We were welcomed aboard the Turpitude by Lister, an over-assuming nouveau riche from – I’m guessing – somewhere near Bradford. West Yorkshire that is, not Pennsylvania, and a slutty Loz in a very short skirt and a long leather jacket. “Darlings” she giggled, ” come on in, and up to the poop deck for drinkies” She giggled some more.
To me it was immediately obvious that this was going to be a greasy salty snacky affair with anything you like to drink as long as it was gin and tonic. Knowing that parties of this nature inevitably led to unseemly behaviour, quarrelling, vomiting and sometimes hospitalisation, it was not to my liking. I turned and left the shrinking ship without a word. This of course was only for effect, as once I am finally ready to party, I’m good and ready. I headed off to my good friend Marcel’s épicerie fine just across the street. There I slapped a couple of sickly sausage rolls that I had pocketed before leaving on his gleaming counter and said: “Marcel my bon ami, could you please recommend a wine as a suitable accompaniment to these things? A perfect match, a marriage made in heaven?”
Marcel was decent enough to examine them closely, picked one up and sniffed it attentively and after having identified it correctly as chair à saucisse in pâte feuilletée, produced a knife and cut them into twelve bite sized morsels, then over to a refrigerated display for six bottles of rosé that covered the entire pinky spectrum from the palest salmon to a much deeper greanadine, then two pristine glasses before he asked me if I was ready for “une experience organaleptique“.
“Ready Marcel” I replied nervously, fearing for my organs as the tasting began. We nibbled at the truly disgusting mouthfuls of Britain and sniffed swirled and gargled our way through these explosively nosed bottles of blush before finally deciding on a cantankerous Château Carrubier from a nearby and much maligned vineyard, agreeing also that it would be a short lived romance, divorced before the clock struck twelve. No matter, Marcel quickly chilled out a dozen bottles and I could hardly wait to find out how they would get along with the pork pies, roasted peanuts and extruded polystyrene crunchy crispies that were lying in wait for me back on the Turpitude.
The party could not really be described as being in full swing when I leapt back on board with my big box of wine. Lister had made an effort by playing a not so easy listening eighties disco mix tape on his multi-knobbed and functioned music-centre and was bobbing up and down, twitching unconventionally to the beat. Maurin and Steve were motionless, freeze-framed waiting for my return. Lozzi and Taz were idly reminiscing about “schooldays”.
They were not really friends, but their paths had crossed many many times at stupidly expensive private schools in various parts of England and less fortunately, Wales. The competition to see who could be expelled the most often had never been made official, as far as I know anyway, but between Taz with her legendary and inexplicable rudeness and Lozzi’s “habit” of not drinking anything but gin after ten in the morning, well, if it had been a competition, I would probably have declared it a draw. eight all.
If a party can be described as a handful of fancily dressed persons in varying states of mind alteration, with a few drinks, nibblies and a certain quantity of yowser, yowser, yowsers thrown in for good measure, then this was a party, but no more. Not really a get together, just a gathering, a happening! But sadly no kazoos, tin-whistles or jaw’s harps. Bum steer. This was no party at all until Maurin finally decided to become its life and soul.
He startled us all by slamming his clenched fist hard on the coffee table with his thumb rigidly upright. Bang! “Osco Manosco!” he boomed,
“Have I got a good one for you?”
With a little cleverly disguised difficulty he managed to a salvage a tiny and curiously irregular object from his, err, sporren? ”This is a heptahedron, a seven sided die and we are about to play a game I learned from the Italian kids back in Marseilles when I was a boy, a game of forfeits, a ridiculous game par excellence. It is really very simple but very dependant on mood and inebriation. The first player – and yes you are really players – the first player to throw a seven – has to dream up some kind of prank or trick to play, I hardly need to add that the more reckless, absurd or down right idiotic this thing may be, the better….The next one to throw a seven will decide who will execute this crass and hopefully self-destructive deed, and the lucky third seven will be obliged to pay for all the resulting expenses incurred. Got it everybody?”
We must have got it, because the play began, we tossed the die idly and not without decorum until I of course threw the first seven.
“Well then” I mumbled gravely, “someone will have to go to Marcel’s cheese and wine shop and present him with a freshly scraped dog turd, then ask him deadpan to suggest a suitable wine to accompany it.”
Not exactly a blue plate dinner of an idea I know, but the others seemed to find it mildly entertaining, and it would do as an appetizer at least.
It was hapless Lister who chucked the next seven and immediately insisted that it should be his beautiful new bride that did the deed.
“Cum on luv, you know you like takin’t piss outta them froggies.” She did, she loved it. ”Just don’t heed them balaika players or you’ll be in bother…”
.
Steve threw the next seven and had to foot the bill, he instantly produced a large wad of notes from a secret inside stash and handed Loz a couple of large denomination, and in a fatherly tone, said “run along dear take those two little fellas for a ride.”
Lozi returned about half an hour later, crestfallen. Marcel, “the impudent creature” had just smirked at her and handed over a case of Château Chunder for “Monsieur Rodney, with my compliments” and that had been that.
I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it ’cause I know just what I’m gonna do,…So back to the coffee table, first round to me, but Lister once again was first up with a seven. I was not entirely sure if this gross little Yorkshire dimwit had fully understood the niceties of this brilliant game, or would be capable of inventing a decent prank if given the opportunity. He surprised me on both counts.
“Go swipe summat from’t nearest Lidl” He blurted without hesitation. “And if I ‘ave my way t’ll be t’prince of self pity o’er there that does it.” Looking rather nastily at Steve.
Sure enough, complicit wifey threw the next seven and looked over at the trembling yellow jacket. Steve of course had no understanding of anything the unlikely Lister said and remained motionless and oddly distracted, singing softly, naturally and very annoyingly, “if you’re really dumb then show me you’re thumb, if you’re really….”I can’t believe it’s not Beefheart!”
A delighted Lister threw the final seven, he of the - eat all, drink all, pay nowt - mentality laughed derisively, ” ‘Ow am I supposed to pay ‘owt if’t daft bugger’s to steal summat? Great daft wazzocks the lot o’ yer.”
After my painstaking translation of Lister’s malicious intent Steve set off Lidl bound, hell bent on thievery,with a little unnecessary encouragement from Taz: ” Chin up Stevie, you can do it tiger, you’re a man now!” Now what the hell did she mean by that?
Steve was gone some time, during which, Maurin broke out the Nucky balls and lit up a whopper. The British invasion was at first reluctant, preferring G and T’s over donkey shit, but soon caved in beneath the hashish aroma that could, as they say, level Tacoma. His agitated, almost ecstatic return was in sharp contrast to the euphoric indolence of those who were still alert enough to greet him.
“Steve honey! What kept you?” I asked as he staggered aboard, beaming.
“A little Irish fuck kept me, kept me for over an hour, that’s what kept me.Vindictive little bastogne!”
“Then why so happy then Steve?” I asked genuinely puzzled, “What’s with the grin?”
The grin turned into an obviously forced yet highly offensive snicker. Steve had not unreasonably assumed that the aim of the game was to make the loser, the thrower of the last fatal seven, spend a huge amount of money and if this were to be true, then he had definitely come up trumps. “There I was, handcuffed and offering to pay fifty euros cash for that one tube of Vaseline in my pocket, but no, not good enough for the potato guy ‘We always prosecute thieving scumbags, no remorse, no compunction’ and so we had to wait for the police to show up.”
The Gendarmes of course did not respond to yet another call from Lidl, bemoaning their pesky pilferers – “Did you know? There is no proper word for shoplifting in French.” Not that the cops had better things to do of course, just more interesting things like crossword puzzles, picking their noses or patrolling nudist beaches and the like. “So there I was, stumped, waiting for an imaginary policeman to come and arrest me, when I finally realised who the fat chump in sunglasses actually was, I upped my offer to a twenty-five thousand Euro donation to help hungry and thirsty persons with diseases in Africa and Voila, here I am. You lose my friend”. Staring ghoulishly now at a fraught and furious Lister. ”Done deal. I guess we’d better have another round?”
“Well that must be something of a set back to you Steve, particularly with the mountain stages coming up tomorrow?”
“Absolutely Brian, a bit of a setback indeed with the fucking Alpe de bleedin’ Huez looming on my horizon. Out bloody rageous!”
