The dream is dead, long live the dream

It's a bit like being witness to a horrible crime. You know some bad shit went down and that it wasn't pretty, but when it comes to being asked to recall the order in which things happened you find you can't. Your memory's just a blur of mangled flesh, bloodied machetes and wild grinning faces.

It's thus with the slow, final, horrible fall from grace of my dream of a new life in France. After around 6 months of continuously hearing the murderous footsteps coming up the stairs you'd think I'd be better prepared to recount the final blur of devastating blows that left me with the gory mess I stand surveying this sunny day in Strasbourg.

Yes friends, it's all over. I've finally had enough. I can no longer take the constant disappointment, lonliness, isolation, poor decision making and if-you-don't-laugh-you'll-puke-with-despair never-ending paperwork that have so neatly defined the last stage of my 'dream'.

My bank account in France currently reads -€88.65 and in England -£1,595 and that's it. I'm officially spent. I have not a penny to my name, owing as I do, €130 to my 'flatmates' for the 10 nights I spent sleeping on a matress in an empty room in a (usually) empty flat.

The news is so crushing I can hardly bear to write it, but entertainment is entertainment kids. The audience are baying for more and the show must go on: My mum is going to buy me a flight to London sometime in the coming few days and that's it. I'm out of here.

I feel like the end of Jurassic Park where Laura Dern and Sam Neil are airlifted to safety, leaving the snapping jaws of French unemployment and the tearing claws of French commercial immobility to devour eachother in a bloody but unwitnessed battle. As far as I'm concerned this whole country can (and almost certainly will) go to hell with the following exceptions:

• Sophie and Clair, my delightful ex-housemates from Toulouse
• Alisson, my delightful ex-girlfriend
• Sophie's dad who's unbelievable generosity actually made me feel uncomfortable to be a scrounger
• The pretty girl who lives opposite him who invited me into her flat to share a bottle of champagne with her and her friends.

That's it. That means that sixty million minus 5 can rap about their problems and sing tuneless melodies about acid rain accompanied only by a jingling guitar until they're red, white or blue in the face. I no longer care.

I'm not going to recount it here but for all those interested in knowing my French Social Security Beaurocray vs. Text-based adventure video game analogy, you can ask me in person when you buy me that pint of Carlsberg that from now on will represent the price of that trip to come and visit that you all owe me (H and C, you are discounted from this. We'll settle our scores face to face!).

Just a final word about how a decision is right until the instant you make it and can't change your mind.

Remember how the day I booked my flight to Hungary I got a phone call from a bar I'd applied to 2 months ago and McDonald's who I'd applied to 6 months ago asking if I wanted a job?

Well today, having told the boss of my school that I'd teach the rest of the lessons I have this week (2) and that's it, I got a phone call from the job agency asking me if I want to be a waiter in the European Parliament and another from a random bloke who'd seen my little advert stuck on a bar-room wall and was "definitely interested" in taking private lessons at €15 an hour.

What the fuck is going on here, I hear you ask? Well, I'd like to know too. It seems there is a god, and my twin habits of cigarette smoking and pork eating that I've taken up since being here in order to not be a total social reject (some good that did me!) have angered Him immensely. It is with this fact in mind that I solemnly swear that upon my return to England, I will watch more Woody Allen films and learn to insult the French goyim in Yiddish.

Until such time, here's an effort in French:
Vous êtes la foule des sales cons le plus grosse, le plus laide et le plus degueulasses que je n'ai jamais imaginer dans tous mes pires rêves. J'espère que vous allez vous faire enculer le plus tôt possible et que votre bordel d'un pays va créver d'un coeur pourri.

Lots of love and thanks to all who have followed this blog with varying levels of interest and interaction.

Your faithful soon-to-be-ex-traveller,
Rob