Guided by the unshakeable conviction that the best eateries are always situated by a war memorial, we elbowed our way into Le Moulin à Café, which playfully dominates the east corner of Rue Jean Moulin.
Whether John Mills was the café owner or merely a Napoleonic street naming celebrity from yesteryear wasn't entirely clear. Either way, in retrospect, shoving some elderly folk roughly into the gutter seemed an entirely fair way to secure seating as when the food came, it was delicious.
Meandering back to the car, there were wall tops to be traversed and bollards to be jumped from but all were callously thrown over when the play ground hove into view.
There were no pallid youths, smoking belligerently on the swings and it looked like a long time since any drug raddled adolescents had fired up beneath the monkey bars. This was a giant sand pit populated by a clutch of olive skinned cherubs, cavorting joyfully beneath of shock of cork screw curls.
Alex and Sophie dived in and for the next half hour there was nothing on God's earth that could have prised their tiny fingers from the apparatus.
Having already prematurely deployed the ice cream bribe, the only option was to ensure nil by mouth. The strength sapping afternoon heat gradually degraded the children's stamina until shade and fluids seems marginally preferable to being picked over by vultures.
Running the gauntlet of the car's superheated interior, we cranked up the air-conditioning and headed for home where there may not have been a lido to flop into but a small inflatable paddling pool was the next best thing.
Which is when the front door lock seized.
I have always had a knack for this sort of thing. Dennis Ackrill's heavy fortified tuck box presented little resistance to the probing pointy bit of my Swiss Army penknife. The perils of being locked out in the early hours have never held any fears for me, providing I had a spoon and a piece of string. And so it was that I nonchalantly parted the ditherers and prepared to demonstrate the dividends of a wasted youth.
But it wasn't budging.
On nodding terms with the lady next door and being only slightly embarrassed at having given her rather noisy cause to close her shutters in the 35 degree evening heat, the obvious answer was to scale the wall from her back garden and use the back door which was never locked.
Knocking politely, she answered whilst wiping the flour from her hands and ushered me into the kitchen with a look that could have been pity but might have been contempt. The difference was quite important as on the walls of the room hung every gun on the island. Rifles, shotguns, semi-automatic weapons; that the French like to dress stupidly and blast away at low flying migrants is no secret; that octogenarians still do it with an Uzi 9mm was surprising.
Hoping that my pigeon French was not tickling her trigger finger, I gingerly explained the predicament and, with slightly more haste that might have been advisable for a man of my age, scaled the wall, ignored the hernia and braved the serrated concrete lip that rendered further progeny improbable.
One cold beer later, the front door was open, the pool was full and the brush with neighbourly homicide was forgotten as date night beckoned.
 |
| It was busier. |
Whether John Mills was the café owner or merely a Napoleonic street naming celebrity from yesteryear wasn't entirely clear. Either way, in retrospect, shoving some elderly folk roughly into the gutter seemed an entirely fair way to secure seating as when the food came, it was delicious.
 |
| There was competition for a good seat. |
Meandering back to the car, there were wall tops to be traversed and bollards to be jumped from but all were callously thrown over when the play ground hove into view.
There were no pallid youths, smoking belligerently on the swings and it looked like a long time since any drug raddled adolescents had fired up beneath the monkey bars. This was a giant sand pit populated by a clutch of olive skinned cherubs, cavorting joyfully beneath of shock of cork screw curls.
Alex and Sophie dived in and for the next half hour there was nothing on God's earth that could have prised their tiny fingers from the apparatus.
Having already prematurely deployed the ice cream bribe, the only option was to ensure nil by mouth. The strength sapping afternoon heat gradually degraded the children's stamina until shade and fluids seems marginally preferable to being picked over by vultures.
Running the gauntlet of the car's superheated interior, we cranked up the air-conditioning and headed for home where there may not have been a lido to flop into but a small inflatable paddling pool was the next best thing.
Which is when the front door lock seized.
I have always had a knack for this sort of thing. Dennis Ackrill's heavy fortified tuck box presented little resistance to the probing pointy bit of my Swiss Army penknife. The perils of being locked out in the early hours have never held any fears for me, providing I had a spoon and a piece of string. And so it was that I nonchalantly parted the ditherers and prepared to demonstrate the dividends of a wasted youth.
 |
| Easy when you know how. |
But it wasn't budging.
On nodding terms with the lady next door and being only slightly embarrassed at having given her rather noisy cause to close her shutters in the 35 degree evening heat, the obvious answer was to scale the wall from her back garden and use the back door which was never locked.
Knocking politely, she answered whilst wiping the flour from her hands and ushered me into the kitchen with a look that could have been pity but might have been contempt. The difference was quite important as on the walls of the room hung every gun on the island. Rifles, shotguns, semi-automatic weapons; that the French like to dress stupidly and blast away at low flying migrants is no secret; that octogenarians still do it with an Uzi 9mm was surprising.
 |
| Kitchen Appliances, |
Hoping that my pigeon French was not tickling her trigger finger, I gingerly explained the predicament and, with slightly more haste that might have been advisable for a man of my age, scaled the wall, ignored the hernia and braved the serrated concrete lip that rendered further progeny improbable.
 |
| Why was I quick over the wall? |
One cold beer later, the front door was open, the pool was full and the brush with neighbourly homicide was forgotten as date night beckoned.
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