Bateman Blog 006: Looking For A Non-Existent Feeling

In light of the ‘Our Band Could BBQ Your Life’ all-(two)-dayer at Brixton Windmill this weekend I decided that now would be the perfect opportunity to indulge in a little ‘this is why I love the greatest band that no one’s ever heard of’ piece. If someone ever gets round to writing ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life 2: The 90s’ they should call it ‘Looking For A Non-Existent Feeling’ and make the first band in it J-Church. Michael Azzerad also wrote the ‘official’ Nirvana biography, and if Nirvana were the apotheosis of American indie rock’s inevitable ascent to the mainstream and beyond, then J-Church were the working band (well, one of the many, it’s true) who stayed the earthly course; who, ironically, kept the indie rock flag flying by virtue of their general lack of success. They jammed econo right to the very end. Nirvana is Hindu for enlightened state of mind with mystical/philosophical connotations; J-Church is public transport - a San Francisco light rail line. I think that says it all.

Lance Hahn was J-Church, even though they were a 3-piece (and, in their final line-up, briefly a 4-piece). Lance was also Cringer and Cilantro. He wrote an e-newsletter called 'It's not a living, it's a life' about the records he was listening to (and selling), and the books he was reading, and the films he'd watched. It was boring and frequently pretentious. He was from Hawaii, lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 90s and moved to Austin, Texas at the beginning of the 21st Century, where he died in October 2007 of kidney failure. He was quite fat.

J-Church peaked with their first album, Quetzalcoatl (named after the ‘feathered snake’, the Mexican god) and the song Good Judge of Character, about a whore (about a voyeur flirting with and fantasising about the dark side), when John Peel once heralded it on his radio show sometime in the early 90s. That was the closest they got to mainstream success. That said, Lance, though only in his early 40s when he died, made music (J-Church, Honeybear Records – his label that mainly existed to release obscure J-Church records – and selling 7-inches by other obscure bands) his living and his life.

It's pretty much impossible to count how many records J-Church released, never mind the number of songs they recorded and the personal anecdotes and books Lance read that inspired them. They're the only band I've ever heard of who included suggested reading lists in their record sleeves – a pompous self-indulgence maybe, but also an example of how making physical records was once a way for people who embraced a certain view of the world (or at least pop culture) to communicate with one another. In my mind there's no doubt that Lance Hahn wrote some of the greatest songs ever about solitude and futility in life that expressed a warmth and sense of community (in loneliness or ennui) rather than anger or depression.

I respected Hahn most for the fact that he literally wrote a soundtrack to his own life. It may not be a great canon of work; it may be quantity over quality (in comparison, Ryan Adams is a perfectionist) but you truly get a sense of who he was from his songs. The lack of theatricality or adventure added to its charm. Watching Michael Jackson's memorial service on TV it was jarring to see my generation's finest performer's 11 year old daughter speak of her grief at losing her father. I'd come to imagine his children as masked figurines in MJ's very own atrocity exhibition. The very real grief she displayed hammered home the reality of the rather uncomfortable voyeurism we, the great unwashed, indulge in over our garishly glittering stars of print and screen. He was a faded pop star but he was also a father who did fatherly (weirdly fatherly) things with his children. J-Church do not compare in brilliance to Michael Jackson. But they had something he never had - normality - and Lance Hahn fashioned his own averageness into an almost constant stream of lo-fi consciousness, via a series of bedroom-operated 'record labels' from the US to the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and Japan. People didn't buy J-Church records because they were captivated by their unique talent but because they were a peculiar type of record collector who liked the songs, the song titles, the humour and pathos, the record sleeves - the whole imperfect package.

