New mattresses

We decided to be a little more extravagant with the new mattresses and look for ones with interior springing. Our hope was that although they would cost more, they should last longer than the foam variety.

A store about thirty minutes away had just what we wanted, and at not too high a price, so we duly bought one double and two single mattresses and drove round to the other end of the store to collect them. We had enquired about delivery, but this was ridiculously expensive and delivery could not be until after we had returned to England. My car – an estate – was fitted with roof rails and I carried a length of rope in the boot. The mattresses would not be too heavy to carry on the roof of the car so we decided to go for it and take them back ourselves.

After a lengthy wait, the mattresses were dumped beside the collection counter by one of the largest, surliest Frenchmen I have ever met. I hauled them over to the car – one at a time, naturally, although the man who brought them to the collection point had carried both single mattresses at the same time, one under each arm.

I was a little concerned about driving for half an hour with three mattresses on the roof of the car and suggested to Mrs S that she should wait with the double mattress while I took the others home. She baulked at the idea of standing beside the road, a mattress at her feet, claiming that she had no intention of being arrested for running an open-air, roadside brothel. So I suggested that she should drive and I would wait for her, but there was no way she was going to struggle to take a mattress off the roof of the car. There was nothing for it but to take all three mattresses at the same time.

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St Nicholas church in Chateaubriant dates only from 1870.