Beau comme un camion

In English we would say “as good as new”. The French equivalent is “as beautiful as a lorry”. After having lived in France for over 10 years I don’t think their articulated trucks are any prettier than the average British hauler, but in any case after having cleaned both cars this weekend, inside and out, I thought it was an appropriate title for a posting. Sacrificing two afternoons to such a menial chore had some rather unexpected side effects – it allowed me to find the USB port in the Nissan Qashqai, to get up to date with the audio edition of last week’s Economist, to increase my collection of random pens (4 across the two cars), to find a previously mislaid set of house keys (which meant I could now, finally, get last week’s mail out of the mailbox), and to successfully relocate Sandie’s missing credit card holder (so why hadn’t they been cancelled a month ago?). Apart from car cleaning, the rest of the weekend included a pretty dreadful meal out on Saturday night, a fun family outing watching some eventing on Sunday morning, the departure of Jane the au pair from New Zealand, and Maxime turning purple and coming out in an all over spotty rash….he’s now back on antibiotics for the next 6 days. So just another normal weekend going into just another normal week, he says, sitting in his favourite hotel in Brussels.