Procrastibloodynation

Today I am supposed to be finishing off my business plan and sending off to A4E in order to be able to sign off and get ths NEA grant. So far I have twittered, blogged, read the paper, sent emails and generally done everything other than finalize this 90% complete plan. I now plan to go out in the fresh air and sort some other bits out. Argghhhhh!!!! I need to stop procrastinating.

Day Four - The Journey Home

Mostly uneventful trip home, I arrive at the bus station and am one of the first on the bus, I get chatting to a welsh bloke who had come to Paris for 24 hours and was then going out drinking with his mates in London for a few days. I did think that we might get an extra few hours in the town when the driver couldn't shut the door to the bus but there was no problem in the end.

There is a bit off faffing around going through both French customs and British customs before you can get on the ferry. Unfortunately there was a big liner that couldn't get into the port of Dover without the help of the tugs which meant that we were sat outside the port for ages.

It was utterly pissing down when we rolled off the ferry and this continued all the way up the country. I had to change in london again and was told by the driver that to leave my bag in the compartment because he was going to drive up to Birmingham. Unfortunately they changed buses and I saw my bag fly off into the night somewhere, luckily they managed to make the driver wait before the M! and I picked up the bag halfway.

I got back too late to get a bus or train home and it cost me nearly £20 in a taxi to get home.

Overall I think Paris is a great city with loads and loads to see and loads and loads of pretty ladies although not that sociable especially if you don't speak French and definitely not a place to go for a cheap boozy break (although I reckon they must have some cheap bars somewhere) The Megabus is stupidly cheap and reasonably comfortable and mostly painless. If I go again and I'm very tempted to go there for Nuit Blanche which I've fancied for a quite some time I would definitely stop off in London on the way home and stay in a hostel rather than waste £20 on a cab fare that goes four miles.

Paris Megabus Jour Trois

No annoying banging people but I do wake up to the sight of nice bottom, don't know who she was, she didn't appear to speak. I get up eat breakfast and head off into the rain to the Musee d'Orsay. The Musee d'Orsay is a very impressive building, I can't quite believe that it was a train station.

I didn't bother picking up a map of the building and wandered around aimlessly, the first gallery I entered was the post-impressionists which basically means Van Gogh. I was absolutely amazed by these paintings, I don't think I've ever seen paintings quite as intense. I kind of wish I'd seen them last because everything else kind of paled in comparison.

Not that the painting was what impressed my most in this museum, they had a collection of art-nouveau furniture, five different floors of it, Italian, French, North American, English and then on the last floor there is this amazing collection of Germanic Art Nouveau, it looks like what a Viking would have had in his house had he spent time reading instead of pillaging. ;) Also in the Musee d'Orsay was a special exhibition by an Scandinavian (another Viking) artist called Akseli Gallen-Kallela and that was very very good.

After I came out of the museum, I bought a crappy sandwich from a supermarket and caught the metro up to the top of Canal St Martin which I walked the length of, lots of what look like proper bars, street art, cafes, art shops and book shops alongside and is a very nice place to have a wander although it was very quiet. I did nearly get killed by a fire engine who was racing up the side of the canal. All over Paris I kept seeing no drinking in the street signs but on closer inspection they actually say no drinking in the streets after nine pm.

For some strange reason the town planners have decided to cover up half of the canal and put a market on top of it so once I'd reached there I decided to head back and sit in the hostel, eat food, drink beer and look at more anti-social groups and couples. I wasn't disappointed, there were some rather rude Russians who thought I was going to move so they could sit down on the table I was at because it was slightly bigger than the one they already had. Bah!

I decided to make another effort to find a bar so caught the metro down to a more central part of the town and after a bit of a wander found a Australian Bar much like the Australian Bar on Broad Street. As I entered the bouncer said something in French which I didn't understand, "Eh?", he then said in English "It's ten euros in and you get a drink with that", "Nah I wander off somewhere else" says I, "Where are you from?" looking at me a bit funny like, "England", "Oh just go on in". I walk up to the bar and ask for a beer and am given a really horrible pint of Fosters and am charged SEVEN EUROS.

I drink my pint and think "hmmm I think I'll try somewhere else", I walk around the corner and there is a strip of bars, all of them with bouncers on the door and one with out so I pick that one, inside there is a band murdering Sweet Home Alabama, it looks like table service but I go up to the bar anyway and ask for a drink, I get a pint of Kronenbourg and am charged EIGHT EUROS FIFTY!!!

