In the valley of the blind

I heard that she said “an eye for an eye must open hand out” and although it wasn’t exactly Matthew 5:38 (why do Christians insist on giving the time?), I got the feeling that she meant; you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. I was only prepared to scratch hers with money though, don’t want to get embroiled in messy French adultery (as Matthew had warned against eleven minutes before at 5:27). It’s not that I’m all for the sanctity of marriage, far from it, just that it’s hard enough being understood when shouting loudly in their faces, let alone whispering sweet nothings in their ears.

“An eey for an er must open han ac out.” Again; “a knee for enya must open hannah count.”

The pencils were up both nostrils and I was lunging towards the desk to end it all when suddenly I finally realised she was saying “any foreigners must open an account.” Well, madam, I do not want an account, I merely want insurance. I am here for security and putting my money in a French account hardly fulfils that criteria. Within 2 months my pension would be spent on sanitising Berlusconi’s old office, my savings on keeping the Greeks in yoghurt and my bonds sunk in Germany (a mirror of The Spy Who Loved Me where a German was sunk by Bond).

We proceeded to have one of those delightful arguments, much beloved by my family, where we both got very angry despite not at any point understanding what the other one was saying. In the end her manager came in and led me away to another office where she, in vastly better English, proceeded to be even more of an obnoxious old hag. She told me I was behaving like a child for ignoring her advice. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted to rise to her bait but I am a better man than that; I bid her good-day, got up from my seat, pressed the buzzer to unlock the door and only as it shut behind me did I realise I had actually, instead, switched the light off. 

If I'm not Edvard, I'll never be Edvard

When I was 7, I made my mother a clay frog for her birthday, in art class. It had five roughly leg like protrusions. I could have passed one off as a tail but the vaguely recognisable webbed feet gave me no wiggle room for anatomical interpretation, artistic or otherwise.  It had no real face and even when I had realised, post roast in the kiln, my attempts to rectify this with glaze were confused at best. Mother stubbed a cigar out on it and broke off two of the legs before sending me into town with a twenty pound note in order to buy her a proper present, which was a bottle of gin. This, thankfully, is why I never pursued a career in art. Unfortunately, many of the day-glow neon children of liberals, all named after varieties of soya or breeds of earwig, seem to attract praise for the sensuous lines of their pasta portraits and the way the delicate splattering of their urine on the hemp carpet is reminiscent of early Pollock. This leads to them being modern artists and, consequently, to me spending 2 hours in confused irritation at Paris’ capital of modern art; the Pompousdo.

I believe the Pompousdo is a waterpark that has been abandoned and left to dry out, grubby and unwanted with a vast expanse of concrete in front, no longer the home to happy splashing and the rare bathing of French youth. The flumes still hang haphazardly to the side and the turbines of the wave machine stick uselessly out of the ground, sombre and forgotten periscopes. You’d think that emptying it of screaming children and poor people on their annual day out would be an improvement but life is full of surprises.


The large foyer is helpfully lacking in signs and so I wandered around. The first installation asked me for my ticket so I, never afraid to meet an artist on his own terms, fully immersed in the work by giving it some money at which point it moved on to other awaiting viewers. The second work was a piece on the difficulties of bi-dimensional transit, being as it was as a set of moving stairs that conveniently took me up to the 1st floor without having to waste energy walking; and who said art serves no real purpose? This was unfortunately not wholly reinforced by what I discovered there.

Yayoi Kusama clearly has some issues and although I’m all for giving her some potato shapes and water based paint, letting her loose on this scale seems to be the kind of happy-clappy indulgence that has slowly eaten away at standards and gave rise to many of today’s Radio 1 djs. Her style is apparently called Art Brut because, like the cologne, it’s the kind of twaddle only your weird spinster aunt would give you and it stinks like merry hell. Aside from some of her afore mentioned potato paintings, her main focus seems to be on filling rooms with mirrors and tiny spots, possibly to demonstrate to everyone, once and for all, that she’s completely dotty. If there was an underlying message to Kusama’s work, it was don’t leave her unattended with scissors.

