mind! blimey. don’t take much does it? I mean, what’s wrong with these people? you get them all jacked up with spangles and they’re hanging off the garderobes like petulant squids dangling thier hairdriers out the window watching the insurance claims pass by at 70 with that stupid whining noise going off that doesn’t get any nearer and sounds like they’re done a david copperfield with an alsatian. there. it’s stopped. no it hasn’t. yes it has. oh, for gawd sakes.
sit down there. yes, but it’s not raining yet. we’re going to go into this one then this one then that one and you see that one over there we going into that one cos he used to do it in one of those, right, so when we’ve done all that we can probably start dribbling up the 405 like cattle but until then I’ve got a couple of bristols I want to get my hands on and a rather impressive hind. turns out that was a right larf then and so thas roight mardy an all till loike what an thas on the huh int ut. imagine that. 16 hours screwing your legs into the wrongly position onto to find that charlie had moved it and so it wasn’t where you thouht it was so you had to put the kettle on and be done with it. must have been annoying though, right? I mean, bad manners innit like what yous are doing on that thas gonna be right blummun poxy now you git.
dave got the hump and so we careened around the compound in a chariot shouting out carpenters from the yellow pages and lobbing flapjacks into a fire bucket until the super parked his granada in the contraflow with the lights on and we got a flaccid beanpole to nod over the bar where the catflap used to be. I mean, there ain’t no sense in watering the pudding, so we got our sausages and tripped over to gibraltar for a swift one while the mastik was brewing. lovely
it was 11 years ago yeah we missed 10 so here we are its just like I remember it except that bit which I don’t really remember and we never actually went to that bit last time but I remember sitting there I think it was no there that was it wasn’t it and its even hotter if that’s possible but it feels like that to me so if we go up there we get to the belvedere right but I don’t remember this bit we must have just come straight up the main street before well we wouldn’t have been playing on the adventure playground then and looking for the toilets would we hahahahahahaha.
well look at that that’s nice where have you gone? no we’re not going to go in the caves because they’re rubbish even though you come out in the side of the sheer drop and get in a glass lift like charlie bucket although you don’t fly because if it flies there’s something very wrong and anyway we’re not doing that but I want to have a quick look at the sqaure and look at that view it goes on for miles its a bit like the view from down there but you see the difference you can see all the river from here, well, all the bits in the bit of the river that cingle isn’t the biggest but look you can see it all. I want a drink. there? here? let’s just go here. ok
chips and omlette. hmm. got any sandwiches? sondweech? jamon et fromage. oui, c’est bon merci. aah, come on everyone, drink it in. do you know, 11 years ago…oh, we have told you that. anyway, yes you can go and look at friendship bracelets but don’t upset that huge woman/man thing again or she’ll set the dog on you anyway what’s her/his problem we’re gonna buy something. she doesn’t know about the airport leaflet incident does she? how could she possibly know he’s such a fiddle and break risk. I just think she/he doesn’t like people. good job then, working in a shop. moan moan.
can I have some of that bread. that’s aireated that is. have we got any croissants? what’s that? what’s gruyere? can I have cheese? eeuw, that’s all red, look, it’s got red stuff coming out of it. is it? do you like that? what’s for tea? can I go swimming? but what if the alarm goes off. can you come with me. well, can daddy come with me? how long is it? oh, can I have one? what’s that? is that for us? I don’t like that. I have had it before, honest, and I know I don’t like it I had it at Bella’s house I did when I went there remember. honest. I did. when’s tea?
notwithstanding the fact that we didn’t get anything and now its like 1 pm so the whole country is asleep and we didn’t get anything yesterday because we were asleep and now its today and that chocolate bun doesn’t go 5 ways we’ll have to think about doing something tonight instead yes that’s right maybe we can go out that place looks nice maybe we could walk there but only if we don’t get as far as the observatory and daddy chooses that time to tell us that he’s only brought out 20 euros because he didn’t think they’d actually want to be buying anything so he had to run back in the 38 degrees back up the road back up the hill to the farm to get a new tshirt and more money and then, sod it, drive back down and park in town where everything’s closed anyway so we don’t even need 20 euros but this time we might so have you got any money. good. I know its hot we’re nearly there so who wants to go and see that funny metal person in that cafe where they give you tartazine for lemonade and you gag all the way through your baguette which was probably made by that fat bloke behind the bar who’s pointing his gun at the dog who’s snarling by the toilet which you’ll have to use because it’s the only one open I’m afraid so come on, let’s go.