Maurin could not help himself from laughing, but dutifully informed Steve that he had in fact been eliminated, as according to his rules, the loser was the one that failed to accomplish his forfeit, nothing to do with the cash. “You’re out mate” he said, languidly passing him the joint.
“What do you mean out?” Steve was indignant, outraged, “I did ‘swipe summat’, he said, and yes, it did sound fairly odd, coming from the lips of a son of Sacramento. “Take a look at this!” From a pocket he produced a slim but dense volume, entitled “The Lidl Black Book”, sub-titled “The Absolute Bastards Guide To Fast Moving Consumer Goods And I Ain’t Talking Ferraris”
Game on. Taz it would seem had known all along just how loaded was Maurin’s little die and deftly conjured up the first seven. ” Someone ,” she said mysteriously, “will have to moped along, buck naked to the famous local police station, the Gendarmerie de Saint Tropez, march straight in and declare that they find blue to be a particularly ugly colour.”
“High five Taz” That’s my girl, this really was a haymaker, a Saturday night special, God let it be Lister. And so it was; Lister to play and Rodney to pay. Pay what? The bail money I suppose. Let’s wait and see.
Fired up on Nucky balls, Lister showed little fear or apprehension of the task in hand, but insisted that before setting off, that his teeth must be white and his breath fresh. After an hour or so in the ship’s bathroom he was at last ready for some action. He arrived back on deck and proceeded to strip down; off with his crimple cut sta-prest pants and matching blazer, off with his mauve and subtly embroidered polo shirt, off with his string vest and cock-sock… There he stood, pleasingly plump and almost naked imploring us to allow him to keep his little white socks and pink deck shoes… All right, all right, in this kind of situation there is little difference between buck naked and bare assed, we were indulgent and bent the rules. Maurin started the bike and gingerly helped the boy into the saddle and he was off, yodelling happily, off on the greatest and stupidest adventure of his life.
Once inside the hallowed barracks, Lister found himself confronted with a pinky cheeked, very black moustachioed and rather toothsome young sergeant and immediately let rip with his set piece: ” blue is an ‘orrible colour” he announced decisively.
“Couldn’t agree more sir” said the soldier, without looking up, “brown is one of my own personal favourites, yes brown sir, everything comes out brown in the end, if you know what I’m saying sir”
If Lister had been able to give a thought as to the possible consequences of boldly going naked into a police station and being rather rude, then this would have been beyond his wildest imaginings, so he tried it again, trying to remember Taz’s exact words. “I find blue to be a particularly shitty colour matey” he said at last.
“Now listen to me Sir, said the Gendarme patiently, ”If you have any crimes to report, lost cats, parking offences, noisy neighbours or nudity please fill in this form or I shall have to bid you goodnight for I am a busy man.”
Lister was nonplussed and turned on his ass to leave. Looking up finally, the pretty Gendarme stopped him in his tracks; ” One moment Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly have you been smoking to come in here undressed like that?”
Undressed, nonplussed but stoned out of his tiny, Lister turned again. “Why, nucky balls sir, or to be more precise… Nuckminter Listerine!”
“Well if you could see your way sharing some of it with me and my boys in unpleasant uniforms, there would be no little advantage to your good self in the matter of being arrested and left to rot, bruised and battered in jail…if you grasp my train of thought sir?”
Lister grasped it all right, but exalted by his spectacular exploit of nomenclature, he invited the good fellow to call on him the very next morning, then turned again and ran. Nuckmister Listerine. Eureka! “Me dad allers said ‘where there’s muck there’s money’ and ‘ he were right.
When he finally found his way back to the old port , the docks and eventually his own berth, in a frenzy of self loathing and fear, the unclad Yorkshireman clambered back aboard only to find his house guests drowsily queuing at the gates of delirium. He toyed briefly with the idea of heaving too, then kinda, sorta, the enormity of the day’s events struck him, hit him hard and he flew into a mindless beserk fit of northern English pique. “Twenty-five grand outta pocket, baring me bum in front of coppers, what a bloody day, this ends now! Bugger off! All of yer Just bugger off now!” He grabbed a roll of notes from a drawer of his bureau and went in search of Steve, finding him easily, snoring peacefully in a lifeboat and luckily for him with his mouth wide open, the most convenient orifice in which to stuff the cash before his dumb lifeless body was thrown mercilessly overboard. “Noow bugger off all of yer , off me boat if yer know what’s good for yer.” He was on the rampage, screaming, insane. He began running up and down the decks shaking hid fists and dongling his dongler. “Fuck off, all o’ yer, just fuck offff! Lozzi! up t’anchor, we’re off ’ome!”
We did finally fish Steve out of the water, choking on banknotes and took the trembling wreck across to the nearest bistrot. Someone ordered coffee and brandy for four, while I quietly slipped away to a little side-street boutique and spent most of the cash on a brand spanking new outfit worthy of lonesome cowboy Bertrand, the king of the mountains. When I got back with some neatly ribboned parcels, they were at it again, that little die, seven-up. They really don’t give a fuck about anything, those three, how proud I was. It had been decided that we were to retire to a little karaoke bar that Maurin knew of and sing daft French tearjerkers and what was left of Lister’s money should more or less cover the drinks.
” But what about Lidl and those poor starving children?” Taz enquired sweetly.
Steve broke into an engaging textbook laugh that I would never have dreamed his was capable of Lidl? Lidl? Still laughing, “”what makes you think I actually went to Lidl? I found that piece of crap right here, left on a table while I was drinking all afternoon and now it’s at the bottom of the sea where it belongs.You did’t really think that I went to…. Did you?
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He gracefully dismounted and insisted that the long suffering Maurin interviewed him, again!
“The great Steve Milliband has finally made it home and if I’m lucky, I might get some sense out of him, howdy Steve”
“Bonjour Nelson”
“Great ride today !”
“Oui, oui! bon ride aujourd’hwee, trez bon.” Feigning breathlessness.
“The peloton was extremely vigilant today Steve.”
“Oui, oui, extremement vigilant n’est pas Nelson?”
“But you held on for quite a few kilometres didn’t you?
“Oui, bien sur j’ai tenoo quelques petits kilometres Nelson”
“But in the end Lance was too strong for you.”
“Oui, a la fin, Lance etait trop fort pour moi.”
“To sum up then Steve, would it be fair to say a banana is a dildo to a lovestruck camel?”
“Oui, tout a fait Nelson, oui, oui, exactement….”
” Steve, can you confirm the rumours that the boys on the Tour call you mellow Jell-o?”
” Oui, oui and quite rightly.”
“Before you go could you tell us a little about your famous tactics of starting every race like a bat out of hell, only to always finish last?”
“Oui, oui… There are deux choses which I ne comprend pas dans this world, first le income tax and then pourquoi le cycling est un team sport?”
“Always a pleasure to talk to one of cycling’s true greats, better get back to the team bus now Steve, smoke a little something to enhance those language skills…”
My real reason for coming here of course was to try to find out a bit more about this Maurin bloke, he had joined our club, but any time soon he could join the family or at worst become the good friend of a best friend. I really had no idea of what was going on here and it did worry me a little, only friend beer soaked bravado would even think of telling you otherwise. I had been wondering for a couple of days just how I was going to broach the subject: “Tell me a little something about yourself old chap” or ”Good morning, I’d like to talk to you about shirts.” Nothing I could think of sounded quite right and if I practised aloud, quite wrong. I would have to watch and wait.
Maurin treated us all to another taste of his home-grown cuisine, Taz and Steve had a blistering attack of the munchies, while the host and I sedately enjoyed a bottle of Aigo Ardento as a perfect complement to an excellent lamb tajine with dried figs, apricots and a sweet chestnut couscous. As Steve began a ham-fisted attempt at clearing the table, the genial one produced a little something he had prepared earlier, a gently smouldering hookah for two, announcing that “the gentlemen would be indulging in a little Nucky Delight, and no, I don’t include you Steve, I have a funny feeling that Mr Rodney here has something he would like to discuss with me.”
“Too polite to be honest” I was thinking darkly, and also rather hoping that Taz would not offer to do the dishes. She didn’t.
My moment had come, we were alone at opposing ends of a Steve’s unfinished table, resin rings floating deliciously all around us we sat in silence, when suddenly without really thinking about it, the right words just came to me: “Who the fuck are you?”
