Ian Moore's Blog, page 5

Le School's Out!

In France the end of summer is signalled by La Rentrée when the schools, but more importantly everyone else, goes back to work. The equivalent, official phrase for the end of the school year is Les Grandes Vacances but a combination of, ‘Thank Christ for that!’ and ‘Le Big Relief’ would probably do the job better.
It’s not just the kids and teachers who are knackered though both are worked pretty hard and nor is it the drama of school report season which brings an itchy nervousness to the time of year though Samuel was desperate to see improvement on his from Christmas. There were no issues academically but comportement wise where he was described variously as ‘cheeky’, ‘moody’ and ‘melodramatic’. It’s difficult for me to lecture or criticise on such obviously appalling traits but Samuel wanted to show that he’d made an effort in this regard so that his end of year reward would be more grandiose. His report was better – if sucking the individuality out of someone is an improvement  - but seeing as last year’s reward was goats we are still very much locked in ‘reward’negotiations, he favouring the new Manchester United kit and me favouring goat rugs for his bedroom.
Maurice’s end of year I deliberately missed. He has built up such an affection for his teacher that even though I was sent to collect him at the end of his last day, I refused on the grounds that I couldn’t deal with the emotional breakdown that would inevitably occur. I know that this sounds, at the very least, like remiss parenting but seriously every minor setback is greeted at the moment like a widow standing in front of the rubble of her earthquake flattened village and though I love the fact that my children aren’t buttoned up, that they can, and are willing to, express their emotions, there are limits. Natalie collected him instead, “How was it?” I asked, genuinely concerned.
“You’d have hated it.” She replied.
Thérence’s end of term had the potential to be equally traumatic as assorted 4 to 7 year olds were to perform an end of year spectacle to parents and guests. Now I had seen the teachers of this group try and fail to get them to line up in a morning – try watching French passengers on Ryanair, chaos – I just couldn’t see the necessary discipline being instilled with enough success for public performance. It was to take place in the playground behind the school but with the stage itself under a concrete pavilion while the audience sat in the open air. I try not to take a professional eye to these things but sometimes the errors are so glaring that you just can’t help it and I could see that the sound set- up was doomed to failure.
There were microphones attached to the front of the makeshift stage but the speakers themselves had been placed behind the stage, meaning that, at best, the audience would hear a muffled rumble from the deeper recesses of the pavilion and not anything of the spectacleat all. As the audience began to take their seats I feared for the clarity of the production. I also feared for my own mood. I know it’s a school, I know it’s an end of year knees-up as it were but keep your bloody kids in check will you? As one child, one who Maurice has constant issues with, trod on my toe (ie suede Chelsea boots) again playing an inappropriate game of ‘it’ I nearly lost it.
“I’m going to grab him in a minute.” I said to Natalie loudly, there being no need for whispering when no-one else is likely to be able to understand you.
“He has to redoublenext year...” Natalie said, by way of explanation. Meaning that the kid is either thick or has behavioural issues so he’s being held back a year next school year. I’m not surprised frankly with such blatant disregard for sensitive footwear, if I had my way he’d be held back every year. Most of the kids are well behaved though, but too many, far too many in my opinion, are forced to wear the kind of glasses that even a 1980’s kids TV presenter would baulk at. In my day the NHS, bottom of a jam jar, held together with plasters were bad enough here it seems to be the in-thing to have your five year old wear luminous, enormous eyewear that an early Elton John would have regarded as uber-Timmy Mallet-ish. Poor kids, they look at you through these optical monstrosities with a kind of pleading look in their magnified eyes that just screams ‘It wasn’t my idea!’ In the words of Etta James, 'I'd Rather Go Blind'.
The performance began with the muffled strains of the ‘Mission Impossible’ theme tune, surely an irony, as two dozen four year olds dressed as pigs were pushed onto the stage. The thing is that these things are compulsory and not everyone wants to be up there, so seeing a number of the troupe in floods of tears while dressed as porcine is a very long way from joy indeed. Thérence thrives on these things but he was at the back and as he’s also by far the smallest and so was lost behind the emotional frailty that was literally breaking up in front of him. I was sitting unhelpfully behind a concrete pillar, being jostled by parents recording the thing on their iphones like aggressive paparazzi, unable to hear anything beyond the wails of crying children in brightly coloured fancy dress...and it was only the first act.
The expected ‘sound’ problems took their toll early doors it has to be said. The audience, and we are among the older parents at this school, unable to hear much were losing attention fast. Some of them, barely out of school themselves, were behaving like they were back in assembly and pretending to be quiet while bothering others and actually one young dad was pulling the pigtails of a ‘mum’ he’d obviously known since they were the same age as the kids on stage. It all felt horribly chaotic around me – I said last week how I cannot be in an audience – and I left my seat to go and stand elsewhere in the playground.
As I did so the final act started and was the work of the eldest class in the nursery school. The barnyard theme had been abandoned for these children who were improbably dressed in Union Jack ties and singing an English song. Some people turned around to look at me, now standing alone at the back and dressed in what they call around here ‘So Briteesh’, it was as if they thought I’d influenced the choice of material.

Unfortunately the kids here had the toughest slot. They were closing the show, the audience had largely lost interest and the sound was as unhelpful as it could be – comedians may fill in the Jongleurs venue of their choice at this point – it all felt slightly harrowing and I started to think about the hen and stag stand up gigs I myself was about to leave to do. One more weekend to do, I told myself, then it’s Les Grandes Vacances for me too.
The book A la Mod - published by Summersdale - is out in paperback, kindle and on audio download read by me. Click here.

