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.

Croatia: Spellbinding. Intoxicating. Hysteria-inducing.

In September, I went on holiday with my friend Daisy. It was a fun trip, so I thought you might like to hear the highlights. I’ve been trying to write the opening paragraph. My notes read as follows:

Punched in neck. Larry Grayson. Wine under fluorescent strip-lighting. Leaky shampoo.

Hmm. I’m suddenly concerned that the trip might have been more traumatic than I recall. Especially given that all this happened before the plane took off.

The plan had been simple. Take backpacks to show everyone how young and intrepid we are. Get to the airport nice and early to smugly enjoy over-priced pre-holiday we-deserve-this drinks.

The reality had not quite lived up to this. During their affectionate farewell at the train station, Daisy’s boyfriend somehow punched her in the neck. The check-in man had inexplicably felt the need to say, ‘Shut that door,’ a reference both Daisy and I were mortified to be old enough to recognise. The ridiculous queues at both Security and the Terminal 2 bar were so upsetting we ended up knocking back vile white wine under the oppressive glare of canteen lighting at the airport equivalent of a truck-stop. And the less said about the toiletry explosion in my luggage the better.

Not the most auspicious of beginnings to our adventure. Positively rocky, you might say. Don’t worry; it picks up later on.

We started with a few days on Korčula, a beautifully picturesque island off the Dalmatian coast, followed by a 3-night sojourn in Dubrovnik. Let’s start with Korčula. First, the history. Marco Polo might have come from there. Well, he definitely visited once, and there is a family named Polo who have lived there for years. And apparently, that's proof enough.

And now the culture. Korčula Old Town is a mini-Dubrovnik. We wandered the narrow streets, marvelling at the stunning buildings of butter-coloured stone. We swam in the clear calm waters of the Adriatic. One evening, we climbed up an erstwhile wartime lookout tower that now serves great cocktails. Oh, and then Daisy fell off a commemorative cannon.

The next day we got caught in an almighty downpour over lunch. Naturally, we did what any self-respecting Brits would do, pretended it wasn’t raining and carried on eating. It’s a shame we didn’t notice our guidebook swimming in a nearby puddle. The pristine guidebook Daisy had been lent by a kindly old professor colleague. I can only imagine his pained wince when she returned it to him.

And then on to Dubrovnik. Ah, Dubrovnik. If you haven’t been, go. It’s great. There is seafood. There were peacocks. Ice-creams are apparently bigger there than anywhere else. In the evenings, live music plays in the square, inspiring couples to spontaneously begin dancing. One night we were taking a turn around the port and were delighted to hear some kind of male-voice choir taking advantage of the acoustics inside an old stone bastion to sing Croatian folk songs. We rounded the corner to find the a capella group was made up of youths in hoodies, bewitching an audience of middle-aged tourists. A magical moment.

And that’s the thing. Croatia was full of incredible enchanting moments. We were sipping prosecco one afternoon at a bar ingeniously carved into the rocky walls of the city, taking in the sunset and watching dolphins plashing in the sea below. Daisy was so overwhelmed she proposed to me. Well someone should, she said. It feels like the thing to do.

It was an idyllic week, albeit one that occasionally seemed to be masquerading as a farcical comedy of errors. I leave you with the final episode of our adventure. We called on the owner of our rented apartment to return the key. A mysterious character, she seemed to spend her days chain-smoking, incessantly laundering towels and buying up Smurfs 2 merchandise for her grandchildren. Unexpectedly, she invited us in to try a cake she had made.

Ooh, what kind? asked Daisy, politely. You will see, she muttered darkly. And see we did. It was rum cake. Or Rhum Cake, as I prefer to imagine it spelled in Croatian. And more rum than cake, if you ask me. British to the end, Daisy and I both studiously powered our way through the rum-soaked confection that resembled flammable custard more than anything else. And then happily tripped off to catch the bus to the airport, slightly drunk and inadvertently interrupting someone’s wedding photographs on the way. Sounds about right.