{"id":106491,"date":"2025-10-07T09:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T09:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/106491\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T09:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T09:06:08","slug":"melanie-finn-i-never-imagined-having-to-google-the-french-for-broken-clutch-on-the-first-day-of-my-holiday-but-cest-la-vie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/106491\/","title":{"rendered":"Melanie Finn: I never imagined having to google the French for \u2018broken clutch\u2019 on the first day of my holiday, but c\u2019est la vie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">A family trip to Normandy soon unravelled into a disaster that left our correspondent and her husband considerably out of pocket\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Melanie Finn back home with her car after it was hit by mechanical problems at the start of a family holiday to France. Photo: Steve Humphreys\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/II MELANIE FINN 5SH.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Melanie Finn back home with her car after it was hit by mechanical problems at the start of a family holiday to France. Photo: Steve Humphreys<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Do you know the word \u201ccalamity\u201d is originally of French origin? How else do you explain your clutch suddenly failing while hurtling down a motorway in Normandy with your three children in the back? Less than an hour into our 400km journey to the Vendee region, a vital part of our (French) car had decided to give up the ghost.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cMel, the clutch has gone,\u201d my husband Eoin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A family trip to Normandy soon unravelled into a disaster that left our correspondent and her husband considerably&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,2220,6,3912,11,12,15,16,57978,5,44701,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-106491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-insurance","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-melanie-finn","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-renault","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}