Acting Up­­­­­­

I didn’t know whether to be happy or not. Samuel’s theatrical debut was such a resounding personal success that on the one hand I was immensely proud but on the other, secretly, I’d been hoping that he wouldn’t enjoy it as much as he did and that the acting bug would become a passing fancy like so many others and talk of drama school would be quietly dropped.
There’s no chance of that happening now.
Samuel has been attending the local théâtre group since last September, something which has been noted sarcastically by his teachers who have him marked down now as something of a drama queen, and this performance was the culmination of months of rehearsals, tantrum throwing, ego clashing and some quite astonishing flouncing about. The build up to the two shows had been fraught as Samuel, holding down two major roles, struggled firstly with learning his lines and then started getting nervous in the few days before.
“How do you cope with nerves before you go on stage, Daddy?” He asked one night at the dinner table.
Natalie gave me a stern look along the lines of ‘make something up for God’s sakes, don’t tell the truth’ and I gave it some thought. I could be honest and list the early days of chain smoking, alcohol addiction and little pills or the latter method of outwardly not giving a toss while inside my stomach ulcer does a roaring trade in acid production. I gave him some management speak about ‘visualisation’ and preparation which is at least partly true but which also I don’t think was much help to him as the nerves continued to bite.
We had seats reserved right at the front, which if I were him I would have hated – I don’t like having anybody I even know in the audience let alone on the front row. A couple of years ago a group of friends from school came to see me perform in Birmingham and I was a gibbering wreck backstage.
“What’s up with you?” A colleague asked, “what difference does it make?”
“There’s a woman out there who I lost my virginity to...” I said, practically hyperventilating. “I’m not sure she could handle another bad performance.”
The other problem with me being on the front row was that I was seated right next to the standing video camera operator who, to put it mildly, had something of a flatulence problem and which I hoped wouldn’t prove to be a metaphor for the show that was to follow.
The lights went down, the ‘sshhing’ started and faded away and then the play began.
I’m not sure I understood everything that went on. The play was written by the leader of the théâtregroup and was an intergalactic Romeo and Juliet parody taking in such diverse additions as Rihanna, Snow White, local Berrichon peasantry and Charlie Chaplin. It rambled on a bit in truth and wasn’t helped by the fact that some of the cast were far too young and simply hadn’t, or at least not yet been capable of, learning their lines meaning that there were uncomfortable silences, some almost Pinteresquein length.
The democracy of the exercise was admirable, every child, aging from about five years old up to fifteen or sixteen, had some role to play in the performance but it also meant that the limited theatre space which had been created in the local salle des fêteshad a ‘non-performing cast’ issue with those currently not needed sitting in the ‘well’ in front of the stage. The irony here being that those who couldn’t remember what to say on stage a few minutes earlier were now busy chatting away to their friends and disturbing others. The prompter, who by now was becoming a leading figure in the performance, was trying to shush these unemployed cast members which confused some of the more nervy actors on stage who thought, confusingly, that they were being asked to pipe down.
But the older members of the cast and in particular those who had learnt their lines were stunning. The knowledge that they knew what they were saying and when they had to say it, meant they had had time to actually learn to do some acting as well and Samuel, and yes I know ‘I would say that wouldn’t I?’ was very good indeed. The truth is I wouldn’t just say that anyway. If he’d stunk the place out like my video operating neighbour I simply wouldn’t have written about the event at all, but Samuel, as Charlie Chaplin/The Mad Hatter, had wonderful comic timing and there were whispers of approval all around us whenever he was on stage making me ridiculously proud and the opening night  a triumph.
Matineés are tricky at the best of times but I’d really hoped that after a good night’s sleep and the butterflies of the premier had subsided, that things would have tightened up a bit. I think I was expecting a bit too much and those that hadn’t known their lines the night before still didn’t know them the next day but the audience didn’t help. There’s a reason why I am onstage as a comedian and not in the audience and that is that I can legitimately and, ahem, forcefully tell people to shut up and bloody well behave themselves. The Sunday afternoon crowd, while still appreciative, were restless and at times downright rude which meant that I couldn’t relax. I’ve only been to the cinema three times in 20 years and that is because of my rank intolerance of other people’s discourtesy and I was glad that, at the interval, I had to dash off and pick Maurice up from some dance spectacular that he’d insisted on seeing as it meant I didn’t have to hang around the salle des fêtes and upbraid people about their manners.
I had fifteen minutes to pick Maurice up in a different town and bring him back before Samuel opened the second half doing his comic turn. I dashed into the dance spectacular looking for Mo only to go crashing clumsily into a Line Dancing finale, all a-whooping and a-hollerin’ and not at all keen on a one man mod invasion. I apologised, grabbed Mo and left hastily like they’d run me out of town and made it back just as the lights dimmed and the elderly video man let rip with another cloud of poison gas.
Once again Samuel was excellent and, I’m not ashamed to admit it, brought tears to my eyes as I realised that I’m probably never going to have that ‘get a trade, son’ conversation with him now. He has genuine talent and as such a lifetime of showbiz disappointment, frustration, crushing lows and short-lived highs await him and all I can probably do is be there to catch him when I’m needed.
I’ll enrol him on a plumbing course though, just in case....
More FIVE STAR reviews than you can shake a stick at, the book A la Mod... about how it all started is available by clicking this LINK

