Vous n'avez pas la priorité

Although I've taken to the French way of driving surprisingly well, I've had a couple of hairy moments this week.


Apparently there is a Priorité à droite rule in town and village centres in France, which means that if you're turning right you have priority .  This rule applies even if you're turning from a side street onto a main road, unless road signs indicate otherwise. I never knew this. There I was tootling down the main road in the centre of town and a car goes to pull out right in front of me. Obviously I didn't think to stop as I was on the main road, so I had to swerve and ended up being given a loud beep and an angry gesture. 


So now when I come towards a junction I have to figure out if anyone is turning right from it. And for some reason, driving on the wrong (right) side of the road here makes me get my left and right muddled up so it takes about five minutes to work the whole thing out. I've found the quickest and less stressful option is to just close my eyes, put my foot down and hope for the best! 


I also found myself driving on the wrong side of the road when I was leaving the supermarché the other day. This would have been easily rectified if there hadn't been someone turning into the junction that I was on the wrong side of the road trying to get out of. Cue more beeping and angry gestures! 


Driving is definitely more aggressive over here; people lack patience and are all in a hurry.  One good thing though is there's none of the middle lane hogging that goes on in the UK. People only pull out to overtake and once they've overtaken they move back over to the right. Or do I mean left (it's late, I can't figure it out)?


Stu has been really busy with work this week, so I've pretty much had only the company of the two boys during the day. Which is probably why my brain is too frazzled to work out my left from my right. However the highlights from France this week include:

• Stonebaked pizzas from Catherine's outdoor bread oven. 
• Getting registered with a doctor. All in French without the help of Stu. And with the two boys in tow, making hearing what he was saying infinitely more difficult. 
• Having to pay 23 euros for the pleasure of getting registered with a doctor. Vive le NHS. 
• Signing up for a Super U loyalty card.
• Discovering Ilrhéa, a rosé/cognac hybrid from the Ile de Ré. Delicious.
• Max's attention span increasing. He can now watch a Pixar movie all the way through. Only if he's tired though.

Stu has been in the bad books after getting drunk in Marseille on Thursday night and turning up home five hours late on Friday.  He'd texted me at 10pm to say what a boring night he was having and how nobody was even drinking. However it all changed at 11pm.  It turns out the French have caught on to our binge drinking culture, so he ended up out drinking until 5am with a load of his colleagues.

Here's some of the latest pics: