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Day Thirty-Three: Rachez Your Volets

Am installed on my bench at the Boulevard des Pyrenees. Did you know that turtle doves make a hideous noise like malfunctioning squeak toys when they land? Now you do. The first time I heard it, I thought it might just be one individual with indigestion, but am now in a position to declare it a Habit of the Species.

Have discovered that the best way to while away the hours of lunch is, after gnawing off as much of my pain de poulet crudite as I desire, to do my journal writing. Most of yesterday's entry was done right here... and then I have more time and energy to write other things at night.

Not much so far today. Got in too late to start the Musee des Beaux Arts, so I moodled through a few bookshops, hoping to stumble on a good "foreign language" section. No such luck. I wish, I wish, I wish my French was better. I pine for that biography of Gabrielle d'Estrees, of Marguerite of Navarre, of Gaston Febus. I did plump for a general textbook on Bearn -- topography to literature, soup to nuts, pamphlets on the archeology of the Aspe and Protestant chapels in Bearn. I think the order of events now is to moodle off to church (thank God they don't close those for lunch), and then a leisurely walk to the Beaux Arts...

(Later) Well, the Musee des Beaux Arts was nothing but a typical provincial art museum -- damning enough description, I think. I scooched around pretty quickly and turned my attention to the delightful question of cadeaux. Bagged some super goodies and headed home in intermittent rain, under the kind of bruised sky that makes you understand what Turner was on about.

Thought I would have a little adventure by taking a slightly different road to L'Hopital St. B. -- got somewhat more adventure than I bargained for by getting mixed up in that death-lane-to-Barcus again. Sure, doing a Jayne Mansfield with a haytruck would be a splashy exit (in more ways than one), but I'd prefer to schedule it forty or fifty years down the pike.

Anyway. Reached here about 4:30 and tackled the greatest challenge of my bilingual career -- assembling an official French postal box by instructions. Sure, go ahead and tell me what you’d do when requested to "Rachez le volet sur les hassures." Had successfully rachez'ed everything and filled the box with goodies to send home, by the time the cows came home. One sturdy heifer, finding herself well ahead of grandpa and the other girls, relieved her existential loneliness by standing in the middle of the street and regaling us all with a very soulful rendition of "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Cow." When she saw I was watching, she turned self-conscious and headed back to find Grandpa.

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