As if I had taken those words straight from his mouth he laughed back, “Rodney, you will know who I am, and I will tell you everything, but first my friend, you are in my house so who the fuck are you?”
“Touché” I murmured crossly, but it was only a scratch. Alright, if this was how he wanted it, fine.
“I’m Rodney. Skirvishely by name and nature, heir abhorrent, and it would be me that asks the questions….. muffin man.”
Sensing my reluctance and love of the absurd he asked only that I tell him why I was here, in France, with my lovely daughter and the wackjob? I could see no real reason to deny myself the pleasure of telling a preposterous story and as he was visibly sitting very comfortably, I began:
“Not long ago, somewhere in Valencia county, New Mexico I was trying to score a ten bob deal when I came across a pitiful one-armed, half blind amputee deep in honest contemplation, but I asked him anyway. ‘Where can I get some weed in this no horse town?’ He looked me up and down, or at least that was the way I figured it, then he looked me up and down again and said “Don’t look for Mary Janes or sticky greenies in this county as the quality of our law enforcement prohibits the use of them, head east over yonder to Collobrières, France, for there you will find what you are searching for son, the hillsides are full of it. C. Sativa Linn. Those Frenchies say the darnedest things. Lookee lookee yonder!”
“That’s not quite the same story Miss Pinky your daughter told me the other night”. The chump was smirking at me,” quite chatty she is after a few puffs, oh yes, speaking of which, Steve told me he met you last week for the first time in that restaurant……”
Infidels! But my lips were sealed, he would not get another word out of me until I had enjoyed his riposte. How dare he call her miss Pinky anyway?
“OK Rodney, here goes, I was born into a rather well to do family in Marseille…….”
I looked at him askance hoping to convey the message that I was surprised to hear that there were any such families in that dog end of a town, but he chose to ignore me and went on.
“My father is French and had been a heart surgeon at the Hôpital La Timone and later a deputé……No not a Bo Diddely deputy sheriff…” He responded to another of my famous funny looks, “A member of parliament if you prefer, and leaning quite heavily to the right I’m afraid to say. As for my mother, well she was definitely English, but I have never been quite sure if she was an actress, an opera singer or just an over dramatic hooker with an annoying singing voice.”
“Well that was a pretty good start”, I was thinking, “go on Maurin, please…”
“I did try school for quite a number of years” he continued, lost in thought, as if he were reliving those presumably dreadful moments, ” I really tried, but learning endless lists of words, subjected to three or more tortuous dictations a day, being frequently reminded of how important it was to vote, not to mention the enforcement of that strictest of republican certitudes; that we were all the same, made me a very unhappy boy. I who was so different from all those retarded French kids, me whose mother tongue was God’s own and of course the little lad who knew only too well of the vital necessity not to vote, particularly in the eighth arrondissement of Marseille.”
“All three of you then Maurin? More more!”
“School became ever more tiresome as I began to realise that I was learning nothing at all, apart from a language that I dislike and had very little use for. All subjects you see are just thinly veiled French language lessons, even in history or biology tests, all the answers are already on the paper in the form of pretty pictures, graphs and extracts of text. All you have to do is to re-write or paraphrase or do a cute précis in your best French and you’re done…. You must have wondered Rodney why French people appear to be so stupid? No? Well they aren’t strictly speaking any stupider than anybody else, they just don’t actually know anything. Nothing at all.”
“This can’t be true!” I interrupted him, genuinely incredulous, “what about all this we hear about their system being the best in the world and the famous bacca something or other Eh?”
“I’m afraid it is true Rodney, and for them it is the best mass educational system in the whole wide. Why? Because by basing the entire thing on the ability or not to master an impossible language, they neatly divide the populace into three disproportionate categories: the few that can spell really, really well go on to be senior administrators and captains of industry. Those who can write a sentence with only a few grammatical errors can become lowlier public servants and live in complete security on a very meagre salary, and the rest, the soft underbelly of society, just know their place and are happy to be looked after and bullied by their undoubted betters. There is a hidden fourth group, who are referred to as ‘Beurs’, but they don’t count, they’re put away, out of sight in special places.”
Not often do I learn anything from a fellow man, even Google himself would be hard pushed to impart this kind of life-changing information, of course it had to be true, like British table manners, the French spout utter bullshit, but do so beautifully. This was priceless; to know that policemen, schoolteachers, mayors of small towns had risen to their noble occupations only on the merit of being able to read write and speak an almost obsolete language but had no other knowledge or understanding? This I could, and surely would, use to my advantage.
“I finally walked out of school the day my maths teacher said ‘La mathématique, c’est aussi la redaction’. I went home without even bothering to tell him to sodomize himself with a retractable baton, and informed my mother that she was morally and duty bound to teach me how to be a Brit. Enough of indefinite relative pronouns, genders, conjugation and having my maths papers mutilated for a spelling mistake, enough, being British was my birthright.”
I am not easily impressed, in fact he hadn’t really told me very much at all, but walking out of school without a final gratuitous insult to your maths teacher was a remarkable achievement in itself. I was warming to the boy and was impatient to find out how his mother had managed to turn an effete little French robot into what he undoubtedly appeared to be today, a proud and loathsome Brit. According to Maurin she had accepted his demand with relish but first she had to make sure he could read and write in English. She began her very first lesson with a study of the inside cover of her passport… Maurin had read it aloud fluently with a tear in his eye:
“Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary…”
Once this formality was over she had outlined what she considered to be a very cunning plan indeed: he was to major in pop music, from Abba to Zappa with a good deal of abba zabba, beatle bones and smoking stones in between. He would study the beautiful game in all its glorious statistical glory, and finally he would be fed on a diet of British sit-coms and soaps and would be expected to re-enact Monty Python sketches, verbatim, every morning at breakfast. As for the minor subjects, he chose suburban property prices, Mediterranean holidays and an option to speak knowledgeably on all things related to cars, paying particular attention to lying about great deals on air conditioning and heated leather upholstery. He voluntarily passed on reading the tabloid newspapers and eating baked beans and spam for breakfast, dinner or tea.
“So what exactly are you doing here and now in this place? Why did you never go to England, you would have blended in so easily? ” I asked him without really expecting or caring about the reply, the Nucky Balls had left me happy and smug but almost inanimate. He told me that in the end being half French, he actually didn’t give a crap about cars, house prices, holidays, pop music or even football; he just enjoyed a quiet life with all the good things thrown in for free. He loved his freedom and would specifically recommend an ASP219 retractable baton to anybody who tried to tell him how to live his life.
He did have one last thing to ask me, and as the night was getting on and we had a big day ahead of us.”Just tell me, please Rodney”. As I was slipping out of the smoky heavens of Erewhon into the enticing land of nod I’m quite sure I heard him say, ” The one thing I really don’t understand after all those years of studying sport, pop music and and television, I still don’t get it…….Bob Wilson, anchorman?”
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Steve and Taz, like the spoilt little five year-olds that they are had refused to leave Maurin’s party, she was going to stay put with her precious Nucky Balls and he claimed that the sea air was so invigorating and the hill climbs so much more of a challenge. Good luck to them both if they wanted to spend their days getting stoned and shooting things for food and profit, I at least could concentrate on my new hobbies of shopping and drinking, although everyone knows that beer ain’t really drinkin’.
Dillmart had rekindled my love of beer and given me a completely different vision of how to buy things that I didn’t even know existed, let alone want, and then try to stuff them into my saddlebags. One day I decided to be a little more adventurous and head towards a monstrous Centre commercial on the outskirts of Toulon. My days of going to the local butcher with the desire to purchase a chicken would be well and truly behind me, so instead of him being alternately rude and polite I was sure that all the staff in these places would just be plain ill-mannered and offensive. Wouldn’t you be if you had to work in one of them?
I am glad that once again I decided to stick with the moped, as parking a car at IKEA is not recommended for short tempered persons such as myself especially when their bladders are screaming as a result of one of the six or so bottles of DiuretiKbourg I had already consumed on the way here. IKEA? Now what the heck could that stand for? I Knew Eamonn Andrews? I, Kierkegaard, existentialist asshole? Speaking of cheese sandwiches……As I pulled up right outside the building, I was delighted to see that cigarette smoking was finally back in fashion, everybody tentatively patting their pockets in turn searching for a packet, lighting up, relieved and drawing hard; as if the jury had just reached its verdict. What on earth was behind those revolving doors? I had to find out.
