Okay, although I’ve been complaining about Jill’s propensity for sending me to the Plagues (do you suppose she gets a cut of the toll, a sort of CPA deal, for touting it?), and there’s no getting around it that driving in strange city environs is anxiety-inducing, yesterday as it was chucking it down rain, 9°C and the “vent fort—prudence” signs were not joking…I was deeply grateful that I was in le lapin gris and not on l’escargot rouge (my transport of 30 years ago).
And I’ll admit, having the car does increase my entertainment value for the locals. I’d parked the Fiesta in a public garage close to the hotel Saturday evening; it’s closed on Sundays, so there’s the formidable “call” button on the barricaded door. That’s no use, of course, because you wouldn’t be able to understand the recorded voice in your own language, let alone another one; I believe that’s some sort of rule about recorded announcements.
Well, finally I deduced which way to hold my ticket to swipe through the mag reader. I heard a barely perceptible click at the door and yanked it open.
Then I was faced with the dreaded caisse machine, where you insert your ticket and then your payment to get out of the garage. Somehow I don’t mind so much sticking my credit card in one of those machines when there are other people around doing it—you figure it won’t act up where there are witnesses. But doing it in a dimmed area, with no one else around—what’s to stop it from just keeping your Amex card? Huh?
Okay, so that went fine. And then here’s where my major amusement value took the stage: I couldn’t find my car. And the garage is dark, just some emergency lights, so you’re stumbling around wondering if there have been any serial garage killings in Orléans lately. I went out to Level 1, but it really looked…alien. Well, maybe I was on Level 2. And down there, there was a tiny square grey car parked facing the exit ramp…but not mine. (Did mine have a rack on the top? Evidently not.)
Well, back to Level 1. No—definitely not mine.
Well, could it be on Level 3? I went down there and the first good sign: the entrance ramp. The night before I’d shot straight out of that into a parking spot next to the exit ramp. Little square grey car in my spot. And it unlocks when I click the right button on my key!
All this in the dark, looking for hunchbacks and National Front proselytizers who might be lurking in the blackness, because there were still no lights but the barest minimum.
Only when I started the car and flicked on my own lights did the ceilings light up.
There was another hiccup getting out—can’t just go out that exit ramp, nono, must flail about the Level 1 floor plan and get to an actual exit ramp, with the gate into which you stick your paid ticket. Only then are you free to go and get lost in the city.
That wasn’t actually my full entertainment capacity for the day. I needed to get fuel—this thing runs on either Gazole or Diesel—so I pulled into one of those motorway petrol stations, park in front of a diesel pump…and for the life of me I cannot find the switch that opens the flipping fuel tank. I was going over the dashboard like it was Braille, trying to find SOMETHING that would give me a clue.
After about ten minutes I went inside and asked at the caisse. The woman there sent out a colleague with me, who pushed at the right side of the tank cover, et voilà!
To say I felt like the village schmendrick would be a gross understatement. The only good thing (aside from the fact that I could finally fill my tank) was that I disappeared right quickly and didn’t have to listen to the hysterical laughter for long.
You know—it’s a rental, and you’d think that Hertz would give you a bloody owners’ manual, so you could find things like the light controls, the windscreen wipers and the, you know, fuel tank. But no—you’d be wrong.
I do have to say that I'm also grateful for a car this size. If it were anything but the teeniest-tiniest of transportation pods, I wouldn't have made it through some of the little paths designated as actual streets, in either Orléans or here in Poitiers.
Well, enough of the mundane for now. I’m sitting in my hotel salle du pétit déjuner, trying to keep the croissant crumbs and apricot preserves out of my keyboard.
I still owe reports of Chartres, Tours and Orléans, as well as Poitiers. But looks like I’ve got to find someone who can replace watch batteries.
More later.
(Posted at 0900 Monday 23 Novembre at Poitiers)
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