This week we are in Savoie near the village Novalaise. Savoie is one hour and fifteen minutes from Lyon. As Big Chris said in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, ‘It’s been emotional’.
Thursday morning, Charlotte shook me awake and yelled into my face ‘There’s a bat in the room!’ Listen, this was quite the wake-up. I’ve had friends (now associates) throw flour in my face, call me at 3am and demand I pay for their taxi, and worse, call my parents and tell them I’m in the clink, but this was something else.
Charlotte put the baby on the bed and proceeded to chase the bat around the room. At first, I couldn’t understand what she was saying due to my earplugs and lack of glasses. The light was dim. I was dazed. For some reason, I was half-thinking, half-dreaming about Jacque Cousteau and his gorgeous red hat.
I was perplexed at the house-is-burning urgency of Charlotte’s demands.
‘There’s a bat in the room!’
Charlotte corralled the errant bat into the bathroom. She closed the door with a glint in her eye and a look of a mother who was not going to let a blood-sucking-bat near her baby and would employ any means necessary against this marauding mammal. I shuddered. Who was this savvy bat huntress?
In the chaos, I caught the baby as it slipped off the bed. Thank God.
Lost Property
On Thursday, in the village of Chanaz, we stopped for lunch at a park bench. Dazed by the heat, and the bat attack, I walked off leaving my bag next to the park bench. At home, I went to get the baby change kit. Uh oh. My bag was not in the room, it was not in the car, that means, it’s an hour away back in Chanaz, if we’re lucky.
We were exhausted.
Now we had to drive back to see if my bag remained. Tired from the bat attack, the emotional turmoil of almost dropping our son, I saddled up and prepared to drive back. Thankfully, Charlotte had the forethought to ring the Office de Tourisme. I waited as Charlotte made the call. Yes! Someone had found my bag and had agreed to drop the backpack at the tourist office.
Don’t Count Your Chickens Or Lick Your Eggs
Today, we swaggered into the tourist office to pick up my lost backpack. I even had a toothpick perched on my bottom lip and both thumbs looped through my belt loops.
Our hubris was rewarded with a closed door. Inexplicably, the office opened an hour later today. We waited silently in the plaza, dejected, a sense of dread rising. But our silence devolved into an argument as to whether bats were indeed mammals or just homeless birds (I was wrong again). At 11:05am, we corrected our gait, and cap in hand, entered the tourist office.
Sorry sir, your bag has not been handed in yet.
Mon Dieu!
At the time of writing (6pm Friday) the bag remained suspiciously amiss. Who would call the tourist office and tempt the owner with false reckonings of a rendezvous only to pull the carpet?
I considered the contents of my backpack.
A baby change kit with a motley pattern of skid marks
A soiled nappy in each outer mesh pocket with attendant soiled wipes
An ancient Kindle
A bag of baby toys including Teddy’s favourite toy (this was the real loss)
I had to consider the possibility that my backpack was simply too disgusting to hand in. Had the finder called the tourist office but subsequently lost impetus upon discovery of its sour contents? Reader, would you put this mess into your car and hand deliver it to the tourist office?
Cheese Please
We decided on cheese to ease our nerves.
A visit to the local cheese cooperative was in order. Our gracious host had recommended Coopérative Laitiere de Yenne to buy cheese straight from the teat. Savoie has has eight regional cheeses: Abondance, Beaufort, Chevrotin, Emmental de Savoie, Raclette de Savoie, Reblochon, Tomes des Bauges, and Tomes des Savoie.
We were going to try them all.
Little did I know, I was about to see a wheel of cheese sliced by a guillotine. And not only that, the guillotine would be laser guided.
Next week: We’ll let you know if my bag surfaces with it’s odorous contents intact.
A cheese vending machine! How French! Reminds me of the vending machines in Japan that dispense all sorts of things that would never occur to an American. Like umbrellas and sex toys...
Truly a fetid week.