A made-up mind

How do I feel on this, my last day in Bordeaux? Well, it's raining pretty hard and has been cold and windy for a good few days, so the gods of weather are helping me not to feel too strong a sense of nostalgia for the place (I've been here 8 days now which in traveller's time is an epoch.

Yes it's true. I've made up my mind. I'm leaving bdx tomorrow, taking my beautiful mobylette home to Le-Puy-En-Velay and moving in earnest to Toulouse. It's yet another mammoth ride but strangely it will be my last. I feel like a suitor who has chosen someone pretty and homely over a filthy but intriguing punk with constant designs towards kleptomania but who could potentially be a lot of fun. C'est la vie.

I have just enough time left in bdx to tell a few amusing anecdotes and maybe create a couple more, so let's get on with a tale I like to call: The Disturbing Neighbour

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There were three of us, couchsurfers all, staying in the appartment of the ex-boyfriend of our host, Ornella (see previous posts). We had met the guy upstairs once already; a silver-haired man of around fifty with an odd but vaguely smart dress sense and a bycicle in the hallway. He spoke good english and seemed friendly and helpful.

One afternoon as I was leaving the flat to head into town he was there on the landing and we started talking. He told me how nice it was to have youngsters in the place and how if he lived with people his own age the place would be dead. He said that if we wanted to have a party or anything then we were welcome and I thanked him for his generosity. He told me that he's a lawyer and used to live in a posh part of town but had had "a problem" and now lived in the moderate squalor of the appartment but was fine with the move. He asked me my name and told me his and all seemed very jolly.

We were by now out on the street and I could sense that the conversation was going to be one of those ones that don't end unless you force it. He seemed keen to keep on talking and I assumed he was lonely and in need of sociability. Fine. Things got a little rich though when he asked for my phone number. I said in a consiliatory tone that it wasn't necessary but wished him a pleasant afternoon. He quickly departed on his bike with a very hurried goodbye.

2 hours later I was back in the flat reading and relaxing when the buzzer went. The vioce told me it was Phillipe (the owner of the flat, understood to be away in Montreal) and that I should come down to help him do something with the bike in the hallway. I couldn't quite understand all the french but was amazed that the owner of the flat was back unexpectedly and hurried around the flat making things a bit tidier.

When I got downstairs however, it wasn't Phillipe at all, but Hugo and he was in a rage. He was pointing at the German guy's bike, locked to the staircase, and shouting in french and appeared to be in a furious state. His words were along the lines of:

"how can I put my bike away when this bloody bike is in my way. you need to move it right away. I have a very important appointment and how can I get to it if you don't move this bike. I promise I'll call the police if you don't move it right now....etc etc"

I tried to tell him that the bike wasn't mine and that there was nothing I could do but this only enraged him further and he was gesticulating wildly with his arms and shouting ever louder and faster. He told me again he was calling the police and got out his phone. I told him that it was a good idea to call the police and retreated upstairs to the flat, locking the door behind me.

Another hour or so passed in peace and I had forgotten about the strange incident when I heard a knock at the door. Fuck, I thought, he's here. He wants to kill me. So I sat very still and cursed the fact the I'd left the radio on as a giveaway to my presence in the flat. I thought if I just didn't answer he'd assume I was out and leave me alone.

The knocking persisted however, and eventually I resigned myself to opening the door.

I was surprised to find there, not Hugo, but three uniformed local police officers standing on the landing looking serious. They asked me if I was the owner of the mobylette downstairs and asked me if there had been a problem earlier on. I described to them the pleasant conversation, and the refusal to give my number, followed by the blind rage of earlier and they took my name, age and country of birth.

During my tale, two of the policemen ventured upstairs and were peering through the bannisters into Hugo's appartment and one of them started sniggering. He pointed at something to his colleague who in turn smiled wryly and shook his head. They came back downstairs and lead my interlocuter away saying "he's crazy. don't worry about anything". I asked if there was anything I could do but they seemed happy with what they'd seen and left.

What they saw up there in that appartment I'll never know, as I didn't venture upstairs to follow their gaze, but whatever it was was enough to convince the police that they were dealing with a madmen and convince me that we needed to keep our appartment door locked at all times.

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In other news, I have spent a wonderful evening at Ornella's mother's house enjoying fine french cuisine and not entirely understanding fine french conversation. We had an evening of music as one of Ornella's friends is a fine mezzo-soprano, Ornella plays the flute, Toni the German couchsurfer on his accordian, and I played the piano.

