On our way to Tulle to meet up with our friend Steve in a little record shop called The Rev, Dan and I were chatting in the car about guilt and penance. Neither of us, it seems, is ever entirely at rest. We're always thinking about what we should be doing. And, if ever we allow ourselves to do anything creative or, God forbid, frivolous, we find ways of doing penance for our sins. Given that I was sacrificing an entire afternoon to frivolity, I performed two long-standing tasks that morning: cleaning the wires in the kitchen to which the six LED spotlights are clipped, and de-greasing the hood above the cooker.
Both tasks I performed with single-minded gusto, so I could show off my handiwork and claim 'what a good boy am I!' My dear affirmative wife duly gave me an affirmation. I'm not sure what Dan did that morning, but Thou are't absolved, my sons. Say seventeen hail Marys and proceed to thy record shop with clear conscience.
We had a lovely time for a good hour or more, and all three of us spent rather more than we had bargained for. But Philippe is a lovely fellow and running a second-hand record shop like The Rev is an act of passion rather than personal gain. He plays bass in Steve's band and his good taste and knowledge of music are exceptional. We chatted together in stilted Franglais. When he showed me things such as how his pricing policy worked, he tended to explain in English while I replied in French. After a while, I found my quite reasonable French resorting to the kind of tongue-tied unreasonable French it used to be back in the early years.
The following morning, I found the ideal absolution for my sins in cleaning the windows of our living area: unlike the vacuum cleaner, very little noise, so I could listen to my new records, not too tiring and fairly necessary. I was able to show them off to the Good Wife on her return from a hard day at the coal face in Brive and assert 'what a good boy am I!' What's more, clean windows, to translate the French literally (as our daughter once did when she was very little), 'see themselves'. The evidence of diligence is incontrovertible. As penance goes, I can recommend it.
There are only one or two days a year that don't require some kind of atonement. One of those, of course, is my birthday. This year, The Dame and I celebrated it in Bordeaux, that elegant, vibrant and notoriously bourgeois city that has become my French favourite. We took the train, early. It was cold and my wife in jeans fretted about my shorts. I reassured her by pointing to the hairs on my leggy-leg-legs. I confided that shorts are a kind of point of honour. If I can keep going till the end of October, it asserts that there's more to me than meets the eye. Hardier, tougher even than my nine-and-a-half-stones suggest. Don't mess with me. She laughed, uncomprehending.
On the outward journey, we changed at Périgueux. There was time to break our fasts in the station café, where we watched in admiration our hostess, a diminutive creature reminiscent of Edith Piaf, bouncing around in her over-sized trainers, multi-tasking for all she was worth. Which was more than her weight in gold, we surmised.
Once on one of Bordeaux's super-efficient trams, heading
smoothly along beside the Garonne, we were both offered seats by polite young
men. We both refused politely, but I felt like pointing out that you don't
offer your seat to a man in shorts, feigning eternal youth on his 69th
birthday. They'll learn.
In the warren of side streets behind the remarkable Grosse Cloche – a huge 18th century bell above a former dungeon for juveniles (best place for 'em) – we found the simple restaurant my wife had earmarked for lunch, and we sat down in the shadowy ruelle (alleyway) to the plat du jour: grilled octopus tentacles on a bed of steamed butternut squash and yellow peppers. It didn't do much for our 'fish-eating vegetarian' credentials, particular after watching the moving documentary, My Octopus Teacher, but it was nevertheless fabulous.
After lunch, I got my birthday wish of a very leisurely browse through the racks of Diabolo Menthe, a record shop I'd noted in an article on Bordeaux's record shops in a magazine I'd contributed to in an earlier life, Long Live Vinyl. It didn't disappoint – in contrast to Deep End Records just around the corner. Whereas the former was reasonably priced and hosted by a young man with charm and a winning smile, the latter was superintended by an arrogant mother-chuffer who wouldn't have given you the time of day, let alone the price of some of his unmarked records.
We had a four o'clock appointment at our B&B near the elegant Jardins Publics. As our young host took us up the circular stone stairs to our bedroom on the second floor, he explained that the previous owners had used a staircase on the other side of the thick stone wall and that this one had been revealed during the renovation of their magnificent town house. Perhaps I misunderstood him, but It all sounded unlikely and vaguely sinister, like something out of a Korean horror movie. But hey, our bedroom was grand and tastefully done, with an old door, for example, stripped and mounted as a headboard. The bed was so big that when I awoke briefly in the night, I couldn't find my sleeping beauty. This was a B&B masquerading as a boutique hotel. I didn't ask how much our night cost. It came in any case with a sumptuous breakfast, and breakfast is the most civilised meal of the day.
We ate extremely well in Bordeaux: that evening in a Lebanese establishment, and a late lunch the next day in a tiny establishment near the Musée de Beaux Arts run by an English wine trader from Hertfordshire and cooked by his Italian colleague. Perched on my stool, I watched him at work in his tiny kitchen, where he created a starter and a principal dish of quite stunning simplicity.
Our second morning in the city was consecrated to a visit to Lunettes Pour Tous, a kind of French Specsavers, where you choose your frames and leave with proper serviceable glasses a mere half hour or so later. It's the kind of thing that ageing couples with failing vision do for entertainment. And all for rather less than the price of a single night in a boutique B&B. My glasses took a little longer because I opted for my first test in about six years. The young optician with tattooed sleeves reassured me that everything was just fine, but I left with lenses so significantly stronger than my Specsavers models that I feel woozy every time I wear them.
Alas, though, we found that the Museum of Decorative Arts was closed – for five years! What a surprise... Five goddamn years. We came for the culture, you understand, not just to eat and shop. Five years! My brain hurts a lot... So we opted for a trip across the river on one of the municipal bateaux included with your 24-hour tram pass. The quais were dominated by two monstrous cruise ships tied up quayside for a couple of days' mass sightseeing. Walking alongside, they seemed about as big as Newcastle's Byker Wall estate. Were I a younger man, I would slip on a balaclava and attach to the sides under cover of darkness enough Semtex to blow them both to kingdom come.
Alas, once again! There was not enough room on the (somewhat smaller) bateau for us. Since the next one wouldn't arrive till almost four, and since neither of us fancied further queuing in the preternatural heat of this October, we aborted our riverside adventure and returned to the city centre for an ice cream before taking one last tram to the Gare St. Jean. A surfeit of armed gendarmes milled about and we figured that they weren't there for our sake. The rugby world cup perhaps.
The early evening return journey by train was direct. We sat opposite a young couple in a very crowded carriage. Fortunately, they dismounted at Perigueux, so we didn't have to try to ignore their kissing and canoodling the entire way to Brive – where we retrieved our car, then fetched our dog from her godparents' place, and slept soundly.
We had a lovely time, thank you for asking. Next morning I did a big shop: at Giselle's veggie-barn, then at Martel market and finally at Intermarché. Back home, once relieved of the groceries, I cleaned the fridge. It was a job waiting to happen.
