COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER ELEVEN A TESTING TIME
breakfast in order to complete the repair as quickly as possible. It was
too much, coming on top of the round trip to Haute Savoie in such
atrocious conditions, and he was forced to throw in the towel soon
afterwards. He was back in harness again by the following day, but
Anne was left wondering how to cope with a solo retrieve in Elliotts'
pantechnicon.
When Monsieur Boissonade, Secretary General of the
Championships Organisation - a most accomodating fellow who so
arranged his French that we always understood him - heard that she
was on her own he produced a stand-in. A rumbustious character, in
his late seventies or early eighties, who walked with a stick and still
had an eye for the ladies. He seemed to be known as the 'Father of
French Gliding' - though whether because of his sexual prowess or in
honour of his advancing years was never entirely clear.
It was a hot and humid day and our temporary crew man was
insufferable. For a start he kept trying to dry his chief's back, under
her shirt, with her own hankerchief. Difficult to resist if you are
driving a heavy ambulance, with a trailer on the back, and the
perpetrator speaks a different language. Then he resolutely refused to
telephone St Yan and the retrieve overshot by miles.
My landing, much too early in the day, was close to a tiny hamlet
which gave the impression of being almost totally isolated from the
outside world. The sort of place where the inhabitants have been
inbreeding for years and are all a trifle odd.
At the village bakery Madame la Boulangere, a pneumatic lady of
uncertain age, welcomed me with open arms. Of course I could use the
phone. Monsieur was away, and would not be back that night - she
lingered over the words - but he wouldn't mind. And of course I must
stay in the house until my crew arrived. As the day wore on, and they
failed to turn up, she became more pressing. We were a long way from
St Yan - which unfortunately was not true! - and Madame Ince might
not appear for hours. Never mind, there was a large bed upstairs - and
she could make me very comfortable - if I would care to come and see
it now?
When the retrieve arrived it was almost dusk and Madame could
hardly contain her disappointment. She looked daggers at Anne and,
after Anne had told me her story in a brief aside, I looked daggers at
the elderly satyr who had accompanied her from St Yan. He was a pain
in the neck. We should have left him, there and then, to sow a few
more wild oats with Madame la Boulangere. And perhaps, just
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