After revisiting the work of bi-dimensional transit (shown in opposition) I came to an exhibition of German buffoon Edvard Munch, designer of the mask from the movie Scream and namesake of the popular crisp; Monster Munch (of which he designed the packet – not the actual crisp shape itself though, that was  after his time). If not quite as crackers as the Japanese lass, he was certainly a few colours short of a spectrum. Half the display was the same paintings done 3 or 4 times and then abandoned as he clearly was clearly getting nowhere. He’d have been better off cutting back on the fruit loops and concentrating on the crisps as you really feel that the monsters he portrays there are enjoying a quite terrific snack. In comparison, I find the little Italian fellow on Pringles distinctly lacking in bite.

A Fourth-Generation Gentleman of the Buckinghamshire Darlings, Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Continental [and Smoking Too Much]

Listen; Jonny Foreigner has come unstuck in time. Today is Armistice Day in France. This is the same as Remembrance Sunday in England except that the French have ironically forgotten not only what it is should be called but what day it was on. It’s a day to try and remember how many wars we’ve had and the date is significant because it’s two days after 9/11 (today is 11/11 for those of you who haven’t checked) which is when the world decided enough was enough and we would prevent all future wars by ruining the economy and not being able to afford them any more.

It’s a public holiday here in France because it’s the only day soldiers are allowed to go on strike. Everyone has to go on strike at least once a year in France, it’s a legal obligation. A national holiday was introduced so everyone could stay at home because we all know what soldiers are like. I had a second-cousin in the marines who survived 12 years in combat only to snuff in on leave at a Hanoi brothel. The autopsy was unable to reveal if it was the 3 litres of absinthe, the 2 pounds of suspicious sushi, the belt around the neck or the lemur. We had to hold the funeral in secret for fear any of his squadron would attend the wake and we’d end up with more blood on our hands.

The symbolic flower of the Armistice is the cornflower, a small, bright blue thing. They are not to be trusted with poppies as they are naturally a self-indulgent people and would use them to make heroin and listen to jazz. The worst they could do with a cornflower is make a crème brulee (which they did, originally only on this day but, as I just mentioned, they have as much self-restraint as Hugh Hefner).

Remembrance Sunday is much more important in England because we were more involved in both of the world wars. You can see this reflected in the poetry of The Great War as Siegfried Sassoon is all filth, gas and dismemberment (reminds me of the locker-room after rugby) whereas in France they have Arthur Rimbaud who wrote Le Dormeur du Val about a typical Gallic soldier who slept through battle. So it goes.

You spin me right aroindissement

The local area, Gambetta, is as much of a muchness as much of the city seems to be; if you’ve been anywhere in Europe, you’ve probably seen it all (with the exception of Spain, not because it is exceptionally exceptional, except at accepting the minimum of basic amenities, but because it’s exceedingly hot). I’m in the 20th arroindissement, somewhere to the east. The word arroindissement means ‘to make round’ and the areas are so named from a day in the 19th century when the 20 town planners were trying to decide whose turn it was to buy drinks; they tore up the map they’d been working on and used it to draw lots. The next morning, still stinking drunk, they tried to jigsaw the city back together again but found they could only do it using the numbered sides and decided that was probably enough detail anyway, the small stuff would work its self out.

This goes to explain a number of things. Firstly; the completely arbitrary numbering of the districts, only sloth and inebriation could produce such utter disarray. In London, they were so organised that they got in elephants to build castles and canaries in to build wharves (not the birds but early Norwich City fans, all highly suited to building as the extra finger of inbred-wrought polydactyly gave them astonishing grip). Secondly, it shows why everyone around here, in the 20th, is a tight fisted scrooge who would steal the croque right out of your monsieur and why everyone near the louvre, in the 1st, is an impoverished drunk. The arroindissements are sometimes called quarters because too much fannying about with the metric system left the nation unable to count.