Anyone who has had the occasion to visit one of these stores will know what happened to me inside. Yes I had a pee, obviously. Then I grabbed a grossly inappropriate quantity of little half-cut pencils, began to follow the direction arrows on the floor and soon found myself hopelessly lost and completely disorientated. I tried leaving a trail of pencils behind me as a trackback, but since I was not the only one to do this, it made matters a little worse.
This condition went on for some time and deteriorated sevenfold shortly after my second visit to the cafeteria for meatballs beer and Brussels sprouts. I had of course wearied of looking at the crap they had on display and began instead to study my fellow patrons, who like me were wandering about fazed and a little bemused, desperately trying to find the exit without actually showing any signs of panic. It’s fun to be clean, its nice to be neat, for people are happy when they are neat and they are clean.
Everyone has their own personal methods of stress management, mine is singing.
My bright idea to follow someone who was actually using the pygmy pencils for their designed purpose of jotting down unlikely names on the scraps of paper I had at once rejected, turned out to be sound. I should be named employee of the month, but I found out later that a fellow called Kevin had already beaten me to it. I stuck close to one of these brave chaps until I was finally led into a vast and resounding ill-foreboding warehouse. This was the penultimate hurdle before my escape, for between these massive shelves of flat boxes and the check-outs of salvation, lay another little island of fluorescent plastics and miscellaneous objects. I assumed, in my confused state, that I had to buy an arbitary selection before being allowed out. They were mainly things for storing other things in to keep your house tidy and nice, but I just grabbed a pink watering-can, a big yellow firewood bag and a box of candles, paid with my trusty Amex card almost without incident.
“You must take a blue bag sir, the yellow ones are not for sale” said the smiling youth at the desk
“But I like yellow and its a present for Steve”.
“Take a fucking blue one!” said Kevin politely.
Fearing another microphone incident, I took a fucking blue one and rushed outside for a smoke.
Next stop, after a bit of mischievous jay-walking; Decathlon, sporting goods for all the family. Now what could this name possibly signify? I hope I won’t have to spend two days in there, hopping, jumping and throwing things around. Here of course there was no smoking, no stress. In fact brightly feathered, out here on the perimeter they were well-groomed, immaculate.
I wasted a good half an hour hanging about in the reception area looking for freebies until I finally agreed with a white shirt black pants walkie-talkie guy that I should move on. “What no pencils!” I was ambling down the aerobics department and just about to turn into le stretching, idly daydreaming about living at the bottom of the sea and killing anything that came near me, when my phone rang. My ringtone don’t sound funny I’m sure! It was my favourite daughter, Stoned Taz.
“Hi dad, I have news. Lorraine and that slimy bastard Lister are sailing into town at the weekend and throwing a private party on the yacht. Please say you’ll come daddy. For me!”
“Sure.”
“I’d better tell you now, that I suggested fancy-dress, so that they wouldn’t feel too out of place.”
“Well that was awfully considerate you darling, but you know I loathe dressing up, and where am I going to find an outfit at such short notice?”
But she had hung up; got me to say I’d come and buggered off, crafty little so and so.
So here I was more than tipsy, alone in a sportswear mega-store with an invitation to a stupid fancy dress do on a ketch in Saint Tropez. whatever was I going to do?
Meandering through soccer, cycling and ten pin bowling, I had my second brilliant idea of the day. I know you had all thought of it long ago, but don’t forget the beer. So what was it to be? A fearless huntsman in full camouflage a murderous dagger and a real gun? A gay golf pro, an overweight jockey or a paramedic scuba-diver? I just couldn’t decide, so in the end I started to pick up random ill-assorted articles from all the departments. I say random, but I was really concentrating on items that I knew would be too tight, were made of fake Lycra and most of all, things that had the most bizarre brand names with misspelled garbage written all over them. What you may ask was the thinking behind this plan, or indeed was there any at all? Yes, Yes, I shall be attending this party as Everyman, the Decathlon Dick Head. hoorah for Rodney!
I got home late, very late. A punk stopped me on the street and said: ” Have you got a light Mac”?
I said ”No, but I’ve got a plastic watering can, a shiny pink leisure suit with ‘OM! Droit au But!’ written all over it and a blue shopping bag. ‘Ere, you can have it. Not a patch on the ones you get in Dillmart.”
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We woke Taz with a bucket of cold water, ” We need to get your bike back.”
The directions to “Chez Maurin” sounded simple enough, ” Head back towards Collobrieres, turn left at the sequoia then just keep following the track for about three kilometres, you can’t miss it”. I didn’t expect those forest paths to be a particularly easy ride, but when we finally pulled up outside his humble dwelling, me with Taz strapped on to the luggage rack, my balls felt like that celebrated pair of maracas. Steve was just fine, he had finally received his justly deserved free croissants and had pedalled his mount all the way without any help from the motor on the strength of them.
We were here on business, sure, but the beauty of the place left me a little lost for words. The house was what is known in this part of the world as a cabanon, not quite a house, but more than just a cabin. An ancient two storey stone built affair, carefully restored and if you were lucky enough for the thing to appear on Napoleonic records from 1815, even the local authorities tended to say “aw who gives a fuck anyway?”. So it was legal, but not really, a dwelling place but not a house, it didn’t really exist at all. But it did.
The tiny home was set in quite a sizeable clearing in the otherwise densely overgrown cork forest, here were happily grazing critters: two donkeys, a handful of sheep and a couple of greedy goats. A huge parasol pine hung immobile over the house and its vast terrace, overlooking, I will spare you a clichéd description of the glistening turquoise Mediterranean below, but honestly, it was stunning. Looking about us, even Steve was touched to see a little basket by the front door containing a tiny fox cub and a pair of cheeky little weasels, completely tame and highly trained to deal with unwanted visitors.
The place was clearly way off the grid; we had seen no sign of a mailbox, no cables or posts for miles around, just a beautifully crafted stone well and the pleasingly aromatic scent of fig wood burning on a fire within. All this just confirmed my previous notion that we were dealing with a thoroughly extraordinary fellow and Steve’s that he was a hippy douche. Taz had had enough of our admiring procrastination and was about kick down the door with a vicious boot
“Give me my fucking bike back butt head!”
She had miscalculated on two counts, one, the door was not actually closed and two, had she not been clad head to toe in thick biker leather, those weasels would surely have ripped her flesh. She escaped with just the humiliation of being picked up and dusted down by the powerful but gentle hands of the handsome thief.
“Beautiful Zelda from galaxy four suddenly broke down my door” He greeted us in an oddly incongruous south London accent, “welcome my friends”. We were not friends, this was awkward. He then offered us an aperitif, and noticing the look of utter horror on all our faces, quickly added, “no, not that sort, I meant something that really will give you a great appetite”, pointing as he spoke to a roughly hewn cork platter stacked high with little greeny-brown and misshapen easter eggs.
“That’s horse-shit you moron!”
“TAZ!” I reprimanded her as severely as a hungover father can tax his own beautiful and recently mortified daughter.
“No!” she said almost apologetically,” I mean it really is horse shit, can’t you tell? Does anyone truly believe that I am going to eat that………..” “…..Ass crap”, Maurin intervened, ” nicely dried out and cured, it is almost certainly the finest thing you will have ever smoked”.
Not at all convinced, but relieved that it was not edibilia, we took our places at a long monastic table as Maurin produced a, well fat-boy is not the word, this thing was seriously obese. With just one toke, Taz knew instantly what was in the joint and precisely where it had come from. Steve and I braced ourselves for a distinctive and all too familiar foul-mouthed onslaught but were to be disappointed.
As the big thing did its rounds, the magic followed: Taz was serene, smiley and hardly abrasive and rude at all, Steve was more than ever convinced that even if the world was a mess, his hair was nothing short of perfect. A wondrous substance indeed! Maurin was explaining, as if it were even necessary, how one of his donkeys, Nucky by name, had returned after a three day absence, stoned out of his extremely tiny mind and had not stopped laying these golden nuggets ever since. “I call them Nucky Balls!” Smiling broadly. I forgot to mention that by this time, I myself was feeling absolutely bloody fantastic, as strong as an ox and wiser than the wisest man in Wisconsin. I demanded an immediate and private interview with “Nucky, the funky junky donkey”.
