Ian Moore's Blog, page 3

Mad Dogs and English Mods

There comes a time when you’re far away from home and on your own that you need to take a good hard look at yourself; stop moping about in your room, get your glad rags on and get out there and embrace life. See what the world has to offer, dip your toe in the waters of experience. Carpe Diem. Well if that’s your attitude then good for you, me I prefer to watch the cricket on the telly and order room service frankly and would have been quite happy to do so for the few days off that I had on my Mumbai trip, but the hotel had other ideas.
I’ve been in this situation before, I’ve stayed in hotels and by the third day of the stay have been phoned by the management.
“Mr Moore. Are you ok?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve had the Do Not Disturb sign on for three days. We’d like to service your room for you.”
“It really doesn’t need it.”
“But do you not want to go out? It’s a lovely day.”
“No thanks. I’ve been to Portsmouth before. Goodbye.”
It’s obviously erroneous to compare Portsmouth to Mumbai, Portsmouth has far worse social problems, but despite my best intentions I was finding it very difficult to leave my comfortable room. Mumbai in 41 degree temperatures is just too daunting; I’d look out of the window, shake my head and fearfully admit to myself that I am just too inadequate to cope with it. The secret is to do it in short bursts, quick tourist sprints followed by a return to base camp to take on water and sit on the toilet. Again.
The Hindu Festival of Holi is a vibrant and noisy celebration heralding the end of winter; people throw off the shackles of darkness and cover themselves in lurid dye which they hurl at each other, or at the floor and walls and then again at each other. Lots of hurling. Of dye.  I had tentatively discussed this ‘hurling of dye’ thing with the audience the night before and they had suggested that if going out I should wear old clothes. I am a mod, I pointed out, I don’t have ‘old clothes’. ‘Ah’, they said, ‘good luck’. So without wanting to get too close to any of the more exuberant celebrations I ventured out to try and get a feel for it. Even from my hotel room high up on the 15th floor the noise had been pretty deafening from early morning but at street level it was all encompassing, everything that could make a noise was doing so, everything metal was being hit with something, not always with any tune but always with force. There were parties everywhere, on the street, on balconies, in the backs of vans – these people must really hate winter.
Mumbai is a noisy city anyway, the incessant car horns forming a constant backdrop, but this was a level beyond anything I’d heard before and, probably because of the heat, it seemed to be getting louder and louder. Yet despite its volume it couldn’t mask other sounds that took the gloss off all the celebrating, a Palm Squirrel was screeching in a tree as two ravens tried to attack it, the car horns seemed more like angry wasps than ever and, it seemed every corner I turned, a child was screaming. Obviously that’s not an uncommon noise but when that child is lying naked on a plastic bag under a car to keep it out of the sun then to my over sensitive and cosseted western ears it’s deeply unsettling.
I love wandering around cities though, going off the beaten track and down side alleys, exploring and getting lost in a place, but Mumbai is the hardest city to wander around in. Obviously there’s the noise and the heat and it doesn’t take long for the two to get together and make your head swim but there’s also the feeling that, despite taking sensible precautions like not drinking tap water, not having drinks with ice cubes in, being wary of lettuce, showering with gaffer tape on etc that you are never far from a personal ‘soiling’ disaster. Sorry to be graphic about this but it is a genuine concern, I’ve met other westerners over here and they all wear something of a haunted expression. In the way that a fugitive will always spy their quickest way of escape in a room, it’s important for us visitors to Mumbai to know where the nearest toilet is. That’s not really an option if you’re wandering about, though I did, through necessity, venture into a public toilet here the other day...I still get flashbacks now and we shall never speak of it again.
But despite the heat, the noise and the constant fear that your arse may fall out without prior warning Mumbai is a fascinating place to explore. I was warned before I came here last year that I should expect to be followed and hassled by hawkers and urchins and the like, but it’s never happened to me. People leave you alone, barely even notice you most of the time; everybody here is either too busy to bother with you or asleep on the floor. I once had a friend who fell asleep on a speaker system in a nightclub which at the time we thought was quite a feat, but if you can fall asleep on a Mumbai pavement with all that’s going on around you then that’s equally impressive. But of course, a lot of them have nowhere else to go and they just plonk themselves down where they can and get some rest.
As do the millions of dogs here, and there are millions of them as well but who in the total of four weeks I’ve spent here in the last year I have never heard bark. Mostly dogs bark for territorial reasons, well here they have no territory and they’ve also probably worked out that it would be utterly futile to try and compete with all the other noises that are going on. Until yesterday that is. These dogs are remarkable, they have the ability to wander in and out of the traffic and also just sleep wherever they can, so you would have thought that with all that’s going on my soft-soled loafers would hardly be that much of an annoyance to one of them. I may have disturbed its sleep or maybe it was just having a bad day but I swear this bloody dog followed me around Mumbai for most of the afternoon, always keeping about five metres behind me. He didn’t bark at me constantly, but just occasionally remonstrate with me as if I’d committed a whole litany of sins, each bark sounding like ‘...and another thing!’
It was all very undignified. Having said that nobody really takes any notice of you here, they do if you’re being followed by a mental dog who, every few hundred yards, is being told to ‘just Fuck Off!’ by a clearly harassed and inappropriately dressed Englishman. The dog wouldn’t leave me alone and the further I walked trying to shake the damn thing off the more people started to take an interest and follow us. I walked for hours, eventually getting back towards the hotel where, before I could cross the road, I was accosted by a shopkeeper. Well, I say shopkeeper, he owns the off licence near the hotel and in the year since I found his shop and passed on its whereabouts to every other comedian who visits he has put his children through college and entered the Forbes Rich List.
“Sir, Sir...” He shouted from inside as I passed, “What would you like today?”
“I’ll be back later!” I answered over my shoulder, “If I can lose this bloody dog!”
I knew I should have stayed indoors.