The history of the name Gambetta itself has been somewhat harder to trace. My internet research threw up (excuse me) a number of possibilities. The Gambetta method, as famed by the much loved American sports hero Vern Gambetta, seemed the most likely. The main aim of this method is, I quote; “to develop Athleticism, the ability to perform athletic movements.” A vital skill, as any athlete will tell you, and one that many forms of exercise seem to foolishly neglect, such as the popular ‘stillness sports program’ of the late seventies. Vern also tells us; “a healthy athlete is an oxymoron,” which is just one syllable away from what I believe. Since I could find no direct link to Paris, I decided this couldn’t be my man and I was also disappointed to find that nowhere in the blurb did it say ‘Gambetta; we’ll make your game betta’.

I also came across Leon Gambetta, a one eyed Frenchman who gave Tours of Paris in a hot air balloon to avoid doing any work for the government. During one of these Tours he got so lost that he ended up in Spain. Later in life, after blowing enough hot air to finally return himself to the capital, the subject of governmental work came up again. He, still disgusted by the idea, shot himself so hard that he got cancer and died at 44. Quite why you would name an area after this man is beyond me so I’ve decided that it must be from the lesser known Italian guitarist Beppe Gambetta, in honour of his 2008 album Rendez-vous.

The House of Windowless Rooms

Today, I betrayed Queen and country by committing the vilest treason I was able; I began to teach the locals my mother tongue (not my actual mother’s tongue as she swears like a sailor after her second breakfast G&T. In fact, if the air’s not blue before noon, I can only assume she’s passed out or throwing herself at the gardener again). I was left with little choice as there are few skills that are valued here, other than the aloofness and sluggishness beloved by the service industry. I’m working from a hovel out by L’Arc de Triomphe, which was built by Napoleon to celebrate getting his first motorcycle and to give him and all the other appalling French drivers something to aim for when they blundered their way up the Champs-Élysées. The office is run by a bitter Norwegian shrew, who has no more business being involved with the language than I do playing prop for the Harlequins.

My first assignment was out in zone 3 at a place called La Defense. It appears to be some sort of financial district, perhaps explaining why it was so empty; they’re probably all in Greece, stealing hubcaps and taking back the silverware. It’s also a practise ground for French architects, leaving an incoherent sprawl of blocks, spikes, towers and bugger me if they didn’t build a second bloody ‘triumphant arch’. It’s spectacularly named Le Grande Arch (didn’t need to be Voltaire to come up with that one) and was commissioned by Mitterrand in the 80s to celebrate the fact that the French could now build cars that could stay together more than the length of the Champs-Élysées so would therefore need something else to aim for, which is why they are both in line. It looks like it’s made of Lego and, surprise surprise, it was designed by 2 Danes. It would have been no great shock to walk in and find the walls papered with bacon and bloody cinnamon pastries.

I was shoved into a lift by an usher with many years service experience and I eventually found my way through a series of sterile corridors to a single, windowless room. A Hundred metre tall building and I get four blank walls and a carpet the colour of vomit. After an age, in walked Joseph, Ines and Estelle and eternity began. Inspired by the carpet, they spoke English like they were spewing bile and chunks and the best I could do was hold their hair out the way and tell them it’s would be alright. After 2 hours, they left, giving me ten minutes to mop up what was left of my resolve for the next group, who were no better. As Jean-Paul Satre said of the French; ‘He’ll be other people’ meaning – they’re all the bloody same.

Houston, il y a une probleme.

54 years ago today the Russians sent a dog called Licker into space, partly just for the fun of it and also because their Sat Nav had broken so they were trying to get to the moon by smell (which is something Gagarin complained of while in orbit so clearly Licker was a pooper as well). That said, this was no mean feat by a country on it’s knees. I mention this to give you some comparison of the difficulties I came across today. I was not trying to get into space, merely a few kilometres up the road and yet I, like Licker, found it all dreadfully confusing and almost slumped, similarly drooling, against the window of the metro as the hours past.

