La Cale

We are blessed with an excellent restaurant in our pretty little village in Côtes-d'Armor, Bretagne, France. Overlooking the harbour at the southern end of the spectacular Rance Estuary.

A well trodden path of tourists make for it each holiday season, also serving as a popular meeting point year round for so many village inhabitants.

Over the period of eighteen years we have lived here we have seen restaurant proprietors come and go. All of them competent and charming in their own, sometimes inimitable way.

A restaurateur's life is not an easy one though. I didn't envy any for their choice of career. Hard work in long, anti-social working hours and sometimes having to tolerate unappreciative, rude and abusive customers.

One such married couple, custodians for around five years, became very good friends of my wife and me. I am not going to mention their names and only to say that the husband could sometimes make John Cleese's character Basil Fawlty in the wonderful BBC TV comedy Fawlty Towers, seem like his long suffering sibling.

The story starts when a group of around twenty elderly, blue rinse 'clickety-click' stick walkers descend upon the place one mid-day Sunday. Busiest time of the busiest day of the week in mid summer. You know the types, or at least you do if you had the privilege of living in rural Brittany, northern France. Ladies, usually, and each wielding a pair of Ski Poles, except there is no snow. At least not at sea level in the middle of July! Each hiker is intent upon a futile effort of wielding as much damage as they can bring to bear on stubbornly resistant tarmac. A herd of such hikers can be detected by the unmistakable noise they make a long, long time before they appear from around the bend.

First point of call and without as much as a "Bonjour." to our bar tending patrons by the entrance, they burst forward through all the seated diners to the single toilet at the rear and form a noisey disorderly queue.

Thirty minutes later the final free(un)loader joins the rest of her group, now entrenched in seats and tables on the terrace, whereupon each had ordered a glass of tap water. Not even Pellegrino or Perrier mineral water.

Our hero patron was returning from having to turn away a family of five fairly affluent looking tourists, as there are no more places available. He adopted for all the world the appearance of René Artois in BBC's 'Allo, 'Allo, complete with traditional French full length white apron. He stands behind a row of lady culprits and proceeds to mimic throttling the one immediately in front of him. With sufficient draft created by his frantically moving arms for her to turn around. Unoticed by him unfortunately as he was looking skyward at the time, tongue stuck out and eyes rolling in a display of murderous insanity. The remaining ladies simultaneously follow their friend's lead, turn around to see the charade then all rise and instantly depart. Without so much as a "Merci beaucoup, au revoir, bonne journee.", lipstick smudged glasses of water left half finished on the tables and none leaving any tip.

Our friend storms back into the building and grasps his dear wife tightly around her waist. Explaining would she mind holding the fort alone for ten minutes whilst he walks around the block to calm down. Lest he murders the next clickety-click stick hiker for real that even thinks about passing across our village borders.

Mistral's commitment:
Bringing benefits of computerisation to our RAC industry - without the commonly associated problems.

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