A little while later we all began to realise just how hungry we were and our genial host responded with the makings of a feast which turned into full blown banquet. Plate after plate of Daube de sanglier, Faisan en croûte, civet de lapin.… A huge jar of tiny goats cheeses in olive oil, freshly picked rocket salad and some odd but truly delicious bright orange mushrooms lightly grilled in his figgy fireplace. All of this washed heartily down with a respectable red from his large personal vat. A triumph Maurin! Really.
The table talk was a buzz of undecipherable nonsense as we chomped and slurped away into a despicable state of well-being, or sod it, why not? Bien-être. It was Maurin, once again who inevitably broke the spell: “I want to join your club!” he blurted out most unexpectedly, “you know, the Idiot Bastard Sons of Anarchy, I want in!” Steve looked at him crossly and informed him that “we don’t let just anybody become a member you know” I said “try that again Steve but without the ‘just’ bit”.
“Oh dad, don’t be such a rotter, that’s simply unfair, why don’t you try him on one of your famous tests?”
” Goody, goody, I love tests” Maurin joked in a perfect imitation of Steve at his silliest. Taz giggled, it is a very long time since she has done that. Was she beginning to actually like this guy?
“I don’t know what your tests are, but give me a chance won’t you?” Speaking quite seriously now “I think I’m an anarchist because I live by my gun and my wits, I don’t pay any taxes or utility bills and I certainly don’t vote. I may not be a rich bastard like you three, but just like you, I don’t understand a fucking thing when I’m not stoned. Come on daddy, give us a break?”
How could I refuse? ”OK. first question, music, you will have ten seconds in which to answer, whereupon you will hear this sound….”
“Get on with it Dad,” Tazzy all excited.
“Right, which band had a 1970 hit with Up Yours!”?
“The Edgar Broughton Band sir” He answered without hesitation to a massive round of applause from all of us.
“Let’s move on quickly to the practical part, any good at riding mopeds?”
Maurin’s field performance was a delight to behold, his mastery of the two-wheeled two-stroke defied both belief and gravity, how could any man chase sheep through a stony field, blindfold and rolling a fresh joint at the same time? I think this was the defining moment in their whirlwind romance, it was at this point that Steve finally began to fall in love with him.
He was in, of course he was, but just one last question: “how are you at prank phone calls?”
This was the icing on the cake. As long as someone, preferably Taz could show him how to use a ‘phone, he could imitate just about anybody from Nicholas Sarkozy to Eric Cantona, taking in any of those dickhead radio and TV presenters on the way, “if that’s the kind of thing you are looking for”?
Before I gave him the final nod, I asked Steve if he had any questions he would care to add. To my surprise the lovestruck wretch said that my musical question had been ridiculously easy and that anyway, it wasn’t fair because The Broughtons were my favourite band. Could he try him out on his own?
“Maurin” said Steve gravely, “which band had a minor 1967 hit with the song ”Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine”
” Ladies and gentlemen I’d like you to give a big hand to Mr. Country Joe and the Fish!”
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Steve agreed on the moped way even though he had planned on taking the pink Hummer, not just because we were going to saint Trop, but ”Lest we should hit upon a huge flock of sheep on the way”. Yes he did mean hit upon, sick bastard, but that’s Steve for you. He has seen the needle and the damage done is sadly, irreparable.
It was the middle of the afternoon by my KDE clock set to seventy-five per cent fuzziness, so we reckoned that if Taz left on her Harley at early evening, we should all meet up at the restaurant at eight o’ clock sharp. We did.
A word here about Steve’s wife – whom I shall Always think of as Tammy – may be of interest. She is currently wintering in California, as just the thought of wearing a woolly jumper sends a chill all the way down to her butt. Woolly bully. Her one mediocre album from the late seventies “It Ain’t Necessarily Titties And Beer” has assured her a totally disproportionate and steady income ever since. Steve hates the bitch, but being British, all I can say is that I’m not frightfully fond of you either darling.
As we entered the crowded restaurant the diners fell instantly silent, probably due to Taz in her skin-tight let’s talk about leather outfit accompanied by two middle-aged weirdos , but no, it was in Steve’s honour. The hush turned into a rustle of tasteful applause with a few hoorahs and bravos added to emphasize the approval.
I always manage to forget that Steve is what is commonly known as a “Genius in France”, that is, a much mocked and derided figure of fun in his homeland, yet nothing short of a hero in the land of cheese and biscuits. In his heyday Steve had been a wildly unsuccessful professional bicycle rider whose exploits in the Tour de France in the eighties had gone largely unnoticed in the rest of the world but the French had placed him high on a pedestal, all the better to admire his magnificent calves. Think on’t Johnny Drama.
I quickly realised that Steve’s real motive for coming out on the town tonight was to cheer himself up. Not only had he been a little under the weather over the holidays, but ” I haven’t seen a fellow American since the last time I cut my hair”, he lamented pathetically as we were at table expecting a waiter to appear and flatter us.
Maybe It's Because I Had The Flu For ChristmasTaz was no better, the sour puss, but at least her reasons were more justified. A little sad because her long term boyfriend, Lister had upped and betrothed his good-self to some slag called Lozzi whilst cruising on his monster yacht, The Turpitude, somewhere in the Algarve. Totally postal about the acts of vandalism and crass criminality which had been committed on our precious cannabis plantation a couple of days previously. Someone or something had completely ground-zeroed the place and she now had the daunting prospect of a life without weed for the dimly foreseeable future. I knew how she felt.
We had already decided on our order from the neatly scrawled bistrot chalkboard: Steve would have the woozy numbat with brisures of crystal meth. I would opt for the saber-toothed squirrel with candied lemon and cork oak acorns. Taz still in the dumps would just have “a packet of crisps and a pint of what Beckham over there is drinking”.
When Patrick, our waiter for the evening did come to take our order and be pleasing, he produced a crocodile tear as I mentioned the squirrel, “It’s the last one sir!” he sobbed. “Fine by me” I returned casually. “I mean the very last one in existence Monsieur” “Even better”, I quipped, “the squirrelling must go on and I will be mentioned in school text books.” I knew he was just kidding, who doesn’t know that saber-toothed squirrel is the codename for the Linux kernel 3.2-rc1?
As for the drinks, Taz got her pint of Pur Absolut crap and Steve and I were to share a dozen bottles of Chateau Sainte Anne de la Regurgitation, this is the only place in the world that sells it and was the reason behind choosing the mopeds to get here, and back!
I should mention here that as the food arrived, Steve committed the most unthinkable and loutish faux-pas by requesting tomato ketchup, now don’t expect a repetition of a similar scene in the Naked Lunch, this is France remember; no the waiter complied with a grin. It was I in fact who was trembling, with my fingers crossed under the table, ” please lawdi let it be the 57 varieties variety and not a home made apology made with real organic tomatoes and balsamic bleeding vinegar”.
All was going down nicely, my little treetop flyer was exquisite, Steve’s favourite condiment had passed muster and even Taz was a bit more chatty. Emerging slowly from her own dystopian universe, which she had named “Jeans North”, she was imploring me to tell the story about spotting Bono moonlighting in that awful cheapskate supermarket, “Please daddy, again! Again! Just one more time, Pleeeese”
Pleese!This peaceful scene of amicable self-indulgence was violently interrupted when the restaurant doors crashed open and some guy walks in with a monstrous wild boar slung across his shoulders. He stood there staring disdainfully at us all and left the door wide open behind him. He was requested, rather politely I thought to “fermez la porte!”, but he just stood there looking more disgusted than ever. As if it were perfectly normal for a man to be standing with a 200 pound pig round his neck but totally unacceptable to enter a room without saying bonjour and closing the door, the demands for him to do so continued unabated.
Finally the man spoke: “This place is so full of bullshit, I won’t close the door until you’ve all had a blast of clean sea air. ” He was staring at the chalkboard and for a moment I thought he was going to spit on it, but he just shook his head sadly and dropped the hog noisily to the ground.
Never mind the beetrootTaz was quite at the end of her tether “Shut the fucking door, Retard!”
To which he replied, with maybe just a hint of sarcasm: “Well if I’d known that The Idiot Bastard Sons of Anarchy were here, why, I would have closed it long ago.” Our fame was spreading then?