There are a number of issues with the Parisian underground system. The first is that it smells like Licker has marked his territory all over it, making sure no other dogs try to explore it. The second is that the stations are all devilishly unpronounceable and even when they look reasonable they come out of the tannoy mangled like Licker on re-entry into an indistinguishable tangle of spit and gristle.

Then, continuing our Russian theme, we come to Stalingrad! This stop in the north east has probably caused the death of much more than a paltry 2 million soldiers and civilians. It is a warren easily comparable to the smoking rubble that clung to the Volga and trying to make your way between the lines requires stealth, resilience, peak physical health and a casual disregard for human life. Much like the Germans, I naively put my faith in ‘the power of the will’ and my sanity was the inevitable casualty. I ended up in a taxi, leaving the one HiWi who’d tried to give me directions to fend for herself.

The whole reason for my invasion of the Parisian heartland was to sample some of its much lauded culture. I finally tracked down the venue I was after by waving a flier at the taxi driver who gesticulated in Gallic insubordination before consenting to empty my wallet for a 30 second rampage around 2 corners. Didn’t have enough spirit to complain. I  dashed into the venue and thrust some randomly denominated notes at a girl at the desk and was ushered to a cheap plastic seat behind 3 giants and a pillar; silence descended.

A mannish looking Japanese woman appeared and proceeded to spend 30 minutes crawling around an origami duck. If this was interpretive dance, I think someone had mistranslated somewhere between hiking her children’s pyjamas high enough to dissect her and recording a one armed stroke victim playing a xylophone as backing music. The second half was a big improvement as I managed to find a cushion. A feminine chap from Laos took to the stage and there was no misunderstanding the message here, as he curled neatly into the foetal position, washed by delicate piano. So, as instructed, I went to sleep.

I chategorically fail to find a flat

Today, by no means as a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that my hostess is an incomprehensible hag with vinegar on her tongue and sand in her crevices, I began searching for an apartment. I’m not looking for anything fancy, just a place to plant the flag, put my feet up and watch David Attenborough (not Jacques Costeau, get bored of all the water, what about the other animals Jack, you water Nazi? Fascism runs in the family, clearly. Although at least Pierre, who was somewhere while Jacques fannied about, kept it quiet. Bloody Richard Attenborough was everywhere, living off his brother’s fame. What did he ever do except play Santa?).

But it seems my moderate aspirations are the insane delusions of a feckless dreamer. For the average London price here you would barely get enough room for a cat, let alone to swing one. The cat would also possibly need to sublet. The first place I visited had an entire kitchen painted by a backwards 5 year old and the man I thought was the landlord was in fact aiming to be my future roommate; the tour of the flat took roughly 11 steps and I was quick to hot foot it once I realised I was paying for a fold out camping stool to lie on in the corner of this man’s bedroom. I’m surprised it didn’t have a bowl next to it. I am the cat who sleeps by himself, thank you very much.

The next joint seemed better but the fellow was rather shifty and it turns out he’s subletting a subletted sublet, the mind boggles; You’re waiting for a train.. Well listen, I told him, I’m not here to be jollied around just to have the real landlord turn up and throw me out on my ear. You can play no pranks with Skimbleshanks. I marched out once again but truth be told the whole affair was beginning to get to me rather. Doesn’t help that you can’t just pop into a place and get some tea, it’s all café au lait if you s’il vous plait; coffee is so…so…self-righteous, don’t you think? I’m not wholly against the stuff it’s just that tea should be the bread and butter drink and the fact that it’s like a rare novelty over here frankly takes the biscuit.

