Our road has been ‘goudronnage’d - a popular French pastime where some men in a lorry work slowly down the road in a backward fashion dropping tar and gravel into the uneven bits. Then they let your car kick all the loose bits into the side of the road. So, fun for everyone, unless you are on a scooter that is.

Let me explain. Scooter people, like me when I deliver ‘publicity’, don’t like gravel. The bike tends to lose traction on such surfaces. True, it is a long time since my bike has slid on such stuff (but June has done it on a bicycle); still it slows you up. And the French love of this pastime extends to a large number of the roads I travel on during my deliveries.

Goudronnage

As for the title: this was a warning notice at the top of our road. Normally it says ‘gravillon’ (gravel) as the warning so I looked the above word up in wiktionary (a super resource!) and it came up with “the action of goudronner”, and goudronner in turn means “cover with goudron”, and goudron is tar.

So now you know.

And my office clock is now working! I bought it from a 2nd hand shop (no- it had all its hands) complete with date and temperature displays. And it is big and ‘office like’. But when I stuck a battery in the time bit, it worked for a day or 2 then faltered. A quick twiddle with the time setting and it was off again only to stop later on. So I finally got down to it and took it all apart. A little plastic gravillon dropped out and it has been fine ever since!

Gravel.
We love it!