I did 5 gigs in 8 days, followed by a 2 month break, until it starts up again.
I took a quick trip to England and took the ferry from St Malo to Portsmouth as a foot passenger, spent just over an hour at the terminal in Portsmouth, and came back.
I met up with Louise (my daughter), had a cup of tea and a chat, then she gave me instructions on how to drive her old car that she was giving us, before getting back on the ferry.
It’s a 15 year old Mazda MX5, which, to the uninitiated, is a 2 seater convertible sports car, very impractical as you can’t get much more than a loaf of bread in it (although my baritone sax will just fit behind the seats), but is fun, especially when you take the roof off and drive through town.
It really irritates people, as we moan we are hard up, then drive a car like that.
Little do they know it is a freebie. Secondhand cars in France are expensive, and for some reason you cannot get anything which is driveable for less than a thousand euros, so now we have to sort out a French carte grise for the car. This involves visits to the Préfecture at Lannion, and the car will have to pass a “controle technique“.
My Boxer van passed with no problems earlier this year, but the mechanic gave me a lump of rusty metal which looks like the joint between the chassis and a cross support under the engine.
The van is fine, he told me, and that aspect doesn’t come under his remit for failing, but he warned me the engine could fall off its mountings!