At the final place of the day, I found myself being interviewed by a smug Swiss girl who, in all her attempted kooky charm, took great pains to explain to me how she’d made her dress herself. It looked like she’d glued bits of curtain to her very recently jettisoned training bra. I matched the inanity of her questions with a disinterested vagueness and I think she mistook this for philosophical chic; by god she was cracking onto me by the end of it, flexing her new found puberty right in my bloody face. I escaped, for the third time that day, by a whisker.

I open the batting ...

I got here in the end. We all had to shuffle off the train the other side of the channel for god knows what reason. Some chap in a silly hat, with his trousers pulled up far too high, spent a good 3 minutes giving the hair-dryer treatment to a poor collection of nervous guards. We’re all in the same boat chum, I thought, no need to make a scene. Glad we weren’t in a boat though, might have sunk or, worse, been stuck adrift like poor old Edmund Talbot.

I arrived at the bed & breakfast, from which I shall begin my explorations, at a late but not unreasonable hour (extended somewhat by a suspiciously roundabout taxi journey, I’m all for seeing the sights but I didn’t order a buggering tour bus). The landlady begged to differ about the lateness of the hour and chastised me in what may have been French and English interspersed, certainly couldn’t make hide nor tail of it and I mumbled something about ‘une probleme avec le train’ which seemed to placate her. She snuck off to her boudoir and shoved me into a box with a sack on the floor. Very well, I exaggerate but although one doesn’t expect 5 stars, I’d like a window that opened and a wall free of snapshots of the lumpen faces of her gangly children.

I had a brief poke around the apartment, which is not unlike my grandmother’s in Kensington except with less lace and a more porcelain animals. I checked to see which way the water circled when you flushed the toilet. Same as England. Good. You never can be too careful.

I slept in to avoid having to repeat the previous night's admonishments and woke to find a key and a note, which I ignored, and after finding some nosh in the fridge that didn’t smell too continental, I pushed off into the wilderness. Wish I’d bought a map, can’t be doing with those ridiculous aPhones before you say anything, bad enough that mother is able to call me abroad as it is!

First thing I noticed after walking for half an hour or so is there are an awful lot of McDonalds potted around the place. Oddly though, all the big yellow Ms seem to lead underground, the locals probably too snobbish to accept anyone eats there. In England we’ve painted them all green to show how they’ve become healthy, take note mes amis. Odd how much heat they generate down there though, who’d have thought you’d get a wafting warm breeze from 10 microwaves and a deep fat fryer.

I will give the city one thing today, it’s a delightful temperature. I sauntered pleasantly with my coat hung carelessly over one shoulder, trying my best to adopt the aimless swagger of the natives. I’m sure my impression was fairly seamless but I think I was often given away by my Cambridge hockey club tie, no chance you could have picked one of those up over here, as many people must have recognised as they greeted me in clunky English. I spent a few hours reading the Daily Mail in a bistro, 2 days old but what le dif? News doesn’t go out of date.

I decided to head back before I got too lost and I was rather pinched anyhow. I spent 15 minutes trying to get the blasted door open before the old crone pulled herself away from her gruel to come and play gatekeeper. She demonstrated, with a patronising air, how the locked work. Apparently just a key isn’t enough; you have to wriggle the thing around like some sort of combination lock. I told her I was not a magician. She stared blankly and raised her eyebrows. I think that’s how she gets into neutral.

A Little Background On France

Well, here we bloody are. Waiting at St Pancreas, absolutely surrounded by a raggle-taggle cluster of various Europeans. Even the deaf bunch over in the corner, you can tell they’re French without them speaking, something about the puffing of the cheeks and the impetuous set of their brows.

I’m off for a jolly in France, who knows for how long, so I thought I’d do the chivalrous thing and share what I learn, be you deserving of it or not.

Let’s begin with a quick glance at French history to get you up to speed, give you some context in which to put all the future wisdom that I impart.