The man was gone leaving all at our table to believe that this brief interlude had been a kind of dream, not to say hallucination. “What an extraordinary fellow”, I thought and said at the same time, “hippy douche” Steve agreed laconically, Taz said he reminded her of a sheep on meth. If this was all in our imaginations though, why was it taking six grown men to drag that huge slobbering beast into the back kitchens?
The soiree was drawing to a hazy conclusion, it was time for getting drunk and kick starting mopeds, but we were all out of wine. It did end though on a more cheerful note, the number of zeros on the bill were way in excess of our wildest attempts at thinking up numbers and doubling them, even the ketchup had reached three figures. It was a happy Steve then that handed over Tammy’s charge card to the beaming waiter.
When one doorway to happiness opens another one slams in your face, Patrick had surreptitiously slipped a scrap of paper to Taz with a handwritten message from the dead pig guy:
“If you want your bike back, come to my place in the morning, ask anyone for Chez Maurin………”
]]>It was Plato I think, who said “It was a wise man who invented beer.” Wise indeed, but also a great leveler. Even the stinkiest, richest bastard can only drink thirty or so pints a day, so despite his wealth, he really is no better off than me, which would be pretty difficult anyway, given the extent of my own personal fortune.
Regrettably, I myself am not a wise man, I have actually no idea where I should go to buy beer, or anything else for that matter; I do however have a couple of smart friends who pop into my brain from time to time. Little BSD, the Beer Swilling Devil would be a good chap to ask, faithful server and a cute little bugger in those horrid green sneakers, very reliable and comes with excellent documentation too. “Go to Lidl my friend, there you will find a splendid range of quality lagers, continental pilsners and much other beery goodness, all at very reasonable prices. Go, go now and bring me back a case of whatever is on special…”
Lidl! Screams the shiny smug unstable penguin that has installed himself uncomfortably on my laptop, Lidl?*#. The vilest place in the observable universe! Destroyers of small business and violators of human dignity, they will take over our world and dismantle it piece by piece. Don’t go my friend. Go instead to your nearest wine cooperative while there still is one, support local business and agriculture, buy some cheap wine and feel better about yourself.
“Thanks Tux but beer is what I need. Lidl it is.”
” OK, but don’t touch the Fink Brau. Shame in a bottle, trust me Rodney.”
I would never have thought that a town as posh as Sainte Maxime would host one of these reputedly unpleasant establishments, but they do, wait a minute, there’s one in Cogolin too, that’s a bit closer, these places are everywhere. So off I go, Lidl bound, over the hills and not so far away.
Well I found the place alright, that was the easy part, as I dropped in from Grimaud there was the filthy great sign, LIDL! There I found hordes of people milling around pushing and pulling on pram like things with tiny, tiny wheels, some piled high with groceries, some completely empty. I found this a little disturbing, a bit eery, why do people act this way? I hung around anyway to study them, look for a pattern, some logic, and then I finally worked it out. They go in one door with an empty barrow, then appear a bit later through an adjacent one with the darned thing full, looked like a lot of fun.
I then spotted a sort of makeshift shelter with lots of these wheely things all crushed together so I wandered over to grab one for myself. Crikey! They’re all locked up, WTF? I stood there forlorn, scratching my head, that’s what perplexed people do, right? Then out of nowhere, a sweet and very genteel sad-eyed lady took pity on me and firmly pressed a Euro coin in my hand saying “Allez mon vieux, payez-vous quelques bieres avec ca!” How on earth had she got wind of my mission?
I was soon in the shop with my own personal perambulator, slip the coin in the slot and voila! How can they sell them so cheaply?
I tried to focus, I was looking for beer, the place was busy, hard to navigate. These trolley things may be dirt cheap but that’s no reason to abandon them, half full in the middle of the aisles. I seemed to be going round in circles, up and down, round and round, looking here, looking there, and then I was struck by a moment of pure happiness and blinding revelation, after all these years of wondering, at last. This was a supermarket and I was all lost in it. Why had the song made no sense to me before?
I found the beer in the end. I just couldn’t believe my eyes as they darted between cans of Larsullrichbrau and huge bottles of Rammestein before they settled finally on a stack of genuine English Old Scrotum Ale, two for the price of one! Free beer! Just wait till I get to tell the sanctimonious little penguin about this! Sod the Reinheitsgebot I myself would be entirely made up of water, malted barley and hopfen extract before the year was out. So I duly began to load my wheeliebarrow with just as many bottles that would fit without breakage, I got to 359 and had to stop, I could always come back the next day…
I teetered off triumphant towards the out door. Of course I had every intention of paying for them, how dare any of you think otherwise? I just wasn’t quite sure of the procedure, as I’ve said before, my unwisdom in these matters are pearls. Then I spotted the queues ahead of me barring the way to the exit. So this is how it’s done, the goods you have selected pass along a sort of conveyor belt until they are picked up by a blue-uniformed inmate who presents them to a primitive scanning device which then emits a high-frequency and annoying error message bleep. I could hardly wait for my turn.
When I did finally get on more intimate terms with Amandine, the angel in blue, she gave me what is possibly the dirtiest look I have ever encountered and said in a dreary French monotone: ” Please have the goodness to place all the items in your ‘caddy’ on the belt”
“No” I said pleasantly, handing her a selection of credit cards. “you count . There are 359 of them, word of a gent.”
She repeated her demand as if it were a recording but added nastily, I have to check that you are not trying to nick something”
Nick something! How can someone called Amandine be such a hard faced bitch? I tried again to reason with her and softly recited Joe Strummer’s touching lyrics, looking for sympathy. ” There was a wall back in the suburbs, over which I never could see”. She was unmoved, uncomprehending and I don’t know if this is appropriate for a serving lass, but here goes, Intransigent. ” Please have the goodness to place all the items in your ‘caddy’ on the belt or I will be obliged to call the overseer”
I remained calm and bashful, explaining that the green thing in my hand was an American Express card and that she was supposed to say “That will do nicely Sir”.
In response to my perceived dumbness, she grabbed a handy microphone and before I knew it she was braying “Monsieur Warwick Hunt is required at check-out three, Monsieur Warwick Hunt!”.
Within seconds a mean looking fat guy in over tight green pants and a crumpled white shirt was easing himself through the crowds in my direction. For a moment I was convinced it was Peter Griffin, puffing and panting as he approached. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I realised it wasn’t Griffin at all, it was Bono! It was, it was really him, slightly plumper than I remembered, but definitely Bono, not word of a lie. When he saw me his face lit up with a brilliant smile.
“Quel honneur! Monsieur X”, he proclaimed in his inimitable where the fuck do I come from brogue. “I find you here in our own humble, err,” looking oddly at my booty….. “Beer Depot.” ”The beers are on me!” he boomed in obvious delight, for all the world as if he was the Milky Bar Kid.
After all these years in hiding, all these years of anonymous gallivanting, there had finally been a sighting; Bono spotted me in a Lidl! Can you believe that!?
I was off, as fast as my little legs and the laden caddy would let me, resolving to start growing a long shaggy beard the moment I got home.
Just as the automatic doors slipped open, I turned to take one last look. Did I shave my legs for this? Then Bono, grinning stupidly said “I see you have the same problem with your trousers as I do”. This I took to mean, I won’t tell on you if you keep mum about me.” So it definitely was Bono then, see!
Here’s a little sketch I did to while away the time waiting for the beard to grow, solid proof I think, just in case there are still any doubters out there.
Maurad's MountainsKnowing my two friends they will be stocking up on that too and drinking one or two on the way home in Pierrefeu-du-var. I know they will be doing this, because the consumption of alcohol in public places has recently been outlawed in this town. Infantile Rodney provocation, sure, but it would be funny to see how the dumb Gendarmes will deal with a middle aged American and an Arabian seed merchant in flagrante delicto. Fine work Rodney.
Back to the LAPD, the Law-Abiding Pranks Department. The three of us have been trying to nuke the annual Chestnut Festival for about five years now, without notable success, a comedy of stupid errors in fact. Like the year we decided to Rick Roll the whole town from a secret rooftop location; the crowds just loved it, as it totally drowned out the official out of tune quartet with an outstanding repertoire of monotony. Utter failure.
Rick RollAnother time, Rodney had the wickedly cunning idea of a bomb scare, which had he been successful would have caused absolute havoc. Unfortunately he elected to make the call himself, only he spoke in English with a totally unconvincing Irish accent; his call was of course dismissed. With hindsight, maybe a good thing, as it could very easily have backfired on us, the prank I mean, not the bomb, because of course it was a hoax. Please tell me it was a hoax Rodders.