Music’s never been escapism for me; rather, it’s been a way of engaging with the world and articulating how I feel about my experiences. Songs are a bit like constellations I think, in that if you look at a writer’s body of work you can trace an outline of who they are/were from it. The smaller the canon the more brilliant certain stars may shine but the vaguer the constellation. There were quite a few dull stars in Hahn’s constellation (and a few that were dead the moment they burst into existence) but there were also some that really shone in the tiny, alternative galaxy in which (and for whom) they were written. The list below is by no means exhaustive, merely a mix tape of my favourite J Church moments, all part of a very clear constellation the majority of us know all too well – the small victories, the minor letdowns, the flush times and the lean times, the nostalgia and the aging pains (physical and mental), the way we’re fashioned by family, friends, work and not knowing what tomorrow has in store for us.

November (from Camels, Spilled Coronas and the Sound of Mariachi Bands) – ‘As the rain falls hard it falls on the people waiting for the bus home / No matter who you are, you feel the same when you're wet, cold and alone’.

Favorite Phrase (from Camels, Spilled Coronas and the Sound of Mariachi Bands) – ‘You're telling me that you're leaving… / …And then I feel the hem of your dress / And the warmth of your breath on the back of my neck / So come to bed, turn out the light / And let's fuck just one last time’

Tide of Fate (from Nostalgic for Nothing) – ‘Nothing's moving, Nothing's breathing, Nothing's changing, It's sorrow / Nothing's ever gonna make me plan tomorrow / I could sleep under open skies if I'm back at work by Monday / Swim against the tide of fate if I'm back at work by Monday’

Sleep (from Nostalgic for Nothing) – ‘Someone is sleeping on my street, I step over them because I need my coffee / Someone is playing in the hall, I hope they don't grow up at all and burn my house down’

Why I Liked Bikini Kill (from Prophylaxis and The Precession of Simulacra, The Map Preceeds the Territory) – ‘This song is in defence of and in tribute to a great band’

To The Moon (from Travels in Hyper-Reality) – ‘I've never wanted to go to the moon or grow too old too soon / Now you're talking like it's something special to do’

New York Times Book Review (from One Mississippi) – ‘I wish I was an international sensation, I'd blame these words on a bad translation / …The sky is full of lots of things,Evil dreams and the coming rain / Rain must be true, I read it in a New York Times book review’

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tinderbox (from One Mississippi) – ‘There is no time to redefine Leni Riefenstahl / Ignorance may be her only crime / Forget the Führer, Forget the images / Art for art's sake is a lie’

Simple Gesture (from The Drama of Alienation and Whorehouse: Songs and Stories) – ‘I've had three apartments since I last saw you / I kept your letters, Your hate mail, I kept too / …I saw hail for the first time late last night, / All I can say is I'm glad I was inside / re-read your letters so I could feel sad / For the first time they didn't make me think of times we had’

Waiting on the Ground (from Arbor Vitae) - Everyone's singing the white boy blues, Haven't they heard the news? / You can't get away with that attitude until you've paid your dues / Playing in basements and playing in clubs, Playing wherever you can / Touring the States eight hours a day in a shitty, fucked up, rental van / Feeling like crap and eating shit, Living on next to nothing / Go back home to your shitty job, I don't feel that I owe you anything’

Faye Wong (from Altamont '99) – ‘I harboured the usual expectations of Hong Kong as a glamorous and exciting place. I found it to be no big deal. I wasn’t very happy because I didn’t speak Cantonese and had no friends’.

Panama (from Nostalgic for Nothing) – ‘Did you ever think that Cripple Creek could be still at night? / A million broken stereos are stars in the sky / The one thing I will always hear is the constant ringing that's in my ears / It reminds me of the stars in your eyes’

Tricky (from Palestine) – ‘I want a cheese and mushroom omelette / I want a microwave oven’