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The Pigeon Detectives

I like a mystery. I like a good old-fashioned whodunnit. Don’t get me wrong Breaking Bad, Mad Men, they’re great TV but they’re no Morse are they? They’re no Poirot. What I don’t like however is a real life mystery; in real life I like order, structure, reason and definitely no surprises so when the bodies of pigeons began to mount up in alarming numbers it was, to say the least, unsettling.
Okay, it wasn’t as if you had to wear a hard hat outdoors for fear of suddenly deceased falling birds but the sinister appearance of dozens of pigeon corpses was nonetheless macabre and too disturbing to be ignored. As always the internet is the first port of call for investigations of this kind and once you’ve managed to filter out the crackpot conspiracy theories – really, I don’t think the CIA are all that fussed about the Loire Valley pigeon population – there were a number of potential explanations.
Trichomoniasis, common in pigeons apparently, is related to the human STD of the same name which suggests that pigeons, particularly the racing kind I suspect, are putting it about with wild abandon. There’s a line in the Blur song ‘Parklife’ which implies that pigeons are highly sexed creatures, “They love a bit of it!” Phil Daniels claims, which is scant evidence on which to base what appears to be some kind of epidemic, but, no pun intended, we were fumbling around in the dark here. Whatever it is it’s fatal, but because most of the victims we’ve found are pretty mangled we can’t gather the proof.
The other possibility, though less likely, was that we had a visitor. A rapacious mass murderer who clearly had a grudge against pigeons and wasn’t going to stop until he’d wiped them all out. It seemed slightly far-fetched but the tell-tale signs were there, for example decapitation. The weasel likes to rip the heads off its victims, one suspects it’s a power thing, a symbol of victory in the same way I used to treat my little sister’s Barbie dolls but surely pigeons were too big even for an angry, bitter, pigeon-hating weasel. The Fouine, in English the Pine Marten was a much more likely suspect and, sexually transmitted diseases aside, far more worrying. An aggressive hunter of this size  wouldn’t think twice about attacking the kitten or even Gigi the Chiweenie but the hens of course were particularly vulnerable, so when it was obvious that something was digging tunnels into their coop, action was needed, I will not have my ladies upset.
We had talked about moving the hen coop before but with it being seemingly under attack it was now urgent. They haven’t been laying for weeks anyway and Tallulah’s mental breakdown means that the brood was tense to say the least, so maybe a change of scenery would do them good. Of course moving the coop a couple of metres to the right is hardly a massive change of scenery at all but we laid down a proper would floor so that any night time intruders couldn’t actually get the hens at all. They weren’t happy. The four of them stood in a group watching as we lifted their home onto its new base, clucking disapprovingly and eyeing the whole thing with suspicion. Their demeanour suggesting that they thought this was very much the thin end of the wedge and that strong complaints would be made. Tallulah was the first to investigate, venturing nervously in while the others waited outside for her verdict; despite being obviously quite insane, Tallulah is still the de facto leader and treated accordingly though I suspect that it’s a bit like The Madness of King George in that the real decisions are made elsewhere. After a couple of minutes Tallulah hadn’t re-emerged, giving the signal that all was well and that the others come in, which they did gingerly only to be then chased out by a screaming Tallulah who was having one of her more violent turns and should probably be given a wide berth.
The patch of ground that the coop had previously stood on was a vile mess. Three years of chicken poop had moulded into a kind of chipboard flooring and when I lifted it with a spade it came up in one, two metre squared block. As I raised it though it revealed underneath a labyrinth of tunnels, at the heart of which sat a huge, filthy rat. There was a brief comic pause as the rat and I caught each other’s eyes, I thought he was going to tell me to clear off such was his air of belligerence, but then he just bolted.
Toby and Gigi gave chase, neither of them really knowing why but instinct just kicking in and they disappeared towards the pond. We couldn’t see them from where we stood but the screams were not good. The rat, cornered, had obviously gone for Gigi and she was making a dreadful, heart wrenching racket...and then suddenly there was silence. Toby and Gigi slowly made their way back to us, Gigi bleeding heavily from the nose where the rat had obviously taken a hold and Toby with a kind of ‘thousand yard stare’ about him. He had killed the rat, his first ever kill and now, the pacifist that he is, was feeling terribly guilty about the whole thing and certainly didn’t understand the praise he was getting for rescuing Gigi.
The rat corpse was removed and piled up with pigeon bodies, a grisly, war-like sight that continued to grow as the pigeon death count mounted up relentlessly. Natalie reported that the crows were attacking sluggish pigeons mid-air like a fighter plane skirmish but again it couldn’t account for the sheer volume of deaths. In the end though, it’s not the internet that solves these mysteries, it’s local knowledge for which there is no substitute. We live between two large farms, one run by a friendly, do anything for you gentle soul, Monsieur Rousseau and the other by a sociopath who threatened to shoot our children, Monsieur Giresse. Monsieur Rousseau delivered the monthly hay and walked around the property with Natalie, intrigued and baffled by the avian carnage. He even took a carcass away with him for further investigation. The next day Natalie phoned him again, there’d been another killing she said portentously. Rousseau didn’t hesitate and brought round a local expert who he said, would hopefully find an explanation.
He did too. Monsieur Giresse it seems has been lazy in preparing his fields and has left the corn stalks and some of the corn husks unploughed. We suspect he’s done this to provide ‘sport’ for his shooting parties, something for the specially-bred pheasant cannon fodder to hide behind before being blasted apart. The problem though is that corn left in this state is poisonous to the pigeon, it expands in their gullet and leaves them unable to breathe and therefore fatal.
“Ah.” Said Monsieur Rousseau nervously, “I’ll have a word with Giresse, tell him to get it sorted out.” And has the charmless Monsieur Giresse obliged? There’s no mystery in the answer to that.
THE NEW BOOK, 'C'EST MODNIFIQUE! ADVENTURES OF AN ENGLISH GRUMP' WILL BE PUBLISHED IN JULY BY SUMMERSDALE, MEANWHILE YOU CAN BUY OR DOWNLOAD 'A LA MOD - MY SO-CALLED TRANQUIL FAMILY LIFE IN RURAL FRANCE' BY CLICKING THIS SEDUCTIVE LITTLE LINK http://amzn.to/1dRj2BC