Also today, I experienced the joy of a fit of unstoppable giggles on my own, in a sophisticated cafe, whilst reading a paragraph from Love in the Time of Cholera. I'm reasonably sure that it ranks as the most I've ever laughed at a book, but I think some of the laughter may in part have been at the fact that I was laughing alone in public. A wonderful tonic on a drizzly afternoon.

Delights, delights. Next time in Toulouse?

Love from,

Rob

Ev'rybody's learning how...

Ah the joys of CouchSurfing.

I have been shown my temporary new flat by my new CouchSurfing host Ornella (she's on the left below, on the phone) and it's loverly. Pretty central and has a cool shower (my biggest priority in any place I'm staying) and with a beautiful double-matress on the floor replete with high-tog-rated double duvet and fluffy pillow that's the exact opposite of my previous Star-Wars-clad squalour in England. It means I'm getting first-rate accommodation in a private flat all of my own at a grand cost of nought. The flat also has a very well endowed window box (see left).


Me and the girls shown above went for a Japanese meal last night (believe it or not the first time I'd ever eaten sushi) and we had a great time, mostly in French, with Ornella inviting me to dinner with her mum on sunday and both girls imploring me to stay in Bordeaux. All very flattering but I'm concerned that my heart still belongs in Toulouse and that if I don't go there I'll be full of regrets, thinking of the atmosphere that so took hold of me when I was there.

Well, for now I feel like I'm going to stick in BDX for at least another two or three days as the evenings with Ornella are always so much fun. Tonight another CouchSurfer arrives: a German dude who is cycling around Europe playing his accordian on the streets for cash.

And you thought fiction was strange....

Love,
Rob

oh p.s. I've trampled over yet another line I said I'd never cross and now have a YouTube account. I've got some vids on their that I took with my digital camera which are charming enough. It's here.

Some Bordeaulaise street scenes

Especially for you

This post is especially for you (you know who you are) if you have requested a photo of my beautiful, if rapidly degenerating, mobylette. Here it is.

For those who agree with my opinion that this is the greatest photo of an inanimate object ever taken anywhere in the world, I'd like to point out that it is in no way staged. My bike was genuinely resting right there with the quaint old sign and the flowers to be filled up at the following ancient melangeur which mixes my fuel with 4% oil (just the way she likes it).

Hugh Heffner and the young Bordelaise

You really ought to try CouchSurfing: Be you old or young, traveller or settler, wise man or dunce, CouchSurfing is cool.

Last night I met my latest host, Ornella (I think you can check her out here but don't blame me if it doesn't work) in a charmante little square in central Bordeaux. We had a drink or two and then met up with a couple of her friends.

She told me that she was sorry she couldn't put me up at her place but she did have the keys to a couple of her mates' flats that I could use at my leisure as long as I watered the cannabis plant that was growing in one of them. I, needless to say, said that this was fine.

So, she seems really cool. Popular type (which I wouldn't necessarily have attributed to people who list themselves as hosts on something like CouchSurfing. You would assume they're all lonely or wierd) very pretty, and outgoing. Speaks plenty of English but was also full of compliments for my french. Her friends were more of the same: outgoing, enthusiastic and friendly young girls. So that's all cool. We're going to hang out again tonight I think.

They all live a little way out of the centre and Ornella has just pranged her car (her fault apparently but the guy had no insurance so she escaped more-or-less scot free) so had to get the last bus home. I strolled home after our rendez-vous and as I was at the road that my hotel was on, I saw a dimly lit, super-smooth looking place with a pearl-white baby grand in the corner and an attractive bar-maid wearing only a bra. This combination of titilation and instrumentation was too much for my curiosity to bear to I attempted to get in.

It turned out that it was the sort of bar where the owner had to buzz you in after he'd gotten a good look at you. I was fortunate enough to pass whatever tests he was running on me.

When I got in, there was about 7 people in the bar: 1 Hugh Heffner-style silver fox of about 65 who was chain-smoking and drinking something golden off ice, one smooth piano player who was doing soulful renditions of jazz standards at the white delight, one attractive young gypsy-esque man in a sharp suit doing magic tricks with the barmaids vest-top and a cigarette and four youngish-to-not-so-young girls instantly recognisable as high-class rent girls (unusual levels of flesh on display, improbable levels of affinity for the silver-haired patron). There was a high level of touching-up of the girls occuring, but the place didn't seem overly threatening or seedy so I stayed for a Jack Daniels (11 euro a glass, but the shot was as long as the legs of the barmaid that served it to me) and a song or two.

