A perfect baguette

Nick threw a party for Jo yesterday and many of the usual faces were there. It was fun and we had a great time. Relatively early on Sarah asked me what a perfect baguette was. I have mentioned it in an earlier blog.

The idea of a perfect baguette first came up, for me anyway, when I went on a cycling holiday about five years ago with Tim Ade Chris and Simon. We cycled in France in the Dordogne region. At lunchtime we would stop for a beer and baguette. Tim and I came up with the idea of searching for the perfect baguette as each successive one we had got better and better. We wondered if they could continue to get better and better and, indeed, whether we would recognise the perfect baguette when we had it. So we thought of doing a sort of travel book and call in 'In search of the perfect baguette'. It would be, of course, a metaphor for the search for happiness, the questions being whether we would recognise it when we saw it and whether it was, in any case, achievable at all. In the end Heidi explained to Sarah what I had meant.

***

The Policeman glared through the car window to see two boys with bleary eyes staring back. The thought that the Devil himself was about to take us away had turned to rabbit-like paralysis as the torch shone in our eyes.

'Who's driving this car' he asked sternly.

'I am' I replied in as un-guilty a tone as I could.

'Have you been drinking?'

'N no' I stuttered indignantly.

'Well who's car is this?' asked the still sceptical Policeman.

Silence.

Spud looked at me.

I looked at Spud.

Then completely inexplicably and at preceisely the same time I pointed at him, and he pointed at me.

There was another silence, probably shorter than it seemed, as the absurdity of what we had just done, sunk in.

'May I ask you to step out of the car sir?' said the Policeman in a Yorkshire Dixon of Dock Green sort of way' 'I shall have to ask you to breath into this bag'. I tried really hard, and succeeded, in not saying 'certainly ossifer'. I was trying, by this time, not to giggle nervously, as the farcical nature of our predicament became clearer. I was confident about the breathalyser test as I'd only had one pint that night and that was about four hours ago. Sure enough the test was good.

'I'd like you to accompany me to station, for a statement'. We protested of course, but there was no way of changing his mind, he needed to know that what we were saying about the true ownership of the car was in fact correct.

So that's how we got to spend the night in Malton police cells. We were allowed a phone call, so we decided to call Spuds brother, and I called my friend Phil. I asked him to let my parents know that I was out for the night and would be back in the morning. He promised to spare the details. To this day I'm not sure if they know about the truth of that night.

But it wasn't over yet. We still had to get back, and I still didn't know my 'A' level results

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Nick and Jo look like they may have found their own perfect baguettes. I hope so, they make a great couple