Lost in France

Why is it that seemingly the worst things happen at the worst times? What’s that classic quotation? Oh yes – ‘Shit happens’. But often in the midst of a bad experience, at a time when you’re feeling jumped on, kicked in the teeth, on your knees with only one thought in your mind – Why me? – something else happens, something good. In fact sometimes the bad thing had to happen before the good thing could.

A few months ago my wife, Gigi and I, and our 13 year old, golden retriever, Petra, packed up the car from our house in southern Spain and headed north, for the UK. I had important business in a week’s time and expected to be there for a few months, hence driving there rather than flying. We had been on the road for about ten hours and had just crossed the border into France. We were travelling on the motorway at 130 kph, an hour or so from a glass of good French wine, dinner, and glorious bed (what’s the old song – ‘Only 24 hours from Tulsa’). Suddenly the engine juddered and cut out. I glanced down at the dashboard. An ominous, orange figure of an engine glowed in the centre of the instrument panel. We were in the outside lane and I had my foot down, now I had no power and a highway full of thundering six and eight wheeler trucks, seemingly intent on the same destination as me. The hard shoulder was only a narrow strip with a metal crash barrier running alongside it. It seemed miles away. I manoeuvred my way gingerly across the intervening lanes, punctuated by the screech of the horns of irate truck drivers, and somehow managed to bring the car to a stop. But our problems were only just beginning.

It was dark and trucks were thundering by at a hell of a speed. I realised I hadn’t put on the hazard lights. I quickly switched them on and got Gigi to get out of the car and climb over the barrier and away from the roadside. Petra was on the back seat, looking at me, unsure what was going on but with that unfailing look of trust in her eyes that she always had. I hope I wasn’t going to let her down. It was too dangerous to get out on the driver’s side of the car, so I climbed over into the passenger seat and stepped out between the car and the metal barrier. My wife was shouting at me to climb over but I looked back at Petra, she sat there, panting expectantly, her big pink tongue hanging out. The trucks were still racing past. Our car is a big 4X4 but I was still scared stiff that at any moment one of them would wipe us off the face of the earth. I opened the back door and jammed myself in the space so she couldn’t get past. The noise of the motorway was now much louder in the car and Petra was starting to get nervous. I was terrified she would jump out and run into the road. I found her lead on the floor and looped the chain over her head. I wound the leather lead around my hand and wrapped my arms around her. She’s a golden retriever and not small but she trusted me and didn’t try to struggle. Another truck screamed past, closer than ever, making the car shake with the vibration. Petra was getting nervous now. I manhandled her out of the car as quickly as I could and handed her across the barrier to my wife. At least the two most important things in my life were safe. My wife was yelling at me to climb over. I closed up the car and scrambled over the barrier, expecting our car to be swept away at any moment. We stood there, the three of us in the darkness and the growing chill of the evening and wondered what next.

A set of lights appeared in the nearside lane and started to slow, then its hazard lights began flashing, and out of the gloom appeared a large motorway service truck, the kind with the big flashing arrow on the back, warning approaching traffic to move over. Rescue at last. Our saviour called a tow truck and an hour later it arrived and we were all soon jammed into the confined space of the truck’s cab, my wife in the back and me on the seat next to the driver with Petra on my lap. The driver didn’t speak any English and my French is not what it used to be but between it and some Spanish that he knew we were able to communicate. He was looking at Petra.
“Does it bite?”
“No,” I said.
The driver then commenced to lean over and tickle Petra under the chin. She loved it of course but I was looking out of the windscreen. We were blasting along at some crazy speed in this battered old tow truck, with our car on the back and the driver seemingly only interested in our dog. The gods must have smiled on us at last, because we made it to the garage in one piece. As we pulled in to the yard the biggest German shepherd dog I’ve ever seen started to run around the truck barking like crazy. It was my turn to ask if she bites.
“No, she’s all woof, woof, woof,” the driver said. I hoped so.

It turns out he was right and after the ritual sniffing of Petra’s rear end it disappeared into the depths of the yard. I spent an hour trying to contact the service agent of my car manufacturer (I won’t say the name of the manufacturer but the car has a 7 year warranty) with no luck, while Petra managed to coax biscuits out of the garage owner’s wife and get her belly tickled. In the end I gave up and asked the garage owner, who was also the tow truck driver, if there was a hotel near by. He said yes and got on the phone. The next thing he was dropping us in front of a small hotel in a tiny village, miles from anywhere. We thanked him and he drove off leaving us standing there with a few retrieved belongings from the car and seemingly nothing else in the world.

The hotel owner greeted us with a smile, his name was Sebastian and thankfully he spoke excellent English. His hotel, was called ‘Le Bon Geours’ and we were in a village called Saint Geours de Maremne, somewhere in the depths of the Languedoc. We were too late for dinner but Sebastian made us sandwiches and I got my glass of wine (well more than one actually). He showed us to our room, we were exhausted so we showered quickly and climbed into bed, Petra climbed on and lay at out feet. My last thought before I drifted off – “At least we were still alive, and tomorrow was another day.”

And so it was, and the day after that, and the one after that too. After a series of increasingly unhelpful phone calls to the manufacturer’s agent, we finally got the car to a dealer. But that was it, no information, always good news tomorrow, we’ll call you but they never did, it was left to me to chase them around. So we were stuck, waiting for our car to be repaired, in this undoubtedly beautiful village, with nothing to do but sit outside the hotel in the sunshine.

Soon everyone in the village knew who we were, and our tale. They would stop and say hello to Petra, and with my halting French we would communicate a little. Each day, Gigi and I would sit out at one of the tables in front of the hotel, Petra lying on the floor between us, me scribbling away at a new story I had been kicking about in my head, and Gigi sketching ideas for her next series of paintings in her pad. Across from where we sat, were the church and the Mairie (the town hall), the traditional pillars of every French town. The symbols seemed to connect directly with a major element of my story, as indeed did the people of Saint Geours de Maremne, something I realised later as my story began to blossom. Before long people were waving to us as they passed, the local patisserie greeted us every day with smiles and the most wonderful pastries. At the end of the day we would wander up to the little bar at the corner where the welcome was always extremely friendly. The food in the hotel was excellent and everyone, from the waiters to the owner just looked after us so well. In the midst of all the corporate ignorance and downright obstinacy, we had found an oasis, surrounded by ordinary people, people who stood for traditional values, who cared about the little things in life, politeness, and concern for your fellow man.

It took two weeks before the dealer announced that the car’s engine was totally kaput and it would have to be shipped back to Spain for repair. By then my business opportunity was history so it was back home to Spain for us. We said goodbye to Sebastian with a strange feeling of regret and promised that in the future, when we were making this journey, our stop off point would be his hotel.

Here we are months later, our car repaired but not our relationship with the manufacturer. The events in that tiny village are now just memories but for me one thing remains clear in my mind. It’s people that matter and people caring about people is the most important, basic value in life. Brush aside all the corporate greed and insensitivity, the headlong rush of life, and you find it’s still alive, living in everyday, ordinary people – If you look for it. As John Lennon so succinctly said – ‘All you need is love’.