Ernest teased me after I had got into his maroon Peugeot 406. The last two digits 70 of his car plate number indicated that their official residence was Haute-Saône, one of the four departments in the region of Franche-Comté.
"We're having a horrible climate this year. The four seasons we used to have were over. Now it's either winter or summer. We're supposed to be in spring. But you see the temperature, less than 20˚C most of the time, and it's been raining often. We only managed to have our meals outside the house for a few days in early May. Hopefully you're going to bring some sunlight to our region..." Nicole, who was wearing a leather coat, complained about the weather.
On our way back to their house in the countryside, we stopped at a supermarket. Even though I had been to Carrefour in Malaysia many times, I knew that this time I was really in France: the language of display, the abundance of dairy products, the attractive appearance of bread, cakes and tarts, the greenness of salad leaves... Ernest and Nicole were already very used to Euro. I was still trying to figure out the prices converted to Ringgit. The cost of living was of course much higher in France than in Malaysia, and than if compared to six years ago in France itself. The new currency was first introduced in the French daily life in January 2001. I left the country ten months later, still nostalgic about the more colourful French Francs notes.
We carried the groceries in paper or wooden boxes which were provided near the counter and loaded everything into the car boot. French supermarkets no longer gave free plastic bags to customers for the sake of the ecology. I wished Malaysian supermarkets would care as much for our suffering planet.
We continued to follow the direction of Vesoul. After taking the Rioz exit, we headed towards the commune of Traitiéfontaine. The local Coccinelle supermarket with the red-green ladybird logo was no longer there. It had been replaced by the Belgian "Colruyt" with its monotonic orange logo.
"We are going to have TGV (high speed train) passing here soon. Trees are being chopped down. You see, a new road is being constructed over there..."
I was not really paying attention to Nicole's narration. After passing by Vieilles-Granges, we were already approaching Neuves-Granges. Upon reaching the house, so many old memories came back to my mind. Those landmarks and the landscape which were so familiar to me:
-the signboard,
-the windows and the narrow path,
-the stone wall between the garage and the neighbour's huge walnut tree,
-the wooden fence and the lonely tree,
-the grassy path and field,
-and the lovely garden.
"We've adopted a new cat recently. When it came to our house for the first time, it had already been castrated. We don't know whether it's a male or female. We just called it Bobbie."
"Where's the previous one?"
"You mean Jeudi (which means Thursday. Following the example of Robinson Crusoe and his companion Friday, Ernest and Nicole had also named the other cat after the day of the week it had appeared)? One day it just left us and has never come back."
But me, I was back to them again.
No comments:
Post a Comment