Things are hotting up in Aspiran just as the weather is cooling down. All of a sudden, it seems, people are finding me.
On Thursday I was waiting for Christopher Lee to arrive and work on a book. Then that same day, out of nowhere, came two Aussies on a BMW 800 just to say hello.
Hein and Corene Schwartz were on their way East but he was such a happy, jocular fellow and his wife was a serene smiling presence behind him so I thought, what the hell, and invited them to stay.
We wheeled his bike into the garage, and started to think about dinner when Chris phoned from a village about ten minutes away. According to the schedule, the bus was supposed to bring him to Aspiran, but it got to Le Pouget and refused to go any further.
It seems the buses here, normally very cooperative, can also be bloody-minded. It seemed a shame to frustrate Chris’s brilliant efforts to get here under his own steam from Montpellier airport, which involved a shuttle, a tram and a bus in unfamiliar country. But he was only ten minutes away.
Hein and Corene left next day. Here he is emerging from the dungeon under my house…
…and off they go, hoping for a paddle in the Mediterranean.
But now there’s Melanie Stegemann, a German biking lady, on her way through. She just wants to say Hello on Sunday. I bet she ends up staying the night.
Today I had to go to the pharmacy for an eye drop, and it seems Hein has been doing public relations. “Ah. Monsieur Simon,” said the pharmacist. “The Australian has told us about your book.” After three years in this village it took a visiting Aussie to tell them who I am. We’ll see what happens next.
Just keeping up to date on the various ways in which the French Bureaucracy challenges our ingenuity. I have received a registered letter from Nantes.
The government office at Nantes is well known to everyone, including the police, as a black hole. It is where you send applications for a change of driving license.
The letter, paraphrased, says, “Sir, on the 9th of July, 2018, we received your application to change your British driving license for a French license. We have examined your request. However, since your request was made, you have renewed your license, and since your current license is not the same as the one you sent us 14 months ago, we cannot make the exchange. Please accept our most distinguished consideration.”
My current license will be valid for three more years. I wonder if the people at Nantes will be able to hold on to my new application until that too has expired. Is there a Guinness record in the offing? I’ll keep you posted, unless I too have expired.
I’m off to Ukraine for a flying visit at the end of September to celebrate the tenth anniversary of my worst motorcycle accident. I’m celebrating the fact that it had no visible lasting consequences.
In 2009 I was riding my 650 BMW to the Polish border, at a steady pace on a good road in fine weather. As always I was riding close to the crown of the road. Another rider was ahead of me on a smaller bike, riding almost in the gutter as they often do in eastern Europe. We were approaching a crossroads and that was the last that I remember before I woke up on the ground, surrounded by people.
I had a fractured arm and had apparently been out, concussed. I gave someone the phone number of Lida, whom I’d been visiting, and before too long she arrived on the scene.The bike was bent, but not irredeemably, and she arranged for it and my things to be taken somewhere. I was taken to hospital.
After six weeks my arm was good enough to ride, the bike was repaired, and I rode it back to Germany where it lived. Then I flew to London. While I was recovering in Lida’s house another friend, a doctor, visited me on his way to Bosnia and he suggested that if I’d been concussed It would be a good idea to get a CT Scan of my head, so when I got to London I ambled into the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and told them. The did the scan, and the next minute I was in bed under 24 hour observation. It turned out I’d had a subdural haematoma (HORRORS!) and they were waiting see whether to drill a hole in my skull.
Happily it wasn’t necessary. I was forbidden to fly for a few weeks, and my friends said that I was behaving rather strangely. And that was that. If I behave strangely today, I have no excuse.
What caused the accident? After some wild theorising, the explanation is pretty obvious. The other guy turned left at the crossroads without looking, and I didn’t anticipate that’s what he might do. So you could say it was his fault, but I know it was mine really. All’s well that ends well.
