A Life Lesson from Napoleon

Recently I had to drive all the way up France – a long, boring motorway journey, head down, zoning out – when suddenly some strange dashboard lights appeared. Warning symbols lit up and the car experienced a total loss of power. I pulled over, turned on the hazard lights, and my expert investigative Googling suggested that the car was knackered. I reached into the depths of my extensive mechanical expertise and tried turning the car off and on again, and on again. Thankfully, it came back to life a little and would now limp forward at about 30 kilometres per hour, juddering furiously and seemingly about to die at any moment.

It was Sunday afternoon, and no garage would be open until Monday morning. So I was stuck, and decided I might as well keep limping north and see how far I could get. I had a blanket and a pillow in the car, in case it all went wrong.

I left the motorway and drove north up country roads, hazard lights on, car juddering and pootling, doing my best to allow the traffic piling up behind me to pass as often as possible. I gave an apologetic wave, and more than one French driver offered me a bon courage gesture as I stumbled on. The hills were the worst, and the car barely made it up each one. But with a decent run at the downhills, I could keep moving forwards.

My day had turned from an efficient, boring motorway trudge into an exasperating breakdown scenario, and yet I found that I was delighted. I saw small villages of France, country roads, lines of bare trees on the winter horizon dotted with mistletoe, birch plantations hypnotically aligned, white trunks submerged in flooded fields, old roadside milestones, small hamlets with a church and a single bistro, an antique shop selling all manner of terracotta pottery, hunters in a wood with shotguns cocked, looking for lunch.

I was rattling along so slowly that I began taking photographs from the car window with my crappy old film camera. There was so much to see everywhere, so many places I had never been to, so many places I would never return to. I was bound to the thin blue line of Google Maps leading me north on “no motorways” mode. I anticipated I had eight more hours of driving to go, and this was the most fun I had had travelling through France since my days here on a bicycle or hitchhiking.

Atop a small rise, I stopped to pee beside a tall memorial to Napoleon. I looked around with no idea where I was, but feeling entirely happy to be there. I climbed back into the car, turned on the engine, and suddenly all the warning lights had disappeared. The car burst back into life and roared down the road – or at least as well as a 2012 grey Skoda can do. Merci, le petit général. Thank you, Napoleon, my lucky charm. The car was fixed.

I hammered it on to a motorway and barrelled north again. Before I knew it, once more my mind was blank. My head was bored, and the tedious journey resumed as it had been before.

I suspect there are a few life lessons for me in all of this.