The bikers
The bikers guys were great fun last night. Larry and Malcolm. When Larry said biking it across Europe I thought we were talking Harleys or something. When Malcolm told me they brought their bikes on the plane it clicked!! Malcolm’s dad is English and has a boat moored on the hamble. Small world! So their story is that they are both football nuts in a country where the only the sport anyone else is interested in is ice skating in padded gear with sticks. Or-key.. hokey.. something like that. So they come to Europe to find atmosphere during the world cup. Trouble is they picked the wrong country. See the whole of France think that their manager is a bit of a nob. On account of the fact that... well.. he is! Even his team thinks so, so France has given up even before the tournament starts. The only animated people in the pub that night was us three. Most of the French were outside smoking. And judging by the look on the managers face, I think that’s what he’d rather be doing too. France eventually lost 2-0 (to Mexico).
So they were biking it to Germany this morning is search of atmosphere and were planning to be in Amsterdam for the final. I was in Amsterdam for the final in 98 when France won and there was no shortage of atmosphere then.
Smoking
On the subject of smoking, how on earth did they manage to ban smoking in public places in a country where literally everyone smokes? You simply aren’t chique unless you have a fag in your gob. Like many bars this one has a huge cigarette counter which seems to have a permanent queue of people. Looking at the long line of pre-pubescent girls buying fags without id I turned to Malcolm and said ‘How old do you have to be to buy cigarettes? He did a quick scan of the queue and said ‘About 7 I reckon!’. He wasn’t far wrong. At one point the loony lady popped in to buy some. I realised she is actually about the same age as me, I think the clothes she was wearing before made her look older.
What to do with bad sausage
Now I’ve noticed that not all sausage is as tasty as other sausage... and when the sniggering stops, I’ll continue..... ...... ....................... Ok. So the best thing to do with bad sausage is to fry it and it takes just like bacon! Goes great with fried eggs.
It’s a real pain that everything closes between 12 and 2. By the time I’ve got up, got showered, had breakfast, washed the dishes and walked into town it’s about 12.30. So I have an hour and a half wait before I can do whatever business I need to do. Today my business was replacing my squeaky boots and visiting the estate agents. I really didn’t want to spend an hour in a bar drinking beer so I went to Rose and Gilberts ‘restaurant, creperie, glacier salon’ and ordered a chef’s salad which arrived quickly... along with a nice cold beer. They had a sign out front saying ‘We speak English’. Of course the sign should more accurately say “We are happy to speak English”. They were lovely people that seemed genuinely interested in my reasons for wanting to move to France.
Salad me up Rose
Other than the usual conversational politeness and Rose aside, I’m finding it hard to really get a good conversation going and it’s really frustrating me. Obviously it’s my lack of understanding of the French language and some people’s unwillingness to drop into English. People quickly tire of my French conversational capacity... ‘Where is the sun today?’, ‘What is your name?’, ‘Do you like sausage?’, ‘I like sausage’. It only gets you so far. Maybe I should invite the loony lady out on a date. She wouldn’t care what I talked about.
It’s actually surprising how many words are the same in French and English. If you don’t know a French word it mostly works out to use the English word using French pronunciation rules. These are;
For sure you will feel like a berk, making up French words, but a lot of the time you will get it correct.
I bought some brown boots from a lady who had a shop in the market square. She was smoking in the shop and the atmosphere was so think you could cut it with scissors. All of her boots and shoes had the same browny colour.
Back at camp, as I was doing dinner a group people were foraging in my area for bits of wood for a BBQ. They were speaking English so I went over for a chin wag. They were from Somerset and Berkshire, Glocester. In fact the somerset guys were just down the road from my Dad. They kindly invited me over to join in their BBQ. I said I was going into town to watch the match in the bar, but when they said they had an HD satellite tellybox I jumped at the opportunity. Bring your Polish girlfriend they said! Is the Southampton Polish community really that infamous?
I took a bottle of vodka with me to their camp and announced ‘I have a Russian friend? Will she do?’. Dave and I demolished the Vodka by the end of the match... It helped ease the pain (Algeria 0 – 0!). Their camp consisted of two large motor homes and a car with a caravan. It was all very luxurious and it housed three couples and a funny dog called Charlie.
After the match I walked back home very drunk and stood on the handle of my frying pan, breaking it in two. Oh no! Disaster! I know it may sound trivial but to the non reasoned camper, as any Bear Grylls type character will tell you, when your in the wild (or even a nice comfortable campsite with hot showers) you soon learn to appreciate the true value of things. For instance;
As if to illustrate my point, after leaving the other guys camp and before sanding on my pan handle I stopped by the laundry machine which was supposed to be drying my clothes. I already put them on once (at the cost of 4 euro) and they came out soaking! So while the match was on I put them in again, and again they came out not a single bit dryer then when they went in! So with half a bottle of vodka lubricating and limbs I fashioned a washing line out of some emergency rope I had.
Incidentally whilst talking to the English guys I learned of the terrible tragedy that happened not so far away in Provence. The rain has been so bad that many small streams burst their banks and 25 people lost their lives with another 20 odd unaccounted for! I’m usually the first to know about stuff like this but without TV I haven’t been keeping up to date.
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