Between showering and hand washing - it's holding out.

TUESDAY 13-5-25

It was a peaceful night here at Camping Provence Valley and we were up at a reasonable time. Having looked at the weather forecast last night telling us today was going to be cloudy with sun until 18:00 after which there would be a few hours of rain, our cunning plan was to do the hand washing and having hung it out relax in that sunshine before having lunch and wandering down the hill in to town.

My first problem was how to keep the dressing on my arm dry whilst having a shower and doing the washing. The solution was a wrapping of clingfilm applied with precision by nurse Rosina. In addition I shaved with an electric shaver to avoid both arms going under the shower head whist a I had a wet shave under it.

After a successful visit to the female showers ( I hadn't spotted the urinals in the other one), I set about my hand washing, followed by The Chef after I returned from the washing facility. The clingfilm had held up pretty well and having finished with wet jobs for the day I removed both the film and the dressing so that the sun could get to work on it aiding the healing process. I'd used paper tape to keep the non-stick dressing in place yesterday, and this morning was reminded how painful it can be pulling sticky tape off hairy skin.

It was only after all this that I took another look at the forecast. Oh dear, they'd changed their minds, and were now telling us it would now only stay dry until 15:00. That scuppered things a bit and with a much smaller window to leave the washing to dry whilst we popped in to town, we decided to stay 'home' and get the washing dry.

The sky began to look very threatening at about 13:00 when we had a few spots of rain and many of the clothes had yet to dry. It would have been problematic to have bought wet clothes in to the vehicle for the night and so we wound out the awning and moved everything under that. Should it rain, everything would remain dry although I don't like leaving the awning to get wet, any more than I like leaving it wound out overnight. We tried that once in Spain and soon after hearing it groan a bit in the breeze we got out of bed, dressed and wound it back in, never to be repeated.

They say necessity is the mother of invention and it wasn't long before I had a lightbulb moment and had the ceramic fan heater on the table oscillating along the line of clothes on full power. Eventually everything was dry allowing the heater, airer and awning to be put away.

Within a few hours we'd cracked the washing and drying, and frustratingly those spots of rain never came to anything, the threatening clouds kept missing us, and eventually the sun came out and we went to bask in its rays again. So another wrong weather forecast upset our plans for the day. In my days involved with meteorology in the Royal Navy over fifty years ago our weather forecasters were a damned site more accurate than those of today who are assisted by supercomputers and weather satellites. I think forecasters get things hopelessly wrong should be taken out to the staff car park and given fifty lashes in front of all their colleagues. Perhaps then they'll focus on a bit more accuracy.

Tonight's gastronomic delight will be a joint effort between The Chef and myself. She will be in charge of chips and salad whilst I attempt to cook some chicken drumsticks on a griddle over a gas ring. I left my beloved gas powered Weber Baby Q barbecue behind. Lovely though it is it takes up a fair bit of room, is fairly weighty and, like all barbies takes a lot of cleaning afterwards.

We tend to eat self catering, although the European camping style is to go out for the evening meal. It's a habit for the French and Spanish who have nothing else to do with their time, whilst for the Germans it's a very welcomed change from a plate of boiled cabbage and a few frankfurters throw in, though I suppose being a German delicacy they should be Fritzfurters.

Tomorrow we shall be up and scrubbed and down the town in the morning and to hell with what their latest guess is regarding rain.