elections & electricity

Yesterday I stumbled through dark corridors behind my mainlaw as she showed me all the cupboards where her bluddy dog's sumptuous supplies are kept. She had just found out, she informed me, that by using less electricity she might help to save the environment. So she was not going to use her lights.
Then she & my father-in-law switched off their tv which is on 16/24, 7/7, (loudly), got into our car, we drove for 1 & 1/2 hours to Bordeaux, including a 20-minute spell with foot hard down, which is the only way to survive on the 'Rocade' around the city, to the airport at Merignac, where they got on a jet.

Bordeaux's airport is unhurried, bright & cheerful. There are plenty of signs, loos & pleasing notices saying Restaurants, plural. You can park right outside. We've never flown from there, being far more familiar with the tents & sheds of Bergerac-Roumanières, but as they shuffled off, I thought that I'd like to, perhaps this summer, as we brace ourselves for the usual heat plus the now-expected urban unrest.

This may not be noticeable in the calm of the rural Sud-Ouest but it may be wise to stock up at the supermarket. One cannot live on foie-gras, duck breast & the local appellations for ever, ( although this is pretty well all you can get in any local restaurant as French food has ossified since the 1960's, bar the nouvelle cuisine blip). If supply lines are cut by riots in the banlieus & strikes at the ports, following Sarkhozy's election, we need to ensure our supplies of sliced bread & sausages & bottled Black Sheep. These are all to be found on the shelves marked 'Produits Etrangers', along with noodles & soy sauce & Pataks curry sauces, Hooray! All a far cry from the day when, in a supermarket near Sarlat, we shrank & longed to look French as a pink Englishwoman in unsuitable shorts strode up & down the aisles, crying
"But they must have Branston's. Where's the Branstons?", after which we ex-pats promised never to raise our voices in that middle-class bray that so many English tourists affect as they de-ferry.

I watched Sego & Sarko on the debate. I know which one I preferred. The body language spoke volumes; one too rigidly calm despite a moment of being accused of losing their cool, one fidgettingly repressed, aggressive, turning a shoulder constantly to viewer & co-debatee & talking to the TV pundits. We're in for a rocky 100 days, je pense. Best to turn off lights, leds & all, head for Merignac & the hills.