The journey down through France would always have been spent in an uncomfortable, pre air-con sweaty haze as the hot French sun blazed down on us. The further south we went the stronger the sun's heat would be; a fiery orange ball in a clear azure sky beating down relentlessly. We would pass fields blackened by drought and heard the locals talking about how it hadn't rained in five months. There were hose-pipe bans, water shortages and the army had been placed on high alert due to the risk of wild fires. The elderly, infirm and very young were in grave danger as temperatures soared to previously unrecorded highs.
Like most teenage girls I was desperate to return to school in September with a nice tan and stories of a wonderful holiday romance. As the latter was totally out of the question on account of my smelling worse than a Russian weight-lifter's crotch (no shower - see previous chapter for full details) then the tan was my only hope of proving I'd had a decent summer.
So, despite all the traumas of the journey, arrival and sleeping arrangements I would wake up on the first morning full of adolescent expectation and pull open the curtains to be met with ... cloud. "It's not very sunny", I would say to my mum in that uniquely teenage way, which manages to convey to the addressee that you hold them totally responsible for whatever miserable state of affairs you find yourself in. "It's early yet", she would reply "I'm sure it will get out nice later on".
It didn't. It stayed overcast all morning, drizzled at lunch time and then the heavens opened in the afternoon. The locals were overjoyed, out doing rain dances, shouting 'il pleut' and sacrificing small animals in grateful thanks at makeshift roadside shrines, when all I wanted to do was to worship at the altar of St Ambre of Solaire. The rain would continue pretty much unhindered for the next fortnight, clearing only temporarily one afternoon when we were inside visiting some sodding Benedictine monastery.
This would happen EVERY year. Had Dragon's Den been in existence in the 1980s we could have marketed ourselves as some kind of rain making device. 'Not had any rain for 9 months? Crops failing and your entire population on the brink of starvation? Don't worry. Call 'The Bennett Family' and see those clouds start to form within hours of their arrival'
And so I would return to England pasty and unloved (at least not by anyone French, male and aged 14-17). I never did achieve that 'just cuprinol-ed' look but now, aged 42 my skin is very grateful that I didn't.
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