Bateman Blog 005: A Prayer For Owen Meany

A long time ago, eleven or so years when I was just old enough to legally drink, a few of my friends worked in a bar called Smugglers Inn. It was a mock English pub, for expats and tourists, on the waterfront in the village of Stanley, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. It was run by two alcoholic Chinese brothers and frequented by their triad 'friends', teenagers either just old enough or not quite old enough to drink (they didn't discriminate) and the odd, genuine 'regular' - those people destined to wile away a good portion of their lives on a barstool. In the UK, in miserable little drinking holes across towns and cities across the spectrum of prosperity, this is not unusual. But in a very social city like Hong Kong, where drinking is widely regarded as an exercise rather than a habit, people who choose to dress their alcoholism down in such an unflattering way are banished to provincial outposts like Smugglers Inn in Stanley. There was the only Caucasian bus driver in Hong Kong, whose wife had died when he was quite a bit younger and who was surly when he arrived sober and abusive when he was inevitably asked to leave five hours later. There was Paul and Denise Clark, brother and sister in their late 30s/early 40s who, except for the fact that they had been raised in Hong Kong by their now departed parents, were the real life versions of Steve Coogan's Paul and Pauline Carr. There was Nicky, who'd turned her passion for surfing into a reasonably successful business venture, opening a surf shop in Stanley market, but who, at night, seemed determined to piss it away - possibly because she was trapped in a marriage with a particularly unpleasant local triad. And, finally, there was Dilip.

Dilip was half Indian, half English I think, but more English than Indian; mild-mannered and very intelligent, as you'd expect from an accountant. He might've been gay and he might've liked boys only just 'of age'; he might also've just been lonely and had more to talk about with bright, bratty teenagers than his fellow regulars. He was quite patronising and as he became friendlier with us we became less impressed with his smarts and his willingness to buy us drinks. By the end of my friend groups' weird and brief 'friendship' with Dilip I think we were probably just out-and-out rude to him – but during this time he gave me some brand new vinyl – Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' and 'Closer' and New Order's 'Substance' (because he didn't have a record player) – and he recommended I read ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ by John Irving. I listened to the records a few times, though I could never properly get into Joy Division, but never read the book. Still, people recommend books to me all the time that I say I'll read and never do and that I then forget about, but ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ stuck with me - possibly because it's a great title but I really couldn't say.

Not long after, Dilip got a brain tumour. He survived and had to shave his head and would demonstrate the enormous scar across the top of his head to us when he returned, on occasion and for far fewer drinks, looking much thinner, to Smugglers Inn. He survived a car crash that saw his taxi flipped onto its roof on the winding mountain roads from Stanley to the centre of Hong Kong Island after someone I know hit them from behind, racing drunk round blind turns (it was the son of a prominent judge so he got off with having his license briefly suspended). After we all moved away for university I heard his brain tumour came back and he died in his late thirties.

I never bought ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ but a few years after Dilip recommended I read it I bought ‘Let's Talk About Feelings’ by Lagwagon, a record whose final track is called 'Owen Meaney'. I'm not sure if the difference in spelling is deliberate but it kept alive the notion that, if I ever came across it and had the time, maybe I should read the book. I tend not to believe in signs and suchlike, but the enigmatic lyrics to ‘Owen Meaney’ and Dilip’s fate gave the book an air of intrigue and meant that I'd probably have to read it one day, if only to satisfy my curiosity.
Back around the time Dilip gave me the Joy Division records I only really listened to bands that sounded like Lagwagon - fast, melodic punk. Since then, I've come to realise that most bands that sound like this are shit; however, I always had a soft spot for the 'wagon and with time my nostalgic fondness for them has developed into a genuine love. Singer Joey Cape writes modern punk rock like modern country - like all music that follows a formula, when it's done well it ticks all the right boxes and functions just as it says it will on the tin. Not adventurous or overly original - it's better than those things. Words don't really explain music very well but to me it's catchy, triumphant, sorrowful and joyous.

