You Win Some, You Lose Some.

Things I learned today:

1. If the fire-alarm goes off in the middle of your lesson, you can guarantee it will be raining outside. And if you set a great example to your students by following official protocol and leaving all your worldly possessions inside, a feeling of righteous smugness won’t keep you dry.

2. If you try and fit in a visit to an underground shopping-precinct in the gap between finishing teaching and getting to your French class, you can guarantee they will be renovating both the Métro station and the shopping-centre so that you can’t find the shop you want. The shop being the strangely-named ‘fnac’, which you have no clue how to pronounce, so you can’t even ask anyone. (I think it’s basically the noise you make when a bug flies into your nose).

3. It doesn’t matter which queue you choose at the cash-desks, it is guaranteed to be the slowest. In which Parisians will demonstrate a huge inability to queue normally. By which, I refer to their habit of sending their small children into other queues to reserve a place, despite the children having no idea of their role in this activity. Or the tactic of the woman behind me, who expressed her unhappiness at the queuing-time by standing far too close to me while taking the art of audible tutting to a whole new level.

4. When you finally get off the Métro at 13.50, you will inadvertently run the wrong way down the street, away from your French class that starts at 2pm sharp. When you realise your error, an insane spoof of a James Bond film will ensue, whereby you get on a random bus, travel for 1 stop, panic and get off, and then chase the bus down the road for 8 full minutes. You will then arrive at your French class only mildly late, but unable to breathe for approximately 20 minutes due to all the running.

5. You will confidently approach the coffee-machine you were scared of last week, having studied the buttons carefully and worked out how to order a standard coffee. The machine will then ignore you, fill the cup to overflowing (to punish you for not asking for a tiny expresso) and will add extra sugar, when you asked for none. Standard.

6. The highlight of your day, visiting the boulangerie that has been declared vendor of the BEST BAGUETTE IN PARIS 1998 AND 2014, will be thwarted as it is naturally closed on Wednesday afternoons.

7. Despite writing ‘toilet-roll’ on your hand and accepting the fact you will get strange looks from people all day, you will forget to buy it at the supermarket.

Things that made up for all the shit things that happened:

I’m not working this evening. I’m watching Friends dubbed into French in my pyjamas. (Tap-dancing class is un cours de claquettes).

A shit day in Paris is still a pretty awesome day.

I got to take the tram home. Which tells you the name of each stop by announcing it in both a female and then a male voice. And each stop has its own little jingle, most of which seem to have been taken from the soundtrack of a 40s detective thriller.

Red wine.