Notorious Psycho Birds

There was a report out last week stating as categorically as these things can be stated that ‘successful comedians show psychotic traits’. Aside from filing this firstly in the ‘No Shit Sherlock’ file, it throws up various questions, how do you define ‘successful’? What is psychotic? Who are you calling a comedian? And so on. Many years ago I was diagnosed as a manic depressive and I couldn’t have been happier. I had just started in stand up comedy, a real novice and not very good, but to be given this diagnosis, correct or not, to my mind immediately bracketed me with my heroes. A few gigs in to a nascent comedy career and already people were comparing me to Milligan, Hancock, Sellers and Cleese. Seriously, it cheered me up no end.
The thing is though, who on earth doesn’t show ‘psychotic traits’? If there are people out there who aren’t in some way needy, to a certain extent self obsessed, seeking approval and sometimes attention then I suspect that they’re the ones with severe mental health issues. Everyone has a certain amount of trouble in the head, everyone. And not just humans either.
Take Tallulah for instance. It’s not unusual for a hen to get broody and cut herself off from the crowd for a couple of weeks, Monica does it at least twice a year, Tallulah however seems to have completely flipped. In Blackadder terms she has genuinely put some underpants on her head and is repeatedly squawking ‘WIBBLE!’ The hens have barely laid any eggs for a couple of months now and frankly they’re lucky to be with such a soft, non-French family, or they’d have been squashed into a large Le Creuset some time ago.
They’re pets though and I love them dearly. The fact that Tallulah is now behaving like Inspector Dreyfus in The Pink Panther films only adds to her charm, a disturbing charm possibly, but charm nonetheless. As she’s got older she’s been unable to escape, via brief flight on to the gate, the confines of the orchard but occasionally we let the ladies out for a stroll. They generally stick together as they stride, staccato like, around the garden like old ladies in a Royal Park on a Sunday afternoon, but Tallulah has taken to hiding in the bushes and then jumping out at unsuspecting passersby. I was wheeling a barrow load of firewood and kindling back to the house and all of a sudden she jumped out of a hedge, squawked at me in what appeared to be foul language with her wings flapping aggressively, before suddenly stopping, folding back her wings, pausing briefly with embarrassment like she’d hassled the wrong person and disappeared back under the hedge again.
I’m not being singled out for this behaviour, nor is it restricted to unsuspecting humans. Poor Toby got the fright of his life as he took what he thought would be a quiet, back of the hedge morning dump only to be scared witless as the mad old bird gave him exactly the same performance. He nearly jumped out of his skin and was practically constipated by nerves for a good couple of days afterwards. The kitten got similar treatment as he’s gradually introduced to the great outdoors and frankly it set his confidence back a bit as Tallulah, almost twice as big as he is, came shooting out of a bush, screeched and flapped right in the poor kid’s face before running off again.
We decided that maybe, if just for the stress levels of the other beasts, we should be keeping her in the orchard, rather than let her roam about terrifying everyone from the depths and shadows, like an avian Jack the Ripper.
It made no difference.
Natalie and I took some scraps into the orchard for the ladies, but only three of them were out. Tallulah was indoors, occupying the coop’s sleeping quarters on her own and so the others were staying out of her way clearly deciding to give the old girl a bit of much-needed space. She must have heard the two of us open the gate though and there was an almighty kerfuffle inside the coop as she came running out, tripping over herself, wings flapping angrily, screeching obscenities at the top of her voice. She rushed us, ran round us in a tight circle and then disappeared back into the coop leaving a trail of feathers, some of which were yet to hit the ground.
We all suffer stress at times, we all have our moments. The world is a confusing place. Flame for instance is behaving with apparent grief at the moment because his litter tray has been moved; he stares at the now empty space like a homeowner returning to their recently burgled house. He sits there for ages deciding usually in the end that the tray actually is still in situ but is in fact invisible and so defecates there anyway to prove his point.
As if this wasn’t enough to create a kind of Victorian, swirling fog atmosphere of menace, madness and bedlam,  last week the corpses began to mount up, specifically pigeon corpses. I didn’t realise just how many pigeons there were around here until their cadavers started piling up, but clearly they’re as numerous as wildebeests on the Serengeti. One afternoon Natalie counted 12 dead pigeons which had all appeared in the last forty-eight hours, all on the face of it, the victim of different deaths. Some were decapitated, some were totally butchered and some had no discernible marks on them at all. We were investigating a particularly gruesome victim which Gigi had found by the well, she also seemed particularly proud to have found it and sat by us as we prodded the thing in lieu of proper investigation. Suddenly Tallulah came charging out from behind a tree and practically knocked Gigi over before running off into the distance still screeching at the top of her voice. Then there was an eerie silence, broken eventually by the sinister squawk of a solitary rook.

Seriously, at times living round here is enough to drive you mad.
THE NEW BOOK, 'C'EST MODNIFIQUE! ADVENTURES OF AN ENGLISH GRUMP' WILL BE PUBLISHED IN JULY BY SUMMERSDALE, MEANWHILE YOU CAN BUY OR DOWNLOAD 'A LA MOD - MY SO-CALLED TRANQUIL FAMILY LIFE IN RURAL FRANCE' BY CLICKING THIS SEDUCTIVE LITTLE LINK http://amzn.to/1dRj2BC

Back in the Saddle

I’m not one necessarily to pooh-pooh modern mental health disorders, we live in a relentless world and the pressures that come with it bring forward new issues, but it always struck me that ‘Seasonal Adjustment Disorder’ (SAD) was one of the woolliest of these new fangled maladies. Maybe, and as a direct result of my job, it’s that I spend so much time in darkened rooms or am out late at night that the idea of bleak, dirty grey, long winter days isn’t that much of a culture shock. Also, I find it hard to credit that anyone born in the British Isles would possibly suffer from SAD as most years it’s pretty much the one ‘season’ anyway.
I’ve changed my mind though.
Natalie has always suffered from it. Her desire, need almost, to be outside in the garden is trampled on by the harsh weather and the dark days and her mood – and overall happiness – suffers accordingly as she’s left cooped up like a songbird in a cage, unable to spread her horticultural wings. I have no desire to be outside at all but even I’m getting the winter blues this year. In short, New Year my arse. There’s nothing ‘new’ about it! Look out of the window in January, there’s nothing new there, it’s the same slow lingering death that was in evidence before the somewhat forced jollity of Christmas. It’s cold, damp and drab and this place suffers terribly from an almost Hammer House of Horror desolation.
This month marked our ninth anniversary of being here in France and it’s flown by. How, in that time, we’ve gone from a one child family in a suburban Victorian semi to the Von Trapp’s owning a petting zoo is the result of a mysterious whirlwind and at times like these it feels too much; everything is an effort, everything is a chore. Just going out in the morning for firewood elicits the kind of sullen chuntering you might get from a teenager who’s been told to go and brush his teeth. There’s a stagnation, the place feels bloated and unkempt, too big, too much hassle, in need of change.
The death of Junior the horse hasn’t helped, nor the disappearance and probable death of Vespa. She may come back of course, cats can do that, but it’s been four months and it’s unlikely. Junior’s ultimately swift demise, not to mention the emotionally draining legal process of getting his body removed, was brutal for us all and has left a lingering sadness that Christmas could only temporarily lift. Sensing the mood the hens stopped laying weeks ago and Ultime, Junior’s skittish female companion, spends much of the day whinnying seemingly in grief. As a result Natalie has taken to the internet browsing animal rescue websites and, much worse, house price comparison websites which showed us that if we sold up here we could get a sizeable property in Grimsby. As if things weren’t bleak enough.
It’s possible in these times to get a bit slapdash, cut corners, rush things. Which is presumably exactly how the gate to the paddock came to be left open and I stood in the kitchen one morning washing the dishes and looking balefully through the window while Ultime, only a few yards the other side of the window stood in the potager(allotment) and belligerently evacuated herself while holding my gaze. The goats were out too and as I snapped off the marigolds and let my head fall into my chest I could see potentially the whole day being lost to rounding up livestock. I wasn’t in the mood.
Perhaps the goats sensed my short temper and on seeing me immediately fled back into the paddock, at last I thought, I’m getting some goat respect around here but no, it wasn’t my authority they were scared of, it was Ultime and I could understand why. Having broken out of her paddock she was now in such a state of blind panic that she was charging about the garden and kicking out, she would rush at me and then suddenly stop like a racehorse at a daunting fence, then she’d start again. She was wild. Her eyes were huge and she snorted like a maniac. What you have to do in these circumstances is remain calm apparently, bring an air of serenity to proceedings, show who’s boss. I, on the other hand, ran to the door like a frightened rodeo amateur while the mad horse chased me murderously. I got to the back door which Natalie opened swiftly but rather than letting me in, she just handed me some bread and shut the door again.
This hardly seemed like an effective weapon and Ultime just stared at me with contempt. I managed to lead her (she chased me) back near to the paddock gate, but as we got close she reared up angrily and then came crashing down and started kicking her back legs out. I was genuinely scared by this point and considering getting the hell out of there but instead I banged her on the nose with the three day old baguette and told her to ‘get a bloody grip’. The effect was immediate. Rather than send her even more crazy she stopped jumping around and just stared at me in utter bewilderment. She was so shocked at being ‘baguetted’ on the nose that it seemed to wake her from her madness. She stared at me a while longer and then, after some gentle, albeit nervous, strokes from me, followed me docilely back into the paddock and I fed her the baguette.
I am no ‘countryphile’, I am not a man of the soil, I’m no horse whisperer, but after a few weeks of hard slog where everything had felt like a drag, where we’ve questioned our ability and desire to stay where we are, questioned the very essence of why we came here in the first place, this moment with a now calm Ultime eating from my hand and Natalie emerging to help keep her, and me, calm was priceless. Suddenly everything seemed clear again, suddenly it was all worth it. It’s been a long winter and there’s plenty more to come but as I stood there in my pale blue Gabicci knitwear, light brown Donegal trousers and brogue Loakes I knew I belonged.
The new book 'C'est Modnifique! The Adventures of an English Grump in Rural France' is released in July, but you can buy the paperback, kindle and Audio download versions of 'A la Mod...' by clicking this link AMAZON SHOP