Anciens Regime

I’m not very good at receiving bad news when I’m away. The sense of isolation, helplessness and quite phenomenal levels of ‘drama-queenery’ kick in so that even the smallest thing gets blown out of proportion. I down tools and rush home, which to be honest is something I’m generally looking to do anyway. But when Natalie rang to say that she had collapsed and was frightened, I panicked and desperately wanted to get home as soon as possible.
I persuaded her to call the doctor out and to rally friends and family to help with the boys. She did so and promised to call back when she had more news. The news was that it was nothing too serious, a result of exhaustion; the doctor had been out, medication had been prescribed and the local community had indeed rallied and everything would be fine. There was no need to rush home, she said. When I eventually got home four days later it was clear that she was still not right though and we booked another appointment with the doctor who ordered a series of blood tests.
“While we’re here...” I said to the doctor hopefully and went on to explain my latest problem. Regular readers will be aware that I was diagnosed with gout in January which at the time our doctor, who regards me as just a ‘Friends’ boxset away from full womanhood, put down to an excess of white wine and chocolate. Well, I’d given up both and the medication he’d prescribed at the time was either the wrong kind or was lacking oomph. The ‘gout’ had returned, but only after I’d been lying down (quite a bit) and was non-existent after exercise (around quite a lot) and so he re-examined my foot.
“The main area of pain,” I said, “is around this toe here which I broke playing sport about six years ago.” He looked at me and the ‘kerching’ of simple diagnosis rolled around his eyes like in a slot machine. It’s true I had broken the toe, but ‘sporting’ injury may have been a slight exaggeration. I was staying with Natalie’s parents and had been listening to England playing cricket in India all night, in truth there hadn’t been much action so when, at about seven in the morning Steve Harmison finally took a wicket I celebrated wildly. Unfortunately I was at the top of the stairs in my stockinged feet which slipped on the carpet and I went sliding down the stairs until my fall was eventually broken by the balustrade. My right foot had taken the brunt of the impact and in particular my fourth toe which in cricketing parlance was heading down the Bakerloo line when it should have been on the Northern one.
I was seen quickly at the hospital but the nurse didn’t like me at all. She bent down at the end of the bed and took the offending toe gently between her fingers, “My ex husband was a mod.” She said menacingly and looked me in the eye as she yanked the toe back upwards. I screamed the place down and once I had exhausted myself doing that, screamed some more. “You won’t be wearing winkle pickers for a while, will you sunbeam?” She said gleefully.
Well it seems that a combination of this NHS fed brutality and indeed my desire to be back in said winkle pickers have led to my current malaise, to whit, I have arthritis in my foot and it seems to be affecting the nerves up my right leg too. Why the doctor couldn’t have diagnosed this before is frankly beyond me but also not all that surprising. His diagnosis history is so poor, Thérence’s skin problems, my stomach problems, various issues during Natalie’s pregnancies (including getting the sex of the child wrong) that I suspect ‘diagnosis’ to him is less evidence based and more an internal multiple choice dialogue that, like an enthusiastic but limited child, he consistently gets wrong, always plumping for the wrong answer.
The arthritis, though I’d suspected as much, is something of a blow. Okay gout is no prize in life’s lottery but at least it gives the aura of a life well lived. It’s known as the ‘King’s Disease’ after Henry VIII and as such gives the impression that the sufferer has over indulged his passions of wine, women and song, a larger than life character with stories to tell. Arthritis has the air of decrepitude and the withering of age. It’s the bell just before the final lap.
Having dealt with us both the doctor as is his wont while writing out lengthy prescriptions, expounded on his latest theory of medicine, ‘positive thinking’. “Think yourself healthy,” he was saying and went off on a lecture about some 19th century chemist who had originally formulated this theory. I’m all for this kind of thing in other people but positive thinking is not, nor has it ever been, my forté to the extent that I have made a half decent career out of being a stage miserabilist and have no intention of getting all happy-clappy now thank you very much. Besides which positivity is an extremely unlikely emotion while a doctor inspects your ‘worrying’ varicose veins and prescribes ‘orthopeadic socks’ to wear on planes.
The doctor blithely introduced the notion of ‘medical legwear’ like it was the most natural thing in the world, and not something that a 42 year old man might find somewhat deflating. “Yep, there you go put these tights on – next stop rubber pants.” The only ‘positive’ I could see in this situation was that the whole incongruity of me wearing the bloody things had seemingly had the effect of cheering Natalie up no end, a smile (more like full on laughter) had returned and she had a definite spring in her step as we left the surgery.
The ignominy didn’t end there either. I thought I’d picked a quiet time at the chemist in which to collect my new undergarments, I was wrong. Not only was the place not quiet it was full of young gypsy women, all barefoot and outdoorsy but who stopped their chaotic buzzing around the chemist as the strangely dressed ‘foreigner’ was measured – MEASURED – for his socks. They gathered round as the female chemist rolled up my trousers and measured my calves and ankles, clearly regarding the decadence of the spectacle as the main reason vindicating their decision to drop out of society altogether what with its rules and too ordered underwear.
“Would you like them in black or beige?” asked the chemist, apparently oblivious to our audience.
“Do you have them in Argyle?” I asked, trying to claw back some dignity.
You can approach the onset of old age and decay in two ways. You can let it get to you and give up or you can come out fighting, ignore the ravages of time and face it down with a disrespectful sneer. Frankly I’m all for the first option but having young children means that you can’t let this show, not yet anyway, and following the chemist debacle I decided to show I still had some physical strength and mend the goats’ wooden stable wall. They’d kicked it down the night before and it needed putting back together.
I drew the hammer back and attacked the thing with gusto, letting out the frustrations of the day, if not life itself. The hammer hit the wood mightily, in fact so hard that the iron head flew off the hammer and into my forehead. It then seemed to pirouette in front of me before bouncing off, and smashing my watch, then coming to a rest on the floor. I stared at the thing for a full two minutes. The wall remained unattached, I had a bruise on my forehead and my watch was broken. I think the socks frankly are the least of my problems.

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The 'I' in Equipe

The ‘I’ in Equipe. 
The late Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said that football isn’t a matter of life and death, it’s ‘more important than that’. Patent nonsense obviously and it neglects basic needs like food, breathing, the vertical sharp crease on a pair of sta-prest. But to an eight year old it’s pretty much spot on. 
Maurice is obsessed with football and has been dreading, since around Easter time, the end of the football season but in the same way looking forward to the big end of season tournament in Chateauroux where the best of the teams from the departement all get together and compete for...well, nothing really. Just for the fun of doing so apparently. There’s no ‘competition’ as such, just another opportunity for the under 8’s, still playing four a side here, of the area to hone their levels of vision and technique without competitive burden. This may be why continental teams are more technically developed, as the cliché goes, but there’s certainly no lack of ‘edge’. 
The only problem with these jamborees is that, this being France, nothing starts until after lunch. Nothing. It’s a little known historical fact that the German invasion in 1940 was an early morning fixture planned in the full knowledge that France wouldn’t be ready until about three in the afternoon, and even then might need a nap before retaliating. The football tournament wasn’t scheduled to finish until about 11 at night! That’s too late for me when I’m not working let alone almost every eight year old in the area and though I was keen to support Maurice – as my dad always did with me (though at sensible times) – I went with a certain reluctance. In fact we all went, as we decided that this would be an ideal family day out and Natalie, Samuel, Thérence and I all went to lend Maurice our support. 
The weather didn’t help. All week had been glorious sunshine and though possibly too hot for football was certainly better for the spectators than this dark, grey permadrizzle. Every other spectator had clearly checked the weather forecast though and as hundreds of us all began to converge on the venue it was clear pretty early on that I was the only one in ironed trouser shorts, beige Clarks’ Wallabies and a cycling top. I was bloody frozen right from the start. I blame the banks. The whole thing was sponsored by Credit Agricole, and if you get a bank involved these days there’s bound to be trouble. And you couldn’t miss them, handing out their little corporate goody bags to the eight year olds from their pitched sales caravan and drowning the place out with loud music, Cumbawumba’s ‘We Get Knocked Down...’ seemingly, and ironically, on repeat. 
Even then the football didn’t get under way until about five in the evening which meant nigh on anarchy as about 300 eight year olds went from polite, sedate training exercises to whacking the wet footballs at each other and hitting each other with sticks. It’s a wonder there weren’t more injuries before the whole thing kicked off as these mini, wanabee footballers proved to be just like their older, professional counterparts and steadfastly refused to behave and gave way destructively to boredom.  
Finally it began and we had high hopes. 
Maurice is a good player in a good team, nobody can really remember when they were last beaten, and though there were no trophies or titles to be won it doesn’t mean that the results didn’t matter. They did. But they started badly, a dull 0-0 draw, which was played out in the teeming rain and in which they seemed to have forgotten how to pass the ball. They played like they didn’t know each other and in the next one they played like they didn’t even like each other and were beaten which left them in shock. 
They had a ten minute break before their next match and time for some soul-searching. A couple of them were in tears, unused to defeat, while various parents offered explanations for the poor displays, ‘pass the ball’, ‘look up’, ‘stretch the play’, ‘it’s too cold and wet’ – the last one was mine. Samuel however has become something of a student of the game and was taking each player away in turn and having a chat, clearly more in favour of ‘arm around the shoulder’ style of man management rather than carrot and stick. Plus being only 12 himself, he could speak their language. 
The next game, as the rain improbably got harder, was a much needed victory but against the most unathletic looking bunch of children I think I’ve ever seen and some of whom would clearly have been much happier eating a football rather than kicking it but it was a victory. A much needed victory, something to build on. At least it would have been something to build on if the entire tournament hadn’t been put on hold for dinner!  
“What?” I asked, by now absolutely soaking and my beautiful Wallaby shoes now looking more like Possum roadkill, “We’ve only just started!” 
For the next hour and a half hundreds of us huddled in cars or under umbrellas eating a frankly needless picnic while the kids ran around, wasting their energy for the second half and stuffing their faces like the finely honed athletes they are. All except our team who’d been taken off by Samuel, or Moore-inho as he’s been dubbed, to ‘work on some set pieces’. 
As we trudged back to the pitches, the music got louder with Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ being favoured this time, the rain stayed relentlessly on its course and I spotted someone with a Test Match Special umbrella. I can’t think of a more potent symbol of Englishness than a Test Match Special umbrella and mentioned this to Natalie who was attempting to wheel Thérence’s buggy through the mud. 
“Oh,” she said, “He’s probably English, why don’t you go and talk to him?” I mean really, isn’t that the kind of thing a parent says to their child on holiday if they feel said child is too much of a loner or they just want to get rid of them for a bit? I declined, I’m not the sociable type anyway and especially not when I’m shivering and soaking wet. 
The football kicked off again but the break had been unkind to Maurice’s team. Their manager seemed to wash his hands of them too and it was left to Samuel Moore-inho to read the riot act. I don’t know what he said to them, the promise of a better contract, win bonuses, no idea, but it worked and they romped home in the last two matches, played in almost darkness, with Maurice scoring three goals.  
“Come on then.” I said, “Let’s get back to the car or we’ll be stuck in the car park for hours...” 
“But Daddy...” Maurice interrupted and even in the late gloom I could see his lip wobbling, “...fireworks.” 
There really was no point in arguing and besides which I couldn’t get any wetter and miraculously the rain had relented just in time for the Feu d’Artifices. I have no idea why everything in France has to end with a fireworks display but it does. Some say it goes back to the revolution but if that’s so I’d have preferred a beheading myself; drag out Madame La Guillotine and show this DJ that Van Halen never was, and certainly isn’t now, acceptable in polite society. It also irked me that Maurice, along with Natalie, Samuel and Thérence insisted on standing at the very front! It’s a firework display! We could stand a mile back (i.e. nearer the car park) and not miss anything. It was though, even I have to admit, pretty spectacular. 
It was a very French day, the dominance of meal times, the non-competitive competition, the fireworks and to cap it all, as it took an hour to inch out of the car park, my soaking and squelching shoes worked the pedals and felt less like clutch control and more like treading grapes.  And I was expecting Maurice to be a bit down that that was it now for a few months but no, like his brothers, he was fast asleep.

