You've gotta love the French, though sometimes it's a bit hard. First task today was validation of my bank card, which I achieved painlessly at the nearby bank, having failed to do so or even work up the courage to try by telephone in Australia or NZ, with or without assistance of a kind fiancée who I'm sure would have been glad to help. Anyway, that was good.
Then I sought an sfr (equivalent of Telstra) shop. It's very pleasant wandering streets of St Malo, which clearly the authorities want the visitor to enjoy as long as possible, to which end they provide very few street signs, which certainly adds to the mystery and suspense, as well as the duration. By a little management and some luck (and without functioning electronic navigation aids), I reached 37 rue Ville Pépin, St Malo, which the sfr website had proclaimed as the location of a magasin espace sfr. There was a super spiffy friendly sign saying that the shop had been relocated and giving the names of the lovely staff ready to serve me but not actually disclosing the new address. Perfect.
I then visited the lovely Vincent, who had had charge of Mathilde over the winter, and who was surprised when I said i wanted to transport her by trailer this Thursday. My email of 18 May to him had said, and I QUOTE: "I look forward to seeing you next week, say 25 or 26 May. I hope we can then finalise arrangements for a trailer to transport Mathilde to the mouth of the Seine on Thursday 28 May. I suppose that there are boat ramps in or near Honfleur so that Mathilde may be launched from the trailer." This made me wonder which part of the word Thursday he hadn't understood.
He also said that there was a teensy problem with depositing Mathilde in Honfleur, at the mouth of the Seine, as his trailer was not the sort to back into the water, and there was no convenient crane to drop her into it. Passing over the implications of the word "drop," I received with interest his proposal to deliver the boat to Deauville.
After further discussion and testing that my phone would ring when he called it, he promised to get back to me later today. It is now 1734 and I'm totally surprised not to have heard from him.
My afternoon task was to visit an existent sfr shop a good busride (€1.25) away. When trying to top the phone up on the website, i had got the message that it was owned by Monsieur Fi*** Ti***, détenteur de la ligne, who would have to agree. A little over an hour later, the problem was fixed, with the tiny qualification that I didn't have web access on the phone. I had asked the helpful Jonathan (who was not long back from a tour of Australia) to top up both the phone and the iPad, which can be done via coupons bought and printed at an sfr shop. It can be done, that is to say, when the shop's printer is working. So that was a bit of a fail.
After taking the bus back to Intra Muros, as the walled city of St Malo is charmingly called, I bought a coupon at a little shop. Also a sandwich. Back in the hotel, feeling that it had been a long day, I used the coupon to good effect, punching its numbers into the phone's keypad. I believed that my efforts had failed, as I could not immediately reach the interweb on the phone but, no, it was just that the service was slow. Well, I'm used to Malcolm Turnbull's internet performance.
The final step was to use my newly activated bank card to top up the iPad on sfr's website. This I achieved on only the second attempt, supplying my mother's maiden name. No, that's not a flight of fancy: I really did. It must have been the right one, because Pangloss (the iPad) can reach the interweb without using the hotel's wifi.
So that was the forenoon and the afternoon of the first day spent in the one place in France this year.
Next challenge, apart from arranging Mathilde's transport to the Seine or thereabouts: buy a gas cylinder for her stove. I'm sure it will go smoothly.
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