In the morning. Rita went to Veroniques for a music lesson, while I checked some things on the barge. We have always slept well on the barge, perhaps due to the memory-foam mattress that Chris Farmer installed on Kimasut (the original Kanumbra). However, recently we have found that the memory of the mattress is perhaps a bit too good, with valleys forming on each side of the bed where we lie. So, this morning I lifted the mattress off the bed to inspect it, and found that it was rather damp on the bottom, and that the plywood base on which it sat was just a little bit mouldy. So, we decided that the mattress had reached the end of its useful life. We rang the local recycling centre and learned that they did indeed accept old mattresses. But getting the mattress from the barge to the recycling centre was not as easy as it sounds. The mattress was large, bulky and not easy to fold. So we cut it in half (laboriously with a Stanley knife) and then folded and tied it (with one of us sitting on it, then squeezed it up through the wheelhouse and into the back of the Renault Scenic. Luckily, with the back seats folded down, the Scenic is quite spacious.

In the afternoon, Jackie returned from Marseilles, just in time for a film/karaoke night with lots of our barging friends in Cazes, a town just to the northeast of Moissac that we had not yet visited. The format of the evening was that, over dinner and drinks in the restaurant/bar, we watched a film (Grease) that contained lots of songs that we could all sing along to, and then after the film the karaoke machine was cranked up for anyone who wanted to repeat some of the songs solo (or sing any other song they cared to sing). But it seemed that most people were “sung-out” by the end of the film, since the karaoke was dominated by just a few people (who luckily could sing very well). It was a very good night in a pretty village, with lots of chatter and laughter, as illustrated by this post from Irene Plunket’s Facebook page. Not sure who looked better with green hair; me or Jackie.