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A Ticking Bomb

It had to happen sooner or later. I’ve had this cloud effectively hanging over me since we moved here so at some point I was going to get caught out. You don’t commute between France and the UK for eight and a half years and not, eventually, become a victim of a strike. Now I’m a fan of a certain amount of union power, checks and balances and all that, but hitherto all strikes have been planned well in advance; civilised affairs that allow the traveller to make other arrangements. Now either I’ve been living under a rock or watching the daytime French news (much the same thing) but this Air Traffic Controllers Strike came literally out of the blue. 
The fact that Flybe didn’t know that my flight had been cancelled was no surprise whatsoever. People moan about Ryanair (I do, often) but in terms of customer disdain, deliberate website confusion and lack of information, Flybe are way ahead.  
“WE operate this flight and I can tell you it’s NOT cancelled.” Said the rather chipper ‘Customer Service’ agent on their expensive ‘customer service’ helpline. 
“I’ve taken this flight a lot.” I said, trying to remain calm, “Your partner, Air France, operate the flight and their website says it’s cancelled. As I booked the flight through you, you need to check and then refund me.” 
She went away to check and returned to the phone five minutes later and behaved as if I’d pulled a Jedi Mind trick on her. 
“Our partner Air France operates this flight and it’s cancelled. I can offer you a full refund.” 
Getting one over a budget airline is all very well of course but the fact is that I still needed to get back to England, and with Eurostar upping their prices by the minute driving seemed an attractive proposition. It’s a chance to stock up on crisps but also Samuel had also expressed an interest in playing cricket so I was determined to strike while the mood was still there and bring back a cricket set. I didn’t fancy a full seven hour drive to Calais though so instead went for the Dieppe-Newhaven ferry at six in the evening; Dieppe is only four and a half hours away but as it was already one o’clock when I booked it, it was going to be tight.  
There’s something old-fashioned about ferry travel, partly because it’s a childhood memory of family holidays and school trips but also because, more often than not, the boats have remained the same while the operating companies have changed almost bi-annually and with it the livery. These boats have had so many makeovers they're like old soap actresses, they resemble old hospitals or council buildings that have had a ‘happy’ picture painted on to the wall to distract you from the cracks, the dirt and the overall sense of misery. 
The ‘Seven Sisters’ operated by Transmanche Ferries is just like that. It may have been grand once but now has the feel of a neglected school ‘portakabin’ which no amount of grandiose names like ‘The Agatha Christie Salon’ (some tables next to a half empty shop) or the ‘The Hillaire Belloc Salon’ (a cordoned off part of the bar which was occupied by tired looking scooter mods) is going to change. The fact that the boat was half empty too all added to a fin de siècle feel, a cloudy day leaving Dieppe on a run down old boat. Almost everything, including me, felt like it had seen better days. I seriously doubt whether Dom Joly does actually travel by ferry and if he does I’m sure it was the inspiration behind ‘The Dark Tourist’. 
‘The Lanes’ Restaurant was a quiet affair too. Ferry food really could benefit from a Jamie Oliver type investigation and I suspect that much of the muck he cleared out of British school canteens has ended up on cross-channel ferries as trucker fodder. The restaurant’s spirited attempt at a cosmopolitan menu was divided by nationality, Boeuf Bourgignon for the French, Spaghetti Bolognaise for the coach load of Italians that hadn’t shown up and Chicken Tikka Masala for the English obviously. For those whose hackles are now going up, get over yourselves, it’s the national dish. I was working in India during the last football world cup and every day the hotel buffet would have a theme depending on who was playing that day, pasta for the Italians, beef for the Argentinians, dog for South Korea etc. When England played they just served extra curry which I thought was a nice touch. This stuff though brightly coloured like a good Chicken Tikka Masala should be, was the wrong bright colour and was more reminiscent of the kind of stuff one sees swilling about on the floor on particularly rough crossings; it looked like the kind of curry I used to buy in a tin when I was a student, a real old fashioned curry from a time before our palates were educated. I really shouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did. 
All the time I was superciliously wandering around this travel throwback, Natalie was having other problems. 
“FUCKING GAS GONE N CANT FUCKING OPEN OTHER BOTTLE” is a text that leaves the recipient in very little doubt of the sender’s mood. The gas bottles supply the kitchen hob, they weigh a tonne when full and are, frankly, a pain in the arse to attach and get up and running. I thought that I’d left a new one all hooked up just for the, inevitable, eventuality of it running out when I wasn’t at home. Clearly not. 
I got a series of texts for the next couple of hours, all slightly escalating in anger and frustration as Natalie fought with the bloody things, my joke about waiting until morning and asking one of the ‘binmen to help was particularly ill-received. Eventually though I got a text saying that there was now a permanent smell of gas and the stuff was everywhere apart from the kitchen. These things only ever happen when you’re away, thanks to French Air Traffic Control I was stuck on the ghost ship from Normandy when actually I should have been at home enjoying a family, albeit gas related, evening. 
The pompiers were called and arrived with an equally tooled up squad from EDF-Gaz de France, all looking like the scene from E.T. when the ‘government’ take over the house. Natalie and the boys had been warned to stay outside and away from the kitchen end of the garden. It was by now after ten at night and obviously quite a traumatic event as Maurice especially wanted to keep rushing inside to ‘save his Egypt collection’. The problem, it turns out, was that the second gas bottle was also empty and that Natalie hadn’t been able to open the ‘new’ one as it was already open, her efforts had dislodged the pipes and so the gas had escaped. “It was nothing really,” said the pompiers,“you were right to call.” Though I suspect they’ll want a bigger contribution come Christmastime and they’re hawking their calendar about from door to door. “Better to be safe than sorry,” said the EDF-Gaz de France people, “you don’t want to be blown sky high!” 
As if Air-Traffic control would allow that... 
The book A la Mod... of how all this started is out now in all forms and perfect for your grumpy dad this Father's Day.

