This happened just before we left the house in Thezan to head for home on Friday last.
We hadn’t gotten round to depositing the bottles from the latter part of the summer, plus the ones from the last week, so I headed off for a trip to the bottle bank with two large crates of bottles.
I was popping these in the bins when a lady on a similar errand pulled up next to me.
She smiled at me and then, to my total confusion, said something to me in Spanish. My mind at that stage was in a bit of a lather between French, English and the fact that Sile’s Irish speaking sister and brother in law had just spent a few days with us.
To be addressed in Spanish was too much for my brain and I just looked at her dumb struck.
Then she said to me in French;”Are you not Spanish?” and the penny dropped. As we had flown into Girona, just over the Spanish border we had rented our car there and it had a large E for Espana on the back.
“No, no” I said “I am just on holiday”, I rented the car in Spain because it was cheaper”
At that stage I saw her looking at my huge supply of bottles so I decided to blurble on so she wouldn’t think me a total alcoholic “But I own a house here” I said;”I’m Irish”
I could see that I wasn’t getting through to her, why, if I lived here did I hire a Spanish car? So I just got rid of my bottles and hopped back in the car to make my getaway.
That was when I made my fatal error.
The car being, of course a left hand drive I had hopped like an idiot into the front passenger seat. At this stage Madame stopped all pretence of depositing bottles and stared open mouthed at this fool who was trying to drive the car from the wrong seat.
Scarlet in the face I crawled out of the car and croaked to Madame in bad French something about “In Ireland the wheel is on the right” To my amazement her face immediately cleared and she said “D’accord!, One drives on the left in Ireland” and burst into peals of laughter.
Mollified, and just about saved from looking a total idiot, I drove off.