WordPress had taken it upon itself to publish a paragraph in my name which started with a quote from Oscar Wilde. I am replacing it with nothing, although I may be moved to add something in the future.
‘Beware of any enterprise which requires new clothes’ Henry David Thoreau
I drive to M. Aimé s place at the agreed time, but I am clearly a little early because he is peeing in the garden as I illuminate him with my headlights.
I follow him into the house. It turns out that our first task is to call a number and ascertain from a recorded message whether the truck carrying our newspapers is on the road yet.
While we wait, M. Aimé eats toast dunked in a big bowl of black coffee. He offers me some, but I get away with just a biscuit. We have to whisper because Mme. Aimé is asleep in bed, I’m afraid I keep forgetting.
Eventually, we leave, in a no frills Citroen from the 1980s.
The truck is still a no show, so we wait with another deliverer, in the kind of huddle that makes me think of Resistants waiting to blow up a bridge.
And, enfin, we are on the road!
We take the first roundabout the English way, M. Aimé is quick to tell me that none of the usual rules apply to us.
Stop signs, pff. Route barrée…not to us it isn’t! And seat belts, forbidden, by an arrangement with the Gendarmes. It feels very weird, like being naked in the car, but I dare not disobey, because when my hand sneaks to the seat belt, M. Aimé shouts “Non!”
The next 5 hours are a jumble of impressions of tree lined lanes, dirt tracks, letter boxes, and the more welcome newspaper tube.
I have no idea how I will ever remember any part of this delivery route. It is beyond bewildering. I fold 181 newspapers and hand them one by one to M. Aimé, who hops out of the car and disappears into the darkness.
On one occasion I shine my torch on him, to better see the letter box, but he is peeing again, so I turn it off quickly.
We see a hedgehog, some squirrels and a hare. And dawn breaks, eventually, as we bump along the final green lane which ends very surprisingly, with a view of my car!
I am pixy led, I don’t know where South or even Up is, and we are going to do it all again in 16 hours time.
I drive home and I’m asleep within a minute of falling into bed.
I’m always on the lookout for work. Since I ran from my place in the world of salary-paying employment, I have let Fate throw me into bizarre and probably unsuitable positions, and I’ve learned a lot.
So, when I found a job advert tempting me in a local café, of course I took a photo.
“Wow!” I was already imagining it.
“How cool would this be! Driving around the countryside through the night, grooving under a starry sky with deer and hedgehogs as my companions.”
I didn’t really give much thought to the substantive task, ie the delivery of a local newspaper to folk living in the back of beyond. Having already debuted as a telephone directory deliverer in SW Ireland, I pretty much assumed I could cope with any such activity.
I nearly fell at the first hurdle. The number I called directed me to another number, which was given in such a delightfully impenetrable Breton accent that it took me nearly an hour of listening to the recorded message to actually get the correct digits. The name was still a mystery.
Finally, I set up an interview. Well, I call it an interview. M. Aimé greeted me like a friend and waved away my attempt to show him my driving license.
“I trust you” he shouted, “and I don’t want to see your Social Security number, or read any references”
“When can you start?”
In retrospect, this should perhaps have given me pause for thought. There was no queue of applicants, I was in a field of one.
We agreed that I would accompany him for 3 nights to learn the route and letterbox locations.
We would start the following day!
This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.
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Moonlight in My Life