19 dec

Poor Merlin. She had to go to the hospital today. She had been in pain for one week. And although Merlin is not of the complaining, but simply of the struggling on, type, she was crying for help, mainly through the explosions of continuous backfiring.
We found her perfect hospital in Vidauban, a town close to our camping. There were quite a few doctors (mechanics) very interested in her situation. Everyone who spoke a little bit of english at the hospital (garage) was called in to come up with the evidential conclusion. The muffler had blown out. Auch.
Muflers these days are easily replaced. I’m thinking of a body part that is easily replaced – to keep this doctors story going – but I cannot come up with one. Knee, kidney, liver, it’s all way to serious. A new implant tooth? Even that is stretching it.
Anyway, forget about the hospital. Merlin was at the garage. And only if it would have been possible to get a new muffler. The mechanics called and called, but in the whole of South France there was not the exact muffler available that we needed. And that while I felt so comfortable going to France because Merlin, a Talbot, was originally a French car.
So no transplantation, but the whole thing had to be welded together. More expensive, because more labour intensive, and less durable. Ah well, anything to make Merlin stop screaming.
I had heard the screaming, of course, but my mind goes funny in situations like this. I recognize that sound, I think. I must have heard that sound before, I then think. If I have heard this sound before, and we are still happily driving, it must not be a worrying sound, I think finally. And happily I drive on. I worry, but reason my worries away. And then start worrying if there is not something else to worry about so I can reason it away. Keeps me busy.
Julie is quite different. Julie is the mechanic in our relationship, you know. When Julie hears something funny in the car she starts to babble about words that I do not even want to think about; carburetors, fuel filters, ‘the timing’, those kind of things. It resonates nowhere in my brain, but it makes it impossible for me to fool myself that nothing is wrong.
Somehow Julie, after using her dad’s voice regularly in the past few days, was convinced that the fuel filter was clogged. Although Julie is the mechanic in the family, she expects me to deal with it. I speak french, she thinks, which I happily leave her in the illusion, because she also thinks it is quite sexy (but not as sexy as russian, which she also thinks I speak sometimes!!). But of course I have no clue about all these car problem terms in french. I do not even know the dutch word for backfiring. Let alone all those other funny parts of an engine that just have to behave themselves in my opinion.
All’s well that ends well. And Merlin is not complaining anymore when we drive. We also added a little oil, which she liked to have after almost 4500 miles. We are ready to move on. Mainly to christmas in a lovely little castle in Burgundy. But first we’ll visit Senanque again, our favourite Cistercian abbey, having visited it three times before. In fact, Senanque has lost her place. To Le Thoronet, which is just a little more perfect in dimensions.