France has a long history but largely due to its proximity to our great isles. The country lay virtually empty for many centuries, until the romans passed through on their way to England and many were unlucky enough to have to remain in France due to our limited size (it’s how you use it) and the difficulties in transit. These romans were eventually joined by the odd tribe of Germans looking to expand; never happy with what they’ve got the Germans. I’m sure there’s the odd other race thrown in there but that was predominantly how the French were formed.

During the 14^th century, French was adopted in the English court ironically, on a dare by the Marquess of Dorset, and began the longest running practical joke in history. In the beginning the French themselves took some umbrage with this and, in trying to claim copyright over their language, a war broke out. This is now known as the 100 years’ war but this is, in fact, a clerical error which occurred during the conversion to the metric system. The war was closer to 18 years, 16 of those being the required time for which it takes anything to be organised in France. The British won the war under Henry V and that’s why the V was adopted as our 2 fingered salute to rub in the neighbours defeated faces, enabling us to gloat and show our allegiance to the king. Towards the end of the war, when the English were putting the locals to the sword, to avoid any future difficulties, a French heroine appeared; Joan of Ark saved the French people by taking a pair of each type of Frenchman; two cheese makers, two bakers, two bureaucrats, two mime artists etc. and putting them all aboard a large barge and sailing up the Seine to safety

The French revulsion began in 1789 when the people realised that Marie Antoinette had grown so fat on cake, she was too disgusting and no longer a fit and proper person to rule the country. They executed her with the guillotine, which had just been invented to slice the increasingly enormous cakes she had been ordering. The Tennis Court Oath was signed, where they agreed not to learn tennis.

This led on to Napoleon, who likewise had no interest in tennis, mainly because he couldn’t see over the net. Historians have decided that this made him complex. He gave the Germans a taste of their own medicine by expanding all over the shop but eventually got his comeuppance at Waterloo, which at that point, to his surprise, was not connected to the Northern line. Napoleon got lost on his way back to France, probably due to a similar misunderstanding in transportation, and ended up in St Helena (the place, not the woman). He died of parsnip poisoning in 1821.

The French flag settled on its final form in 1790. It’s called the tricolore and consists of three vertical stripes; one red, one white and one blue. The name tricolore is a combination of Latin from tricare – to behave evasively and the olore is derived from olfacere meaning smell. Hence; deceptive smell, a true representation of the country.

Another fascinating linguistic fact is that the capital Paris (where I shall be residing) is a phonetic reduction of ‘pas ici’ meaning ‘not here’, which was the response given when a then tiny town on the river was asked where they thought the centre of French government should be placed.

They were right to be concerned as France is riddled with confounding bureaucracy and it is all but inescapable in the capital. In 1925 a famous European administrator named Franz Kafka wrote The Trial, a detailed model of how he thought all government agencies should function and, in France, this has been followed diligently ever since. Kafka's influence can be seen worldwide and in recent history Haruki Murakami, an obsessive of traditional Japanese organisation, wrote Kafka on the shore, a thesis on the arrangement of family holidays.

Perhaps it is understandable that the French would crave order after the madness of the first half of the 20^th century but then England is a much more sensible place and we did most of the leg work, so maybe it’s no excuse after all.

The French managed to avoid most of World War I by tricking the Belgians into speaking French and persuading everyone else that Ypres was part of France and the others just had their maps wrong.

During WW2 they were unable to pull the same trick again due too much stricter cartography. The English had sensibly decided to redraw Europe with a smaller Germany next to Austria, to give them somewhere to expand into if they felt the need. Unfortunately, Hitler had a peculiar affinity for the Austrians and decided to go to Poland instead. This certainly wasn’t cricket and we said so to France and Russia. The Russians didn’t really understand but the uneducated masses had just taken control of the place so were up for taking their army out for a test run to see how it worked. The French set up the resistance; a resistance to learning the rules of cricket and thereby not knowing if something was or wasn’t it. This trend of refusing to learn sports is a common characteristic of their history.