Bread, Cheese, and Wine

I went to France to eat bread, cheese, and wine. I carried everything I needed on my back, because I had no car. We took the train to Portsmouth, and walked to the ferry port.

I took a tent, some clothes, some cooking equipment, and a beautiful browned-eyed woman with curly hair, I had just fallen in love with. We didn’t have any money, but living off: bread, cheese, and wine, and spending your days making love, and swimming in the sea, was very cheap.

         One day we decided to take a bus far into the countryside to see a local corn maze. We took some euros, and left our main stash at our tents, in case we lost it. We thought we had enough, but the maze rinsed us for a large fee, and then even more for water and ice cream. Our bus tickets were valid for two hours’ travel and they had run out, because we wanted to get our money’s worth out of the maze. We didn’t have enough money for the bus back, and our water was running out. We were out in the boulder smooth Brittany countryside. It was hot and beautiful, but the beauty was lost on me, as I began to panic. I could not speak French. I had learnt how to order beer, cheese, bread, and wine. I took a glance at the phrase book on the ferry over. Three phrases stuck in my head: I could say:

“Je suis anglais, je suis perdu, je suis désolé,” which translates as:

“I am English, I am lost, I am desolate.”   And anyone could tell you, that if a patriotic French person heard you say: “I’m English, I’m lost, I am desolate,” they may laugh inwardly, and point you in the direction of a ten-mile hike to the next town. But not all French people hate the English. And a kind man took pity on us and gave us a lift to the nearest town, and we had just enough in small change to get back to our camp site. Our tame slice of a French adventure made us hungry. That night we ate pizza and drank the local rose sparkling wine. We didn’t stray too far from our base after that, we didn’t have to. We found a little hidden beach and swam there every morning before lunch.