I got chatting to the pianist and the magician and we were suddenly a small troup of normality in amongst the aging nymphs and punters (we had been joined by a man who looked like a builder and a Buster Merryfield lookalike who must have been his grandad). It was a cool night, and we talked about music (in french of course!) and the pianist let me sing one of the numbers (Fly me to the Moon - I did my best smoky cabaret singer impersonation) and play a little of my own. Great fun, and I insisted to the owner that I'd be back the following evening. I'm not sure that I will.

Bordeaux night-life and the Alliance Francaise

Dude I'm tired. Seriously.

Last night I managed to coax a small but moderately willing troup of "youth" from the world's least friendly Youth Hostel to come out for a drink with me into town. It was cool, and I even met a girl that I'd spoken to at the Hostel in Montpellier (I'm starting to feel like I'm on a real backpacker's drag!) but the hostel closes at two so a lot of people lamed out and went home early.

Me and this one girl were blind with desire to find some late night fun so we decided to stay out past the curfew (shock!) and be locked out of the hostel for the night. This is not as serious as it sounds because the place opens again at five so we just had to make sure we could occupy ourselves till then.

Sadly the girl, as often happens with girls who seem totally normal at first meeting, turned out to be a mentalist and got super-grumpy about five minutes after we arrived at this -supercool- little club on the outskirts of town. It was just the sort of place I always like to think I'll find but never do: small, full of twenty-somthing locals, wildly and nuttily decorated and playing reasonable non-shit house music. I was in heaven. The chiquita I was with, however, looked like she'd just stepped out of a salon... OF MISERY! So I tried to cajole her into having a good time but it was clearly going nowhere.

We did successfully stay out till late enough to get in though, and now I'm suffering the consequences of a late night and a few too many rum and cokes.

All perfect preparation for what I've just done. I was wandering aimlessly about the streets (see most of the previous days of my life for similar activities) when I stumbled upon the Alliance Francaise, a world-wide group of zealots who are trying to spread the good name of GCSE-style French lessons across the globe. Needless to say I went in to check it out. Memories of French at Coleridge were still fresh in my mind like a rogue Tango in a Orangina despenser and I just had to take a swig.

The woman seemed remarkably keen to sign me up and was full of "what about next Monday? No? What about the Monday after that?" kind of talk familiar to desparate bachelors the globe over. Still, I did a test which was horribly reminiscent of my GCSE French exam where I forgot what the verb "to Have" was and had to just blather on about fruit and veg. It started easy and got really nasty by the end.

Stuff like this (all in French of course) -
Complete this sentence using the correct verbs and tenses:
If Julie had been born in the XVth Century ___________
If Pierre hadn't been two minutes late for the cinema ____________
etc etc.

Tough. Needless to say I bottled everything after about question 5 and just wrote pathetic excuses in French about how it was all too difficult.

Well, they're going to email me the results of my test at some point so we'll see what happens.

All this Alliance Francaise stuff and the crusade-like finding of nightlife is all really just to give me something to anchor me to this place. At the moment I still feel like I'm floating a bit. I heard this morning from my super-cool Canadian friend that she's going to stay in Toulouse for this year, and I'm thinking she's got a point. Still, Toulouse is relatively small and Bordeaux definitely has size on its side if nothing else. I'm going to try and find a choir. I think the town that can offer me the best choir is the one I'll marry.

Finding it is going to be tough though.

Rob

My new phone

Oh yeah,

I should probably say here as I'm currently running the risk of irritating people massively.

I've got a NEW PHONE NUMBER and IT'S A FRENCH ONE AND EVERYTHING!

This is very exciting for me. I have a +33 country code and a crazy number that starts with 06, and that you divide into groups of two instead of the classic 5-3-3 formation so beloved in england.

So here it is. Please use it to make me feel loved:
+33 (0) 6 70 40 41 56 (leave out the zero in brackets if calling from the UK)

or in our fave british format:

+33 (0) 670 404 156. Yeah bitches! It's shorter than an english mobile number. Prove if any were needed that you have to text it right now.

Love from,
Rob

First impressions of Bordeaux

Shit dude. I'm here. I made it.

According to my little pocket untearable waterproof tourist atlas of France, it's 480km from Toulouse to Bordeaux. I can tell you now that I felt every one.

It was a painful ride. My bag seemed to be filled with concrete and my shoulders ached from the strain of carrying it on the bike all day, not helped by the bouncy suspension on the oft-craggy D-roads of southern France.

On top of this it's been super-wierd getting back into my solitary mode of living. I've been sitting in restaurants hoplessly picturing my happy little group in Montpellier. Having fun sure does make being bored a lot harder.