Hunkering Down

“Darling, the swimming pool engineer refuses to come in until we’ve put the horse away” is pretty much the apotheosis of middle class, first world problems. I found myself shouting this up the stairs to Natalie and immediately needed a sit down, a few moments to take a good long hard look at myself. The truth was that I have every sympathy for the poor pool engineer. He arrived, probably in a mood of optimism late in the afternoon, no doubt feeling that this would be his last call of the day, a simple ‘hivernage’(putting the pool into winter hibernation) and then home to a warming cognac or something. What he didn’t expect as he tried to get through the gate was an ill looking horse acting as bouncer and clearly taking a dislike to the poor man. Junior is very obviously unwell but there’s still enough residual hate in his veins for snorting maniacally at boiler-suited strangers who turn up unannounced. I tried to move him myself but he was having none of it from me and so we all just stood there awkwardly filling time, Junior very obviously not taking his eye off the increasingly nervous visitor. Natalie arrived and of course the old sod was immediately politeness itself, though as he was led away he would stop every few yards and turn his head back to the pool engineer just to let him know... To be fair Junior isn’t like this as often as he used to be. He is, like I say, quite unwell and we suspect (though actual tests cost hundreds of euros and can only be done in Le Mans or Paris) that he has cancer. Ultime, one minute crying out for him when he’s allowed to roam outside the paddock will then give him something of a beating on his return to the extent now that she has now been separated and is left to her own devices away from the poor old man.  Tallulah the oldest hen is suffering too and the ‘tonic’ drops are becoming less and less effective as she croaks quietly to herself, her crest lies limply across her head like a Bobby Charlton comb over and her feathers seem to get paler. Vespa, Natalie’s much loved cat, has been missing for two months now and Natalie is heartbroken. I had a text from Natalie late last night to say that there had been a power cut since early evening and that she and the boys were all huddled around candles in the front room. These are trying times for her indeed. She hates the winter anyway, the weather is foul and keeping her indoors but the sense that the new season very much marks the end of something is compounded by the fact that by spring there’s a very real possibility that we’ll be without our first horse, our first hen and our first cat and that is a very depressing thought. The boys are almost constantly ill at this time of year too passing germs between the three of them, then there’ll be a few days respite before another bout of gastro is picked up at school and the whole game starts again. I hardly help with her burden  by firstly being away nearly all the time at the moment and then just occasionally ringing up to moan about ineffective hotel wifi or delayed room service. Natalie is the eternal optimist, yes she’s got her plate full at the moment and things are difficult but she’s already planning her ‘spring garden’ for next year. Extra planning had had to be added since the goats escaped again last week and decimated her beloved rose bushes, a particularly stupid and wanton act considering that the goats’ only ally around the place is Natalie herself and one more bout of rose-related vandalism like that and they will very much be history. But she’s getting through it as she always does, humming tunes away to herself, never down for long, keeping us all going. I suspect also that she has plans in the animal department too. She tried to convince me last week that we needed another puppy to which even the boys were sceptical and I could tell her heart wasn’t really in it. We have a new neighbour you see who has a dog-breeding business, and although they live half a mile away, they can be heard. We’re not keen on the whole pedigree dog breedingindustry anyway, and although we’ve never actually seen them, around feeding time you can hear dozens of Highland Terriers all yapping excitedly for their dinner. Natalie stands on the terrasse listening to the cacophony, her head tilted like she’s trying to understand them. I fear that at some point over the winter she’ll attempt a night raid or at least a reconnaissance mission to check ontheir conditions. Also, a litter of kittens was spotted on the roadside a few days ago and she keeps popping back to the spot to see if they’re still around. I’ve mentioned before also that a lone elephant is kept in a field on the way to a train station I sometimes use. I wouldn’t put it past her, you know. She has previous. So as I put this blog into hibernation too for a few weeks, really there’s only so much moaning from the inside of insipid mid-range hotels even I am capable of, I can almost guarantee that on my return there will be new additions to be introduced, new cast members rescued from whatever pitiful fate they were enduring and bringing into the Moore household their own behavioural problems and needs, added chaos and burden. More ties to the place and increased responsibility and labour. I’m not sure we’d want it any other way. In the meantime, check out things here for book, festival or gig shenanigans