Fifteen quid for two drinks and I think fuck that and head back to the hostel. The offie next door is still open so I buy a couple of bottles of Kronenbourg. Inside the hostel there are actually people talking to one another, it seems that these people have been in the hostel the whole time I was there but had been met with the same wall of silent couples and groups I had. I ended staying up drinking later than was probably sensible given the time I had to get up the next morning but it was fun all the same and quite a nice way to finish the break.

Paris Part Deux.

I wake up nice and early. Some fucking twat of a woman thinks that it's acceptable to turn on all the lights in a shared room at half past three in the morning and start running the sink, bang around, zip and unzip bags, rustle plastic bags open and close the door at alarming regularity. Stupid cow. I think to myself, I hope your plane crashes then think that's probably a bit harsh and instead hope that she shits herself on the plane. About an hour later she fucks off to wherever she is going and I drop back to sleep.

I wake up nice and early. This time it is an Australian couple who are making noise but then it is nine o;clock so I go go and get some breakfast, shit, shower and shave and wonder what it is I should do for the day. I decide on the Louvre. I have a nice stroll through the Jardins de Tuilleries and am pleasantly suprised to see there is no queue to get into the palace.

The Louvre is funny, most people are only there to see the Mona Lisa, they run past the Giottos, the Rafael frescos, the other Da Vinci paintings, the Carravaggios, the Titians, the Cimbaues, the Mantenegas and the Bellinis. They don't bother going to see any of the paintings by the Flemish masters, this part of the gallery is completely empty. No they go and look at this little painting of some bird, that could do with being restored. ;)

It's nice is the Louvre, you can go and see how the other half lived in Napoleon the Third's chambers are all as they were in his day, bit flash if you ask me. There is one part of the palace where I walked in and thought fuck me that is a bit over the top, they have a fresco of Napoleon with his generals on one side and the others (I think) of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great - shame he lost innit. :)

'm in the Louvre for about three hours before deciding that I've had enough but then I get lost trying to find my way out and end up in an underground shopping centre hell and that takes me another half hour to get out. The sun is out when I come up for air and I'm regretting wearing such a big coat. I sit down and eat the sandwiches which I made before leaving and watch pretty ladies walk by.

From where I am standing I can see pretty ladies, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower so I head down the bank of the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. It's a pretty impressive structure although not as good as the Clifton Suspension Bridge of course. There are massive massive queues of people waiting to get into lift to get up to the top, I had no intention of going up, I'd already seen a nice view over Paris.

I walk back along the other side of the river down towards Notre Dame, I sit in the gardens and enjoy the sunshine. It is getting quite late so I head off to find food, I consider finding a bistro but instead opt for the food and beer from the supermarche selection. Back at the hostel I eat and drink a few cans ignoring the "no drinking of outside alcohol in the hostel" sign. People come and go but stick very squarely to their own groups. There are too many couples in the hostel.

I chat to a Spanish bloke for a bit who tells me that he has gone Amsterdam->Brussels->London->Paris over the last three weeks for only £12 on the Megabus. That's cheap. He is was a bit annoying though and thought he knew everything and got upset when I pointed out that he was talking a load of bollocks and was a bit of a racist nob.

I left my Spanish friend to annoy some other people and headed off to a different part of town where I was informed there was some bars. There was. They were heaving full of people in suits and incredibly expensive, so I carried on walking around and found myself outside the Moulin Rouge which is in a Las Ramblas type sleaze bucket of an area, lots of annoying people trying to get you to go and see their sex show.

I never found a bar that I liked the look of and headed back to the hostel. Walking back I did pass what looked like it would have been a cool bar had I been with a few people, loads of people spilling out onto the street drinking cans that they'd quite clearly bought from the offie next door but I was feeling a bit jaded and knackerd by this point so just wandered home.

Megabus to Paris Day One.

I got up at 3.50 amazingly having some sleep despite staying up a bit too late watching Total Recall, sorted my bag of clothes out, ate cornflakes and rang for a taxi. Was the first to arrive at the Megastop and wasn't joined by that many people, a French lad on his way home for the weekend, a bloke who was only going as far as London and some Indian girls who were off for a hen do in Amsterdam who managed to blag their way onto our bus because they were too cold (I think less skimpy clothes at four in the morning might have been more sensible) and could get the connection in London..

Off we drove to Coventry where we picked up another couple of people and then off to London. I slept most of the way down even though the coach was colder than my house and woke up somewhere around Brent Park to see that it was utterly pissing down. I don't think I have ever managed to get across London so quickly, I think most people looked outside and figured that they'd stay in bed an extra half hour which meant there was absolutely no traffic.

