We stayed in the peasant palace with the whole top floor to ourselves and six beds each. The other buildings were mostly roofs and the bank had a big mosaic of a wench on it. The shops were open for five minutes a week.
The site was placed between a lake and a prison for screaming geese. It was about the size of a large Tesco. We dug some holes and filled them back in again.
Then the drive to Hauteville. I used to work there. So did Shane. He is managing the site this year. I am not. We dug some holes and filled them back in again. What we filled them in with was better than what we took out of them. At one point one of the holes had to be moved to the left a bit. Then we went for dinner at the bar restaurant up the road along the beach round the corner. They know us and Hassan immediately made Geoff go behind the bar to pour us a load of drinks, flavoury ones with unusual aromas served in fancy glass hats. We drank them and some pizzas appeared, followed by more drinks and more pizzas and so on until everybody had had enough pizza and then more drinks appeared and I think he invited us to Morocco, I'm not very sure, one of his kids was there sat opposite with a shirt on looking like when will I see the end of all this hooting drudgery, they must think they're the magnificent fucking seven, and it turned out he was waiting to go bowling and had been since before we walked in unannounced and he was ten years old and we quickly departed shouting and demonstrating advice about bowling technique.
The next day we dug some holes and filled them in again, and there was a bit of a side-plot involving posts and screws and ropes and chainsaws and the sun behind us. Hassan dropped off some enormous ham baguettes and fizzy drinks and glasses. When we'd finished things off we went back for a meal, he'd bought us white fish, I can't remember its name, it was with potato and exactly right and there was a lot of wine and some beer and some whiskey and it became extremely difficult to leave.
Then the drive to Savane. It's almost the length of France. The length is like the width but longer. It took about forty years and the satnav lady has a patronising voice, did they hold auditions for it or did they already know just the woman. We went to a very tense service station and ate cheese. My phone stopped working while I was right in the middle of something and I realised the charger was the length of France away and I went beserk to myself and then calmed down angrily and then relaxed.
