Some things you do learn during a life long, 20 year old relationship. There are things you do not well together. Like fixing leaking caravans. Today was specified as the fixing the roof day. That meant I had to be out of the way, because my fast, quick, superficial healing methods don’t resonate well with the more sober and structural sound approaches of my wife and daughter, who do gang together when the occasion demands it.
I knew my role. Disappear. But not before I could have made myself a little useful. I talked to the guy which I considered the sheriff of the county hall square where we had been staying for a few rainy days now. The main reason I thought this is because every other hour he would get his squeegie out and clean the toilets, even when nobody would have used them in the time in between.
No, he was not in charge of this area, and no he did not have a clue where I could find a ladder to attack our leaking roof. He did give me the french word for ladder, I even had him repeat it a few times, but I still managed to forget it right away.
He gave me directions to someone in this village that could help me. But I had different plans, now that I knew he was not related to the Gestapo of Juzennecourt. In the corners of the town square there was all kinds of material that could be used for our building platform. My new friend, the not-Gestapo-frenchman even helped me to get the different pieces of building material over to our camper. With a promise of rain I even ran the camper under a roof in the corner of the village square.
Then I was off, leaving the real work to ‘mes filles’. I was planning to go and see the old abbey church of Montier-en-Der, which I had read about in the book Millennium by Tom Holland, an english guy, in the morning. I drove off on a road that wasn’t listed on our French road map, but it was clear that I was directing towards the town of Vignory, where there were also some Romanesq remminascances, according to the map where I had coloured the towns that where mentioned in an ‘Atlas of the Romanesq world’.
Come to find out this town of Vignory was a real treasure, with one of the oldest remaining medieval churches of France. It looked splendid from the back, and inside still had the sobriety that makes praying possible, if you would know how to do it. Julie and I were at St. Peter in Vatican a few years ago. That is just 16th century Disneyland for catholics. The church of Vignory is still too grand though. I can’t wait for the real small Romanesq churches of Poitou and Provence that I remember fro movies like ‘Jean de la Florette’.
I went on to Montier-en-Den. Every village was a sllepy version of a wonderful Snowwhite that was just waiting for it’s Prince to kiss it awake. I sped on though, sometimes stopping to take a picture of some dying sunflower field, finally finding one that was unquestionably dead. The church of Montier was ok, being completely rebuild after WWII when the Germans shot it down. It had some amazing windows that were added in 1993, but really have the atmosphere of a sober Romanesq church.
When I came home, the roof was fixed, at least that’s what we believe till it will rain again. Les filles did a wonderful job, we got some internet connection again, being not able to detect the Orange hotspot somewhere on this damned square and even got a french phone. It is clear. We are ready to roll on and conquer the rest of la douce France.
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