On a similarly introspective note, my new home (for the next week or thereabouts) has a fabulous amount to live up to. As much as I may have said that Montpellier didn't match Toulouse for sheer atmosphere and generally coolitude, I did really enjoy and warm to the city and found some of the sweetest little places to drink dance and smoke sheesha in. This all makes it difficult for Bordeaux. Here are some first impressions:

• The hostel is large, and the man is scary and unfriendly. He seems pissed off to be there. My roommates don't speak any english (which i KNOW is a good thing, blah blah blah but it's nice to have an easy welcome to a new town and not have the stress of not having the faintest clue what someone is talking about even after the third repitition). The vending machine in the hall, when I asked for a delicious can of Orangina, gave me Orange Tango.
• Next to the hostel is what looks like an old defunct bingo hall (any of you who've ever been to the outskirts of Coventry will know the sort of thing I mean), populated by a large and hideous collection of ancient dudes who are professional piss artists and casual grafitti artists.
• I saw a whole, fresh, dead pidgeon on the piss-stained street just up from the Youth Hostel.

Still, I know what you're thinking (by which I mean: I know what I'm thinking, deep down). I've come to Bordeaux to see a real city. A real city ain't a real city without some good old city problems, and if grumpy receptionists, smelly tramps and a dead pidgeon aren't city problems then I'm fearful and scathing of those things that are. Can you tell I was brought up in leafy Cherry Hintonshire?

Ok, so. It's time to get out there into the real world, check out some deprivation, feel some shit, fight some motherfuckers if necessary, and earn myself the title of "one who knows Bordeaux a little".

Rock....

The genuine backpacker's existence

Christ, where am I? What am I doing here? Why does it feel like there's an angry whale pulsating in my head?

These aren't my questions of course, but the questions of a man who has woken up at 9, the kicking-out time of the hostel he's staying in, gnarled and gnarly after having gone to bed at four thirty pissed and happy. For the fourth consecutive time.

A man in fact very much like myself, earlier this morning.

Montpellier hostel, it turns out, has the same amount of life, sound people, drinking, smoking, talking, shouting and singing as the whole of the rest of southern France put together. It's been pretty wild. And very cool.

Life in the hostel has been a continuous stream of sad Au Revoirs and joyous Bonjours, a group of merry boozers constantly being ruptured and reformed by the ever moving tide of people coming and going. The reason I'm writing this now is because the last of the 'old guard' have finally moved on (by old guard I mean myself and anyone who arrived at the same time as or before me) and I'm left to wander the streets and wonder what went on all those hazy nights and what, if anything, it has all meant for the rest of my trip.

I still feel like Montpellier is too small for my plans. It's kind of a bit Cambridge-sized and everyone I've spoken to has told me in no uncertain terms that it's really hard to find work here. Still, it's made the rest of my journey same lame and monochrome which should kickstart me into demanding more from life and not settling for hanging out with either loser or, more likely, no-one but myself.

I suppose what I have learnt from having a week surrounded by cool people in a place I've come to consider my own, is that I need to settle down in a town as quickly as possible and get myself a job and a flat.

I also need to balance this against the need to choose my destination town correctly though.

Does this mean I should cut short my legendary moped journey, take the mighty steed back home and set out to genuinely seek my fortune, or should I continue on to Avignon, Marseille, Nice and maybe even Bordeaux in search of more fleeting fun and southern french knowledge.

At the moment I can't say, but it's important for me to remember that my time here in Montpellier has been made great by the people I've met (particularly notable are Hugh, Victoria from the Sheesha place, Mickael and the crazy German punks. The rest, you know who you are!) not by the city itself which is both horribly touristy and downright seedy in equal parts. Still though, the chefs of Montpellier sure make a fine kebab.

Speak soon,

love to all,
Rob

Montpellier: First experiences

Last night, after I left my vigilant post at blogger keeping everyone busy reading this drivel, I spent one of the strangest and most pleasant nights in a my whole trip.


After sleeping under the stars near the beach the previous night I felt ready for a night I felt good and ready for a comfy bed and a night in a proper town. I had also suffered the unpleasant side-effect not mentioned in Lonely Planet-style write-ups of sleeping outside: I had (and still have) mosquito bites all over the one thing that was left exposed to the elements: my face. I have three on my forehead, one on the bridge of my nose and a couple on my eyelids.

I'm not a pretty sight at the moment.