There have been countless other mischievous attempts to disrupt and disturb this annual outrage and petty crime against humanity; dropping stink bombs, redesigning the traffic system by heaving the no-parking signs and barriers into the river, doing rain dances, all to no, or very little avail.
The only ruse that we all assume did succeed, does not fulfill all the requirements of a practical joke and so does not count. My wife has pragmatically adopted the – if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – approach. She has a stand where she sells her very own and quite appalling chestnut flavored spread with a label that would suggest that it is better tasting and much better for you than Nutella itself. The joke is that I have been lacing her mixture for some years now with a very potent dose of homegrown marijuana, but since nobody yet has opened the jar and tucked in immediately- she does not supply plastic spoons, bless her – I have never enjoyed the pleasure of witnessing their discomfort.
This year it is going to be different. From the dubious comfort of Rodney’s cellar we will prepare an illustrated news story about the day the good people of Collobrieres finally rebelled and went on a burning, breaking and robbing rampage on the eve of the festival’s sickening opening ceremony. Jad would take care of the writing part, being half French he has a little understanding of the vagaries of spelling and grammar. Rod’s daughter would take care of the photoshopping, for she – unbeknownst to her father is herself no stranger to the dual boot – only she goes with Fedora and TinyXP, with a fully functional copy of CS5 extended courtesy of TPB. What’s more she knows how to use it. Yet another point for home-schooling.
Totally confident that this year’s scheme would finally be a winner, because we would post our work on as many news hungry French sites as we could, on a Sunday too, so they wouldn’t be able to verify it, Jad and settled I down for a few more self satisfied drinks.
My normally untroubled mind has been a little less so since Jad finally took his leave. Why on earth did he ask to borrow my stetson and what use could he possibly have for a fake mustache from the props box…………………?
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I’m not sure if he actually did say “howdy” as he offered me his hand and said in a gruff voice “Raylan”, which I took to be his name, but I did invite him in and proffered a cold beer, which he politely refused as it didn’t feature on his list of refreshing summer drinks. Homemade lemonade on the other hand would be more than welcome. I sat him down with a bottle of Pschitt! He quenched his thirst without comment.
It was hard to squeeze much conversation out of this guy without beer, but I did learn that he was Ray Lannigan, Ice-cream king of Wagon Wheel NM and that he was here because he smelled opportunity; my Dear and recently departed friend Phyllis had in her wisdom written a small piece in The Curry County Tribune about her recent joyous holiday, also posted a couple of summer fun pictures online. All that Ray had grasped from this was that everybody in this town moshed around with an ice-cream in their face and what’s more it was any flavor you like, as long as its chestnut. The opportunity of a lifetime to a man of Raylan’s calibre. He had been planning to stay the night in The Expanded Backside, again on Phyllis’s recommendation, but this was festival time and it was fully booked until the end of the month. Could he “flop the night with me?”
Well he sure didn’t seem like a bundle of laughs to me, but how often does Rodney, Duke of Yendor get to entertain visiting Royalty? ”Sure” and I showed him and his little bag to the great guest room in the sky where he could rest shower and change. “Thanks but I’ll pass on the shower and changing bit.”
An hour or so later came the inevitable, the part that I always dread when visiting Americans are in town. Ray announced that he was “so darned hungry” he would even consider eating cheese. I can’t remember how many times I have sworn I will never set foot in a restaurant with an American again. Justified.
He hadn’t been able to stomach the unfamiliar offerings of Air France nor had he been able to make himself understood since he set down in Paris some ten hours previously. How he got here at all with nothing but a scrap of paper with my name and address scribbled on it is more than a little worrying.
“OK Ray”, I say a bit too harshly ” but first I’m going to lay down a few ground rules about dining out in this country. Firstly, things usually start out with an aperitif or two, invariably Pastis with ice and a jug of water; we don’t drink mugs of milky coffee with our meals and beer is considered uncouth, just wine or water. Got it?” He nodded strangely, I continued. “It is customary to use a knife and fork; with the knife in the right hand, or even a knife and crusty piece of bread in the left hand The meal will last several hours and of course please try to remember that in Europe a waitress is considered to be a fully paid up member of the human race. Hands off! If you pay for the meal, I will take care of the tip, as I know from experience you will never, ever be able to get your head around French tipping. Finally, the meal will almost certainly finish with the smug and sweaty chef offering us a glass of his special reserve firewater, reserved specially that is, for the clients he has ripped off the most that evening, and that my friend is going to be us. Still with me?” He was, but maybe it was just the long journey and lack of food that made him look so jaundiced.
I wouldn’t normally be dumb enough to eat in a restaurant that I knew was for sale, would you? The safest bet is to eat somewhere recently opened, still trying to please, bending over backwards is even better. They never put up for sale signs of course, but budding central scrutinizer that I am, I happen to know that The Terrasse Provencal is on the market for a cool one and a half million dollars. What’s more, I had a plan. Happy in the knowledge that they would take any credit card Ray could throw at them, two dudes in stetsons were out on the town.
It was apparent that Ray considered the French national aperitif to be some kind of awful patent medicine, but he swigged it willingly and it had the same effect on him as on those that actually enjoy the stuff; instant-on loud and fervent chatter, borderline obnoxious. As he outlined his great plans for a string of Raylan’s ice-cream parlours, I noted with relief that our waitress – obviously hand-picked by the proprietor’s wife – was more like Winston Churchill in drag than anything he was likely to grope – but the night was young and I remained vigilant. My reputation in this town was already at rock bottom, but with Ray around it could always take a turn for the worse.
The meal itself went surprisingly well; we had meat and potatoes, puddings, even some cheese, and zero vegetables, washed down with bottle after bottle of Chateau Bastidon Rose wine that Ray was drinking as if it was Bud, no, not straight from the bottle stupid, I soon put a stop to that. After some slightly sobering strong black coffee, the greasy blob duly popped out of his kitchen brandishing an old fashioned looking bottle with a whole fat pear inside and came to our table with two tiny glasses. His trite and oft repeated speech fell on deaf ears, for Raylan was into yet another tear-jerking rendition of his favorite song Lonesome Cowboy Bert - there’s the Zappa for those of you not expecting it – and only had eyes for the serving Wench.
I had a feeling that it was a bit too late to explain That Dr. Phyllis MacFarlane, careers adviser at Clovis Community College and Socorro Miss Personality 1975 was entirely responsible for his unfortunate misunderstanding. If she had seen, has she no doubt had, that Collobrieres had been dubbed both the capital of the Maures and chataignes, then she would empirically deduce that these words were synonyms for ice-cream in the language of Moliere, hence the confusion. It was, far too late. I don’t think we were actually thrown out of the diner or even sang anymore on the way home, kicked any cats or peed through anyone’s letterbox . My next recollection was Sunday morning.
“Howdy Rod” He did say it this time of that I’m sure, also that I never seen a man so bright and so early on a Sunday. He had already been into town and bought fresh croissants and a local map, how much French did he learn last night? The coffee was percolating nicely and Ray was bubbling with excitement sticking pins into the map and sounding like he was playing solo Monopoly. Two motels here and here, a proper gas station here with a Toyota dealership and a car wash. A fast-food outlet here here and here. Jeez Rod, there are thousands of people out there with nothing to eat but some kind of nut, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the last time I took a shower, and he grinned for the first time since we’d met.
He was gobbling pastries, slurping coffee looking at his watch and talking all at the same time, like a man who had left his helicopter running on the outskirts of town……?
“Look Rodney, you take care of the relocation incentives, tax breaks and recruitment subsidies – ship in some Chinks if you need to – as we agreed last night – and I’ll be back in a week, oh and you can tell greaseball that since his place is over three hundred years old, its time for a freaking refit, one million cash, that’s my final offer.”
And he was gone… Pschitt!
Lesson learned, they’ll have to change the slogan “Collobrieres Capital des Maures” to something they might understand in Eddy or Grant County, Roxy and elsewhere; something like: ” Collobrieres, we’re growing, come join us.”
We are growing, just not what they’d think.
