Las aventuras de Audrey: la próxima entrega
- Audrey
- Aug 21, 2019
- 6 min read
A bit of a palaver...
Last time I left you the humans and I had been in the new flat for around a month. To remind you, I live with two humans one who cooks a lot who I call Cookie and the other one who wasn’t around much but is now I call Who.
There were a couple of days when Cookie and Who seemed to disappear they’d pop in to say hello but didn’t stay overnight. I missed them although I’d never let them know that - it was just I’d not got anyone to jump on in the night to see if they wanted to play - they usually don’t want to play when I jump on them and start making bread but it’s worth a try. Soon enough they were back, the flat started lurching again and I was in the black case.
When we stopped I could tell we were not in the same place. Gone were the houses and instead lots of those white boxes, in the distance white triangular things on this wobbly blue stuff. They seemed to glide along - all quite odd. We stayed there for a while until the tell tale signs started again, my seat was turned to face the big window, as was the other one.
‘Disconnecting the electricity’
'OK, have you turned the gas off?’
‘Yes, have you closed the vents?’
‘Yes’
‘OK, I’ll fill up with diesel and then we’ll attach the car’
‘See you at Super U’
We lurched along for while then I heard Who speaking
‘Call Raffik’ - Cookie started speaking
‘Hiya, are you alright, why didn’t you stop at Super U?’
‘The car park was too tight to negotiate to the pumps we’ll find somewhere else to fill up’
‘OK, find a lay-by and we’ll hitch up’
We lumbered along and Who was muttering under his breath.
‘Take the second exit at the roundabout’ said the woman, we lurched from side to side and came to a stop. Who got out and I heard Cookie’s voice but couldn’t make out what they were saying. About 10 mins later they both got into the flat and we started again.
‘Take the second exit onto the slip road’ said the lady who guides them.
‘Oh no look at that traffic I’m not going on the motorway we’ll go via Saints-Marie’ and so we trundled on. The lady seemed to be getting quite angry with them beseeching them to turn around but they didn’t listen and carried on. Eventually she told them to take the slip road onto the AP7 and Who said ‘we’ll take the peage now.’
We veered down this road, joined another one and slowed down
‘God we’ve joined this traffic jam’
‘How are we doing for diesel?’
‘We’ve got 137 miles and Palafrugell is 59 miles so we should be ok’
We trundled along quite slowly, I liked this as my black case didn’t move too much and it was smooth. The humans didn’t like it though they were chuntering unintelligibly in the front but I could tell they were unhappy.
‘Range 57 miles’
‘Toll booth coming up, get the token ready’
‘Look at that knob switching from lane to lane it’s people like him that slows everyone down’
It went a bit darker and there was a beep ‘Yay’ I heard them exclaim and we started moving faster although still quite smooth.
‘Range 92miles’
‘That’s better’
Time passed and we suddenly started slowing
‘Oh no more traffic’
I’m not sure who or what traffic is but Cookie and Who don’t like it. We slowed right down again only this time we moved a bit and stopped a bit - this seemed to go on for ages.
‘It’s taken us two hours so far and we’re not half way there yet’
‘I know it’s a complete pain, the peage should be free if you have to queue!’
Eventually,
‘There’s the toll booth, get the token ready’
‘Yep OK, I’m ready’
‘Why isn’t working?’
‘I don’t know it should be’
‘Try it again’
Parp, parp, parp there was a lot of horns blaring I’m not sure why.
‘Press the assist button’
‘I can’t speak French’
‘I’m driving I can’t speak to them’
‘Bzzz, Bonjour puis-je vous aider?’
‘Hello, do you speak English?’
‘A little, how can I ‘elp yoo’
‘Our Sanef tag won’t work - we entered the peage with it but it won’t let us through’
‘Yoor tag is not possible for yoor veehicle, you must pay €7.40’
‘There isn’t a card slot on the machine’
‘Give me yoor carrd nomber, I will payment take’
‘You take over he wants a card number I can’t speak French I’ll drive to the next service area’
Cookie and Who swapped over, Who spoke to the voice in the wall. I couldn’t work out was he was saying something like ‘sink, wheat, sero, twa…. all nonsense to me
Finally we started moving Who looked irritated and Cookie said
‘The range indicator has zeroed out, we’ve got no diesel’
‘It’s ok look at the dash the yellow light hasn’t come on yet’
There was silence for a bit then Who said
‘Well I don’t think we can use the sanef tag again’
‘We've driven through France using it, I don’t see what the problem is’
‘It’s because we have the car on the back.’
They seemed to settle down, we lumbered along
‘Yay we’re in Spain, look the range is 74 miles again’
Not sure of the meaning of this but the humans seemed happy.
The rest of the journey was uneventful they pulled off the autopista and stopped for some diesel it always smells funny when they fill up - I’m not keen on that smell. Who started driving again.
They got very excited when they saw signs for Palafrugell. The woman told us to ‘leave at the next exit and take the third exit off the roundabout’ we slowed down and lurched from side to side before stopping a few minutes later. Who said ‘we’ll unhitch here’ and they both got out the flat. About ten minutes later Who got back in and started driving, I presume he’d forgotten Cookie because he didn’t come back in.
We seemed to take a number of turns and travelled a lot slower, I was getting a bit restless as I’d been in the case just over 3 ½ hours. Who said ‘not long now Audrey we’re nearly there.’ Then we slowed right down, turned into this place called Camping Moby Dick and started going up a hill, twisting and turning. Who was muttering something - sounded like ‘I don’t like this’. Then we reversed and went forwards, reversed again and forwards.
Ring ring ‘Hi’
‘Are you OK?’
‘No I’m not, this place is cramped, I’m turning around I couldn’t see where reception is’
‘I’m at reception it’s by the little restaurant as you drive in’
‘This is awful, got to go, I’ll call you back.’
A human at the side of the road was shouting and raising his arms, Who got out the flat and spoke to him. Then he got in and reversed, stopped and then the human at the side of the road seemed to be lifting something and signalled Who. We started driving again.
Ring ring ‘Are you ok? Why did you have to go?’
‘I got caught in a cable which was slung from the trees, I had to reverse so they could lift it to let me through. I’ll be by reception in a minute.’
Who carried on driving and then we parked. He got out. A while later Who and Cookie got into the flat - he’d not left him behind after all but I’m not sure where he’d hidden him. They seemed to be following a human on a motorbike. Suddenly we stopped and started and stopped and started with voices shouting ‘si, si’ Who seemed to be getting flustered.
‘I don’t like this at all’ said Who, ‘we’re not level and even on the ramps we’ll never be level, and now the electricity has blown so we can’t use the aircon’
Cookie was making a phone call, I didn’t catch much but I did hear ‘good, can we take a look we’ll be straight over.’
‘They have spaces at Camping Kim’s lets go and check it out.’
They locked up and disappeared for about ¾ hour. When they got back they seemed happier, although for some reason I was returned to my black case - unfair when I’d only just got out of it. Then we were moving back and forth, back and forth, with Cookie outside shouting at Who
‘Yes a bit further forwards, STOP, now back, watch that tree, left hand down, forwards, right hand down, STOP’ and so on - they do say some weird things to each other.
Once again we were trundling down that hill under a very low bridge and back onto the road. In 10 minutes we’d arrived somewhere else. They seemed very happy. Apparently we were level with a good electricity supply and a nice size pitch. I noticed the little orange car was parked next to us.
Who seemed much more relaxed, ‘glass of wine?’ said Cookie.
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