Still, I arrived in Montpellier in high spirits and followed signs for what I thought was the tourist office. I actually ended up being led to the parking for the tourist office which is a massive multi-storey entirely underground, and once you reach the barriers there's no turning back. So, I decided to manoeuvre the bike around the side of the barriers and get in. I left my bike there unlocked and without a ticket and headed out onto the main concourse, la Place de la Comedie (this turned out to be an extremely apt name as we shall learn later).

Following the previous night's lonely dining experience I was keen to get some food somewhere I wouldn't be the only person eating, and stumbling upon a little courtyard just out of the centre, I discovered a pretty little place with some eating and, I was glad to notice, some cross-table chatting. The Mango Cafe turned out to be something of a delight, as I chatted to the Manager about his time in Thailand, which explained the Thai food on the menu (I had green curry. I was average. I guess the french palate isn't up to the spice). It also turned out that I was seated next to a couple of students from England who were nice but boring, but while I was speaking english to them it turned out that the waitress (pretty, sporty-looking, about 22) was also english. This turned out to be the first time that this many english people had ever been in the same place in Montpellier and was the source of much amazement. I got chatting to the waitress and she turned out to be really friendly and was telling me all about how she got a job and an appartment with her A-level french and gave me some good tips about getting established. She also gave me, much more importantly, her phone number and told me that she'd show me around the city on tuesday (tomorrow) and also invited me to be on her pub quiz team. Pub quiz! In Montpellier! You can imagine my delight...

After leaving the cafe I went, on the waitress's recommendation, to find a sheesha cafe which is apparently famed as being great. As it turned out, great was not the word. If I could design, from scratch, with as much budget and equipment as I needed and no regard to whether or not it would make money, I could not dream up a more perfect little place than the place I found myself in.
The beautiful girl behind the counter (who turned out to be Ukranian) invited me to take off my shoes and take a seat on one of the many leather cushions that lined three of the walls of the dark souk-like room. I ordered jasmine tea (what else!?) and a mint sheesha and these were cooked up and served with infallible style and pageantry. It was all very lovely. I got chatting to the girl and we talked all evening in french about proper stuff like music and festivals and living in France v. living in England or Spain.

I told her of my mobylette, hidden in the dark depths of the car park under the Place de la Comedie and she made a face and said that she thought it was pretty unsafe to leave it there (especially with the helmet right there on the handlebars) and told me of a place around the back of the pub she lived above which has a combination on the gate and where I could leave my bike. This sounded great so I paid and headed back to the car park. I found my mobylette there as I'd left it (I'd had my fingers crossed!) but when I lept on to start it it wouldn't go. Now regular readers of my blog may know that troubles starting this little machine are not uncommon and I thought the kickstart had packed up again. Knowing that the solution to a bike with no kickstart is to roll it down a hill, and being on the "top floor" of a deep subterranean car park I began rolling it down the ramps but to no avail. I was now on floor -4 which was dark and competely deserted and was nowhere nearer to starting my bike. I was in trouble (and out of breath from my efforts with the kickstarter). I headed upstairs to the security booth for help, mindful of the fact that didn't have a ticket for the car park as I'd entered illegally.

The guy appeared monumentally unimpressed with my tale of a broken moped but nonetheless followed me down to the -4th floor to inspect it. We had some midly humorous moments with him (late fourties, suited and booted) racing wildly down one of the ramps in an effort to get it started but the engine clearly wasn't firing. It was when he, in a last act of desperation, got down on his hands and knees to inspect the engine found the the cable connecting the timing with the spark plug was flying loose. It turned out that rather than nicking my bike which is what had been expected of the people of Montpellier someone had, in a hilarious prank, stolen a vital piece off the bike which made the engine fire. I was boned. Or was I? After a long haul up four sets of ramps the guy, who spoke no english at all, rootled around in his office for a long while before reimmerging with a paper clip and a much younger colleague who seemed to be saying that it didn't matter that the piece was missing. A lively debate followed in which the older security man invited the younger to try starting the machine as it was and much goading which I didn't follow. Anyway, following an heroic effort with a pair of pliers and this paper-clip, the older guy got the cable re-connected to the spark plug and stood back to admire his efforts. He gave the kickstart the mearest of tickles with his shoe and the engine lept into life. I was totally stunned. And incredibly thankful.

In a final stroke of luck the security booth was, for some reason, nowhere near the exit which was entirely unmanned and I was able to slip out the way I got in.