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I have doubts about the thinking behind the emblazoned scrawl on the back of my obviously borrowed leather motorcycle jacket. TIBSA “The Idiot Bastard Sons of Anarchy” This is some club that Rod has recently signed up with, who’s mission seems to be behave like naughty little boys and see what you can get away with. Sounds like fun, sure, but he’s not getting any younger and he’s trapped underground with my husband. We love Rodney, always have, but the low spark of these moped boys? They will soon be the men in suits buying proper cars at the expense of your dreams Rod.
Anyway, enough of that. Good morning, I’d care to purchase a chicken please. We have settled right down to the kind of a bread cheese and wine routine that would make the folks back home in Curry County chunder. What is it now, you great pillock? Ten pints of sun warmed rose a night for three, cheese that smells like Hank Baskett’s armpits and bread that you can actually break. we’re good, me Teddy and Rod, very good. Ah, certainly sir, some stuffing? Awesome actually.
Back and forth, back and forth, five liters a day the well balanced way. Unsustainable is not one of my favorite words, but the boys are right, bright pink and permanently sozzled is not the place for me to be right now. Ted has got his laptop sorted out; all this way for a dual boot? What’s wrong with the friendly old IRC channel? Use your own, you great poofy poonagger. Rodney, ever the diploma, cuts to the cheese: ” @#$! off back to Clovis and leave me alone” For he has great work still to accomplish, here in Collobrières. Tough titties if he didn’t, you nasty spotted prancer.
Phyllis.
]]>This is not our first trip to France so we were prepared to do a bit of shopping around before finding a suitable restaurant, you see poor Ted is a vegetarian and doesn’t care much for Phish; he also stated more than once in his autobiography – Ted the Dead-Head – that he did not want to see another omelette as long as he lived. Here though we expected no difficulty in finding some of that fabulous Mediterranean food the stuff that diets are made of; marinated goat’s cheese and real sun ripened tomatoes, ratatouille, even a more exotic apricot tajine would do just fine. This was also the season for wild mushrooms, gorgeous juicy figs and of course roast chestnuts. As for the movie, he had settled on The Hangover 2 which was coming down nicely and we felt all cosy and safe from the ire of the copyright holders, tucked away here in deepest Provence where the only time you might get into a bit of bother is if you telecharge Johnny Halliday or his kidney.
Rodney had told us, among other more curious things that there were ‘shed loads’ of eating places in this tiny town and we had already checked out collobrieres-tourism.com, no less than eleven with all but two in very easy walking distance, so with mouths already watering off we set. We began down by the little river at the Hotel des Maures, not much information on the site and their link was broken, but “Cuisine Provencal” was a good enough start.
tarte-maisonI was intrigued by the Tarte Maison, wild horses would have balked at dragging away Ted, but in the end anchovies, pigs and cows were more persuasive. I found out much later that an omelette aux champignons had always been a more less compulsory appetizer at this establishment and not only were the mushrooms of the canned variety but the eggs were supplied very cheaply by a man called Didier, who Rod does not seem to care very much for. What sort of name is Didier anyway?
It was with some trepidation that we ventured into the the Bar de la Mairie. Bar, restaurant, tobacconist and house of ill repute, just a couple of doors down. We were not really expecting an effusive welcome having read some of Rodney’s recent posts, but after ten minutes or so of being ceremoniously ignored we hopped across the street to the rather posh looking “Un Air de Rien“, no kidding. Just a tapas bar though really, spicy sausages and tortillas, omelettes by any other name, I wouldn’t get away with that. No Way. We did pop in for a drink or two though. Julian the owner is such a sweetie, sooh! attentive, I really think he should rename it The Dewdrop Inn though, or better, The Dude Drop In, that would be really sweet.
Not unduly discouraged, in fact buoyed a little by Lucien’s lovely wine we strolled the fifty or so yards to the Farigoulette, next on the list, but not forgetting to call back at the two previous bars for a couple of beers, I thought it better to give them a few of our hard earned dollars, to make up for their bad behavior, far be it from us to give American tourists a bad name.
The Farigoulette looked absolutely stunning, almost completely smothered in a glorious Virginia creeper and several beautifully hand-written chalk menu boards now this was more like it. Not so much for the herbivore however, unless Ted was to stick to the puddings. The chef, Franck did kindly propose some hot tuna, why do people always think vegetarians eat fish? His wife Karine was a doll and would not hear of us leaving without an aperitif as it was still quite early. She produced a half emptied bottle of Guignorix, a power packed cherry liqueur, from her husband’s secret stash in the kitchen and would not let us go until the bottle was finished. Before leaving I asked Corinne what the word farigoulette actually meant, but she had no idea, “We’re not from round here” she explained we just pay the rent, ”I think it’s just the name of the shop”. Francis was looking decidedly peeved.
La farigouletteAn hour later we found ourselves standing forlornly outside the Petite Fontaine, where, we had been assured by Francois that we would find our bonheur. Cuisine provençale again, but this time recommended by nombreux guides, including Gault & Millau and Gantié no less. Their specialties were onion tart, local cheese and red peppers marinated in olive oil and farigoulette, the local name for thyme. Eureka! It was closed, which is probably a good thing because looking around we find that they don’t do credit cards and I doubt they give receipts[..]
The immediately adjacent and gaudily decorated Terrasse Provencal was packed to bursting, taking shameless advantage of their neighbor’s annual holiday to serve what sounded like, well I may be from New Mexico but I know what a Welsh rugby team sounds like especially when food is served on a bed of leeks.
So ever onward, a little further up the street we found the recently opened “Gourmandy’z”, their link was also a 404, so all we had to go on was an interesting variation of the cuisine thing , this time it was traditionelle. They should really have called it Wackjob’z , their menu being an arbitrary mix of
Wackjob'Zinternational fare; baked Camembert with a banana sauce for example does, I suppose, warrant a great big V sign – but vegetarians are notoriously unadventurous – isn’t that so Ted? Even I would have to pass on the tuna fish with chorizo. It did have thankfully, a traditional Spanish tapas bar attached as well. Two of those in one small French village, odderer and odderer, still, may as well have a few more drinks.
It was now way past nine ‘o clock and staggering slightly, hopefully homeward bound,we stumbled upon this little place.time trying to decipher the menu in the failing light and arguing briefly about what day it was, we at last settled for the beetroot vinaigrette, aioli with its vegetables, a Proustian cake and ice-cream, yum. We had found the menu
Something for Ted at lastbut there didn’t seem to be any kind of restaurant, how could this be? We tried a few doors and looked in a few alleyways, nothing, until a woman tugging a smelly cocker spaniel by a long piece of string came to our assistance. She turned out to be British and god, how do those people do it? She didn’t even bat one of her snooty eyelids when she told us it was the primary school cafeteria and judging by our appearance we wouldn’t like it anyway because they are rumoured to water down the wine for the 3-11 year-olds. She did though point us in the right direction home – even accompanied us for most of the way – until we made our excuses and hurried on. That dog really did stink.
I recalled in my tipsiness having seen a pizza to go flyer somewhere in the house, I agreed to call the order while Ted checked on the download. The phone was ringing and I was wondering just how this man Goertzy could possibly make pizzas in a wood burning oven in this little van when suddenly I heard Ted: Rar rar rar, its #!@?! password protected #!@?! .We have been married the best part of thirty years yet I had no idea that he was a fan of spectator sports, he always says that’s an oxymoron, so why all the rar rar rars all of a sudden? “Just typing in some mis-spelled expletives darling, you know, comments on TPB .”
So far its no dinner and no movie and the phone was still ringing…..Allo Pizza ! At last. Hi! ” Deux calzone mit extra formaggio, keine fliesch und molto capers por favor” . How well do I speak French after a few Drinks?
What's cookin'?Goertzy was all apologies, really polite, but why did I not know that it was Wednesday and that French people do not work on this day? he had worked also both the public holidays in July and August and must take the month of September to rest. Ordering a pizza at half past nine on a Thursday night should be punishable by law, even dough boys have rights don’t you know?
Well if he doesn’t sell pizzas and he patently does not, if he is mild-mannered and quite incoherent on the telephone, this surely begs the question, what exactly does he cook in there? Shake and bake?
Just over twelve hours in this odd little burg nor any bite to eat, though rummaging about in the larder I have just found a pack or two of Jiminy Cricket Brand super yum-yum chicken flavored instant noodles, Ted’s favourite. Also a bottle of schnapps just for me. More posts in a day or two.
Phyllis
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