On Sunday morning, I opened my eyes very slowly.
I was expecting the terrible sensation when your eyelids are
stuck together and you forgot that they might be, and then you realise they are
and your body half-heartedly tries to prepare itself for bright lights and the
onslaught of gravity, while your brain attempts self-preservational shutdown by
refusing to find out what might be going on behind all the blurry vision-fog
and eye-glue.
You see, on Saturday evening, I went to two parties. Two parties. This is not the sort of
social gallivanting that I generally get up to (query to self: have I ever done
it?).
The first was my Work Do (very Parisian, in the sense that
there was very nice free champagne until it all ran out and was replaced with
questionable white wine), and the second was the Christmas party of my lovely Italian/Canadian
friends (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice champagne all night. The sort that comes in the
incredible extra-large bottles that are my favourite, but that are also very
heavy and difficult to pour out of, so it’s altogether better if someone else
does it).
Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t sink 15 glasses of champagne
and get completely hammered, as the Jen at Christmas Parties of Yore would have
done. These days I am (mostly) civilised and a grown-up. (NB. We won’t mention
the Negroni-fuelled fiasco the night before these same Italian/Canadian friends
got married in July).
But over the course of a delightful evening, I did drink
quite a lot. And I probably deserved at least a bit of a hangover. Or, as the
French so aptly put it, a gueule de bois,
a mouth of wood.
Yet on Sunday morning there was not a headache or a spinning
room in sight. I got up, ate porridge with seeds and goji berries, and smugly
went about my day. This is fantastic, I thought; I’ve finally cracked it.
Champagne is my drink. I’m never going to drink anything else again.
Unfortunately, that is not the end of my story.
It turned out the gods of the Wooden Mouth had other plans
for me.
First up, I went to a lovely fancy oratorio choir concert
that my friend Pam was performing in. I sat with two other friends, we enjoyed
the beautiful music, and then we all went off to get the Métro together,
feeling wonderfully cultured and stuffing our faces with mince pies as we
discussed which station we hate the most. For me, it’s Châtelet Les Halles,
hands down, which was ironically the station we were heading to.
And that’s where my troubles began.
My magical Métro pass, which I love and which makes my life
reasonably-priced and easy, didn’t work. The gate didn’t slide open when I
beeped, so when I re-beeped, I initiated the angry-sounding DOUBLE BEEP ALERT
noise. Leaving me trapped on the wrong side of the barrier to my friends.
My brain could not handle this unexpected development at
all. It was Sunday, so naturally all the ticket booths were closed, and there
was not a single staff-member to be seen. My subconscious started heading
towards a group of camo-wearing machine-gun-toting soldiers as the only
available figures of authority in the vicinity before I stopped it. What did I
think they could do, shoot the barriers down to let me through?
I wandered aimlessly around the station for a bit, and then
sent a pathetic ‘Save yourselves. Go on without me’ message to my friends,
before realising I no longer had any idea which of the 94 different barriers I
was supposed to be trying to get through (there are many excellent reasons why
Châtelet is the worst station).
Eventually, I beeped my way through 3 different barriers at
random and I think the system let me rejoin my friends out of sheer pity.
To recover from all this, we went to have a festive drink
and a welcome sit-down at Starbucks. Where I forgot my own name.
I was busy practising saying ‘gingerbread latte’ in my head
in a French accent so that it would be intelligible for the nice French barista
(it didn’t work; I had to repeat it six times before we got anywhere). And when
she asked my name, poised to write it on my cup, I went completely blank.
Most of my students believe I’m called Jan or Jane, so part
of me was excited to rectify things ever so slightly and get this right. And then
I heard my friend Jo somewhere to my right declaring that her name was Hélène,
and I realised it would be simpler to just say a more normal French name. But I
couldn’t think of any of those either.
I said Jen. She wrote Jan. I said, No, no, with an ‘e’. So
she wrote Jane.
My friends went on to have dinner that evening, but I
decided to quit while I was (not at all) ahead. As I was walking home, a group
of people asked me the way to the Opera House. They spoke French, but with
Spanish-sounding accents, so I was overjoyed to not only understand but also to
be able to answer their question. Of course, I declared confidently, it’s down
that street. About 10 minutes’ walk. You’re welcome.
It isn’t. It’s precisely the opposite direction from where I
so airily pointed. I’m sorry, Spanish tourists. Please google a picture of the
Opera House; it really is beautiful, and well worth a visit.
I’m self-imposing a one-party-per-night limit from now on.
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