Tuesday 15th‏ July 2014

Disappointed at the lack of Bastille Day celebrations yesterday; seem to be mainly centred on Paris. The nearest firework display was in Callac in the North of Brittany; too far away for my old car.

Had to leave at 8.30 this morning in order to get to St Malo in time for the ferry. Laura took loads of photos on her phone before we left. Mainly Coco and the garden, with a few of me and Karl who arrived at 7.00 to give us a lift. Stopped at Dinan and had a coffee. Laura told me she'd swallowed almost a whole packet of sealegs (she's somewhat prone to exaggeration), moaned about the ferry not arriving back in the U.K until six thirty this evening and about having to get two trains from Portsmouth back to Tunbridge Wells. I think she was probably just anxious about the journey.

Karl said he's only been to England once, several years ago. Laura asked him about Berlin but he didn't say much about that; only that he hasn't been back there for years. He did tell us about his life on a kibbutz in Israel and how he's been married several times (to a Japanese woman, to a Portuguese woman, et all). I didn't know that he'd lived in the Algarve. Laura was very interested in this as she taught English at a language school in Faro, but only for a short time, saying she was hopeless at it. The school had asked her to stand in for a teacher who had mysteriously disappeared. Laura said she had no experience or training and was thrown in at the deep end to a class of children who went out of their way to disrupt the lessons (probably the reason for the previous teacher's disappearance).

Made it to St Malo in good time and after a quick goodbye started the journey back. Stopped on the way to look at a house sale but nothing interesting. Karl dismissed the furniture as cheap tat and after after a few minutes we left.

Quiet without Laura. Hope she wasn't too sick on the journey.