Day 39 – Salon du Vin

La nuit fût longue.

[It was a long night as we say in French]. I got to bed about half past midnight, as usual, and almost immediately started coughing. That lasted for quite some time and was quite painful. About an hour later it started all over again. I ended up putting myself to sleep on the couch so Desney could get some sleep. I spent the entire night coughing. I would have an attack for about 10 minutes every hour throughout the night. This was with the painkiller stuck up my … and supposedly calming things down. It was a long and tiring night.

I got out of bed (couch) early and took a shower to get ready to go as quickly as I could. Desney and I left at about 10:30 which is very late for us normally when we go to the Salon des Vignerons Indépendants. Normally we try and get there for 10:00 for the opening. The traffic around the Porte de Versailles was just ridiculous. They’re building the new tramway system along the boulevards. With a combination of the road works and everyone going to the salons (Salon de l’Education at the same time and place as the Salon de Vin???) it was beyond ridiculous. At the end it took us 45 minutes to go the last 600 metres (from Ballard to Porte de Versailles)!!! I dropped Desney off at the Salon so she could meet Arlene. Arlene got from her hotel at La Madeleine to the Porte de Versailles in less time than it took us to drive the last 600 metres. I drove around the parking lots for another 45 minutes. Absolutely every parking lot was full. I ended up patrolling the streets and found a place about 15 minutes’ walk away. I was just so glad to park the car and get out!

For those of you who are curious as to what the Salon des Vignerons Indépendants is I actually wrote an ARTICLE about it for an Israeli food and wine magazine once upon a time. This was Arlene’s first experience and I’m sure it was quite amazing. For me personally it was probably the must frustrating experience of my life. We went round only to the wines we absolutely need right now. With my faint and scratchy voice, burned neck and big scar it was obvious that something had happened. However it was a shock for both sides of the counters to hear me say that I couldn’t drink the wine. I could only smell from Desney’s glass. It’s like throwing a kid in a candy store and sewing his mouth shut. We got out of there in record time as we really only bought the minimum and visited the minimum of winemakers. I had a very good idea as to what we needed already and we had most of it delivered. It was just a matter of filling out the order forms and paying. I spent quite a lot… as usual.

We got home just in time for me to have a very quick rest before heading back out to the clinic for my last treatment of the week. Arlene came with me for her last chance to wait in the waiting room full of cancer victims. Don’t ask me why. The treatment went as always and we headed home. I was in considerable pain and could not stop coughing. It hopefully didn’t affect my driving too much and we made it home safely.

Our getting around safely today may have been helped by the fact that I replaced my TomTom Go One GPS with the newer TomTom Go 500 GPS. The new model keeps track of traffic and calculates the routes based on the current traffic situation. It also works as a hands-free Bluetooth phone solution which was a lot of fun. For a bit of novelty I can also download even more voices for this model and I downloaded John Cleese’s voice. It was a lot of fun but got old pretty quickly.

I was able to take a nap before dinner and Desney made pasta. After dinner we watched Bend It Like Beckham as Arlene had never seen it before.