ham cheese pasta melon apples grapes prunes danone red white lemonde vittel
it’s only 10 minutes down the road and it’s been a week already, yeah, I know, so why don’t we just do that? I feel like a quiet day after all and can’t be bothered to drive round for a hour trying to find my way out of a field of withered sunflowers somewhere between the buddhist pagoda and appelation controlée so let’s just take it slowly and we can even saunter if we feel up to it. there’s probably a bench there somewhere where we can sit all afternoon and watch the dutch come and go in their convoys.
rising the steps passing a couple of hopeless prams which probably weren’t designed for the 12th century we passed through the entrance gates and negotiated with a very french woman about the pricing structures which might allow us to have 2 of us and one of them at full but not them 2 as they’re under 7 but it says there famille which should include all of us right but that’s just 4 and there’s 5 of us you see and so should we get one of those and just pay for the extra 1, who is under 7 anyway, like we said, and, oh, right, it doesn’t work like that? pas de famille? deux adultes et trois enfant, mais, erm, les deux sont six ans et, elle, la, oui, la (zoe, come here, she wants to look at you), oui, bon, elle, la, elle a nuef ans, oui, um, c’est une biller de famille? non? deux adultes et trois enfants? pardon? libre? free? tout les enfants? ah! bon! (it’s ok Zoe, you can go away again now, she’s seen you) ok, deux adultes. pardon. et trois enfants? mais…
we handed over some money and she gave us an english guide book which was a photocopied affair in a plastic folder, much like the one we got at Marqueyssac which we put in our backpack and took home by mistake so we said we must not take this one home again which of course we did, adding to our new collection of english language guide folders for local attractions that we would leave behind in the gite so that the next people would take them thinking they are just free handouts and the people on the gate when they tried to pay would ask them where the hell they got that from. once inside it was obvious that they don’t have the same strict health and safety regulations over here as they do it english castles museums and monuments so we tied pieces of string around the children so that when they hung over the 2 foot high parapets we had at least a small chance of slowing their 50 foot drop to the valley below. it was also obvious that they were doing something akin to repointing on the upper courtyard which involved the tallest lorry-mounted contraption I’ve ever seen which was pumping cement about 100 feet up and over the battlements and about 50 feet into the roof area of the upper courtyard where monkeys were dancing around without hard hats and daft punk were playing harder, better, faster, stronger in the scaffolding. the upshot of this is that the upper courtyard was closed this year which didn’t seem so bad until you worked out that that was the very place that they film all the movies you’ve seen that they’ve filmed at this place and so you won’t get to see it and go ‘oh, yeah, that was that bit in les visiteurs II’ or ‘hang on, oh look, remember that bit in that james bond film’ and things like that so I got a bit grumpy and said I want to eat my sandwich NOW and so we stopped in the lower courtyard and took in the view though the very nice arched panorama and calmed down a bit.
there was still loads to see at chateau de biron, however, including a restored oak floor that you had to slide around on on small bits of felt under your feet, although we only realized that because other people were doing it, and there was naturally a nice graphic dungeon which was so dark (health and safety) that you couldn’t even see the small sign warning you about the small step you were about to take a small trip over which everybody did anyway. sam picked out everything ‘you see that that’s a rack that is that’s what they stuck people on and you turn those handles at the end and then that strrreetched people until all their bones broke and they came apart and all their guts flew out and look you see that that thing up there that that metal thing that’s a thing were they put bad people and squashed them in so their bones broke and they hung them out on big stick so they were still alive right and all the birds came and pecked their eyes out and stuff until they were dead and that that right you see that thing that up the back on the wall that right that’s what they used to tie people to you see those hooks at the end they tied their hands up there and then they tied their feet down there right see and so they broke all their bones, probably, I think, and they didn’t have any clothes on and they used to stick big bits of hot metal in them and when they weren’t dead yet they got a big saw and sawed them in half so all their guts flew out everywhere and they were like screaming everywhere and the dogs would come and eats their guts while they were still alive and you see that thing, ooh, listen, right, that thing is like a giant screw like corkscrew that is right but except they didn’t use it for opening bottles and stuff they used to put in on people’s heads and then turn that handle and it would crush their heads and their eyes would like BURST out and their guts flew out probably and all their bones got broken and you see that…’
I don’t know how he knew all that stuff. we don’t do that at home.
