The excellent journey started rather early due to Easyjet's eager will to provide the best value and the worst flight slots and I found myself unable to choose CDs that would sustain us on the way to the mountain that early in the morning. I don't know why but I saw the following in my CD box and thought I haven't listened to them in a while.
1.Madonna....
2.Cyndi Lauper...best of
3.Pet shop boys....actually, I dreamt about them the night before and I therefore had a compulsive need to bring that with me
4.Strokes
Flight was on time. Batman and I ate what polite Easyjet staff called a baguette with cheese and pickle relish, but was rather a cheese sandwich made out of that bread that has a glossy finish, like those plastic ones kids play with in pretend kitchens. I doubt there was any space to put the flour after all the E numbers to preserve it till 2008. Anyway...the baguette....and a bag of mini cheddars...a grand feast.
I washed it down with diet coke, 120ml can, I doubt such downsizing is even legal in UK.
Grenoble was cold and we swiftly found the rent-a-car...a black, scooby car, but new and rather pleasant so the adventure began.
A far cry from chavmobile that Batman drives and we are used to.
Roundabouts were fun. We managed to have a few turns on each panicking and deciding which exit we should take and eventually we prolonged scenic route by approximately 80 minutes. (This was later confessed by Batman although at the time he concentrated on turning sharp bends with one hand and pretending that he knows what he's doing )
There were some technical worries from the start, such as the fact we didn't think about needing winter tyres or chains and the blizzard was brewing up at the top, but the journey was peaceful, aided by Cindy Lauper's 'relaxing' voice.
While it was taking me back to my youth, when I was one of the more popular girls at my school, frequently dancing to Cyndi's songs at a schools disco, I could sense Batman was getting more and more agitated by the eclectic mix I brought and there was a moment when he requested me to take out the CD. French radio ensued and we were pleasantly surprised to hear Outcast sing Hey ya that we had one of those crazy moments when you have a little dance in a car. Batman surprised me by multitasking, his swift combination of dance moves involving both hands moving in a circular fashion as well as having a full control of the scooby car whilst driving uphill.
I rarely feel a wave of peaceful joy sitting in the passenger seat in chavmobile due to various reasons, to name but a few...having almost gotten killed in Brighton car park, us almost hitting a lorry at the big junction and frequently feeling as if my food is making a comeback...but I felt the joy while we had a little dance.
As we arrived at out secret destination, Batman tried, with and without me in the car, to park the scooby car up the steep hill covered with ice and snow but was unable. The car slept for 3 days under 2 feet of snow after that with all the fancy French snacks we purchased in supermarket we encountered on the way, which, in Batman's opinion smelled like a foreign supermarket but to me, a foreign girl, it smelled like supermarkets back home.
The time I spent with the true Catwoman, aka Batman's mum and her little Kittens was bliss. There were times when the kittens tried to overpower Batman but failed, times when I lost at "Four in a row" 3D, which confused me to no end, even though I was bent on hiding that fact...the times spent frolicking in the snow...
Batman's sisters, little kitty cats, were cute and sweet and if I lost at the game mentioned above and was rather useless on the slopes, be that in sledging or walking with snow shoes...I was a big hit with the girls and although I hate to brag, often there were fights about who will sit next to me at meal times. Batman was jealous, you could tell, but a man of his standing would never let that be known.
I think the tug of war reached its peak when I took time to paint my nails in glitter, blinding the little kittens with my style and flair. They were on my lap all the time.
There was the family cat...a real feline this time, a fat, ginger puss called Puk.
He deserved the right to roam the house and sleep in the chair by the fire because he evolved his bladder to the higher plain of control, whilst there was a cat, whose name now escapes me, which was eternally freezing at the windowsill, looking in and meowing every time someone looked at her. We even devised cruel games of getting up and looking at her whilst going towards the front door. She never failed to believe this would be the moment she would finally be admitted to the house again.
Clearly a lower mammal than Puk.
This idyllic life went on for few days, and then we had to say our goodbyes.
France, in a time zone which is an hour ahead of UK, managed to confuse Batman who set his alarm to 7 instead of 6 because he never amended his time while we were there, whilst I, a person that can fathom such Matrix shit, did well, programming it for 5am and rising promptly at 6 as planned.
Quick breakfast and we were on our way down the frozen slope { Catwoman's husband eventually managed to park the car up that frozen hill..( higher mammal?)}.
The drive was awesome, it was still dark, no lights anywhere and ravines at our right...the best bit was when we were driving along the forest trees, spooky and wonderfully dark...
The sun began to rise and this made such a scenic moment that Batman halted the scooby car and I took photos of the mountain in the morning mist through the frozen trees.
Getting lost in Grenoble was fun too. No one on the streets that early, we managed to find a promenade that probably has a ban on cars. I swear, as we drove through it, French pigeons were looking at us and thinking...look at those bastards.
But we made it through. We surrendered our scooby friend, went through all the checks, which included me being groped by some French official ( I believe she was gay and she set that alarm to feed her perversions ).
Sitting at our gate, eyeing a cute lad opposite me, on a school trip no doubt...a sudden realisation shook me to the core...I left my camera on the back seat of the scooby car when Batman required me to read the map in Grenoble. ( which was clearly futile anyway )
There was no going back. Few phone calls to europecar later, they claim they didn't find it. Batman says they stole it. By then I am crushed about all the photos, even though most of them are of me lying down in the snow as Batman put it.
Utterly sad about it, it took me days to even attempt to write it all down as I was going to have a mini photo adventure trip posting instead. There is even a picture of their bastard scooby rent-a-car, may it burn in hell.
But I'm not bitter even if it comes across as if I am.
