France in my pants (sounded better in my head)

Me and Mrs Burnett have just completed a few days wandering across France – driving an electric car, of course. I spend much of my working days extolling the virtues of the EV, so it would be naughty of me to hop in something that belches partially combusted hydrocarbons as soon as I was off the clock.

I keep getting told that it’s impossible to drive long distances in EVs, despite many times having completed long distances in EVs. Is this what it’s like to be a woman? Apologies if my lived experiences don’t match up to your hastily assembled preconceptions. It’s all been fine, though, driving to the south coast and back along a circuitous route taking in Toulouse and various other places. There was a bit of fuss trying to find somewhere to charge in Tours, but it also took us a remarkably long time to realise that the quiet looking shopping centre we were hoping to juice up at was in fact entirely abandoned.

It’s the weather that took me by surprise though – a delightful treat swapping out the chilly sub-20°C chills of home for the blanketing thrills of 30°C France. The many mosquito bites spotting my legs are the price I pay – for some reason I’m irresistible to the bugs of Montpellier in a way that I have never in my life experienced. I once spent two weeks in Thailand and came away with just a nibble on my elbow where my companions had been munched on. I was repellent in so many ways as a younger man.

And now as we make our way back to the frozen tundra of Oxfordshire I shall look forward to rummaging out my thick jumpers and counting down the days until I’m allowed to put the heating on. I hate this next little while, the slide into winter, but at least I have the warm glow of chasing the sun.