The main reason I love Lagwagon rather than just quite like them though is because of the album 'Resolve'. It's not their best album (that would be 'Blaze' closely followed by 'Hoss') but it's definitely their most meaningful and powerfully resonant record, because it's about the suicide of former Lagwagon drummer, Derrick Plourde. Bands usually get this kind of thing terribly wrong - the 'dedicated to the memory of' genre tends to be nothing of the sort, and finds writers slipping into the most vulgar and self-indulgent solipsism that gives the objective listener/reader no sense of the subject or what their life was like. Plourde's a ghostly presence throughout ‘Resolve’ but Cape brightens the corners of a stranger's life perfectly, touching on the homogenous emptiness that defines sprawling suburban life, and how wide open spaces suggest freedom at the expense of community; he remembers Plourde vicariously through the music and grieves when the music ends; he sympathises with Plourde's family (he shot himself in the face in his parents' bedroom) and rails against the drug addiction that led Plourde to deceive his friends and family, to let them down time and again as he went from rehab to community shelter to relapse. Finally, Cape finds comfort in his own family and acknowledges his friend's greatest influence - Plourde introduced Cape to his future wife. It's emotional but unsentimental and it's this that makes it so moving.

Anyway, I stumbled across a brand new copy of Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany in a cupboard at the London Stock Exchange (funnily enough, I was there to meet Andrew Ferris so what a fitting forum this is for this story) and decided that I should take it. Three years later I got round to reading it. Though the back cover hails it as a 'modern American classic' I was sorely disappointed. It's loosely about faith in God and how faith, regardless of whether one actually believes in God, helps people mourn the hard, absoluteness of death; it's loosely about the Vietnam War and the American psyche. The premise is superb - eleven year old Owen Meany kills his best friend's mum while playing baseball and comes to think of himself as an instrument of God - but the 600+ pages are exceptionally tedious. I didn't like the characters and I didn't like the narrator and I found Owen Meany vile and, worse, disbelievable.

* * *

I read on a Lagwagon fans' website that 'Owen Meaney' is probably about Derrick Plourde and possibly written before his death. That's mildly disconcerting considering Owen Meany's fate, though I suppose not really that exceptional, as one tends to assume that hard drug addiction leads to a grisly end. Still, my curiosity sated after reading it, I found myself wishing I hadn't. Reading fiction is a great form of escapism; but not knowing what this book was about was even better - it fuelled my imagination. It was a personal little mystery that I didn’t know until I’d read it that I didn’t want to solve. There are lots of these little mysteries in the novel that are never unravelled. Faith is a mystery of sorts, but why we believe isn’t; we believe because we’re scared of death – and death is the biggest mystery and yet the hardest fact of all. 'Owen Meaney' is a decent song but, having read the book with the similar name, I can't help thinking it was merely a prototype for the songs on Resolve – better because they’re inspired by a true, not just potential, tragedy. Maybe that's callous. I'll never know why Dilip liked the book so much, but after finishing the book I wondered if he ever thought of the tumour as his own, personal baseball, pitched by some awful instrument of God.

Bateman Blog 004: Variety Is The Shite Of Life

Their second album 'Back To The Future' is out now and STA's finest wordsmith Bateman of The Young Playthings continues the documenting of his life episodes for the STA blog. The brief is open-ended and editorial control out the window, - we hope you find his insights contentious, illuminating, scintillating and titillating!

Whenever I go to the US I eat salads. Not that I'm on a diet - in fact, far from it. I have a healthy love of nachos and burgers and pizza, but for every junk food meal I enjoy I know it's only sensible and healthy to alternate with salad and fruit and raw tofu. The thing is, American salads are not very salad-like - like Katie Price isn't very ladylike. No, they're a brash, naughty indulgence that satisfy an immediate craving but leave a foul aftertaste (though, scratch that, I'm sure Katie doesn't leave a foul aftertaste - she's just foul-mouthed).

