A countryside adventure (with added compost)

Parents have been relatively well-behaved.

Yesterday we caught a train and headed for Fontainebleau. Which was about the first time Timber had been outside RATP zone 2 this calendar year. Tried to compost the tickets and found that our kind of tickets (pathetic little RATP purple card things, rather than yer important-looking but flimsy great SNCF ones) could not be composted by the yellow composting machines.

Oh well, we thought, and got on the train, as it was about to leave. Perhaps the conductor composts them on the train.

Cue conductor climbing into carriage just after Bois-le-Roi. Ah, he said in French to Mother, you has done a silly ting. Why hath ye not composted. All the world knows the commandment: thou shalt always compost.

On doit obligatoirement composter son billet avant tout trajet.

Meep, I interjecteth, ye poor Mutti do not speake Frankish, oh conductor dude. Be unwilling to do the ladie any harm with thy greate and impressionating garlickenesse! Speake then unto me.

It doth me greate sorrow, sayeth the displeased conductor dude, but thou shalt be made to paye for thine crimery.

It doth me even greater sorrowe, countereth the heroic Timber, but we shall not paye, for we are not paying.

Oh, embarketh ye conductor dude, greately flummoxed by the clearely superiant logicke of Timber, then makest thou shure that ye shall not recreate the same mistaycke in ye future never agayne.

Yea verily we shall not, I repondeth, now boggeth ye off with thine smelly visage of Frankish pong.*

And thus ended the discussion. We caught a bus to the château and did a great deal of walking and mother took some dastardly photos on her mobile whatsit. Perhaps one day I will upload them to this blog post. You'll have to wait till she's back in England, figures out how to use bluetooth, then sends them to me by email. Expect this to take at least 6 months.

* Timberblog accepts no responsibility for the quality of this transcription, but would like to apologise for any linguistic inaccuracies or anachronisms; the translation and proofreading of today's blog entry was undertaken by a work-experience student on an ERASMUS exchange scheme from Felixstowe.