Out early this morning to take Seàn in for a service, bodywork, bit of parallelism and a squint at the thermocouple on the cooling system. The nice people at the BMW garage lend me their nice red Mini ONE for the next three days, the same one I had earlier this year during Seàn's last service.
Then it was a bit of a dog - cute but slow. Now, presumably after the engine's running in has been done by the heavy right feet of the average French BMW customer, it feels much, much nippier.
Very nippy indeed, in fact. I quite like Minis in many ways but not enough, I fear, to ever actually want to buy one. It's probably a little too cute, for a start - everything inside is designed to match beyond reason with, for example, the chunky rear-view mirror being such a weird shape it's almost useless. It's also a long way away - the windscreen is so vertical that there's a lot of space in the cabin, unlike in most modern cars with severely-raked windscreens.
For me, the real killer is the placement of the steering wheel and pedals. Only limited adjustments are offered for the steering wheel, none designed to bring it nearer to you, and this means that the necessary driving position for me is rather reminiscent of many Alpha Romeos - the 'gorilla', with long arms and short legs. The floor-hinged accelerator pedal becomes difficult to use comfortably no matter how you sit and my calf ached after a while trying to maintain any position at all.
And there's no bloody room in the back, either. Even with the seats folded down, the hatchback entrance affords access to an anti-tardis like quantity of storage room. What have they done with the inside?
Still. Cute and nippy and one for any girl to put on her shopping list, I think.
The plan for the rest of the day is to drive into Montpellier, mooch about a bit, have a nice steak at l'Entrecôte, go see a film and then sushi with Bob & Lynne before the opera this evening.
Well, first I think I'll drive down the N113 instead of the motorway from Nimes to Montpellier. Nice drive and I'm on the lookout for interesting shops along the way. Big mistake - it takes two hours instead of the normal 45 minutes or so because there's a wide load in front with 8,000 mad French drivers trying to overtake it and each other. At every moment I consider turning round and taking the motorway a few more cars manage to get by and I think it'll be my turn soon - only to be overtaken by more suicidal gits who steal my place in the overtaking queue. No decent torque in this baby, unfortunately, unlike in Seàn, so it makes getting by impossible.
And then, at 1230 just as I'm about to turn into the underground car park at the Place de la Comédie I realise that I've left my opera ticket for tonight behind at home.
Bum.
Quick decision: on in for a steak and then home? Or home now?
I go home now and make myself a conciliatory steak sandwich there, but it's not the same. And of course once there I make the mistake of checking my e-mail and the message board, despite having been promised (by me) a whole day off and get sucked into other people's problems, so it's four o'clock before I get back out of the house and five before I get back to Montpellier.
Which leaves enough time to pop into Addon to see what's good on the second-hand DVD shelves today - Goldfinger and Gosford Park - and to walk round to the Sushi bar which has just opened over the other side of the Corum, where tonight's opera is being performed.