Sanity and what I paid for it

Due to a gross technical problem at my exciting new flat, I write this blog entry from an internet cafe.

Still, I am, without further ado, moved in and life has taken on a whole new domesticity. Yesterday I had a hot shower and climbed into my grey jogging bottoms, having just pulled them out of the very bottom of my suitcase. It felt good. It felt like being at home.

Jonny, my housemate, is rarely at home so I have set myself up a little bachelors lifestyle of meagre evening meals, regular siestas and lots of reading. It's good and bad simultaneously. Those that know me well know that I thrive off interpersonal contact and that living alone is not my forté. Still, it's a far cry from the nowhere-to-live-nothing-to-do states of mid september.

I've started my new class at school and it's going swimmingly. The level is challenging without being demoralising which is just perfect.

Still no word on the job front though. It's incredible either way. Either McDonald's here take an unbelievably long time to process their job applications or they have some kind of shocking anti-foreigner employment policy. I have heard tell such facts as the latter of french enterprises before now so it wouldn't surprise me greatly.

To make things worse, I heard from the current girl of my dreams (I have to be careful what I say on this public forum as you never know who's reading, so I'll keep all references oblique and all phrases deliberately obtuse and slangy for the incomprehension of the gauls!) that a new joint has sprung up in the town she lives in which hankers after brits like me to serve the jars.

Sorry if you don't understand the following. It's written all in slang.

Who is this mysterious bird? She hangs out close to the briney (the place the posh plonk comes from) and is a real diamond. Wiley, Witty, and generally Way Out she's currently rocking my Top 40 and I suspect I hers (but I'm not 100%). The happy gospel is she's keen to come over for a jaunt soon. Needless to say my ticker leaped when I found out.

Ok, oblique stuff over. If you want an explanation, email me and I'll reveal all.

Those elsewhere wanting a good laugh should try and picture a tall ungainly youth, with limb co-ordination issues attempting to walk in a pair of shoes with well-oiled wheels on the underside. The people of Toulouse however have no need to imagine. They have the spectacle before their very eyes.

Yes it's true. I've taken my bike back to the hire-place and bought a pair of roller blades. I sort of thought it would be easy I think. It looks so damn easy after all. I put them on as soon as I was out of the shop and managed the slowest 200m of my life, overtaken by irate old hunchbacks with crippled legs and jaundice who cursed the slow-moving and unsightly obstacle.

It was amusing. For a bit. I changed back into my shoes after not very long. But, damn you, I'm determined to get it going even though I've no idea of the mode d'emploi.

I'll let you all know how I get on.

Rob