Normandy, May 2006

The Ryanair flight from East Midlands airport to Dinard in Brittany was uneventful and on time. Our house is about two hours drive away and the entire journey, door to door, takes only five hours. A lot less than the ferry from Portsmouth to Caen. Dinard ‘International' Airport is very small by most standards. It is too small even to have the normal luggage carousel. Just outside the tiny baggage reclaim hall, the luggage from the plane is put onto one end of a conveyer belt, enters the baggage reclaim section and, 15 metres further on, falls off the other end - unless you are quick enough to pick it up first. Just a few days after my operation in February, Heather came into my room at Papworth hospital to tell me that she had had a telephone call from the mayor of our commune in Normandy. Ostensibly it was to inform us that our next door neighbour, the ‘peasant' lady, Mme Leroulier, had died at the beginning of that month. In fact, he had been asked by her family to ask us if we were interested in buying the house from them. As a consequence, I wrote a fax to the mayor explaining where I was and why, therefore, we could not commit ourselves to do anything about the house, but at the same time passing on our condolences to the family. The house is now empty but Mousse, the dog who used to run around her tiny garden all day, barking endlessly at all the passers-by going along the lane, is now being looked after by the tenant in the field next to us. We always had a good relationship both with Mme Leroulier and the dog. Indeed, the dog used to know that it was us when we turned into the lane100 metres away from the house and never barked. But I was never happy with the apparent disregard of the French (including our neighbour) generally for their dogs. Apart from very expensive pedigree dogs, they are regarded as any other animal and kept outside in all weathers. To see our little friend Mousse standing there shivering and wet was very upsetting. On various occasions I contemplated kidnapping him and bringing him back to England for a better life. Now, although he is tied up some of the time, he is mostly free to run around the entire field and can commune, if that's what dogs do, with the goats, turkeys, sheep and chickens which the man also keeps there. He seems a lot happier and barks a lot less. Leaving to go back to the UK obviously gives Ryanair a great problem with its half-hour turn-round time. There is only one hand-luggage x-ray machine and so the time taken for the Boeing 737's up to 200 passengers to pass through is considerable. As a result, the airport PA system starts issuing threats to passengers, at least an hour before the incoming flight even arrives, that they must get to security and go through to the gate. The second time you use the service, of course, you know what's happening and so you don't leave your croque-monsieur half-eaten in the cafeteria and rush down the stairs - only to take your place in a very long queue of similarly fed-up and under-fed passengers. Is it perhaps a conspiracy designed to force you to buy the on-board food?

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