Le camion théâtre

We have swapped our lives in the UK for something new and exciting in France. Yet, moving away from our families and friends has left a gap in our lives and probably theirs too. Of course we are hoping for plenty of visitors, but, for the moment, the telephone is our way of filling that gap.

Both of us have spent a lot of time on the phone since our ‘Numericable’ cable package was activated on Tuesday. It is a brilliant package with unlimited phone calls to fixed lines in France, Europe and North America. This means we can keep in touch with family and friends by phone as well as by email, text and instant messaging.

Now we have been here over a week, we will inevitably start to drop into some kind of routine. Shopping needs to be done, clothes need to be washed and the apartment tidied and cleaned.

Today was my first trip to the launderette. I can’t remember the last time I had to wash my clothes in a launderette, but it could be nearly twenty years ago. I’m blaming that for my total bewilderment and inability to follow instructions, because the French was actually quite easy to understand.

I have a student who spoke some English to thank for pointing me in the right direction and I now feel that I am perfectly capable of doing the laundry for the next year. It was really expensive though - €7.80 to wash and dry one load of clothes.

Living costs are different to those in the UK and we will need to look at what we are spending and how to budget sensibly. We don’t yet know how much income we’ll have over the next year, but we have been saving up every since we started planning the trip four years ago, so we can afford to do everything we want to do, within reason.

There are so many interesting free events on over the summer in Caen. Earlier we watched a play by a travelling theatre company who drive all around the north west of France and perform their plays from the back of their truck – camion théâtre.

Their style of performance is very traditional with comedy, slapstick, satire, tragedy and a good moral to their stories. It’s a style that is still common in towns and villages across Europe, but much less so in the UK with the exception of Mummer’s plays which you still sometimes catch around Christmas in southern England.

I have to admit that I understood very little of the hour-long performance, although I did get one good joke that Becky missed and I understood the moral of their final play – if you go to the swimming pool, stay in the shallow end.