Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [23]
On Thursday morning, we had croissants and coffee in bed and left at 9.00 for what we hoped was a straight 350-mile drive through the Loire and Perigord to the Lot.
But things have a way of happening unexpectedly, and we were not fifty yards from the hotel when the exhaust pipe broke in two. The sun was already high in the sky, and my French was not very confident as yet, and it was therefore a most frustrating two hours whilst we waited for a garage to repair the exhaust, gazing imploringly at small enigmatic Frenchmen, watching for the slightest trace of sympathy or urgency.
Eventually it was mended and we left L’Aigle at 11.15. Soon a warning light on the dashboard frightened us enough to turn off the engine and cruise downhill to another garage. We found that this light meant that our oil filter needed to be changed in the next 300 miles, but this was little consolation as we ground our way to the town of Montoire, where we bought bread and lunched in a hot and insect-ridden field. This was the nadir of our journey. We were only about 100 miles from L’Aigle, the car seemed to be cracking up, and the heat was making things even worse. But after lunch Thomas slept for about two and a half hours and we made good time, crossing the Loire at Amboise and reaching La Trémouille, well into Limousin, before stopping for tea. I decided that we might as well press on and try to reach Roques that night.
Roques is an old farmhouse made primarily of local limestone, and looks solid and attractive, with plain wooden roofs and floors. Downstairs there is a kitchen cum eating cum sleeping cum reception room with a large fireplace. Off this is the main bedroom. Stairs ascend to a long room, one half uninhabited, and the other half now inhabited by the Palins. It’s rather like a loft, with a dusty wooden floor, but a newly improved roof. Below the ground floor is the washing/bathing room. Again a long room, of which one half is tiled in local red tiles, with a recessed circular shower area and a double basin. At present they are awaiting the attentions of a M. Prunier to connect up the cold water, but hot water is as yet provided either by boiling or by the Baby Burco.
Eating and cooking during this hot, dry weather take place in the barn, which is open on one side and is swathed in early morning sun, which makes breakfast a great meal.
All in all, Roques is solid and simple. One is a long way from telephones and television, there is no water, but there is electricity. The silence is frightening, but the satisfaction of the solitariness after London is worth everything.
We eat well here and drink the local wine – and by local, I mean grown one mile away by the small farmer who used to own Roques, M. Lapouge.
Thursday, August 6th, Roques
The hot weather continues. It’s now a week since we left London and, apart from one stormy evening, it has been sun and clear skies.
Today I decided to go and visit the local médecin. This was mainly a result of Helen’s prompting, and by the continuance of the discomfort which I’ve been getting every time I pee.
I arrived at his house about 10.00 and his son was lolling about the garden. No sooner had I asked where the doctor was, than the youth motioned me to follow him and leapt on his motorbike. With him and his friend giving me a motorcycle escort, I proceeded in triumph for the 200 yards to the doctor’s surgery in the Boulevard Gambetta. Here I waited for nearly an hour and a half until the doctor called me in. His surgery was filled with cigar smoke. I reeled off my carefully prepared speech and all was well until he started to question me. ‘Quand vous pee-pee,’ he kept insisting, and there was I referring proudly to ‘la urine’. He was rather aggressive in the face of my blank incomprehension, and when I came away I had a number of incredibly complicated instructions, which I did not understand, and a consultation fee of 16 Francs – about 25/-.
It was 11.45 and I had