to understand what was happening but reluctantly put his coat on under the watchful eye of the young girl.

As if she had read his mind she grabbed his wrist and span it around so she could see his watch.   At exactly the same moment that in a somewhat exasperated voice, she shouted "NON",  Tony, realised that his watch was still on English time and so it was, in fact, already well past 11.30.

The girl then released his wrist, grabbed her car keys off a hook and ran out of the house yelling at Tony to follow her.  

Outside there was an old beaten up Renault which she leaped into and motioned for Tony to get in the passenger seat.  He did, and before he had shut the door the tyres squealed and he was thrown against the seat back as the car shot away down the road.

Tony was awake enough to see the red light, which was apparently more than the girl did.  He also saw the cyclist nearly fall off as she rushed past him with her horn blaring.   He couldn't fail to notice when she pulled out of the side road directly into the traffic on the main road with her horn once again,blaring, but this time, waving a fist at the other driver involved.

The car carried on with it's death defying trip across town and eventually span into a car park out side a huge, impressive, building which Tony only caught a glance of before being dragged by the coat tails to run behind the girl and into the building.

She waved animatedly, at some people at the reception desk before bursting into a huge office. As Tony entered he managed to catch sight of the plaque on the door which read S Rougierre, Maire.

Madam Rougierre was a tall elegant lady who was impeccably dressed as befitted the mayor of a small resort on the Normandy Coast.  Tony was a bedraggled fisherman who had been arrested for illegally landing fish and then had got very drunk, so much so that he had been carried to a bed to sleep it off.

The pair made an interesting couple....