Rire Guard Action

And so finally, after what seems like months, I can finally breathe out again. I said at the start of the year that I would do a gig in French by the end of 2013 and this week I did it. But since I booked it in June it has hung over me like a dark cloud, like I’d set the date for my own professional execution and as the date approached so my nerves got worse, the many, many reasons I could come up with for cancelling it got more and more compelling and more and more tempting to use.
My nerves made Natalie and the boys nervous; I said to Natalie last week how anxious I was about the whole thing and she replied, “I know! It’s making me sick just thinking about it.” And it wasn’t just close family who feared for me, Mélanie, my hairdresser in France, asked me how I was practising, specifically who I spoke French with considering we speak French at home. “You're the only person I speak French with on a regular basis.” I pointed out to her in what, even for me, was bad French. She went silent, avoided eye contact and hurriedly changed the subject. 
It wasn’t that people didn’t think it would go well, it’s just that anybody who I spoke to about it couldn’t really understand why I was doing it all. Even I was a little hazy about the whole thing. Like moving to France in the first place, the reasons for doing so were numerous – if it went well. If it didn’t go well then professionally it wouldn’t make any difference, stage confidence can be a fragile thing but dying on my hole in French would have little or no effect on my ‘English’ performances, but as far as my self confidence goes, in the country we’ve chosen to live, it would have been a crushing blow. And not just for me, but for Natalie, Samuel, Maurice and Thérence too who would be doomed to a life of translating for the mod thickie in the corner.
When I first started doing stand up I had no great ambitions in the industry, far from it, I can honestly say that for almost the first ten years of being a stand up comedian I was so shocked that I was being paid for it at all that I almost tried to hide myself away, convinced that at some point someone who tap me on the shoulder and tell me my time was up, that I’d gate-crashed for long enough. So let me make it clear I have no ambition to continue performing in French either, the main reason, in fact when I first thought about it at all the only reason was to improve my French; the logic being that if I gave myself a deadline I would stop hiding behind Natalie and the children and actually do something about improving my language skills. Also, cockily, I’d always convinced myself that I already had the language skills but somehow they were suffering from some kind of locked in syndrome and that this gig would act as a plunger and suddenly the dormant linguist would spill forth.
Yes. I was wrong about that.
When I sat down to write the French set with Natalie it became apparent, very early on, that my French skills were, in a word, merde. I had a certain level of vocabulary but my grammar and sentence construction were pathetically weak, which made our joint writing sessions somewhat fraught. I would tell Natalie what I wanted to say and she would come up with a sentence that looked so complicated it was like the work of a French Chaucer. For Natalie correct grammar and sentence construction is almost an evangelical obsession, sometimes she’ll just stare angrily at Facebook for hours, shaking her head and on the verge of tears at the ‘crimes’ perpetrated by language terrorists. In the end we had to call in Samuel to help with the writing just so that we had some acceptable middle ground between my laissez-faireattitude to the grammar and Natalie’s Moliere-esque wordiness.
Strangely enough, I was never that concerned with whether what we were writing was actually funny or not. By choosing to do the gig in London to a French audience and talking about how embarrassingly pitiful my French is, I was essentially preaching to the converted. My logic being that they live and work in England, they are therefore Anglophones and linguists so it was going to be a subject they know about. What worried me most, apart from learning the lines themselves, was the complete lack of skills I would have as a performer in a language I’m not comfortable in. Chatting to the front row, reacting to heckles, ad-libs and asides, all vital weapons in a stand up's armoury, were going to be unavailable to me because of non-fluency. It was going to be like my first gig all over again only with a lot fewer words than I had at my disposal then.
I went to The Comedy Store early, nervous as hell. The brilliant staff there, most of whom I’ve known for years, could tell at once I was dreading the show. I was visibly shaking with nerves, carrying my script around with me as though at this late stage that would make any difference at all. I was introduced to the French acts who were the main attraction on the bill, they were friendly, even concerned as my fragility was tragically obvious.
The lights went down, the music stopped and the French headline act (INSERT NAME) gave me a warm introduction to the stage. I walked on to the famous Comedy Stage, like I’ve done hundreds of times before, took the microphone out of its stand and promptly forgot everything I’d planned to say! I shuffled about a bit, said ‘Bonsoir’, pretended to look at my hand for the next bit – in my head desperately trying to remember what the hell I should be talking about. I’d said to Simon, the stage manager, before the gig that what I really needed for my set to be a success was the audience to buy into it, to buy into the ‘character’ of an Englishman out of his comfort zone, struggling in a language totally alien to him. And they did, thankfully they did. Partly of course because this ‘character’ that they thought was being acted out in front of them was not a comedy character at all, this act had integrity, honesty and pathos because I really was that struggling Englishman, it was about as authentic as I’ve ever been.
My time on stage absolutely flew by, in the end, by the time I’d regained a grip on my script, I had to cut things out as I went along, surprising myself at my ability to mentally edit a foreign script onstage. I did ten minutes and in that time I had three or four full applause breaks (I’m not sure my ten minutes sets at The Comedy Store were ever that well received in English) and I left the stage to cheering and whooping and the congratulations of the other acts.
I felt like crying. The relief was almost too much to bear and the exhaustion was suddenly overwhelming. Everybody else seemed almost as relieved as I was and then the talk was all about when I’d be doing my next one, come back and do a full set next time, have you thought about touring?
I don’t remember my actual first gig. I couldn’t remember it the following morning, fear had erased it from my mind, but I know it went well because everybody told me it did. And so, stupidly, for my second gig I invited loads of friends and family. Even now I can confidently say that second ever gig is still one of the worst in the thousands of gigs I’ve done. There are still some people who I invited who have not spoken to me since such was the stench I left behind.
So when am I doing my second French gig?

Mmmm, we’ll see about that.

Anyway, if you want to see me in English please this page here and the first Comedy Book Festival. Please.

Coming or Going

This blog started almost exactly three years ago with me testing a new, and ultimately ineffective, electric fence. It was a necessary installation at the time as Junior (The World’s Angriest HorseTM) kept turning up on the doorstep in the middle of the night demanding hay with menaces; in the intervening time the voltage has been increased, as subsequently the goats took over the mantel of Farmyard Escape Committee, until it now stands at just under ‘Texan State Penitentiary’ wattage and crackles away in the background like Frankenstein’s laboratory. This week it nearly killed me.
It has been ‘one of those weeks’, a whirlwind of travel, gigs and small holding husbandry, smart suits, crunching surgical insoles for loafers and rubber gloves for animal poo gathering. I have missed at least two night’s sleep and all the time wander around in a detached fog reciting lines that I’m learning for my first gig in French which looms on the horizon, more terrifying with every day, like my professional execution to which no pardon will be granted.
I drove with Natalie and the boys back to England last Wednesday for their annual ‘holiday’ seeing family and friends and as usual someone had to take care of the ark so while Natalie’s uncle watched the place for a couple of nights, I had to rush back to, excuse the pun, take the reins. It was never going to be that straightforward. I dropped the family off in Crawley, I hosted an awards ceremony in London and had my travel all mapped out. A 3am National Express to Luton Airport, flight to Paris, TGV to Tours and pick up my car which I’d brilliantly left in a remote side street, like a getaway car. I fell almost at the first hurdle. Oh I managed the night bus to Luton, even after only 35 minutes sleep I could manage that, it was trying to get through security at the airport itself that things broke down.
“Er, I’m sorry sir; this boarding pass is for yesterday’s flight.”
I travel a lot and 90% of the time (alright nearer 75%) it goes okay, but occasionally I get slack, blasé about tight connections and feasible routes, but booking the wrong day entirely was a new low in travel ineptitude and I just looked at the security man like he was the insane one, which unnerved him no end and he started gibbering on about getting me on the evening flight to Nimes as recompense. Nimes is about as close to where I live as Edinburgh is to the suburbs of Plymouth and I just turned my back on the poor man and started mentally flicking through my options. I may not always get the practicality right but if I have a Mastermind topic of choice these days it would be ‘Possible Ways to Travel Between England and France’ and I knew that if I could get on the next train from Luton I would still make the 5.40am Eurostar and still make it home for a late lunch.
“Hello mate,” I said, “can I get through and buy a ticket on the train please, I really need to be on the next train to London.”
The next train to London left in two minutes and I had a barrier to get through and three flights of stairs between me and the platform. Also there was a surly I-don’t-like-my-job station guard in the way too. I repeated my question.
“No. You’re not allowed through without a ticket...”
“But it’s urgent, I...”
“The machines are over there.” He said coldly and turned his back on me.
I put my bag down slowly, went to the machine and tried not to lose my temper. If I got the next train to London I could still make the 7.01 Eurostar, I could get home for afternoon tea. I bought my ticket, picked up my bag and went through the barrier and approached the station guard.
“What time is the next train to London please?” I said looking straight into his eyes.
“4.47. Takes you...” He replied, trying to avoid eye contact.
“Good.” I put my bag down again. “So that gives me about ten minutes to stand here and make you feel as uncomfortable as possible while your disappointing life ticks slowly on, doesn’t it?” He looked genuinely disconcerted by the prospect and started stuttering about rules, all the while trying to straighten his Hi-Vis vest as if he needed more protection. I leaned in towards him, laughed nastily in his face and made my way to the platform, it was a small victory but a necessary one.
I did eventually make it home later that afternoon and immediately started to work my way through Natalie’s detailed instructions on animal and property upkeep, three sides of A4 paper. I must have looked quite a sight, still in my Black tie Awards-Hosting suit, I put on my Wellington Boots and my original 1950’s US military Parka and got to work on the horses, goats and hens. Despite completely ballsing up my travel I did feel a sense of triumph that I had actually made it home at all and the next three days went swimmingly. I did lots of work on my French script, started writing the next book, tidied up all the boys’ bedrooms, did the ironing, made myself ridiculously rich, sauce-heavy meals, caught up on my sleep and still cleaned up after, fed and marshalled the cats, dogs, hens, goats and horses.
On the Monday I had to go back to London for another corporate ‘do’ while Natalie’s uncle babysat for the evening, but returned on Tuesday lunchtime – this time successfully via Luton – ready once more for the fray but also once again having had no sleep. I got careless.
The mild weather meant that I had no need for the warmth of my Parka and so in an act of dress down folly, one which won’t be repeated, I had on my denim jacket instead. Natalie’s instructions for feeding the horses were clear, before placing their feed buckets over the fence, TURN THE ELECTRIC FENCE OFF; I hadn’t done so up to now and though I’d brushed the fence a few times the military outerwear Parka had obviously protected me against any shock. The denim jacket didn’t do so, particularly the metal buttons on the breast pockets...
The pain was intense and in the brief throes of the violence I could almost picture myself, cartoon-style, as a glowing, throbbing skeleton. I was thrown about three metres across the ground screaming. My chest felt like it might explode and my mouth had a taste of burnt coal, in fact everything seemed like it was just smouldering. The horses, looked up from their buckets, looked at each other as if to tut and then carried on eating. I sat up, everything ached. I stood up, and immediately fell down again. I stayed sitting down for a good twenty minutes, trying to gather myself. I’d had a genuine escape, not only that but supposing the worst had happened? I wouldn’t have been found for another four days when Natalie returns...Here lies Ian Moore, born in hope, died by Nipple Button Pocket Electrocution.

