summertime goes south

"a howlin' wind runs through here,
Takes my breath away" Graham Parker, 'Howling Wind'

We stayed 3 days in the harbour on the Iles de Frioul. The islands are rugged and stark with little vegetation and popular with day trippers. They have a number of holiday homes but few permanent residents and were a military base until bought by the Municipality of Marseille. An adjacent islet contains the fortress of If, used as a notorious prison and made famous by Dumas in his novel 'The Count of Monte Christo'.
The harbour is rather exposed and with a 'Mistral' forecast we tried to move on to more sheltered harbours but they were full. We found a berth in Marseilles Vieux Port and rode out the gales. In the port the wind blew for 2 days and reached over 35 knots which is gale force and made life very uncomfortable and noisy as the boat rocked and rolled and strained at the lines.
For some light relief we decided to do our washing in a nearby 'laverie'. The usual dull process was enlivened by a little French hysteria. A young woman and her 3 year old son returned to check on her washing. Her machine had reached the spin cycle and the machine looked empty. Forgetting about centrifugal force she immediately jumped to the unlikely conclusion that her washing had been stolen. She immediately rang the emergency number to complain rhatntheir customers were dangerous felons and they needed to get down there immediately. She complained to us that she would have to buy her son a complete new set of clothes and that the people of Marseille were untrustworthy.
Once the spin cycle finished the clothes magically reappeared much to her embarrassment. We found it difficult to suppress a smile or two. Once she calmed down she seemed perfectly rational and pleasant person despite her earlier over-reaction. It almost made us look forward to our next visit if this was the standard of entertainment on offer at French laveries, much better than the boring British variety.