Free Last Tango in Toulouse by Mary Moody Page A

various social activities, ending each one with ‘and woke the following morning feeling absolutely fine’. Well, perhaps Jock’s idea of ‘fine’ is different from most people’s. I know how I feel after a few weeks trying tokeep up with his pace in France, and ‘fine’ isn’t the word. It’s ‘ruined’!
    Like everyone living in a remote rural region, Jock is totally dependent on his car for mobility. There are no taxis or trains or buses in the countryside so, after a five-hour lunch, driving home, no matter in what condition, is unavoidable. Over time Jock’s reliable old Peugeot has taken a bit of a battering. The rubber side-strips have been scraped off, one by one. The side mirrors have been known to take out the odd passing shrub, and the back bumper bar has born the brunt of more than half a dozen badly judged reverses. The driver-side front fender is entirely caved in, though Jock insists he wasn’t responsible for that one – someone backed into him in a car park. And there’s a running gag among his friends about a ‘Watch Out For Children’ sign erected in the driveway of a friend’s rental house: Jock has knocked it down at least four times.
    His worst accident happened one summer when he attended a morning drinks party that somehow became a lunch party that somehow continued with glasses of wine into the early evening. Jock suddenly realised the lateness of the hour and decided he should go home, weaving his car down the long driveway, pruning some of the hedge with his side mirrors. Next morning his neighbours were horrified to see his badly dented car parked out the front of his house. The passenger side was completely stoved in and the front bumper bar was on the road. Mid-morning, Jock emerged from his house a little rumpled and red-faced but none the worse for wear. He seemed highly amused, revealing that as he pulled in to park in front of his house, his foot ‘slipped’ off the brake and the car plunged forward into the thick stone front wall. The car was pronounced‘totalled’ by the local mechanic, M Moliere, and without insurance Jock was faced with having to rustle up the funds for a new one. When asked by friends what had happened, Jock responded in characteristic fashion: ‘The front wall reared up and attacked the car,’ he said.
    Meanwhile, back in Australia, all is not running smoothly down on the farm. David is feeling a profound sense of loneliness and disconnection, not having me there to soothe his passage into our new environment. He has befriended our rather eccentric neighbour Russell, who pops over the fence for a beer and a chat about local life in the district. Like David, Russell is a hoarder, except that his collections consist mainly of junk which is scattered at random from one end of his property to the other. There are rusting sheets of corrugated iron, old water tanks riddled with holes, kitchen and laundry appliances, sinks, baths, toilets, buckets, and piles of railway sleepers and tangled coils of wire. You could be forgiven for thinking that his side paddock is the local tip, only probably not as tidy. In and around the drifts of rubbish Russell manages to cultivate organic vegetables mainly leeks and rhubarb for the commercial market, and has a large flock of honking geese that he allows to graze and keep the grass down. There are two old houses on the property but Russell actually lives in the shed. The houses are rented out to augment his meagre income. But Russell is strangely lovable and David grows immediately fond of him, looking forward to his spontaneous afternoon visits that help break the silence.
    As the weeks pass David discovers various practical problems around the property, a pretty normal occurrence when you move to somewhere new. The water pump frequently malfunctions,leaving him mid-shower with his customary head-to-toe soapy lather and suddenly no water to