9th June

When we got the message, late last night from Laurie, to call home ASAP we knew the news would not be good.  Early this morning we were told that Eric’s Mum had passed away.  Although this was not really unexpected, and Eric had already considered that it may well happen while we were away, you are never really ready to lose someone who has been there since the day you were born.  We spent the early morning in a reflective mood and then headed to the tourist office to book tickets on a tour bus for the Luberon district tomorrow, so as not to repeat the mistakes of yesterday.  On the way we walked through the market in Cours Mirabeau and what could make the day turn from bad to disastrous?  Eric has just visited the autobank to withdraw cash and now he has had his wallet stolen.  After some panic stricken moments and time spent retracing our steps we got home and began the process of cancelling cards.  As it happens Christine, our host, visited while we were home and had by chance bought a bunch of flowers with her.  That brought me undone and between the both of us we shared more tears as her Mum has died quite recently too.  She explained that normally Aix is quite safe but this weekend there is a Sud Cote (South Coast) Festival and that brings all the gypsies to town – hence the Rumanian children who make a pest of themselves at the markets.  They were so good we didn‘t even see them.  Funny, I’d had my pickpocket radar on full alert in Italy but here I had relaxed and Eric is naturally pretty preoccupied today.  We spent a long afternoon at the French Police station making a report.  At one stage there were 7 officers all intrigued with our plight, but not one of them could speak English and our French is not good at the best of times, let alone under this stress. We had to go back home to  retrieve our passports and when we got back there was English speaking help on hand.  And the day ends on a more positive note; even though my cards are attached to the same accounts they are not cancelled so we can still access money.  That’s better than when it happened in 1985, but that’s another story.  No pics today.