I'm very fond of the parable about the guy who makes soup from a stone. I've never been sure what the lesson is supposed to be, although I'm sure the tale comes from some ancient salesmen’s' almanac - one can have anything from nothing, or one can sell anything using nothing, if one employs the wherewithal vacuum-packed within that clever little stone in one's bright little box. If you don't know it, it goes like this. A 'travelling' (read: homeless) man is walking along a dirt road and he's hungry. There's nothing to eat for miles around - until he stumbles upon two mucky children playing in the dirt. He thinks to himself 'I broke all my teeth on the last child I ate, so that's out of the question. What I need is some soup - but I'm sure these two don't have a clue how to make any and it's highly unlikely their parents have a blender I can use.' But the traveller, though homeless and jobless, is no fool. He picks up a pebble from the dirt road and saunters over to where the children are playing. The children look up at the stranger with wild, wary eyes (for their parents read the News of the World and they have been warned hysterically about paedophiles) but the stranger looks kindly, if a little devilish.

'Hello children, I'm a travelling man with no trade to my name and of no fixed abode - I'm hungry but I'm an honest john - I will show you how I can magically make soup from nothing but this mere stone and a dash of your kindness. What sayst thou?'

And the children, because children love creeps like magicians and clowns, are all ears.

'First I need a pot to make it in'. So Tracy runs off to the family home, climbs in through a broken window and comes back with a battered old pan.

'Excellent. But now I need some water'.

So Dwayne runs off to CostCutter and nicks a 1L bottle of Evian.

'The magic is working, but now I need some vegetables....'

And this goes on till the kids are exhausted running back and forth between the dirt road and the town, but there's a lovely pot of vegetable soup with a stone at the bottom of it bubbling over a warm fire.

American salads are kind of like this story. The stone in the soup story is like a bay leaf - it adds no flavour unless you're the unlucky one that gets the mouthful with the thing in it - and your taste buds are wrecked (or teeth, in the case of the stone). Ultimately, the stone is a way of fooling someone into giving you something nice for free. The American salad is a way of fooling yourself into thinking that you're giving yourself something healthy and tasty to eat.

For example, you go into these whole food stores (what the hell is 'whole food' anyway?) where they serve healthy things. You get a tub of lettuce and hand it to the Mexican behind the extra-ingredients-and-condiments counter, and tell him what you'd like on your salad. 30 seconds later you have a $14 'salad' consisting of barbecued shrimp, sesame tofu, broccoli, sundried tomatoes, asparagus, blue cheese, avocado and artichoke hearts, slathered in a ladle spoon’s worth of 1000 Island dressing. It's like a blended 4,000 calorie pizza with a few bits of romaine lettuce in it. You go to the park, eat it and feel like eating a platter of nachos with extra cheese to assuage your soul (and clogged arteries).

I'm no chef and those ingredients weren't meant to go together. What the hell was I thinking?! I'll tell you what, my fat little eyes were greedily eyeballing the extra ingredients and condiments and I just pointed at a few of them, with no thought as to how well they'd compliment each other when combined in one dish, and the Mexican dutifully scraped up a spatchelor-load of each and dumped it in the green mixing bowl. Voila!

The point is, like children I'm easily fooled by conmen and sly marketing gimmicks. Ludicrously gullible. The dullest tool in the dull-tool toolbox. The kind of person who'll eat a raw chilli when a stranger dares me to drunkenly do so, which will inevitably ruin my evening. The 'spice of life' for me is not a good thing, it only leads to a numb tongue, a belly full of rubbish and a revolting aftertaste. And it costs a lot more than it's worth.

Bateman Blog 001: American Sky Sharks Vs French Sky Sharks

Ferris - As a pre-cursor to the landing of their second album 'Back To The Future' we've invited one of STA's finest wordsmiths Bateman of The Young Playthings to contribute some of his life episodes to the blog. The brief is open-ended and editorial control out the window, - we hope you find his insights contentious, illuminating, scintillating and titillating!

