Homeward Bound

Whilst our motley band of misfits slept the day away in the cool shade of the woods, and Antoine valiantly stood guard puffing on Madame Grognonne’s pipe to keep the flies at bay, there happened to pass, not far from them, the figure of a young lad intent on his duty.

It was none other than the lost and grubby figure of Jean Luc Perdu, carrying in his satchel an urgent telegram from myself ,which was sadly by now somewhat ragged and stained owing to his unhygienic habit of storing his baguette and bloater paste repas in his satchel along with his mail.

Little did he know that had he but chosen to rest his velocipede under the trees and taken the opportunity to perform some much needed ablutions in the clean waters of the stream he would have stumbled across Madame Grognonne, the rightful recipient of the telegram and thus saved himself several more days on the road.

Of course had he come across Madame Grognonne, there in the woods, he would have very likely not continued along the road to Paimpol and therefore perhaps never had the opportunity to make the intimate acquaintance of one Fleur Fleton a friendly fish filleter who introduced him with to the delights she usually reserved solely for the entertainment of members of the Breton fishing fleet, before sending him on his way back in the direction in which he had come. So overcome was he with Fleur Fletons and her fishy tales that, very soon after delivering his bloater paste stained telegram at Chateau Loufoque, he returned to Paimpol and bound himself as a cabin boy on a cod fishing boat sailing for the far flung shores of Cape Breton in Canada where, having discovered that due to an unfortunate inner ear imbalance he was ill fitted to the life of a sailor, he apprenticed himself to a fur trapper called Finnius Finnigan and eventually married Finnegan’s fine daughter Fenoulla. That however is another story altogether.

Anyway, I digress. As the day began to cool and evening fell the party reassembled themselves and adjusted their disguises, not easy in the case of Loic whose backward facing foot had become inexplicably tangled in the widows garter elastic, then, having eaten a restorative repas of herring fillets and anchovy paste tarts washed down with the remains of the cider, they resumed their journey homewards with many a backward glance fearing with every turn of the carts squeaking wheels that they the perfidious port policemen at Paimpol may even now be pursuing them .

The night being cold, all except Jacques, who was driving the creaking cart, took refuge in the back lying huddled together on top of the sacking in the rear gaining what heat they could from each others bodies and the festering fish guts, which although they make excellent organic fertilizer for the garden do not make particularly desirable bedding. Happily, none of them were discerning characters and were not ,therefore, greatly discomforted by their odiforous mattress although Loic did take the precaution of removing his twisted limb and hanging it over the side in order to avoid further petticoat entanglements and the danger of the joints becoming seized up with sardine scales. There was I am sure many an unfortunate traveller that night who felt their time had come seeing the creaking cart go past in the mist its back piled high with bodies.

On reaching the outskirts of our village the cart stopped with the intention of allowing Antoine to dismount and make his way across country to his home unseen. However he slept so soundly that none had the heart to wake him , and it was in fact lucky for them they had halted for in doing so they narrowly avoided an accident when a small but swift dog cart, its drivers muffled and travelling at speed shot past them unseeing and would have almost collided with them had they not been parked under the protective branches of an overhanging chestnut tree. Who could it have been rocketing past at such urgent velocity and at such an early hour? Fearing they had been found out and suspecting the worst they travelled onwards in silence choosing the little used roads until, as dawn broke the sky with its first shards of tentative light they arrived, Chez Nous ,to find some other person had arrived before them and the door to the silent house stood open...
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The photograph is of none other than that of Finnius Finnigan, future father in law to young Jean Luc Perdu and Grandpere to all the little Perdus that Jean Luc and the fercund Fenoulla produced in the way of offspring, including Fanny, Florence, Fabian, Francois, Felice , Ferdinand, Phillipe and last but not least poor little Elodie . Early on in their marriage they made the sensible decision to ensure all their children were given prenoms starting with the letter F so as to save on the the cost of name tapes for their clothing. Poor little Elodie however was the exception and was named after Jean Luc’s maiden aunt whose crossed eyes she had unfortunately inherited. Phillipe was a spelling error, one that could have happened in even the best regulated families unless sensible precautions are taken.