Aug 18
We both slept late, and it is apparent that we are taking some French mud home with us, since I can’t get E’s pants clean. I guess when you throw much from a French castle…it really sticks. It somehow seems vaguely like something from Monty Python.
We met my friend Carol for lunch. She and I were best friends at the end of high school, and into university. The last time I saw her was in 1978 – I spent a summer camping in England and she was still living there. Since then we’ve somehow both turned into grandmothers. I was curious to see if we would even be able to recognize each other, but we had no problems at all. She’s a little thinner, and I’m a little less so. We caught up on each other’s lives and families…and then talked about our great dreams at the time, and how reality was somehow different that we ever thought it would be. Not worse, just different.
We ate too much, and talked all afternoon. Fortunately, Eunsol, who was playing a game on her phone, suddenly remarked on the time, and we had to practically run back towards the station for her to catch her train back to Nantes, where she is staying with her daughter and new grand-daughter.
It was a truly lovely day. We finished it off by strolling down the street after we saw Carol off, and finding a street vendor selling crepes with Nutella…one of E’s favourites.