I got a cheap deal to New York over the long Easter weekend, which involved flying the American carrier Northwest Airlines to NYC via Detroit and Air France back to London, via Paris. Northwest and Air France are part of the same air alliance which is why I could get a return trip on two different airlines; however, one is distinctly American and the other the French airline and, unlike global capitalism, which, in theory, knows no prejudices because profit is the global language of love, I wear mine noticeably on my sleeves – and they read thus: I’m a self-confessed English Yankophile and this means I doubly hate the French. I love super-sized junk food meals and, to paraphrase Henry Ford, tend to think modern philosophy is bunk. That said, I’m educated and open-minded enough to give respect where respect is due and, likewise, to criticise those that I love. These are my notes.

My outbound flight is very early morning. The plane’s a piece of shit and we’re delayed two hours on the runway by a faulty computer. Finally – shakily – in the air I’m served orange juice and a tiny bag of mini pretzels which I eat because on a plane you eat whatever you’re given (no one likes pretzels – the only people that eat pretzels are tourists in Central Park and those travelling peasant class on American air carriers). This is followed by a vile, processed breakfast and watery coffee. Americans drink tons of coffee and work very long, hard hours – coffee is not to be enjoyed; rather, it’s fuel for the day. An ex-(American) girlfriend of mine’s father once complained that, on domestic American flights, all the stewardesses were old and useless. I’ve noticed in recent years that this trend has been extended to include all stewardesses on all American air carriers. All of this barely edible shit is served by ancient crones who could never have been apple pie American girls with perfect white teeth – I’m thinking, are they fucking French birds who’ve improbably mastered the American accent?! As is the case on most aeroplanes with personal TVs in the back of the seat in front of you, the safety demonstration has been outsourced to an onscreen jingle. I’m treated to an incredible piece of politically-correct barf, where a black stewardess with a demented grin woodenly tells a white male passenger and his south-east Asian wife, both with equally demented grins, that in the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure they will need to pull the airmasks tight over their own faces before applying it to the face of their Indian child.

Intentionally, I’m flying with a decent hangover so that I won’t be tempted to drink on the flight and, as such, won’t spend a small fortune before I even get to the Big Apple. A few years ago, practically every American air carrier went practically bankrupt and each one had to seriously cut back on the ‘luxuries’ they provide to passengers ‘free of charge’. And so the irony is that flying American these days is like flying communist in the 80s before the Wall came down – an utterly miserable experience. I’m therefore shocked to discover that Northwest, unlike all the other American carriers, don’t charge for alcohol onboard; but I’m tired and hungover so I stick with the made-from-pure-concentrate orange juice. I’d also intended to get some shuteye on the flight but then I discover the movie channel and decide to stay awake the entire flight watching Yes Man, Frost/Nixon and Rock n Rolla. Ah, Hollywood – the differentiating factor between ruthless corporate efficiencies and communist asceticism.

Everyone onboard the flight is connecting to another flight in Detroit – to Florida, California, New York – anywhere but Detroit. No one goes to Detroit, except of course the blue-collar dude sitting next to me, who blue-eyes my blackberry suspiciously and tells me to turn it off as we’re taxiing out to the runway and who then decides to engage me in a little elbow-room war over the shared armrest between our cramped seats. I refuse to give in and he finally relents, leaning into me and murmuring, ‘hey bud, can you keep yr elbow on yr side of the fence – it was in my ribs a moment ago’. Which was absolute bullshit and so I turn to him and tell him it was never in his ribs as I’d have felt it in my elbow if it was digging into his ribs. I’m not sure if I’ve won the battle for armrest supremacy but thankfully for the rest of the flight we avoid each other, as far as two people who are confined to practically sitting on top of each other can.

