Leaving Chamonix
Well I finally managed to leave. The moment of departure has been looming since… well I guess the day I decided to rent out my chalet, which must have been last winter. The closer the moment got, the more stressed I became about it.
I had thought many times about the moment I would be driving off and taking my last glance at my chalet through the rear view mirror of the camper. I was expecting an emotional moment but it wasn’t. I had been too busy and stressed all-day and just to be able to jump in and go was a relief.
The drive was uneventful. I split it into 2 days because camper is not so fast and of course I don’t have to pay a hotel for a bed for the night. The ferry however is always fun. I find the crossing from France to the UK (or vice versa) probably the most interesting place ever to people watch. Why? I think it is because you have such a broad cross-section of society in one place. Where else does one see the underclass on a booze cruise seated next to members of the aristocracy driving the Bentley over to the family auberge in Normandy for a weekend of hunting.
The couple that interested me were…. yes you guessed it from the underclasses. A couple in their thirties, a small child and a delightful tattooed grandma to keep an eye on things. They were all sporting football jerseys. What struck me most of all about these people was that in a lounge bar which stretched the full beam of the ship, they were over one side, I was near the other side and I heard every dull word of their sorry conversation. The 3rd Duke of Winborne and his delightful wife seated no more than 10 feet from me were in deep conversation and I could not decipher a word of their debate. Why do these people talk at such a volume? It was like a cheap hifi that has had the volume knob broken. All you hear is a distorted cacophony punctuated by short heavenly silences. These people fascinated me. Just as one can’t help but fiddle with the painful wobbly tooth, I couldn’t help taking an unhealthy interest in their lives.
It is my guess that we all talk loudly, but only when socially acceptable, for instance asking what someone wants at the bar at a heavy metal concert. The difference for these people is that they are blissfully unaware that there are other people around them and make no attempt to adjust their behaviour. Bless them, I wish I could do that more often.
Fortunately my attention was led elsewhere. Just as I was about to ask the Duke how much fuel the Bentley would use on the journey to the auberge and had he not thought about a diesel supercar as “gasoil|” is much cheaper in France, Debbie came and sat next to me. Debbie, myself, and the ship’s engineer passed a pleasant hour together. Ship’s engineer was an unusually polite and humble Frenchman from Marseille who lived on the Isle of Wight – yes I thought it was strange too.