When I returned to the youth hostel after parking my bike in the Sheesha Cafe girl's courtyard and thanking her and her boyfriend for everything, I found the room in full swing with drinking and smoking and lots of lively chat in english. Me and the gay austrian catholics had been joined by two über-buff german beach dudes, an american guy, two dutch girls and an unidentified sleeping guy. All had brought sangria and beers and seemed to be having a great time. I, needless to say, joined in and didn't get to bed till late. Sweet.

Now to get some breakfast....

A few general points about my plans

This post is just an update on what I'm actually planning to do, following the bit of soul-searching from earlier on.

Given the state of the middle-east at the moment, and the heartfelt advice from quite a few of my friends and readers, I've decided not to go to Israel this year.

I'm going to set up camp in the South of France (or possibly Barcelona) and try and get a job.

My general trek around the country has turned into a reconnaissance mission to find my future hometown. I have Toulouse, Montpellier, Avignon and Marseille amongst my top few.

Comments and emails about experiences in any of these places would be lovely. Thanks all.

Rob x x x

Things go a bit wrong....

Toulouse, being a city-paradise of lovely people, wonderful architecture and great restaurants seems like a distant dream at the moment. My departure from Toulouse was punished by the gods by a rapid downturn in my fortunes.

Downturn in fortune 1:

Around 35km out of Toulouse; I was cruising along with a light heart and a feeling of indestructibility. I get a sudden brainflash: "Imagine what people in America would think about a man jetting around the south of France on a moped. It must seem so exotic to them!" which generally expanded to: "Imagine what anyone would think if they could see me now. Those with jobs, kids, urban deprivation issues, rising damp, falling stocks, problems of the heart, problems with their heart etc etc. I'm riding through the sunshine surrounded by extraordinary natural beauty without a care in the world. Sweet!"....

It was as I thought these thoughts that, with a severe jolt that made me think I was going to come off the moped and meet the tarmac, my drive belt snapped, sending bits of old rope and rubber scattering across the road. I pulled over in a cold sweat.

After some initial amateur attempts to repair my moped I saw that there was no way this beast was going anywhere until it got to a garage. I was 35 km from Toulouse and god-knows-how-far from the nearest habitation along the road ahead of me. I didn't cry.

I wheeled my lame duck along the road for a while until I spotted an ancient looking farm house that appeared to be uninhabited/uinhabitable. I freewheeled down the dirt track off the main road and was soon greeted by a very excited looking dog. The dog was followed by a woman in a car who, when I attempted to speak to her said "Parlez avec la madame" and waved me onwards towards the decrepit establishment.

There, amongst a host of chickens, ducks and ancient farmyard equipment sat an old lady of around 90 busily sunning herself and doing nothing. I explained my situation as best I could and asked if I could leave my mobylette there while I tried to get help (my French is sort of becoming usable!). I was greeted with an animated string of what sounded for all the world like grizzled Italian, spoken and full pace and with a face of what appeared to be disgust. I later realised that this must be the much-fabled, little-heard language of Occitane (an aside: I am currently in an area called Langue D'Oc, or language of Oc. This language is Occitane and the street signs are doubled in French and it. My contacts have told me that it is spoken by no-one, but perhaps there is a hidden, ancient generation of speakers).

Through a difficult series of hand gestures and total guess work I left my mobylette on the side of an old hay barn and made a rapid exit back onto the road to try my hand at some hitch-hiking. This proved suprisingly easy and fun and I got three lifts, first with a young IT consultant who spoke good English and took me all the way to the MBK garage in Castres (via a toy shop to buy a pokemon toy for his girlfriend!), second with an arabic French guy who talked to me about American politics, rolled me a cigarette and insisting on me taking a scrumpled old €5 note which he pressed into my hand as I got out the car after the lift, and finally a couple who were on their way to Labastide Rouairoux (the location of the llama farm) and took me all the way to the door. So within three hours of breaking down in the middle of nowhere I was back "home" with the English family and the llamas.

Downturn in fortune 2:

When I settled down with all my stuff and started telling this tale of woe, I noticed that of the shoes that I had strapped to the sides of my bag for the wearing of flip-flops, only one remained. I had lost one of my shoes somewhere during the hiking process. This constitutes a loss of around 5% of my total wordly possessions at the moment and was a bit of a blow.

It turned out that Graham and Renée had left a while back and they had a new helper, also an Australian, who seemed a little slow and dippy, but was reasonably hot. This proved too much for my fragile on-the-road body and I propositioned her one morning in an out-of-character brash style. She told me that she was bored and had nothing to do and I said that we should go up to her room and "fool around" for a while. She seemed to not understand what I was saying so I elaborated a little. This seem to come as quite a shock to her, and before we had a chance to resolve our differences of opinion as to whether or not this would be an acceptable way of passing half an hour or so, the 4-year-old burst in and told us she was making chocolate coins. This incident was not mentioned again for the two days I was there.

