Reasons I'm Not Classy (No. 1 in a series of 207)

I was driving to work yesterday morning, singing along to The Bluetones. I was stopped at a crossing outside a school and a couple of dozen kids got to hear me shouting along to 'sleazy bed track' really loudly. I hope they couldn't make out the lyrics, they were only about 8 years old and won't be having kids for at least another 6 years. Let them have their innocence.

As I said, we went to see Grandaddy in Mancland on Tuesday. It was beautiful, when they played 'He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot' as the last song, I realised about half-way through that my eyes had filled up with tears. Jesus, i'm so soft. I get moved in that way by truly beautiful music though. I had real difficulty seeing last night, Marie always has that trouble, what with her being tiny, but at 6 foot I feel I should be able to see okay. Only when a series of 6 and a half foot giants stand in front of me does this prove difficult. Still, I enjoyed it.
I'm listening to Exit Music by Radiohead as I type this and I can feel myself being musically overwhelmed again. I wish I had musical talent, I really do. I'd happily trade in my collection of 8-balls for that.

This morning I phoned up CSC, the chaps who look after our computers here. They put me on hold, probably whilst they tried to work out what the hell I wanted from them, and I was pleasantly surprised that the hold-music was The Charlatans. I had a good listen to that and was disappointed when it was interrupted by CSC giving me the answer I wanted. I'm considering phoning them up with a problem of such monumental complexity that they have to put me on hold for hours.

I WANT TO LIVE, BREATHE! I WANNA BE A PART OF THE HUMAN RACE!

I can see John trying to catch my eye again. I know what he's up to and he knows I know. I know he knows I know he knows as well. If I actually look over, he'll flick me the V-sign and then look away again. He's a 40 year old father of two teenagers. Hee hee, the only plus point to working in this dump is the fact I have three or four good friends here who are as childish and idiotic as myself.
Shit I looked, he flicked me the V-sign.


Where are my archives?

Hmm, I haven't written in here for a while have I?
It's not like I haven't been doing anything and decided against writing a lengthy bore-piece about the sofa, I’ve actually been quite busy. Recent weeks have seen an entertaining wedding reception of Dave from work, where Nige and I seemed to end up dancing to Grease megamixes whilst pissed. We also had the fun of Karl's 30th birthday, followed the next day by a trip down to Bedford to see a Mr. John Woodhouse.
There's been plenty more as well, so why haven't I written about any of it? Well, the prime reason is laziness. It was always going to rear it's ugly head and even though I’m still very bored at work, it all seemed so much hassle to type a hundred or more words joined by erratic punctuation, for the interest or enjoyment of nobody. I'd rather stare into space or play with my collection of desk toys - you can have hours of fun with a plastic spinning top.
Then there is my mood. A couple -one in particular- of the events I would normally write about left me in a bad mood. If I’d have written about it, it would have been horrible; embarassing, unfair and likely to lead to trouble. So I didn't. I get disappointed in people really easily, I bet it grates hard on people’s nerves, so I feel I should tone it down sometimes. Sell out!
So why am I writing something now? Well, we returned from Paris on Sunday and I’d like to write something down about what we did, mainly for my own purpose. The mind is going, in a few years time, I’ll only be able to recall the price of booze in Paris by reading what I've put in here.
So...

