Paris - Bordeaux - Agen - Condom - Éauze - Nogaro

 

• Paris 1

I have a slightly fermented salade césar for lunch and the waiter looks at me like a dog has climbed onto its hind legs and attempted to order. Perhaps it's the touristy area or the redness of my face but I appear to emit an Englishness that is evident from 30 paces. Rosbif comes off me like a fog. I feel the urge to explain to stunning Parisians that I am in my travel clothes, I can be stylish, or at least a closer approximation of it, but I'm on the road you see, I have to wear sensible shoes, you're all so beautiful, can I see what you smell like? Meanwhile I shamble lumpen from street to street, trying to remember to look left rather than right, to show the correct level of insouciance in the face of traffic, waiting to settle into the rhythm of not tourist but traveller, a noble profession, not just some cunt who has come to look at things. Dégoûtant.

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I pay €13 for a beer in a bar overlooking Notre Dame. I am living with the sort of wasteful indolence which comes with day one of a holiday, during that happy lull where money isn’t real and you coo at the little tray of nuts which arrives with your blanche like you’ve been identified as a special customer and they’re just for you. 

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The bar with the €13 beer does not have a toilet seat on the toilet. Perhaps they save that for the €14 customers.

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In Belleville an elderly man with a cane approaches and rattles something off to me. I politely declare my poor French and it turns out he's a naturalised Yank called Fred, who married a French woman. He asks me what I think of his president. I try to avoid talking about politics with strange Americans but I can’t bring myself to issue any sort of neutral answer so I respond cautiously to the negative. “He is a buffoon”, Fred concurs. I tell him that I would love to live in Paris but I lack the requisite paperwork. We agree to find me a French wife too. He soon ambles off. He's had his fill of chat, or maybe just of mine. I watch him depart very, very slowly.

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I drink 6-7 French beers.

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The night ends sat in the street with some French drama students and musicians. We buy some strong beer which is notorious for being drunk by derelicts but as far as I can tell is the kind of delicious Belgian-style blonde they make in monasteries. I read out a play in French and I am given a live translation. The play seems to be mostly composed of an argument between two people. There’s lots of effing and jeffing and “how come we never fuck any more”, things of that nature. Somehow it's 3am. Someone rides away on a scooter. The moment feels excessively, aggressively Parisian. But then I suppose I would think that. 

• Paris 2

I am hungover. I slump past the porcelain people of Paris like the worthless dog I am. I hope they don’t look at me. 

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I have a bagel, two Normandy ciders, a piece of cheese and a bowl of Yemeni food and decide that things might be fine after all. 

• Bordeaux

I start the day by falling down the stairs and landing on my sunglasses, bending them in half. They don't fit my face any more because both of my eyes are on the front of my head. It is 7am and I am on the Metro to Paris Montparnasse. I have too much shit in my bag but I have no idea what to take out. I thought I was travelling light but perhaps there are too many changes of clothes. Caroline told me there is a base level of stink you have to adapt to when you're walking every day and I suspect she's right. Need to stop being prissy and embrace the road.

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Outside Gare Montparnasse, French commuters share red wine in paper espresso cups. This seems decadent even by Parisian standards. 

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I have a fresh-pressed orange juice and a croissant with comté cheese outside the Marché de Capucins. It’s so good I begin to feel that special emotion of holiday-happy-sad. A wistful, special happiness, like a monkey who has been given a fruit and knows it could be taken away again in an instant. 

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Nothing else happens in Bordeaux except for me attempting to set the world record for the shortest ever time for one man to contract gout. 

• Occitania Day 1

The first travel crisis falls in Agen, the home of prunes. It produces 65% of the prunes in France and every year they have a prune festival in which they have prune tastings. Among other things. I have fucked up my timing and find myself short of a bus to Condom. Today I am the prune. A woman called Nicola who speaks no English also needs to get to Condom, and I manage to express to her in garbled French that we should share a taxi. I then spend 40 minutes watching in horror as the meter goes north of €100. If I wasn’t splitting it I’d be inconsolable. 

I make it to Condom and a bird shits on me. I’ve been out of the taxi, wallet significantly lighter, for about 35 seconds. I look down at my feet and see that the ground beneath is covered in a thick coating of guano. What’s happened here is I’ve attempted to have a head-clearing rest directly underneath a panel of winking cloacas. I have nobody to blame but myself. I set about trying to find my second mystery bus of the day. It’s so stressful I can’t even enjoy that I’m in Condom, which I inarguably am. I go to a bar while I wait and watch the last 20 minutes of Aston Villa vs Fulham while terrible EDM thunders out of the speakers. Europe has a sickness and its name is EDM. 

