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.