A weekend adventure....

Now, there comes a point where you think towels really should be thrown in, resignation should rule, just accept it boy, mundane never happens to you.

Life has just overwhelmed me.

Lets' recap; for the last three weeks we have been trying to get out to Brittany to check on the house and make sure all is fine.

For two weeks the ferry weather has stopped us. 3 weeks ago, excitement mounted car seats removed, text message and ferry canceled. 2 weekends ago I looked at the weather and thought there was a real chance nothing would be happening on the Saturday night so I canceled before they did. Naturally, so it turns out, all sailings went through as per schedule.

This weekend just gone arrived at the end of a week of occasional phone, rare Internet and BT saying they would repair it but no indication as to when.

Our life was a procession of BT line vans up the drive, each engineer spending hours: opening connection boxes, up poles, replacing wires, reneweing joints, on average about 4 faults per call. Each call ending with a good line test, followed by a by a snap, crackle, pop on the line and a total lack of internet.

Some repairs lasted ohhhh hours, one broke down while the engineer was still driving away up the drive.

This went on against a background of social care, big D we discovered by accident no longer has a social worker. She stayed a month, decided she was not happy, gave in her notice then went home sick.

Contact has turned really complex, who was dealing with it for him we asked, the answer was no one.

Whoever this "no one" is they have been not dealing with it for a few weeks now.

Wednesday we decided we could wait no more for news of the revised contact arrangements for big D so we went and asked the complaints officer to organize them. No doubt that's another star for us in the popularity stakes..

This on top of our refusing the minutes of the last stat review which had been the subject of a good massage to make the garden look rosy.

Thursday it's own excitement with children everywhere, tintinabulated the phone: twas young D whose social worker was picking him up after school, only he hadn't.....

D would get in a car with an anyone, but had the good sense to phone home, this prompted wild alarms and a rush to get school to find him and get him safe before he walked under a car or some such like thing.

So anyway I roared off to pick him up and the head of the school was delighted in an incandescent sort of way.

Next morning, Friday, off went the management on auction bent, leaving me in charge of Plugeot preparation.

Seats all removed and a buzzing in the pocket, text message: Brittany Ferries regret that, due to bad weather......

Turns out that the Bretagne was in Roscoff unable to sail so they had pulled the plug on the Friday night sailing from Plymouth but, we could sail into Cherbourg, a mere 150 miles the wrong way. As these things go; an offer akin to being told you could not have the gourmet meal but you could have an enema...

Trip off then - again.

Of course now we were seriously out of coffee and it was crisis time.

A check of the diary and no way we could go again before Xmas.

Problems problems. As they say.

A quick check and it turned out, the St Malo ferry was an option.

Right.....

ALL this meant was get to Portsmouth by 8 not Plymouth by 10.

Or put another way, completely rewrite the child care plan, re draught the afternoon and pack everything we had left to pack in the next 10 minutes.

Up the drive we exploded picked little D up from school and blew up the M4.

Daycastle and drop off at grans then back on to the tortured motorway system.

Still the GPS said we had plenty of time, only use it to estimate ETA these days.

Weather?

Oh yes that was great, Noah level rain and wind and rain and wind.

Just to add to that, a trucker had a sleep moment, nothing like a 38 ton artic veering into the outside lane as we overtook him, to help you "concentrate".

This was a really unpleasant motorway trip.

But we got there, on to the good ship Pont Aven.

One of the good things about Brittany Ferries is the posh restaurant, best value ever.

A three course meal for under 18 pounds.

Unlimited first courses, a lovely hot meal and unlimited desert.

Sensibly, (????) we had prepared for this by skipping breakfast end everything thereafter, even then we struggled to do it justice.

Mind you, taking Branwen in there could bankrupt the ferry company!!

The crossing, oh my the crossing. The Pont Aven uses some form of jet drive and, in the rather choppy seas this would cavitate, that means suck in air not water.

You would know it was doing this when the whole ship would shake and there would be the most tremendous banging. It seemed to do this a lot.

Couple this with taking the seas at about a 40 degree angle and you had a vessel that corkscrewed across the channel making the most appalling din.

If you are thinking this might not have made for a good nights sleep you would be almost psychic..

So, unrefreshed we reeled off the ship and made the trip down to the house.

St Malo is a lovely old town, the weather lightened and we set off for the South.

The road over to Pontivy is vastly improved and much updated, something we soon recognized as the GPS came to the conclusion I was driving across fields and started insisting I drove on roads it knew about.

Still, it took not a lot of time to get to our house and soon we had the door open and realized we had been burgled again. Must have been in the last month as all was secure back in September.

Break out a selection of GG tools and my cordless drill. I soon had the windows boarded up and everything tightly screwed closed. They will still get in if they want but this time they will have to struggle a bit.

Feeling a bit jaded it must be dinner time...

Up to les Trois Marchands. 4 courses €11.50, a simply fantastic meal that I struggled to pack in on top of the remains of the day before's feast, still I managed somehow..

Management, God bless her decided I had done quite enough driving, or was that too much wine, but anyway she placed me in the passenger seat.

I think this might have been an error, Lack of sleep, lack of familiarity with the plugeot, which in turns lacks the fleetness of foot of the xantia, combined with driving on the right made for an "interesting" trip.

In St Pol I absolutely insisted that I would drive......

Car loaded with the weeks shopping plus several months coffee and enough wine to ensure a festive yule and we parked up in the ferry terminal and went for even more food in town.

There are many restaurants and creperies in Roscoff, some of which are quite well known. Ty Sauzon in Roscoff is where the locals go for crepes, presided over by an elderly patriarch, always immaculately dressed, trousers boasting a razor crease shoes a mirror polish. Crepes there are simply to die for, though too many and you might too... Having spent an unfeasible amount of time on food over the weekend, we admitted defeated after the second.

Reluctantly we walked back to the ship through the chill night air with only the odd hint and wisp of rain to soak our spirits.

An hour in the dismal terminal soon passed and we mounted up the plugeot and set off for the ferry. Without a ticket.....

Management was confident it would turn out we were booked on to the ferry in St Malo, Cherbourg, or somewhere equally far away; but no, everything went well and on to the ship we went all was fine.....

Or not.....

"The captain regrets to inform you that due to bad weather........" our usual jinx had struck. Or had it, no, the crossing had been delayed so arrival would be delayed so, glory be, we could stay in bed an extra 2 hours next morning - this was the sort of thing we wanted!

Silly me....

The delayed crossing set off and with management and I ignoring the building plank wide berths in our cabin we spread a couple of duvets on the floor and went to sleep.

Midnight passed, lines were dropped and with a slight stir that barely broke the tiredness, the ship was at sea and we slumbered on, but not for long.

"Thud", my head hit the bed, "smack" my feet hit the door. As the vessel pitched into the substantial seas management and I slid hither and thither with various bits of body making contact with various bits of cabin.

Of course this was not consistent, occasionally things would calm, just long enough for us to drop into slumber then: "thud".

By morning however we had managed to snatch ohhhhh at least a few minutes sleep so it was off the ferry and away for home.

The trip back was quiet and uneventful, joyously boring even.

Home and discovery that the phone line that BT assured us was "working fine" had been out all weekend. So we had a houseful of young people who had been separated from Face book I player and you tube, which we all know are the essentials of life!

Still, I could always phone ~BT in the morning and they would be round to sort it straight away.

Well, as I write this, it's Friday, another Friday, another eventful week has passed and I think we might have the Internet back on again.

I had better hit send before that changes.....

R