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The bus comes and I make it to Éauze. My gîte is a crumbling farmhouse with plastered brick walls, honeysuckle creeping up the exterior, a tumbledown barn out the back filled with rusting farm equipment, creaky floorboards and patterned blankets. A fleet of chickens come out to greet me. Jean-Pierre, who lives here and hosts pilgrims, has a shock of grey hair, a wide smile and pads around his house barefoot. He has come from a plant swap in town. “It makes a good feeling to share,” he tells me. 

The gîte has a dry toilet, which is to say it has a hole onto which you shovel soil after you have a shit. Jean-Pierre asks if I am okay with a rustic life. I reassure him that I am. The original plumbed toilet has not been disposed of. Instead it has been kept as a trophy, mounted like the carcass of a slain foe in the hallway, under a handwritten sign on the wall which reads, “L’obsolescence”. 

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In Éauze a tiny dog in a cloth travel case attempts to attack anyone who comes close, but is thwarted by its containment. It is just a growling, rattling bag. Nobody seems to find it as funny as I do.

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The same man does the rounds of every bar I'm in, shaking hands, muttering, dark grey hair tied back, a white-ish vest, dirty blue jeans, a can of Heineken. He looks like one of the Frenchmen in the Simpsons who kidnap Bart and lace their wine with anti-freeze. He even has an earring. Nobody seems to mind. Everyone greets him warmly. Some people buy him a drink. He claps them on the shoulder and rumbles something drunk.

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Lying in the bed now as I write with the shutters flung wide open, the sounds of the French countryside flood in. Crickets, birds, frogs, the rustling of leaves in the wind. Earlier I sat by the cathedral and watched swifts on the wing at dusk. As I walked home I saw bats. 

There is a loud thump at the window. I am on the first floor. I go to inspect it and see that an enormous junebug has domed itself on the window chasing the light and is now on its back on the window ledge, legs wriggling in the air. I’m about to help it up and then it wriggles itself over the edge and disappears. A moment later - thump - it has recovered itself. I take this as a signal. I turn off the light to go to sleep.

• Occitanie 2

Over breakfast Jean-Pierre tells me that we have to distinguish between an unhappy country and an unhappiness in ourselves. He says people are always saying “France has no future, France is shit”. He asks them if they are happy in their life and they shrug and say, “Yes”. Jean-Pierre has lost his driver’s license. He says he feels like he is being scolded like a child by the state. They closed the local enforcement office so he has to go on the computer to fill out a form. He hates to use the computer. He wants to live a natural life; he just wants to dance (he went out dancing last night but his friend had to drive him). I tell him about the cockchafer - un hanneton. I call it stupid. He says he thinks they are not so stupid compared to humans. We drink black coffee, eat toast with apricot jam, and listen to the birds. Les hanneton will be here after we’re gone. 

I leave for Nogaro.

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Halfway. Manciet. The walk is muddy after overnight rain, the route weaving its way through vineyards and farms. It’s very easy planning to make yourself uncomfortable until you adjust to the distance and the weight of your bag. I’ll adapt. It won’t kill me. I know people walk this distance all the way. I see old people doing it. The reality, however, is that at only the 10km mark my back is stiff and my legs ache. Only halfway! Sometimes halfway is a relief. Today it is ominous. I check and re-check the route to see if I’ve hallucinated the distance but it remains exactly the same. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get over the hump - this is only day one of walking, after all. Hopefully by day two. 

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Second half of the walk is fine. I put this down to having an extremely hearty rural French lunch and a single glass of strong beer. This is not a sustainable method of dealing with my agonies, but it did the job today. 

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Nogaro is a bit of a dump. This surprises me. The reason seems to be that the local economy is based around attendees of the famous local Grand Prix and associated racing track. People who like cars, it goes without saying, are the worst people on the planet, and should be put down like animals. As a consequence there is a kebab shop density which makes me feel right at home, as does the weather - torrential rain. The hostel is a strange one, with the dormitory being one single enormous function room with no blinds or curtains, sixteen beds, and a shuttered service hatch of uncertain purpose. The other guests are almost exclusively elderly, and the room actually smells a little of old people. One Dutch man has three consecutive bellowing phone calls, goes out for dinner, returns and then commences - I shit thee not - clipping his toenails. The crack of each sundered talon rings out around the big empty room.

This is not Jean-Pierre’s farmhouse. 

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For reasons which escape me, Nogaro has a camel. It is now very soggy. It's hard to see the disposition of a camel but I think I would rather be somewhere else.

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I am glad that I brought earplugs and an eyemask. Bed.