Episode 1 Cruising Away From The Atlantic

CRUISING AWAY FROM THE ATLANTIC

A French summer day in 2012 , three days after the Fête Nationale.

A gleaming white Citroën DS named Madeleine slices eastward through the dawn air of the tree-lined Route Nationale between the Atlantic coast and Poitiers. Regiments of sunflowers stretch uphill to the horizon on the left, all facing the sunrise; a carpet of maize spreads to the foot of the wind-turbines and the distant hazy ash-tees of the Marais Poitevin, to the right.

Long-wave radio fills the interior with a non-digital France Inter news programme: the new président and the month-old government are settling in, and haven’t left for holidays, yet. The radio news suggests that, at this very moment, in the Elysée Palace, the recently-arrived incumbent and his lady friend may be exchanging harsh words of discomfiture over their confiture aux fraises about journalism and Twitter accounts…

In contrast, all is well with Madeleine and her conducteur.

Travelling alone in the DS on this idyllic morning is rather like sitting in a plush cinema, watching a favourite 1950’s Cinemascope film unfold. The hydropneumatic suspension, conceived  a lifetime ago for roads such as this, quietly goes about its work of making the car feel like a cruising Caravelle airliner. The retro-gallic experience is completed by the heater fan’s wafting of air which is perfumed with remnant Chanel Number 5, Dunlopillo foam and Gauloise Disque-Bleu.

The soft, ballooning smugness of the moment begins to deflate only when a rumbling sound, which has been emanating on occasion from under the bonnet for the last twenty years, gives way to a series of screeches.

The driver identifies this as Morse code:

“Le roulement de l’alternateur est foutu”

(Author’s Morse/French/Strine translation ) : 

T-H-E…A-L-T-E-R-N-A-T-O-R-…B-E-A-R-I-N-G… J-U-S-T C-A-R-K-E-D-I-T…….M-A-T-E

On occasions such as these, when he lived in Australia, the driver always used to follow his mate Ralph’s advice :

“Stop and get the billy boiling”.

This being France, he adopts the French solution:

“Pull in to the nearest  village, buy a croissant and a café au lait, and see what adventure unfolds once you start talking to the locals”…