Shock and Spore

I started this blog in September 2010 with a story, possibly even a cry for attention, about me erecting and testing an electric fence. In it I showed a distinct lack of tolerance, physical prowess, ‘nouse’ and dignity. I consider it therefore a quite massive personal failing that two and a half years later I am once again in the business of electrifying the same fence, and showing the very same character flaws that frankly I should have grown out of by now.
Have I learnt nothing?
The goats, particularly Chewbacca, seem to be able to escape at will and actually, once having done so, then panic and yearn to be locked up again, more comfortable in familiar surroundings. As such desperate times call for desperate measures and it was decided that the electric tape that currently keeps the horses in check should be lowered to protect the goats from themselves and their permanently itchy feet. The process of actually doing this was fairly straightforward; Natalie and I have become dab hands at the logistics of animal imprisonment even if the results, in practice, are somewhat patchy. The only potential problem was that Junior, still somewhat under the weather with a muscle disease, has decided to fight his physical travails with typical belligerence and springtime aggression. So while I was screwing the brackets for the electric tape into the fence posts, Junior was doing something similar to Ultime just a few yards behind me and deliberately trying to catch my eye while doing so. It was like being at a teenage party all over again while the tough, good looking bloke was showily getting off with the best looking girl.
My way of dealing with those parties was to down a tank full of cheap cider but, having moved on, I ignored the angry beast and just got on with my work. Having completed the re-electrification it was time to test the thing; the standard procedure for this is to get a piece of grass and touch the tape with it, the resulting shock will show whether it’s working or not. But you know what? I’ve had enough of this. So often have I had to go through this rigmarole over the years – I have developed a tic to prove it – that I just couldn’t face it. I came out in a cold sweat at the prospect, starting stammering with fear. The pain is shortlived but intense, the charge remember is set at a level to deter a horse, a charge far, far higher than most effete English mods can handle and as Natalie didn’t fancy testing it either we decided to just turn the thing on and see what occurred.
What occurred was flying goats. Not literally of course, but each one of the goats got one blast from the horse-charged fence, was thrown back a few yards – literally in shock – and didn’t go near the fence again, for a bit anyway. Could it be? Could it really be? That the great goat-man stand off was at an end. If so then it’s for the benefit of everyone. Natalie’s parents had made it clear that unless the goat problem was solved they would, quite rightly, not be keen to house sit the place for us in the summer. As it is, I have fly back from the family holiday in the south because our planned house sitter has balked. These goats have driven a wedge in this family which would be solved if only they’d just stay in their ample bloody field. The prospect therefore, and the early signs were encouraging, was that the new system was working. Occasionally one hears a goat that has drifted too close to the electrics but they quickly recover, let me make it clear we haven’t got goats being flung across the place like the weapons of a siege army throwing livestock at a battlement. They seem genuinely happier, though with their eyes the wrong way up (as all goat eyes are) it’s difficult to tell exactly what they’re thinking. Inscrutable creatures.
Emboldened by this rare foray into outdoor work I set about trying to repair the results of the endless rain of the last few weeks, in short de-weeding 200 square metres of gravel driveway. It used to be that we could put weed killer down, but as the hens have taken ‘free range’ to mean ‘go where the bloody hell they like’ this is no longer an option. Natalie keeps trying to convince me that we should allow most of the area to go fallow and therefore provide further grazing ground but seeing as this seems to either a, increase the chances of acquiring further semi-domesticated animals or b, deliberately letting the now re-imprisoned goats out I wasn’t having any of it. I am, I admit, a petty man, but a driveway is a driveway and seeing as we moved here because I got into feuds in the UK over the lack of acceptable neighbourly driveway etiquette, I’m not letting it go and I attacked the place with gusto wielding my hoe like a mad man, all the while Junior watching me and doing the same.
I have my standards, as Maurice’s schoolteacher will testify. Maurice at the moment ruins at least one pair of trousers a week. He can’t help himself, there are no half measures with Mo and so even a playground game of football is treated like it’s the most important match of the season and another pair of trousers gets ruined. His teacher suggested to Maurice that perhaps sewing patches over the holes rather than buying a new pair may be the way forward but Maurice, knowing my thoughts on patches demurred, “Daddy doesn’t allow patches.” He told her and once again my ranking in the local eccentricity league table rocketed. I don’t mind that at all, I’ve got a proud record of being inappropriately dressed in all four corners of the globe and if some of that rubs off on my boys then I’ve done my job I thought, as I continued maniacally with the weeding.