yeah so its in that little box you open it up right and there’s mr plastic head vegetable man with his pixie lute strumming the beach boys over a field of chaff, so that’s what its all about you see in them days they made their own entertainment and that you see is, well, you tell me, its a 6 foot idiot wrapped in fuse wire and one foot stuck in the past so I should imaging there’s something round here about geometric road alignment and bringing out your dead (I’m not dead yet) and see how clever they were? that one even has 2 tiers like that bridge what collapsed but I don’t think you’re supposed to touch that and, oh, never mind, look, its got a little button you press which transports you back to 1350 but with sennheisers on and an open bottle of vittel on the parkey.
well you get so much for the price don’t you? I mean, you might expect to get a bit of chainmail and some plastic bread or something but this is something else entirely. look over there. and next time we’ll be smashing hammers over the chisels of détant and snaring brick dolphins in sandstone nets until they start squeaking apolcalyptically about trains and we give everything to David who’s been scrubbing the plastic with his fingers again only for us to peel our skin all over the rim and leave a yellow detrius line over his hebrew symbolism he paid 3000 euros for but hey it lasts 8 years and so bob’s yer unkle. one day I’ll be back to poking sticks out the window at plebs and canvas taping the wing mirror but right now there’s another floor so let’s gawp at the orange boxes and give us a listen to that. it’s all in french. hang on.
we missed the 2:30 paint a cardboard bug face under a tree on the promenade slot and when we got there the tiny table covered in cut-out cardboard and poster paints was full of 5 year-olds with ribbons in their hair looking like something out of the summer mini boden catalogue and so they wanted to do it all the more but it was all being packed up at 3 so we said it was ok because we hadn’t even been the 2km up to the end of the garden yet and there was a brrriliant view there and anyway it was under the shade of the trees that way you see so let’s just do that and then we can come back and do this when it’s not so busy ok? as it turns out, it’s 2km uphill through the dusty gravel path and at the end there’s a rather well concealed mobile phone mast next to a wooden playground where you can climb on a dinosaur and swing down a vine and go round and round on a big round thing where there’s shavings all over the floor and a stone lookout that’s bizarrely cold but is full of 5 dutch people who all have calippos that miraculously haven’t melted which they must have kept in a tiny fridge they carry around in their backpack so it wasn’t all lost because now it’s downhill and round the corner so they can run all the way until their faces go #660000 and they collapse sous l’arbre and don’t want to do that painting anymore anyway. but she’s still there, cutting out fox’s heads from sheets of cardboard and lo, there’s 3 chairs and so everyone gets to have a go while I lay down on the grass and try to close my eyes while an italian baby is taking it’s first steps in front of the whole family tree and does really well to make it all the way over to where my sunglasses are and even better to step right on them. ah. well done! your first steps! grrr.
but we haven’t seen those mad bushes yet. where are they then? well, we walked straight past them when we went on the low path to the belvedere didn’t we? did we? yes. oh. so they’re down there. are they? yes. d’you know, I’m just too hot now, I can’t be bothered. we can come back another day can’t we. yes, but we won’t. yeah, we will. no we won’t and we have to walk past them to get out anyway so come on, let’s just walk slowly that way and we can get a nice cup of tea at the end. alright. where are they? that way. no, they’re that way aren’t they? no, because, look at the map, look, we’re here, they’re there, but we’re actually coming around this way so if you turn it upsaie down, yeah, right, see?