I managed to hire a hand who had a 4x4 to pick up the bike (where it had remained in the dodgy old farm. I assumed they would have either sold the parts for scrap or attempted to eat it somehow) and take it to the garage,and within 24 hours I was back on the road with a new drive belt, a new back brake, various adjusted bits and bobs and a brand new and exciting rear-view mirror thing stuck on the handlebars. A return to king of the world-dom.


Downturn in fortune 3:

Little did I realise as I got on the road for Agde, a little town on the coast on my way to Montpellier, that the massive (I mean unbelievably massive) amount of traffic queuing along all the major routes in the area that I merrily undertook along the hard shoulder was no normal amount of traffic. This was something else. This was "The 15th of August".

Apparently Le Quinze Aout is a famous thing in France where half the population are ending their holidays in the campsites, hotels, auberges and, in some desparate cases, roadsides of the south of France and the other half are arriving. It was gridlock in all directions.

This meant that when I arrived in Agde, all the hotels were complet (full) as were all the campsites and hostels and restaurants and roads in the area. I was screwed. I drove around on the bike looking for a place and accidentally stumbled onto the beach at around sunset. I had had no idea I was near the sea and it took me completely by surprise.

I managed to convince the old monsieur at a tiny campsite just of the beach to allow me to put a sleeping bag down on the grass near the toilets. He agreed in jovial fashion and then told me it was 14 euro 50 for the night (the price of a two-person camping place). I thought this was a bit rich and thought about sleeping on the beach but I had no water with me andI didn't fancy being washed away so I plumped for the costly spot of earth under the stars. I headed back into town for the loneliest one-man meal in the history of the world, while France celebrated and holidayed with their friends and family. Low point. On the plus side there was a live blues band playing and a crazy man doing the twist in a really sleazy wierd way, so I got to listen to awful covers of Stand By Me and Cocaine.

Downturn in fortune 4:

The skin on the sole of my foot has become so dry and hard from all the walking and mopedding with flip-flops on, that I have developed a massive fault-line in the ball of my foot that has split the land surrounding it all the way down to the core, and threatens to offer up lava-flows of blood every time I walk on it. Very painful. And I have no shoes.

Still, I'm here in Montpellier have have a bed in a very comfy and busy youth hostel just out the centre, where I'm sharing with, amongst others, a couple of gay catholic Austrians who seem very friendly (I'm not sure if they are actually gay, but they're camp in a way only German speakers can be. They have openly admitted to being catholic) and I've chatted to a nice Columbian girl already so things seem to be going my way a little. I have vowed to myself that I'm never going into the countryside again.

p.s. sorry no snaps this time. Forgot to bring my camera to the cyber-cafe. I've got some good'uns to show y'all.

Toulouse

Helen and Jonny in the classic Toulouse Pose

Ok, that's enough of my pyschological breakdown for now. Where am I?

Well, I finished up in Labastide and said a fond(ish) fairwell to my crazy host family and agreed to meet up with the wonderful Australians in Avignon if possible.

I lept aboard my trust mobylette and jetted in a mere four hours to Toulouse where I met the delightful Waterhouse and her old university friend Jonny who has lived here for two years working (as virtually every english person here does) at Airbus.

We had a fairly glorious few days of relaxation in the time Helen was here and she departed early this morning with a traditional Levy send-off of one eye open and a vaguely groaned "see yer...". In the intervening time we've sat in some fabulous spots with drinks, eat in some magically delicious restaurants and swum in a super-sized municipal pool. A few photographic highlights follow below:

Helen on Jonny's balcony

Us hanging out in a bar

A truely beautiful little restaurant called "Seventh Heaven"

Helen and Jonny framed by the Pont Neuf

The merry cyclists

An unfortunately named Toulousian boutique

Some mouth-wateringly beautiful (and typical) architecture

A snap of the single most charming object ever to appear in a park. It's an incredibly beautiful and complex carousel

Toulouse has proved itself to be a truely beautiful city (as opposed to one of those places where the cameras have to be strategically placed to capture the few impressive sights whilst obscuring the drudgery- London and Cambridge spring to mind) and one that is absolutely soaked with young happy and relaxed people having a good time and generally staying out of each other's way. I've never seen such a harmonious co-existence of a large population (outside of a uni campus). A walk along the river sees groups of teenagers drinking, people playing guitar or bongos, lovers having a leisurely snog and strollers of all ages enjoying the same space of earth without having to claim the territory as their own. We Brits could learn a lot from these people.