Wednesday

I'd arranged with Mimoun to fly at 9:10am. Yet the tickets were lost in the post*, so we had to pick them up from Manchester airport. We decided to get there early enough to leave us time to get the tickets and check-in so we'd picked out the 6:40am train from Preston, as the one to be seen on. So we missed it...
Hee hee, I should have known that would happen. We are such a pair of "Glenn and Marie"s. Therefore I had to bomb it to the airport in my car and leave it in the long-term car park. Please note this for later. We got the tickets and checked-in easily enough. Please note THIS for later.
We got entry to the Air France executive lounge, which was nice, especially seeing as all the drinks, including the alcoholic ones, were complimentary.
Now, I don't like flying. I'm not really scared by it and will happily fly places, it just worries me doing something that doesn't make much sense and which I have no control over. How do they fly? THEY'RE BIG BITS OF METAL! Sparrows can fly, that makes sense, big fuzzy bees, they're a bit fat so have problems with flying. PLANES ARE MASSIVE! Madness! It was quite a good flight there though; it's only an hour from Mancland to Paris, so we were there before I had chance to study my "Big Book On The Physics Of Flying".
Hotel was a bit basic, but then again it was quite cheap, so what do I want? The moon on a stick that's what. It was tidy enough and thankfully we were only on the third floor. The bathroom looked like a set from The Mummy, it was done out in a tasteful brown mosaic, and was so small that you could have a shower, poo and a shave all at the same. The light went in the bathroom after a day or two, meaning you had to have the door open but I never got the courage to shut the door fully anyway. It would have triggered off my claustrophobia like mad. It was okay really, the hotel was very central and they had copies of The Grauniad which we could steal. I think I’m just used to the 4-star class hotel, when the scummier side of hotels is a bit more suited to my scummier side of human being appearance.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around Paris, the sun playing funny tricks with my head. Big yellow bastard! There was a supermarche' just round the corner which could be used to fill us up with cheese, bread and fizzy wine. Hmm, fizzy wine. I decided to develop my annoying attempts at being funny early on, you know, to keep us entertained. So I started pre-fixing everything with 'le', using French words wrongly all over the place and being obviously "over-English". Hil-ar-ious!
One other thing to note is that paying 10 euros (about 7 quid) for a pint of lager leaves a bad taste in the mouth. We learned from that mistake though and resorted to cheap supermarket booze for most other alco-moments.

*Mimoun was the guy I had to phone up to sort out our complimentary tickets. He was a lovely, friendly Frenchie but gave off an odour of incompetence. He told me he'd put the tickets in the post but they never turned up. He told me he'd send me confirmation emails of our flights but they never turned up either. We ended up having to pick up our tickets from the airport on the morning of our flight.

Thursday

On Furzdee, we went to see the Eiffel tower. It's an impressive structure, really big and imposing over the surrounding skyline, the decision was obviously made to restrict the height of surrounding buildings to emphasise the magnitude of the trifle. Marie was a bit wary about going to the top but decided to give it a go, so dodging the numerous water and souvenir sellers, we went up to the second viewing floor and then to the very top. The view is stunning, Paris still has a historical feel to it; the skyscrapers are all stuck together in one or two business districts, leaving an unspoilt view of most of the city. We got lots of pictures of things which seemed very impressive when viewed from a giant tower with the naked eye, but I’m sure which on film, will look like a picture of a miniature model village.
The Eiffel tower was probably the best place for tourist watching. The American tourists were really loud, annoying, with the cocky aura of people with perfect white teeth. Brits tended to drag their feet and appeared only to brighten up when there was some good old queuing to do. Other Europeans don't tend to like queues, and tended to try and manoeuvre themselves nearer the front of them, especially the kids. Tactical knees to the head could be used to prevent this unfortunate event occurring.
We then went to the Pompidou centre to look at art de'moderne. Or something. Anyway there were some really good pieces there, some that looked like they'd taken a minute to do, and some quite amusingly odd things. Sadly, only one Mark Rothko painting. It passed a couple of hours and for every picture of fairly meaningless paint splatter, there would be one that would elicit an "oooh", an "aaah" or a "blimey". It was interesting to see how the design of items such as office furniture, chairs and tables for example, has come about from singular art pieces made early last century. There was a Red Setter outside the centre having a shit, trying to be a rather crude art critic methinks.
We then had dinner outside at an Italian restaurant and some expensive wine before retiring to the hotel to drink some fizzier and cheaper stuff.

