A Wednesday in Montpellier - Dancing at Last part 2

Last Wednesday started like most days - a sleep in, a leisurely breakfast and a plan for the day. But as you will have read in earlier blogs, sometimes our plans just don't go to plan!

The plan was to have lunch with my Japanese girl friend from French classes, because we managed to miss each other the day before!
(To digress slightly - lunch planned by email - she said to meet at the parc at 12.30, so I nearly did check but decided not to and assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that she meant the small park across the road from the French language school, so promptly turned up there, EARLY PLEASE NOTE. She meant the big park near our place, so walked all the way over there! Our paths crossed, but we didn't! After sorting out the confusion by phone that evening, we planned to meet at the big park on Wednesday)
After lunch, I was coming back home to meet Alan and clean the house ready for our friend John's visit the next day.

Lunch went well and over 2 hours we discussed all sorts of interesting topics and decided to have lunch again next week!
But when I got home , Alan had been busy researching the purchase of a car and had found some possibilities, so I made the phone call and spoke to this gentleman who had no English and a strong local accent and agreed to meet at the large Carrefours supermarket at the end of the red tram route in approx 1 hours time, so off we headed, cleaning postponed!
An interesting trip but unsuccessful! We waited in this suburban wasteland of westernized shopping complexes (think Fountain Gate and Whitehorse Rd Nunawading rolled into one) for over an hour without seeing a sign of any man or any car for sale! While Pam waited outside the front of the store in her orange skirt and white top, as arranged, Alan did our weekly supermarket shopping. Pam left garbled French messages on his landline and mobile voice mails, before we made the return tram trip back to Gambetta (the Arab quarter) followed by a slow walk back home. Of course as soon as we got on the noisy, crowded tram, my phone rings and it is the gentleman in question asking where I was and what had happened!!!! I asked the same thing!!!!!
So we tried a very disjointed conversation in my garbled French and arranged for him to come to our place that evening, as the following day (Thursday) was no good due to our English friend John arriving for the day, and Friday it seemed was no good for him. We lived in hope, but not much confidence as it was too noisy to understand much and we had not set a definite time, only "ce soir".
On a shop window on the way home, Pam noticed a flier for various concerts and also tango lessons at a restaurant called La Pleine Lune (The Full Moon) in Figuerolles, the suburb between Gambetta & us and thought it worth investigating, so took down the details.
At Gambetta (well we thought it was still Gambetta), we did a bit more food shopping (can't resist the Arab spices, etc) and sat down for a well needed coffee at a street cafe. Lo & behold, I look up and find that this cafe is in fact called La Pleine Lune. You guessed it: we were actually in Figuerolles at the very cafe I wanted to check out!
When asking about the tango lessons - yes they were happening every Wednesday evening at 6.00pm for 1 hour followed by 2 hours of practice. The lessons would take place on the restaurant terrace and were 5 euros per week payable on the night. I had been wanting some dancing, so here was my chance!
By now it was about 5.45pm so Alan decided to head home with the shopping and I stayed on waiting for the class. It happened in typical French style! At 6.00pm the guy I thought was teaching the class, took the speakers out to the terrace.
Surprise no.1 - the terrace is not an upstairs roof top or courtyard out the back, but the local village square across the road from the cafe proper in the middle of additional cafe tables, car park and traffic and pedestrian passers by! This stumped me for a bit as I was not sure I wanted to be a laughing stock for all the local French population, but I was interested in the tango lesson, so hung around to see how things progressed.
Surprise no.2 - French time is very accurate for train and bus departures, and French language classes, but not much else! I was still hanging around at 6.45pm when a young attractive female, who had been having coffee with some friends and whom I thought was another potential student, suddenly stood up, changed into the highest pair of stiletto dancing shoes I have seen and proceeded to get the class up and running! It seems a 6.00pm start means, at 6.00pm get the p.a. system out of storage, find the right cables, work out how to get rid of the awful crackle and static in the speakers, decide several time where it is best to place the speakers and then start the class 45 minutes late! And in theory they have already had two weeks of classes! I have my doubts.
Anyway 11 of us gingerly stood up in public view and proceeded to learn the basics of the Tango. As I was the odd one out (most of them came in pairs or with friends), I got to do most of my practices with the young teacher. (Peter Henry eat your heart out!!), which includes getting in the right position, head on shoulder, in nice and close. Later on, when she made us change partners, I did some practice with another female and a lot of practice with one of the other guys who could actually do the tango. He was really great and I think came to help out the teacher and another of his friends who was learning. I have decided that I probably have 4 left feet when it comes to the Tango!! I was great when we just did simple steps round the circle or even in a square routine, and even got a few tres bien's (very good) from the teacher, but as soon as it came to actually reversing direction and crossing feet mid stream, I got off balance and trod on their toes! (A fatal mistake for a dancer!!!) However I am tempted to give it another try next week - I really am a glutton for punishment.
Well when the hour was up, the class stopped and so much for the practice - the music was packed up and everyone disappeared. Just as well really because I had to get home to the tea Alan was cooking and I still wasn't sure if the guy was going to turn up with the car - I had given him our address. However, just as I cross the road, Alan texts me asking me to get something additional from the shop and informing me no car, when the phone actually rings and it is the guy to say he will be there in an hour - is that okay?
What could I say but yes!!! So I rush home, have a lovely meal of roast chicken, and just as we finished eating, there is a loud knock on the door and you guessed it, the man did arrive!
He actually turned out to be very nice and the car was almost exactly what we were looking for. We had a good look at it and then we took it for a test drive. The guy took us out to some quiet outer suburbs, where Alan took over. I realised I had my wrong glasses on, so couldn't drive it even if I had wanted to! Anyway Alan was impressed and invited the guy in for a glass of wine when we finally returned to our place. We discussed the car further, all the paper work required our French plans and his reasons for selling (all in French mind, because this guy cannot speak English) and all seemed good. The guy even offered to come to the prefecture with us or at least help us with the paperwork! He is a retired civil servant. We agreed that we would investigate insurance and bank details over the next few days and he even let us photocopy the relevant paper work (we now have an HP 3 in one printer/scanner/copier, purchased over the internet) which made it all very easy, and we have agreed to contact him again on Monday afternoon.

He finally left at 11.00pm and we decided to do the cleaning and house preparation that had been set for much ealier that day, but had to be done so that we could get up and meet John's train at 9.30am! Sweeping floors, washing dishes and making beds when your mind is full of tango, cars and garbled French is not as bad as you think!
Anyway we were in bed by midnight, exhausted, but happy and with a great day to come. More on that in another blog, but a different Wednesday to the one originally planned!