Because of the delay in taking-off I’ve missed my connecting flight to NYC. Luckily, Americans are sensitive to inconveniencing people and, thankfully, they’re not afraid to massively pollute their skies in order to avoid doing so. Flights between major American cities are a constant throughout the day and, in Detroit, I’m whisked straight through to another flight where I’m delighted to find I’ve been upgraded to first class. This is also where I make two discoveries: the pretty American stewardesses work in domestic first class now! And free alcohol on international Northwest flights (a serious coup over their fellow American competitors) is now brought to you, in part, by a merger between Northwest and Delta which makes them the largest American air operator and for whom, the pilot announces, he is proudly flying. 15 minutes after this announcement I’m in the back of a taxi on the Triboro Bridge, still struck by the beauty of Manhattan from a distance after all these years, eating a slice of Sbarro pizza, which is the worst slice of pizza I’ll eat during my stay in NYC but still a fuckload better than any pizza I’ve ever eaten in the UK.

Pat once told me that on Air France they refuse to speak English to you which Damien, my French-speaking Swiss-Fijian-Irish-Jewish New Zealander friend subsequently told me was nonsense. As is usually the case, the truth lies somewhere between the two. Let me tell you, they speak English begrudgingly. However, compared to the threadbare sardine can I flew on to the US the Air France 747 is pure opulence. Even the peasants enjoyed the rich euphoria of the bountiful grape harvest in medieval France (or something) and, accordingly, I’m served champagne in my cramped quarters at the back of the vessel with the other European animals. It accompanies a decent meal of cherry tomatoes, spinach and a Portobello mushroom cooked in a light balsamic sauce, fruit and as many mini baguettes as I please.

The French stewardesses are serious Monets. From a distance they’re young and stunning, running the gamut from white Roman Catholic to café-au-lait-skinned Algerians. Unlike the wizened Americans they’re not mean and foul-tempered, just haughty and ever-so-slightly glamorous. That is, until they get up close and, well, actually, they’re pretty normal looking and don’t take too kindly to you calling ‘sham-pan-yeh’ ‘the bubbly stuff’. The film selection is nowhere near as good as on the Northwest flight and, though the majority of films are American films, all the titles are in French. I can see that the guy in front of me is watching Role Models, the hilarious-looking Seann William Scott and Paul Rudd recently released frat pack comedy and I’m excited to watch it myself. However, it takes me ten minutes of hunting through all the available films in all the different genres that are listed to find it, because it’s billed as ‘Les Grand Freres’. WTF?! The Big Brothers?!

After the film, everyone’s sleeping and it would seem the smart thing to do, to try and get a couple of hours sleep myself before my four hour wait in Paris before my connecting flight to London. Before I do though I want a drink of water to keep me hydrated so I ask the passing stewardess for a glass, who replies ‘there’s a free bar at the back of the plane’. Okay, uh, pause – WTF x 10?!?! It briefly passes through my mind ‘look Frenchie, I may be speaking English and I may only have paid £350 on Expedia for the privilege of flying with le grand Air France; and I know you may only work ten hours a week for an extraordinarily generous pay package, but surely, right now, you’re on duty and so surely you may deign to get me that tiny glass of water that I’ve requested?’ However, I just blink at her and she says ‘but this time I’ll get you one’ which, to be fair, she does very quickly. At this stage I’m too tired to pick a fight with the fat Italian pig next to me, so I ease my rib cage away from her elbow, tuck my own underneath hers and fall asleep.

Paris airport is very nice. Its elegant design makes it light, airy and yet somehow cosy. It’s filled with high-end fashion boutiques and you can play Playstation 2 for free (unfortunately I don’t game). I station myself in a comfy chair in a cafe and enjoy a breakfast of quiche and coffee. The quiche tastes a lot like the Sbarro pizza slice I enjoyed on my arrival in New York, but has probably a third of the calories. The coffee, as one expects from the French, is delicious. As noted above, the French work very little and so have plenty of free time to fill doing interesting things. Like the Americans, they consume a heck of a lot of the stuff, but in smaller portions with a lot more flavour. For them it’s not fuel, it’s a way of life. Fuelled by this delicious coffee I write all the above crap and finally board my flight back to London. Ah, civilisation.