I still feel peculiar, plus my enthusiasm for the whole ‘on my own, get stuff done’ project has waned entirely. I’ve let myself go. This morning I was out feeding the horses in my pyjamas, the trusty parka uncomfortably wrapped over my towelling dressing gown, a grubby beany hat on my head, still shaking from the fence incident and muttering obscenities at anything that moves. I’ve been shocked into premature stir-craziness, but there is hope. Just two more days of this supposed bucolic idyll, some would say death-trap, and I’ll be back working the late night clubs and standing up to random acts of travel bureaucracy unpleasantness, doing what I do best. As Peachy Carnehan says in Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, ‘let’s go and seek safety in battle.’
NOTE: I am taking part in the inaugural Comedy Book Festival at the end of November, so if you want ask a question, hear a reading, have a book signed or just tut at me like horses here's the link http://www.comedybookfest.com/#!ian-moore/c22eq

Last man (Almost) Standing

I was in a shopping mall in Piccadilly recently, well it used to be a shopping mall, it’s now just three floors of wall to wall tourist-knock-off-union-jackery-tat, but the most striking element was one of those fish tank foot cleansing operations that most right thinking people run a mile from. The tanks, six of them, were lined up and grubbier than an abandoned aquarium, the poor fish were struggling for clean oxygen in their water and doomed to a life of enclosed filth while chewing the dead skin off people’s shop tired feet. Only one tank was in operation, and an overweight middle aged man was having his extremities cleansed while he swigged on a can of lager; it was as low rent as supposed western decadence gets and I nearly threw up.
Feet should be a private thing; open toed footwear allowed only on sandy beaches and anyone who removes their shoes in public subjected to the strongest punishment in the land. Podiatrists should operate in gloomy backstreets or do home visits, or preferably not at all. Podiatry is a perversion frankly and those that practice it should be on more than just a medical register.
In any case, the young podiatrist examined my right foot in his hand and examined it closely. Again I was almost overcome with a feeling of nausea as he twisted it this way and that, moved his head closer to it, and fiddled with the ball, the heel and the toes. Occasionally he would look up to ask me a question and he seemed confused by the look of permanent horror on my face, my lip curled as I held his gaze and silently wondered just what kind of deviant he was. I think he took my disdain personally and has prescribed surgical inner soles to arrest a chronic foot, back, leg disorder the fault of which he laid squarely at the foot – no pun intended - at the kind of light (beautifully crafted) loafers I tend to wear. He’d asked me to bring along a selection of my everyday footwear (I’m a mod, we don’t do ‘everyday’) and he’d looked at them aghast like I was a coalminer attempting to break the Earth’s crust wearing only ballet shoes.
He may be right of course, but after nearly eleven months of various diagnoses for my pain I’ll wait and see if the new inner soles actually make a difference and that he’s not, as I suspect, just keen on collecting casts and drawings of people’s feet. Diagnosis is the hardest part of medicine I was once told, that’s why ‘House’ is so popular, most of the time it’s literally a mystery, for example poor Junior has been ill for a year now and we don’t seem much closer to finding out why.
The once mighty, albeit cantankerous, beast has seen more horse vets than Desert Orchid but something is terribly amiss. Some have said sand colic, some have said he’s older than we believe, others have said worms. Our local vets have been tried and exhausted with no discernible improvement, quite the opposite, so now we’re looking further afield for an explanation. Monsieur Corbeau used to be a mechanic in the area until ill health forced his retirement, but he’s using his free time now, amongst other things to train horses for attelage, a popular sport here. Natalie bumped into him in the market and they talked about Junior’s plight. Monsieur Corbeau was the most conscientious mechanic I’ve ever met; I still remember his look of horror when I turned up at his workshop with a Camper Van I’d bought on ebay.
“Where have you driven this from?” He asked incredulously, seemingly afraid to touch it.
“Manchester.” I beamed.
“You’re lucky to be alive.” He said and snatched the keys off me in case I was planning on driving it any further.
He regarded Junior as being in a similar state of disrepair and offered to drive Natalie and Junior in his Horse Box to a renowned vet about an hour away.
“This is so kind of you.” Natalie said to him when they returned from the first of two vet journeys.
He looked at her, slightly confused. “Not really.” He said, “It’s what we do for them.” He concluded, slightly embarrassed and handed Natalie Junior’s lead rope.
If only the results were as clear as that. He’s had a number of blood tests, none of which prove anything, only that the second set were worse than the first in some way. If it’s an ulcer, which they can’t apparently determine, without an endoscopy, then the treatment is 800 Euros.   An endoscopy  can only be done in either Paris or Le Mans, either of which are a 6 hour round trip away in Monsieur Corbeau’s horse box and poor Junior must be starved for 16 hours prior to the camera exploring his insides.  The vet, the most recent one anyway, fears it’s a cancerous tumour, for which there is no treatment.
Add to the fact that Vespa has been missing now for three weeks and Natalie is distraught. Vespa has been gone before but never while the hunting season was on, she stayed close to home then, and not while we have a seeming epidemic of foxes in the area, at the last count 52 have been shot by farmers since September. The feeling is that Vespa may have been the victim of a fox, but we just don’t know.
A number of people have kindly pointed out to Natalie that ‘at least they’re only animals’ as if the cloud of frustration and despair will suddenly lift from her and everything will be alright again. I’ve never really understood this kind of remark, people who go around saying that ‘humans are more important and we should take more care of them’ as if you have to make a choice at some point, choose a side, like there’s only so much compassion you’re allowed to show for living creatures. It’s one or the other. Frankly it’s errant nonsense and ignores the fact that animals, especially our animals, are part of the family. I mean for Heaven’s Sakes anyone who really thinks that I’m somewhere in the pecking order above almost any of the livestock we have clearly isn’t paying attention. Besides which both Vespa and Junior have been integral to so much that has happened to us all over the last few years.
Junior tried to come in through the front door yesterday, he was clearly feeling low and needed Natalie to soothe the savage breast as it were, but the look of contempt he gave me when I closed the door on him rather than offer him a seat was so vivid, so human in many ways and you could tell that when Natalie came down to him he wanted to ask a question of her like, “Really, what do you see in him?”