Friday

By now our legs were starting to hurt from all the walking around. I noticed I was now four inches smaller, my legs having been worn away by the Parisian streets.
Before I'd actually met Marie, I knew she liked the film Amelie. My friends had all seen it as well, and every one of them had thought it was lovely. So in an effort to try and impress Marie with our shared love for this film, and so I had something else in my armoury to talk to her about, I bought it on DVD and watched it. It's a lovely film, and made me feel so good after I saw it. Such a sweet thing. So I was a fan of it too, and we both wanted to visit some of the parts of Paris shown in the film. We went to the cafe from the film and had a drink there. We also went up the Sacre Coeur, which was the second in our "Places quite high up with a good view of Paris" trilogy. Marie got relentlessly pestered by a guy who wanted to sell her something, I maintained my best "fuck off" face to keep them away. I really enjoyed wandering round that part of Paris though.
We then went to see Notre Dame which I believe is a place that God lived in sometime in the past. History also reports that a hunchback once lived there as well but I’m sure that the God-hunchback residency is just coincidence. It quite clearly stated that people should show some respect in the way they're dressed - for all my atheist ways, I actually try to show some respect in religious places by not taking pictures, trying not to wee on tapestries etc. - but there seemed to be lots of Americans present in garish shorts, XXL shirts and sandals.
We found out that Frank Black was playing in Paris that night so made the decision to go and see him. It was only when we found out that the venue for the gig was a fucking boat on the Seine, that we started to have doubts. We joined the queue, sampled more expensive brown booze and then realised that this concert was to be in the hull of the aforementioned small boat, which had one way in and out. Now I’m mildly claustrophobic but also have a fear of deep water, and seeing the massive queue realised that this would be an uncomfortable experience. We abandoned the idea of seeing Frank this time, retired to an "English" pub and drunk expensive cocktails instead.
I was becoming quite concerned by now that my legs may actually fall completely off through overuse but it didn't stop us wandering around the Champs-Elysses until it was time for more fizzy wine.

Satdee

We went to a market on Saturday morning. It was shit, like a garlic filled Fleetwood market, but Marie did manage to get a nice handbag. She needed one as well, she doesn't have enough of them. Hee hee...
We then went to the Louvre. Which I believe may actually be the biggest thing in the world. We spent a good few hours in there but only saw about half of the exhibits. Considering it is the most famous picture in the world, the Mona Lisa is rather underwhelming, especially when compared with some of the paintings in there. There was allsorts to see, sculptures on wobbly plinths that made my brain play balance tricks on me for a laugh, relics from thousands of years ago, paintings as big as your house, oooh everything...
There was so much to see, we were never going to have the stamina to see it all but it was cool, I didn't break anything and I feel 1.4% more cultured.
Woo! Yay! We actually found a vegetarian restaurant. Paris didn't seem to cater very much for me in the culinary sense, which is surprising for a capital city. We had to travel to the outskirts to eat at the Aquarius. It was nice, quite simple food but again expensive. Are you spotting a pattern here? It was nothing I can't make though.
More fizzy wine followed.

Sunday

It was going home day but we got up early enough to wander down the road to the Arc de Triomphe. We decided to go to the top to see what the view was like and it involved climbing lots of steps... Jesus, I've never been to a place with more steps in my life. London is full of escalators, a godsend to the lazy amongst us. Paris however seems to have been designed by a step-aerobics nutjob. 'kin hell, it's no wonder they are quite a slender bunch of people. My right leg which bore the brunt of the effort to climb all these steps still hurts a bit today. It was a nice view from the top, similar to what I’ve already described and it helped to finish off the last camera film.
We checked out of the hotel and headed to the airport. We'd given ourselves plenty of time and it was good job. The train journey there was uneventful and quite pleasant but the airport was a nightmare. Even though about a third of all flights that day were to the UK, they put us all through the one check-in desk. People were missing flights left, right and centre, and it was only because we'd given ourselves plenty of time that we weren't another two being forced to look for a replacement flight.
We eventually got on the plane, only for it to be flown by a seemingly pissed up French chap who aborted one take-off, didn't seem to know were Manchester airport was, landed on one wheel and couldn't find the terminal.
It was a relief to get off the plane, only slightly later than expected but a bit more fraught than we'd hoped for. Now for the car park thing.
It cost us over thirty quid to leave the car for four days next to the airport. I tried not to think about it as I put yet another thing on my credit card. I've since put almost another two hundred poundees on it due to giving my car a service and it's MOT. Hee hee, mot!

So that was Paris really, I’ve missed bits out I’m sure but this is already long enough. What else has happened lately?
Hmm, next doors cat has died. Shame really, we had a difficult beginning to our relationship when it kept trying to get into the house or tried bringing me dead things as presents but we eventually became comfortable with each other as neighbours. We never became firm friends or even lovers but we'd wave at each other as we passed on my way to or from work. At least I won't have to scowl at it now for having a shit in the garden or try to stop it eating squirrels.
The social calendar is still full, we are going to see Grandaddy tonight, Easyworld in a couple of weeks and then there is the Leeds festival. A week on Saturday we will be in Colchester for the wedding of my second cousin. Of course, the wedding of the year actually happens this Saturday in Preston. Hee hee hee...