A grown woman all on her own through France - part one

I'm a grown woman, on my own - well not quite I have two tetchy boys in the back of the car but I'm the one whose doing the driving, making all the decisions, free! And I can't help responding in that vein. I react in a different way on my own without my husband, but there again people would react differently to me if I were under escort...
It would never have happened.
Not that I was looking for it I hasten to add, well, how would you have reacted?
I'm on the Euro Tunnel, driving my car into the train and I see in front of me a tall tawny man in shorts and a Euro Tunnel coat. He's directing the cars to get closer to each other and as I drive up I notice that he's really very dishy indeed. In fact the disburse man I have seen in ages!
I drive up and am directed to move forward, more, a little more, I get nervous about hitting the car in front, it must show on my face as he looks up at me and smiles, my stomach clenched, and flutters. I go bright red. His grin deepens and I note he has the most beautiful blue eyes.
I get flustered, and try to concentrate. He raises his hand to tell me to stop. I do. He grins again and starts to move toward my window. I am confused. "What on earth does he want to say to me?"
He knocks on the window, I lower it blushing.
"yes," he says in the sexiest French accent, "you in first gear non?"
I am not quite with it, still bemused by this assault on my senses. " you Ok?"
I gather my wits but only just. "yes, yes i am fine!" my voice seems loud even to me.
"you have good journey, yes?"
I will now I think as I gaze into his eyes.
He grins at me again and I notice he has a very naughty twinkle. And then he is off. My brief flirtation over, but it was worth it unexpected as it was...
Yes it will be a good journey now, what a way to start a holiday!

God! I need a holiday just to go on holiday!

ARRRGGGHHHHH I am trying to go on holiday and I am going to, if not already in the middle of blowing a fuse! Talk about stressful! God I need a holiday just to go on holiday!

First I have to get hold of all the paper work. Where is the Euro Tunnel paper that I MUST have with my boarding details and times? It’s somewhere among the piles of detritus on my desk. Buried under research and newspapers and stone cold cups of tea. I knew it was a bad idea to leave it on my desk but at least if it is there it’s not on the floor. But I had a deadline to meet and well I only finished that article at 9am this morning. Then there are the passports and the insurance documents, the wee triangle thingy is in here too I am sure. The boys were playing with it and I confiscated it. All things that get confiscated land up in my office….it gets crowded.

I think the spare bulb is in the kitchen, the bulb for the car headlights which you have to have when travelling in France.

You have to have a lot of things when you travel in France.

I swear I put the bulb in the Jug on the sideboard so I wouldn’t lose it the last time I mucked out the car but there again I could have put it in the tool shed with all the other odds and sods belonging to the car in a fit of being organised.

I mustn’t forget my Day-Glo cat sick coloured reflective vest so that when I do break down or my bulb goes people can see where I am – probably the wrong side of the road.

Oh god yes breakdown cover! Have I enough time to ring the RAC to see if I am covered abroad? Please let them say yes! And does O2 do abroad as well? Or will I come back to a bill the size of the US deficit? Do you think they’d let me default?

Do I know where I am going? I did look on Google but I got lost when I tried to make it bigger so I could see better. Basically I am heading for Le Mans on Saturday, tomorrow. Hope it’s not like Paris; I landed up on the peripherique for hours then got bored and did an impromptu  tour  at 3 in the morning only realising where I was when  I saw the Notre Dame. It would have been far more helpful if they had just left the lights on the Eiffel Tower, but I suppose they needed to save electricity. It was actually quite cool driving round the city when no one else was there I even got to drive through the Arc du Triomphe and down the Champs Elysee, not sure if that was entirely legal though…

I shouldn’t be going anywhere near Paris this time if I manage to read the map right A28 all the way from Calais then Abbeville, Rouen, Le Mans, Saumur and that’s it…it may take me a while as I am driving on my own with no trusty map reader beside me, no one to do the tolls and no one to swap the CDs for me.

And there will be two tetchy boys in the back….

Joy!

Is it any wonder I am a tad stressed and that’s just at the thought of the journey!

Heck I haven’t packed either never mind documents and other palaver.

Why am I doing this to myself?

Because my family will be there, that’s why. This is meant to be a lovely happy family holiday….you know that just by writing those words I am putting a curse on the whole thing….

Should I just take the valium now?

Euro tunnel fires, Bio diesel and killer seaweed – why do I always think the worst?

Why is it that I always think the worst? My Boys go with their Dad to visit Granny in Yorkshire and until I know they are there safe I worry. For three hours I worry, I can feel my grief welling up at the thought of losing them all in some freak accident on the A1 involving a high sided Eddie Stobart artic called Dolly Mae or Sally Anne.
I feel the emptiness and I wander their rooms touching their clothes, straightening their beds and putting their toys away.
I can’t settle at all, the TV can’t distract me and I daren’t leave the house in case I get the call from the police or they come round for a visit. I watch the clock incessantly. I have a bath, I read, I restart my elliptical manoeuvres round the house.
I pounce on every telephone call, curt and almost rude with those who ring for a chat too close to the time when I know they should be arriving. Then of course I miss the all important one, I’m outside putting he chickens to bed and it takes me half an hour to check the ansaphone and it’s fine they got there and then, well then I can go to sleep can’t I without a care in the world, until it’s time for them to return.
Now my mind is working overtime about our trip to France. Firstly a kindly dear overhearing me chatting about my trip as I cancel the newspapers in the Village Shop says that wasn’t there a fire in the Channel Tunnel recently and how she couldn’t bear to be trapped underneath all the water. I laugh, albeit a bit nervously, but on the walk back home I start to hyperventilate at the thought of thousands of tons of seawater rushing to swamp me and mine and all the people running screaming along the train but to no avail – strangely the vision looks very similar to that scene in the Dennis Quaid film The Day After Tomorrow when New York gets drowned.
Then my in-laws call to warn me to remember NOT to put bio diesel in my car or was it Gazoil and how will I know which is which? I have visions of my beautiful new car dying and the moment juste on the Autoroute and being flattened by a giant German Juggernaught because of a mistake made by me on the forecourt.
Finally just as I am getting to grips with the inevitability of the vacation, my Mother rings to tell me all about killer seaweed.
Apparently and this is true, tons of sea lettuce is washed up on the shores of the Cotes D’Armor in Brittany and it then rots giving off a bad egg smell. But the killer thing about it is that the sea washes over it leaving the seaweed covered in a layer of sand that then dries forming a crust and it is when the seaweed is rotting and the crust breaks from the pressure of animals and even people walking across it that hydrogen sulphide escapes totally over powering you and making you unconscious and even making you fall in a coma. Obviously the closer to the ground you are the more quickly you will be overcome. Several dogs have died and the Prime Minister of France has even stepped in saying that something must be done.
I can tell you after looking this up on the web, as I did not believe my Mum, my brain has been in overtime. I think I can probably keep my children safe by basically never letting them get more than three feet from me but what of Dear Charlie? The man is on a health kick and insists on going off running. How am I going to be able to protect him – I really, really do not want to be off running with him at 5.30am every other morning and besides who will prevent the children from chocking on their cereal or falling off their bunk beds?