Today and Sunday were a whirl of frenzied activity. On Sunday, aside from having to unpack and make apartment 303
I also had some shopping to do, Le Regale Auvergnat, obviously. I also bought some tomatoes and apples, to eek out my delicatessen. Plus washing up liquid, woolite, and other such necessities. I keep forgetting something, but most shops are just down the road so who cares.
Today was the first day of the Cure. I seem to be getting used to it, or maybe I am getting tougher, but when I was finished I still managed to arrange all sorts of other things – normally I just stagger home and sleep it off until lunch.
Ordering my daily newspaper and a few Decouverte du Monde books – a series of children’s books, with lots of illustration and simple language – was easy. Buying a camera and a bathing costume was not!
My trusty little camera gave up the ghost during the journey, so I needed a new one. Nothing doing in all of La Bourboule. The next town down the road, Le Mont Dore, equally yielded nothing at all. I was sitting in my apartment, completely surrounded by no cameras, when I had an inspiration: Amazon!
I had considered recently buying a new camera, mine is five years old – ancient in modern camera years – and the photos, while perfectly serviceable, are a tad basic. So I knew what I wanted, logged into Amazon, did the spiel, almost got to paying – when I was informed that shipping to my hotel was not an option! What the ????
I do my internetting in the hotel lobby, the only part of the hotel with internet reception, and B, who was at the reception desk, heard my little cries of pain and offered to help. Perhaps my tiny little baby-laptop couldn’t handle issues of such magnitude? She drew a blank, too, despite her large desktop PC. Feeling by now personally insulted by the refusal of Amazon to ship to her hotel, B initiated an extensive search action for my chosen camera. After another half hour, and numerous abortive dead ends, we finally managed to lay our hands – by now sweaty with frustrated rage – on a Nikon Coolpix S9300. Let’s hope there are no more gremlins in the works and my little camera arrives by Thursday am as promised! I’ll keep you posted. But you see why I always go to Les Iles Britanniques – aside from the name, obviously! – they really go the extra mile for their customers.
So now all I needed was a bathing costume, having forgotten mine at chez DB. I also needed to find out what the opening hours of the local pool were, having dropped by three times today and yesterday and always finding them closed.
But I am in no fit state to describe that saga as well. I am exhausted! Because on top of my numerous other activities I also went swimming. I’ll report back tomorrow.
By the way, I am using left over photo from my last visit to La Bourboule. Just so you know. I would hate to mislead you. There is enough skulduggery in the world already.