Natalie and the boys go away for a week tomorrow, a holiday which Natalie especially needs to break the cycle of dealing with a fading Junior and calling out mournfully everyday for a cat that may or may not still be alive. It’s all pretty depressing around here at the moment and we figured it was best that they all get away for a bit, try to lift their gloom. While they’re gone I will take delivery of my new surgical inner soles, so really it’s probably for the best that I’m alone at this difficult time. 
NOTE: For much, much more on why Junior and Vespa are part of the family here is my book, published by Summersdale, and available on paper, audio and the sorcery of download. http://amzn.to/16qs5H9

Starter for Dix

I am not a sociable person. Just because I can handle audiences with a degree of confidence and authority doesn’t mean that I can deal with social situations the same way; I get very nervous and constantly have my eye on a potential escape route. But I was sitting in the Old Red Lion Pub on High Holborn having a nerve-calmer and tonic and already planning my ‘leave early’ – or even my ‘not turn up at all’ – excuses when I just thought ‘sod it’, downed my drink in one gulp and strode across the road and into the pub quiz.
I like a good pub quiz but preferably with people I know and almost certainly in a language I have some flair for, but this was neither. Because of my family’s continuing reluctance to speak French with me at home I am now reduced to joining social language groups in an effort to improve, ironically in London, and speaking with total strangers, something I never do. This group was holding a celebratory bilingual pub quiz and it seemed, at least it did so when I signed up for it a week earlier, a good ice-breaking idea. The fact that it was also taking place in a Wetherspoon’s pub also added to my nerves. I don’t like Wetherspoon’s pubs. The idea, when they first started, was a strong one: No music, no fruit machines, cheaper drink and cheaper pub food, but the result is that cheaper beer always attracts a ‘cheaper beer’ clientele and they are frankly places that I avoid, not having a wardrobe that includes the jogging pants and slip on shoes mix. I once sat in a Wetherspoon’s in Peterborough reading a book and some old bloke came over to my table, poked the cover of my book with a bony, nicotine stained finger and said, “Reading eh? What are you? Some kind of ****?”
This one though, being in Central London, was different to your smaller metropolitan branches and had a different atmosphere, but it was heaving.
“I know!” said Chad apologetically as he introduced himself as founder and chief organiser of the group; his American accent struggling to be heard above the din. “It’s so busy! There’s a rival language group in here tonight...” I didn’t catch the end of what he said, not necessarily because of the noise but the idea that there was a ‘rival’ language group, I imagined them plotting in a dark corner somewhere and that before the night was out there’d be some violent ‘conjugation-off’ and there’d be some pretty salty vocabulary bandied about.
I was one of the first to arrive and deliberately so, that way I wouldn’t feel intimidated walking into a large group and probably just turn around and slink off after a couple of introductions, but the numbers soon swelled to around 40 people which delighted Chad no end, “I’ll bet the other group don’t have this many!” he beamed. The idea of the group is that it’s a mix of French and English speakers, so that both groups have the chance to improve the language that they’re learning, the French could meet English people and vice versa; I have no idea if it was roughly half and half English-French or not but the group within the group that I spent the evening with were mostly French which suited me. Of course they were there to practice their English but they seemed equally happy just to be speaking French with other French people and so I got to speak quite a lot of French right from the start.
Part of my social reticence is down to what I do, this isn’t false modesty I’m a naturally shy person anyway but I’m also aware that I am quite ‘exotic’. Stand up comedy is a fascination for lots of people, it’s an unusual job and folk are quite often curious about what kind of people do it and how it works. As such, once I’ve told people what I do for a living it tends to dominate the conversation, and other people get drawn in on the back of, “Ooh, have you met Ian? He’s a comedian...”, until you’re surrounded and it’s practically a gig, you then start worrying that people will think you’re just showing off. This is exactly what happened here so it was a relief when we were divided up into teams and the quiz began.
There were five in our team, three men and two women, all, and this applied to at least 90% of the group as a whole as far as I could make out, a lot younger than me. There was Gilles, a Frenchman, Roberto, an Italian who spoke five languages and was just ‘brushing the cobwebs from his Français’ he said with dispiriting accent-less eloquence, and Margot and Lucie from Paris who were in London for a year just, enviably, ‘for fun’.
The trust has gone from the pub quiz, smartphones have taken the innocence of the exercise away and so a couple of ‘organisers’ patrolled the tables making sure that nothing underhand was going on but they needn’t have worried. The quiz itself was almost secondary to the evening and provided a springboard for enthusiastic bilingual, sometimes pidgin, communication. No-one was taking the quiz that seriously, except for one bloke.
Look, I have a competitive streak okay. I don’t like to lose, my granddad always said ‘you can only do your best’ but my dad also said that there’s ‘no point in doing anything if you’re going to come second’ and that’s the one that’s stuck with me. My fellow teammates found out pretty early on in proceedings that this was no jolly, this wasn’t something to be taken lightly and that I was, if needs be, prepared to argue my case strongly if I felt we were about to give the wrong answer. Fifteen minutes I spent trying to persuade Margot the folly of her ways and that I did indeed know the correct ingredients for a Mont Blanc though she got her revenge when I said I’d never heard of ‘Durdle’s Door’ in Dorset and doubted that it even existed. We lost the quiz by one point and she subsequently blamed me and my poor Dorset knowledge for the defeat.
Frankly I think the rest of the team were a bit relieved when the quiz was over and we could just get back to socialising. I was definitely having the better evening in terms of language in that the vast majority of conversation at our table was in French so I was learning and practicing a great deal. Inevitably the conversation was largely about my job and, with the wine flowing, I began to get more loquacious, even treating it like a gig, shamelessly throwing in jokes and observations. Showing off basically.
“So Gilles,” Lucie asked, probably to cover the silence after one of my failed bilingual jokes, “what do you do for a living in London?”
A slightly sheepish look came over his face.
“I’m a biologist,” Gilles replied, “working on a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease.”
Now you see, that really is showing off.