Virtually every café and restaurant (and there are hundreds, each one a little bijou one-off that would make Londoners weep with joy) is ram-packed from around 7 to about mignight with merry eaters and drinkers and the buskers who sometimes roam amongst them have their families with them, and seem genuinely well received as valid entertainment. It's beautiful.

In my brain today

Sadly, or otherwise (I'm not yet sure), my time at the llama farm is over. It's time to ask myself some serious questions now that the time of having future plans is over. Here are some of them:

1. What do I want to do with my life? Is it enough just to have experiences like the llama farm which were "Ok" or does life need to be "Great" to be worthwhile? Is a situation in which you're having an alright time but have no chance of meeting anyone your own age ok? How can I distinguish between doing things which are just "passing time" or "treading water" and things which are "worthwhile" in some way?

2. Do I want to end my summer holiday and turn up in a country at war, in a city (Tel Aviv) which has just been specifically mentioned by the enemy as under threat of bombardment?

3. If I dont' want to go to Israel just now then what do I want to do? What can I do that satisfies the unknown conditions which satisy the quetions in point one? Should I just go to Israel anyway to somehow prove that terrorists won't change my life, or should I stay put for a while to relieve the worried minds of my friends and family?

4. Assuming that answering point 3 leads me to staying in France, do I want to live in Toulouse Avignon or an as yet unimagined place. Is France even the right country (it seems like it is as I already have a decent amount of language)?

5. Is it worth signing up to a period in a country including getting a place and a job and possibly a girlfriend when I secretly have hopes of ending up somewhere else (i.e. Israel)? What if I meet a girl and have to choose between love and plans? What if I don't meet a girl and end up as a total lonely loser?

So, as you can see, a tricky set of questions I've got to try and work through. Much more likely is that I won't answer any of these questions, and just end up muddling through to a conclusion of some kind. We'll see. The one thing I know is that being at the brink of an event horizon beyond which you have no plans, no country, no companions and no idea of what you're going to be is a strange business. It's not exactly fear that I'm faced with. More a kind of fuzzy confusion, like being hung over, or really hungry. Actually that might just be hunger. I can't distunguish between any of my emotions which is confusing. Ahh.....

Drilling, Screaming, Balloon-hand and all that

Finally we've worked out the technology to get my photos on the computer and I can blog again in glorious technicolor...

Things here are coming to a close after ten days or so of serious hard work. We've stripped, painted, scrubbed, drilled, filled, dug, lifted, weeded, seeded and drunk all the tea and beer in the western world but it's over. I've got a few before and after type snaps of the work that we did, but it's not going to be massively interesting to anyone who wasn't there (which is everyone but me). The cast of characters of this set of snaps is: Me, Amanda (the woman of the house, and foreman of the DIY work), Thea (Amanda's daughter) and the two Aussie helpers that joined me here a good while ago. They are called Graham and Renée and are a delightful couple of drongos from Brisbane. He's 26, she's 28 and they've been going out for 7 years. They been an absolute life saver for me, as they're fun and friendly and not part of this mad family. The feral 4 year old needs and incredible amount of entertaining (it's school holidays here and she's got nothing to do all day). She's got the classic 3rd child syndrome where the parents are a bit fed up of all this baby stuff and just give her whatever she wants to stop her screaming. Trouble is that this only means that she's not used to not getting exactly what she wants, and is an expert on bringing on wild screaming and "crying" fits whenever something happens that she's not up for. These things include: Her having to go off with Daddy while the others stay and get work done; her having to stay with the family while daddy goes off to town or wherever; her game being cut short by the serving of dinner; anyone sitting in the chair she wants; her not having the same plate or fork as her mummy; bedtime; conversations between adults where she's not the subject; an adult not wanting to play football with her for any more than half an hour etc etc. Life in this house is essentially a round of laughter and hyperactivity while things are going the kids way and wild screaming and arguments when they're not. Quite tiresome. Fortunately, between Graham, Renee and I we are able to soak up the kid and leave the others free to live a life of some kind.

Anyway, here are a few snaps of the house before, during and after the transformation:

Outside the house (before)

Graham working to tidy up the broken front wall

The finished product

Renée painting the ceiling

Me painting the ceiling (coat two I think!)

Graham painting the ceiling (quality ladder use here)

Here are a few tool-porn shots:

Yeah, check out that hot tool-porn shit!

Ok, that'll have to do for now. More words and pictures soon. Love to all, Rob.