I’m sure it was quite a sight, a gardener dressed more for a Bank Holiday seaside riot than bucolic horticultural husbandry and in the background, Junior and Ultime continuing with their angry sex. All the while the hens fretted noisily about the place like women disturbed in the M&S Bra-Fitting department and the cats and the dogs basked in the spring sunshine, occasionally getting up to slurp noisily at a bowl of water or chase a lizard. And then every so often you’d hear a squeal followed a few seconds later by the thud of a landing goat. Ah, the sounds of summer...
The book of how all this crazy circus started is available in all good bookshops, online, in paperback, on kindle, audio download, flickbook and charades shorthand. Click this overwordy sales pitch for details.

A New Hope...

I’d said no and I’d meant it. Every year when Maurice’s birthday rolls around we go through the same rigmarole; he asks me if he can invite people over for a proper birthday party and every year I say no. He then goes and asks Natalie, she says yes, I buckle but lay down some pretty thorough ground rules for the event which everybody then not only ignores, but drives a bloody great truck through.
I’d said no again this year and again I’d meant it so naturally the party was planned for the Saturday, three days after the actual birthday itself. To be fair, I have a history of spineless capitulation dating back years, previous proclamations include ‘I don’t think it’s a good time to get a mortgage’, ‘I’m not sure we need to get married’ and ‘I don’t actually want children’. I’ve said before that I’m treated like a Constitutional Monarch but in reality I’m less than that, I’m more like Chemical Ali, forced to make obviously barmy statements just for show while the real movers and shakers operate behind the scenes, making all the important decisions.
The portents for this year weren’t good though. These birthday parties, chaotic and fraught enough as they are, were always more tolerable because they took place mainly outside so that the dozen or so gathered children could operate like a vicious swarm of African bees, travelling en masse and at speed attacking one area before moving on to the next. The atrocious spring weather didn’t look like letting up though and the frightening prospect loomed that the entire party would have to take place indoors.
At lunchtime though, on the day of the party, the sun nervously started to poke through the clouds and for what seemed like the first time in weeks the garden was bathed in fine spring sunshine. Could it be? Could it really be? Might the Gods of children’s parties and fragile indoor knick-knackery be smiling on us? It really seemed like they might and as the start of the party approached the sun gained in confidence and the dark, ominous clouds began to scuttle away like bullies who’d finally been confronted.
Things were looking up and as the assorted seven and eight year old guests began to arrive a certain, and let’s be honest alien, composure began to set in within me. I didn’t even react when two of the young partygoers arrived and as well as actual presents, promised, respectively, a baby gerbil and a kitten, both to be delivered upon delivery, as it were. ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ I thought as I watched the children who, all happy to be outside for the first time in ages, ran around the place and about four different football matches started at once.
This was the first of Maurice’s parties that Natalie and I had hosted without the help of her parents but also the first of these parties where the kids themselves pretty much supervised themselves. There was no need to arrange games or diversions, largely we were just on hand as a kind of superannuated St. John’s Ambulance Brigade as firstly one little girl twisted her ankle (she was back up and trampolining within minutes, like ALL girls frankly) and one Dickensian waif of a little boy managed to cut his hand.
“It’s nothing.” He said, dripping blood everywhere.
Our other role of course was as event caterers and just as we called everyone in for their gouter the Heavens opened. It didn’t bother us inordinately as the sun was still stoically shining, it’s just a shower we thought, it’ll pass. Then came the one moment of dissension in the whole afternoon when Natalie insisted that while the revellers were indoors it was perhaps inappropriate to have the cricket on the television.
“What is that?” Asked one little boy, pointing at the television.
“It’s cricket.” I replied, pleased to see that this most sedate of Test matches was piquing his interest.
“What?” He asked, perplexed at the sight.
“Cricket.”
He looked at me, “what?”
“Cricket.” I tried again, and he looked at me like the strange foreigner I am, “Cricket. Crick. It. Oh, bloody hell. C’est comme le baseball.”
I switched the channel over to some generic MTV rubbish in the vain hope that that would appease the anti-cricketing hordes but they ignored the writhing, frankly even more inappropriate, ‘dance’ tracks with equal fortitude. They were too busy getting on with each other, talking, laughing, having fun and without the need for outside encouragement. They were utterly delightful. They said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, they were polite to us and each other. Any disputes were sorted out quickly and amongst themselves, and they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Maurice in three languages, although the third, Portuguese, was just unnecessary showing off frankly.
Now many of you might be thinking, so what? Our kids are like that, most kids are – and maybe you’re right, but to me it was something of an epiphany. I am a cynic, not only have I always been a cynic but for the last fifteen years or so I have carved out a fairly successful career as a professional cynic. I get paid to go all over the world to be cynical. On the rare occasions I try and be sincere I get stared at like I’m not well.
But until recently I’d never seen any reason not to have a fairly bleak outlook about the future; I’d always happily joined in the ‘honestly, kids these days...’ diartribes, largely concluding that they were getting the future they deserved. Maybe I’m changing. Until a few years ago I was a deadpan comedian, a purveyor of sardonic gloom until it got to the point where I didn’t enjoy the job anymore. I lightened up, I’m a long way from hope and optimism don’t get me wrong, but at least I look like I’m enjoying it now and mostly I am. I’m never going to be ‘happy-clappy - anyone who ever saw my TV warm-up efforts will know that (yes I’m looking at you David Bowie and Morrissey), but I’m a happier person and these kids made me happy too, genuinely so.
I settled back into a garden chair as the dust settled and the last of the children left, tired yet contented.
“Daddy...” Maurice said, as I closed my eyes to the warm evening sun.
“Yes, my love.” I replied.
“Did you let the goats into the orchard?”

There’s always bloody something though isn’t there? Always bloody something...
The book, A la Mod... about how this whole circus started is out now on papaerback, kindle and audio download. Click here to buy.