There was a bit of faffing around at Victoria bus station where I had to get off and show my passport to the "Megabus International Desk". It's very disorganised at this bus station there are something like twenty stops that they could use to get people on and off the bus but they only ever seem to use about three and nobody seems to think that they should move out of else's way, chaos. Eventually my bus is called and I am pleasantly surprised to see that there are only about 28 people getting on the bus which means that there's enough room to spread out and I won't have to sit next to any smelly people.

The ride down to Dover is pretty painless and I am glad of the chance to be able to stretch my legs on the ferry after been on the move for seven hours already. I eat some rather tasty fish and chips on the ferry before we leave port. I am expecting a choppy journey as the waves are smashing over the harbour wall but as we set off the weather seems to ease off and by the time we are a few miles out the sun even comes out.

Next stop Boulogne which is exactly like Lowestoft, sall seaside town, ferry terminal that is no longer used and a big fish finger factory near the sea front. It even has a Cash Converters. We change drivers here and then it is just a three hour drive down to Paris.

The ring road in Paris is a bit hair raising, it's basically one big tunnel around the city where drivers jump in and out of lanes at high speed whilst others are driving as fast as they can trying to stop them. Deathrace Paris 2012. Surviving the ring road we get to the Porte Malliot bus station and the sun is out but its pretty windy. I find the nearest Metro stop in order to go and check into my hostel.

I am quite pleased that I will be able to get up to Sacre Couer and see the sunset over the city, unfortunately the nob on reception has other ideas and fucks around with everything else for half an hour before deciding to tell me that he can't check me in because his replacement is on the way. Eventually the replacement arrives and does his job but by now it's dark.

I decide to walk up the five billion stairs to the church anyway unfortunately it is just closing up for the day so I don't get to see inside but its a nice view over Paris at night despite the annoying Algerian kids harrassing blonde teenage tourists. I was quite looking forward to a pint after my long journey so I wander down into Montmatre, its pretty quiet, there are lots of places that look like they'd be quite nice to have some food in but nowhere that looks like you could sit at the bar and have beer. There is one cafe that is much much busier than anywhere else and I can't understand why because it looks a bit naff, I subsequently discover it is the one from the film Amelie.

Eventually I find a couple of bars but everyone is sat at tables in there own groups and there are no free seats so I don't bother going into those and just head back to the hostel as I'm pretty knackered anyway.

I have an expensive beer out of the vending machine in the hostel and head off to bed.

Serendipity

Two nights in a row have ended up in drunken silliness after randomly bumping into people. Saturday I wasn't going to go out at all but Joshua wanted to stop at my sisters and I didn't fancy sitting in the house on my own so gave Joe a bell and met up at the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath.

All set for a couple of quiet beers, we sat in the back room where there was a DJ playing dodgy Northern Soul with the high end turned up stupidly so it sounded like a dog whistle blown full blast down my ears. Not the best start to an evening we thought, after a bit of a shouty conversation Joe says he wants a ciggie and we go outside.

Back in the pub they've sorted the music out and have turned the bass up and the high end down making it less painful. I buy a couple of drinks and wince at the price, £10.35 for a pint and a rum and coke in Brum is just silly (next time I'm taking a hip flask).

Another couple of beers then another cigarette for Joey and outside we bump into Jim, Sarah and Marie who have been drinking since noon and who are all quite sozzled, especially Jim. They join us back in the pub and now the music has changed to disco edit versions Dexy's Midnight Runners songs. By now the alcohol really is flowing and the music is sillier and sillier and we a pissed and dancing on the chairs and tables.

Three(ish) in the morning we leave. So much for a quiet night. ;)

Not feeling too hungover, I spend the day clearing some stuff in my Mom and Dad's garden. I was pretty knackered after this and once I'd dropped Joshua back with Rebecca I was ready for a lazy evening on the settee.

As I was walking home I saw a very drunk Dave, Jonno and Andy walking up the road, I was considering putting my head down and walking past them on the other side of the road but "Oi, come and have some beers" and I was dragged into Andy's house and handed a can of Kronenbourg. The three of them were quite pissed and a little bit annoying and when they decided to go to the Chinese down the road I tried to make good my escape but they weren't having none of it and instead I was sent over the road to get beers from the offie.

Back at Andy's house and Karl turned up who was also pretty pissed. Neither Dave, Karl or Jonno needed to go to work the following day and were all on a mission. Dave was the first to flounder after being killed off with folk music and 6.5% ales. More beers and Andy was the next to go. It was about four in the morning and no more beer left and Jonno insisted on opening the Blossom Hill tastes like pop rose which we drank from the bottle. Jonno keeled over and I decided it was probably time to go home.

I felt very shite today. It was one of those days of lost productivity due to alcohol abuse. So I sacked myself and did not very much at all.