For more on my mono-lingual shame my book, A la Mod, published by Summersdale, is available on download, audiobook and good, old-fashioned paper. Click this link http://amzn.to/16iXFkI

I Smell a Rat

It’s hard sometimes not to feel persecuted. In the end if you spend as much time on your own as I do, then the safety valve ‘dreamer’ part of your subconscious inevitably turns darker and you see problems where maybe there aren’t any. You attach sinister meanings to innocent events, put yourself on a heightened sense of alert when relaxing would be far more productive.  
I’ve had bad travel weeks before but a burst petrol tank, lost boarding cards, elephants, phantom taxi drivers, double booked plane tickets and a train strike have turned me into a gibbering wreck. Seriously, Colin Jackson didn’t have as many hurdles as me.  
The plan was simple. I drove over on the Friday and because I’d read my diary wrongly was due to drive back to France again after work on the Saturday. I filled the not inconsiderable space in the Land Rover with English delicacies like crisps, crumpets, Jammie Dodger biscuits and Custard Creams and went to fill the car up with diesel in preparation for the long drive back. While the assistant was waiting for me  to make my mind up on whether to buy an original Yorkie or branch out into the more exotic ‘Raisin and Biscuit’ variety, her colleague let out an exclamation. 
“Ooh Sharon, I think we have a leak on Pump 17!” They both looked at me as a second earlier I’d said ‘Pump 17’ and then we all three turned to look at the said pump and my car sitting next to it spewing out diesel at an alarming rate.  
“LOCK DOWN!” Said a man suddenly emerging from the back office and Sharon gave me a pitying look as she handed me back my cards and receipt. “I wouldn’t start that up if I were you.” She said, as if having weighed up the evidence in the two minutes that she’d known me that that was exactly the sort of stupid thing I’d do. The garage was emptied of other customers and roped off, new customers were denied access which led to a few catcalls on seeing my car of ‘Bloody French! F**K off home!’ The Fire Brigade arrived within minutes, all massive blokes with a sense of purpose and expertise that just made me look small and inadequate in every way and, an hour later, a cheerily driven pick- up truck was heading off into the distance with my stricken crisp-laden vehicle on the back of it. 
My first thoughts at this point weren’t, how much will this cost? How do I get to work tonight? Which garage is it being taken to? No, my first thought was ‘How do I still get home tonight?’ During the week Samuel had been in tears again that I was going away so soon after being away the last time. It is heart-breaking knowing that there’s no alternative, he’s twelve and he wants me around, I think he finds the pressure on him hard when I’m not there but I’d cheered him up by promising that it was ‘only for two nights, I’ll be back before you know it.’ I was determined to make good that promise too, no matter what the cost. 
Fortunately, Eurostar cater specifically for the ‘no matter what the cost’ type travellers and I was back in the Loire Valley by mid afternoon on the Sunday. I was exhausted, certainly a bit down and quite paranoid too as the mechanic had called the evening before and suggested darkly that my car may have been the victim of foul play, someone had possibly cut the pipes to drain the fuel... 
My mind was racing to be honest, paranoia fed on a diet of exhaustion and loneliness is a dangerous mix and as Natalie drove me home from the station it was with a dull sense of surrealism that I noticed an elephant grazing in a field by the side of the road. 
“An elephant!” Said Thérence from the back of the car. Why it was there is anybody’s guess but my state of mind just viewed it and filed it, storing it away in a box marked ‘More things to worry about.’ It all felt like I was in one of those 1970’s conspiracy films, I was being targeted by some shadowy organisation who knew that the best way to bring me down was to deliver regular little blows to my fragile mental state. An elephant in a vineyard was just a cherry on the cake from some evil genius in a government office somewhere. 
Home didn’t immediately work to dispel these thoughts either. One of the out-houses was stinking morbidly and covered in flies, proof that there was something rotting in there that needed to be gotten rid of pronto. Again, the sense of cinematic suspicion was all prevailing as our ‘hero’ returns home to find a corpse. It was rats, two of them, and in fairly advanced stages of decomposition and so we spent two hours clearing everything out of the room, disposing of the maggoty carcasses and disinfecting the place. As homecomings go, it wasn’t the best. 
But the next three days were wonderful, my paranoia even subsided a little. The boys were all on great form and quality time was spent with Samuel before once again it was time to head off, “What time are you going?” He asked innocently at breakfast on the Wednesday morning. 
“There’s a train at 11, but I’ll just check.” I had checked countless times already but I always double check, re-check and check again from a different computer if possible and yes, there is normally a train at 11, only not today. Oh no, because today there was a short notice strike. I’ve said it before but strikes used to be so convivial in France, plenty of notice was given and always on a Thursday but now the bastards were playing hardball and I had to get to Poitiers airport some 200 kilometres away. I called a taxi, knowing full well that a, they wouldn’t answer or b, wouldn’t reply to the message because French taxis are a bit like the unicorn or a phoenix, mythical creatures that everyone wishes actually did exist but know full well they don’t. Natalie drove me to Tours in the end where I was able to catch one of the few trains running to Poitiers and from there made it to the airport.  
My paranoia levels were rising again as the stress of the day so far began to take its toll; I decided to treat myself to a meal at the airport restaurant and climbed the two flights of stairs to the panoramic salon. 
 “A table for one.” I said and the waiter looked at me with disdain. 
“Wait there!” He barked as I began following him into the crowded restaurant area and away from the waiting area. He came back a minute later with a small table and set me up in the corner of the waiting area like I’d behaved badly in the main restaurant or something and an example needed to be made of me. I ate my meal in there on my own as people came in and out and regarded me suspiciously. 
I was, by the time I arrived at my hotel in London, very strung out. Like I said at the start it’s easy to feel persecuted when you’re on your own so much but I was getting the distinct impression that I was playing the fall guy here, that everyone I encountered, every form of transport available was all conspiring against me. It was personal and I felt beleaguered and not at all in control; someone, in old school film noir parlance, was ‘playing me for a sap’. 
“Yes, hello, I have a reservation for tonight. The name’s Moore.” 
I swear I’m not making the next bit up. 
 “Of course, Mr Moore. Excuse me one second.” She picked up her desk phone and dialled a few numbers. “Yes,” she said, glancing quickly at me and then quietly speaking into the phone, “He’s arrived.” 
If I disappear in the next few days.... 
NB Of course if I am the victim of some powerful, shadowy organisation you'll feel terrible if you haven't bought my book. Click here to salve your future conscience.