Spring Broken

While in the UK last week and as the spring ‘weather’ wreaked havoc with plans and moods, I was asked, on more than one occasion, whether the weather was better in France ‘where I was’. I say asked, it was never really a question in the proper sense but more a plea for confirmation; that while England’s weather was doing its post-apocalyptic thing and clouds continued to gather like angry mobs on a street corner, all violent energy and aggression, there was somewhere – not too far away – where the sun was busy getting its thing on.
More often than not I was honest enough to admit that no, the weather was pretty dreadful at home in France too and this would be met with a sad shake of the head and a doleful look in the eyes as if this is indeed ‘the end of days.’ Sometimes the pleas for a better weather report were so desperate that I didn’t have the heart to be honest and just offered an ‘oh yes, apparently it’s glorious’ instead, not wishing to heap misery upon misery. The truth though, is that it is bloody awful here too.
I got back on Monday afternoon after 10 days away and I hardly recognised the place. The vast expanse of gravel that is the driveway was overgrown with weeds, with hardly any gravel showing at all. It’s always difficult to maintain a weed-free area in spring at the best of times anyway but this looked so set in and all encompassing that it almost appeared landscaped. The dogs, Toby and Gigi, emerged from the ‘new’ undergrowth soaking wet, looking like they’d been stranded on a remote island for years. Their greeting, though predictably warm, was out of keeping with the rest of the place. This is spring, I thought, where’s the birdsong? Where’s the background hum of agriculture? Where, for that matter, isspring? The only sound was the cold wind blowing across the driveway and attempting to rustle the leaves, which were too drenched to do any rustling and instead just hung there, occasionally sticking together like frozen bathers on a beach.
I walked past the deserted bikes and scooters towards the house. It felt eerily like the scene in Godfather Part II when Michael returns home to an empty house. I knew Natalie and the boys weren’t going to be there, Natalie’s sister and my two nephews were staying so they’d gone out for the day. Their plan had been to go to the zoo but not only was it too cold, they’d also reckoned, probably correctly, that most of the exotic species would refuse to come out and remain indoors in something of a mood. Instead they’d gone to a big, indoor soft play area about an hour away which, when it’s full, is exactly like the zoo anyway. Well, the chimp house at least.
Natalie’s sister and her boys were over to celebrate Maurice’s 8th birthday which is always a momentous occasion because, as Maurice was born shortly after we moved here, it signifies just how long we’ve been in rural France. Eight years ago when we moved in on a glorious winter’s day in January, the place looked very different indeed. The gravel was pristine for a start, the vast garden was just two acres of sparse lawn with some young, spindly fruit trees to break it up and there was only our Jack Russell running around the place. Now, eight years on and in the middle of the worst spring in living memory it looks like a cross between a poor man’s rainforest floor and a city farm. Junior’s initial excitement that someone was returning home and therefore he would be fed, quickly subsided into contempt when he saw that it was me and he went back to angrily mounting Ultime in a way that I actually think he meant would be insulting to me.
Eight years on and inside the house is very different too. Natalie, now that my stuff has been moved out to my office, has created a lovely ‘farmhousey’ home but ‘farmhousey’ seems to me to have become a euphemism for untidy and though I tried – I really did – not to look down at the floor when I went inside, a fateful thing to do for a ‘tidying fascist’ like me and which is bad enough when there are only three young boys around, but when it’s five...
I couldn’t help myself though and despite the house was empty I tutted loudly and started picking up discarded shoes which for some reason hadn’t been placed in the ‘shoe tidy box.’ There were clothes everywhere, the wet weather meant that any washing – five kids remember – was strewn all over the house in an attempt to get it dry as the pernicious and endless showers rendered the outdoor clothes line obsolete. It all meant that the house looked more like a jumble sale than a home, which it would anyway even if the weather wasn’t being so cruel. I am married to and have fathered a troupe of hoarders, nothing is thrown away just rearranged or moved from one room to another. This house felt massive when we moved in those eight years ago and now as the boys grow quickly and refuse to let go of anything it actually feels tight. If this place were a pair of jeans, we’d be the family ‘muffin top’ falling out over the sides.
I closed my eyes to the lot of it and went to bed. I should have stayed there. The week went on and the weather has got worse as it feels, simultaneously, like the walls of the house are slowly moving in. Tempers are frayed – mine mostly, though not exclusively – and the boys, five lively cousins desperate to be outside are confined indoors where ‘grumpy dad’/’grumpy Uncle Ian’ continues to lay down new draconian law after new draconian law, all regarding noise abatement and acceptable levels of tidiness.
And it’s about to get worse. The weather is forecast to remain miserable until at least the end of the month and yet this Saturday is Maurice’s birthday party. In previous years this ‘little people riot’ has been kept outside and remained a combination of trampoline, football and swimming pool. Not this year though. This year they’ll all be indoors. Indoors. All of them. Thanks spring, thanks a bloody lot. Is it too late to get work for the weekend? Hey! Promoters! Over here!

Seedless Gripes

What on earth is going on? I know it’s traditionally a very British trait to be obsessed with the weather, but moaning about the climate might very well prove to be our greatest recent export, everyone’s at it, even in France. I’ve been in the South of England all week where the weather has been so anti-mod that I haven’t ventured out at all unless it’s to go to work.

Ideal mod weather, for the record, is not too warm, not too cold, preferably dry and definitely – possibly most importantly – no wind. It’s been a brutal week then for us gentle souls desperate to begin the spring peacock. Venturing out for work is one thing, but before I left France I rashly promised my father in law that while I was house-sitting his place in Crawley I would maintain his allotment. One look at my own pôtager in France would have been enough to tell him that this probably wouldn’t be the case and more likely was an offer made out of the almost continual flow of celebratory champagne last week.

A promise though is a promise and during a brief lapse in the apocalyptic weather conditions I spotted my moment to go and harvest some asparagus. There was a problem though, no boots. I wasn’t intending to get down on my hands and knees and start weeding so actual suitable clothing wasn’t a problem but I had no appropriate footwear. As the clouds began to close in again I had to make a decision and so, with a face like a contestant on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here during a Bushtucker trial, tried on my father in law's wellington boots. It’s not right wearing another man’s boots, or shoes in general for that matter. It just isn’t done. I once returned home from work to find my mother’s boyfriend barefoot in my slippers! The footwear was subsequently binned and I haven’t spoken to the man since. An outrageous invasion.

Every step I took in my father in law’s boots seemed to hurt, it wasn’t that they didn’t fit though, in fact it was because my feet were curled up inside the boots, almost like they were embarrassed and didn’t want to touch anything. I limped to the immaculate allotment but found a pretty paltry asparagus crop. Of about two dozen spears one was the height of a small child while the rest seemed to have decided it was far too cold to come out and were just going to stick their helmeted tops out of the soil and wait for better weather. It shouldn’t be like this in mid-May.

It’s been like this for two years in France. My much vaunted chutney business has suffered miserably because of the atrocious spring weather. There have been no cherries because early spring was too cold, then it’s too wet for the plums, the quince tree seems to have gone on strike in protest, the pear and walnut trees have died and Junior, just to cement his place at the top the Spiteful Horse rankings, like it was ever in doubt, has eaten my apple trees. Eaten my apple trees. He knows full well it makes him ill but he does it anyway because severe colic is a small price to pay if it goes some way towards ruining my life.

The result of this climatic and equine inspired mayhem is that I am bereft of fruit. We’ve planted a fig tree but it’s too small yet for decent produce and in the autumn we will plant some more apple and pear trees, which I will defend viciously. But it’s now that I need the stuff. Chutney making is not just a hobby it’s my get-out, my escape. Standing vacantly over a boiling pot of fruit, wine vinegar and various spices, stirring absent mindedly takes me away from the relentless self absorption of stand up comedy. If you stand next to me while I’m stirring a pan of nascent chutney it would be like holding a shell up to your ear, you’d hear a light zephyr and soft rolling waves, there is nothing going on in my head.

Once again this spring I’ve been looking forward to the start of the chutney season which traditionally starts with the cherries in May, and eventually finishes with the medlar fruit in late November. I’ve bought hundreds of those mini, hotel-sized ‘breakfast’ jars, I bought some nice paisley material to use on the jar lids and a new set of labels all ready for this year’s La Maison Moore chutney production. I’m desperate to get started. I still have some in stock from previous years but when I hand them out to people they look at me and go, “Oh, that’s lovely, thanks. January 2012 you made this, yes. Erm is it still edible?”

It’s still perfectly okay to eat, the jars are always sterilised and the produce either completely airtight or have a special paraffin seal. These things will last forever, they’d survive a nuclear attack, they are the cockroach of the condiment world but in this day and age where even ‘natural bottled water’ and yoghurts, yoghurts for heaven’s sakes, have Best Before Dates, handing over a jar of chutney that’s eighteen months old is greeted with a suspicious look and an obvious misgiving that you might be trying to poison the recipient.

I get home next week and I fully expect cherry production to begin, I need it too. I’ll be like Depardieu in Jean de Florrette stomping confusedly around my produce willing it to grow and unable to understand why it isn’t, and all the time my family will watch me, willing things to turn around for me, but deep down feeling that I’m doomed to failure. I’m going to guard this year’s crops, however meagre they may be, nurture them and treat them like delicate offspring. I’ll guard for attack, wrap it all in cotton wool if I have to...and I’ll be wearing my own boots.

DayDream Believer

The envelope was there when I got back from the bar. A sealed envelope, left very prominently on the grey, formica table-shelf next to where I’d been sitting and arranged so that its severe corners were very obviously in line with those of the ‘table’. I’d been queuing at the bar for only a couple of minutes and I hadn’t noticed anyone approach my coat and bags, and I normally would. I picked the envelope up, held it one hand and tapped it into the other. An ordinary white A4 envelope, but sealed twice. Once with the envelope flap and then again with a ‘L’Occitane’ stamp, the perfume and wine shop just down from the bar. I sniffed the envelope, film noir style, but there was no hint of a scent... 
Sometimes I live in a fantasy world. While Natalie was complaining this morning that I was hogging the bathroom I realised I was getting ready for a stage appearance that wouldn’t happen for another fourteen and a half hours in another country and after at least six train journeys. There are many ways to kill the time while travelling: reading, writing, eating, sleeping but more often than not I’m just mentally on another planet, normally a world of intrigue, a sharply dressed, slightly opaque, mid-1960’s cold war world. Danger lurks, ready to pounce, just around the corner.  
It’s the classic commuter’s escape. I’m on a mission; I have secrets, assignations, assassinations and a cold, steely stare. In reality though, it’s a dull Thursday, I’m over-dressed and on a cramped Eurostar, messily eating a baguette and trying to get rid of a hangover. So much of my time is spent alone, you almost build up a fictional image of yourself, obviously as a stand up comedian I’ve been doing that for some time anyway but it’s offstage when it becomes more important, more necessary. 
I’d only got back on Monday. My book was published on Monday, once a dream in itself, but finally reality and the plan had been to meet up with Natalie in Tours and go to one of our favourite restaurants on the Place Plumereau. I arrived in Tours having been awake for nearly thirty hours but excited anyway; excited by the book and also by the rare chance for Natalie and me to spend some time alone together. The book is about our move to France and how the quest for peace and quiet has actually spawned into trying to keep a lid on a rapidly growing ‘farm’, too much land, three children and our (actually my) sanity. I should have known then that Natalie wouldn’t be able to make our lunch date, that something would crop up unexpectedly, it always does so who was I kidding? 
I sat at the restaurant for two hours, on an outside table, and after a while the waitress diplomatically removed the place setting opposite me so that it looked all along like it had been a meal for one. I scowled at the other lunchers, trying to look as cold and sophisticated as a man can look while draining pichet after delicate pichet of the local rosé. Poor Natalie, she felt awful but in many ways it was the perfect book launch for an author writing about travel, chaos and displacement. 
The beep went off the second I went near it. By now I had been up for a full day and a half and the beeping supermarket security alarm startled me, shaking me awake. It’s the kind of ‘gate’ alarm system that’s usually kept by shop doorways but our local supermarket has them on every till and they’re more sensitive than a hormonal teenager with a skin complaint. I made a big show of emptying the bags in front of the checkout assistant who eyed me sceptically. Samuel was with me too and he could see that already, only five seconds into this confrontation, I was losing my temper. 
“And your pockets, Monsieur?” Said the assistant and I threw down my wallet and some loose change. “Try and pass through again please.” 
I did and the alarm went off again. She stared at me, trying to figure out where I’d hidden whatever it was I was trying to steal. 
“Maybe it’s your machine?” I said angrily while Samuel backed away quite obviously thinking that my shaking anger was caused by rage and not just exhaustion. She asked her colleague for help while the entire shop stared at me. I had put my arms up and by now was talking loudly, proclaiming my innocence.  
“Is that a new shirt?” said the colleague suspiciously and clearly thinking I’d grabbed it off the shelf. 
“This?” I said, very close to losing it. It’s one thing to be accused of stealing but the idea that I might wear supermarket clothing was frankly beyond the pale. “This is a limited edition, Paul Weller designed Fred Perry shirt that is at least six years old.”  
“Your shoes then? Maybe there is still a tag in there from when you bought them?” Her tone had become more conciliatory, she clearly didn’t want a showdown with an angry mod so she was now making a play about ‘having to do her job’.  
“No.” I said and ostentatiously placed my feet, one after the other onto the till packing area. 
“Your trousers?” she said nervously. 
“You want to check?” I shouted while beginning to unbuckle my belt. She didn’t and eventually we were released, much to Samuel’s, and I think everybody else in the shop’s, relief.  
In truth I could have dealt with it better, certainly more calmly, but I’d been inheriting my ‘travel persona’ for so long that the edges had become blurred. Suddenly I was that coiled spring of cold war violence, that shamus jumped in the alleyway, that escaping POW... or, just a bit of a mentalist who needed some sleep. 
I fingered the envelope, imagining that I was being watched by my fellow passengers, and then tore it open viciously. It was empty. Of course it was. Somebody had just dropped it clearly and I had needed no excuse to run with it. Probably just as well, I’ve got enough on my plate. 
If you enjoyed this then the book, kindle and audio versions about how it all started are available here.