11th September 2003

"The French. What a bunch of c***s" - Laurence Philp, 2003

I had uttered such sentiments many times to interested Americans, and it was somewhat reassuring to find my thoughts both echoed and confirmed on our short trip to France. It was a small number (Sausage Dog, Laurence, Andrew and Ewok) on a short trip which had more comedy gold than I know what to do with. The tone was set at check-in. As Laurence pulled his passport from his wallet, out flew his Spearmint Rhino card which had been just put there for safe keeping. In a desperate attempt to save his dignity, Laurence told the check-in clerk to keep it as a present. The woman behind the desk seemed surprisingly satisfied with the gift. Maybe she has grandchildren.

The comdey was pretty much at this level for the holiday. In a rare approximation of an intelligent conversation, we at one point discussed where we would go if we could choose any point in history. The answers were 1985, 1984 and a week last Wednesday*. Intelligent conversations were henceforth avoided.

Which was a good thing too, as seeing as we were in France, we needed to spend all our time practising abuse. Our opportunity came after your correspondent made a classic howler. Myself and a colleague were trying to chat to a couple of French girls. Now the French are not a happy people (see first comment). In fact I'm not sure I saw a single French set of teeth the entire holiday. But these girls made the others look like Ken Dodd on laughing gas. Things were looking pretty dim when, after I'd attempted a particularly difficult French phrase (perhaps a variant of "Voluez-vous touchez mon petit homme?"), one of them told me I spoke French well. Assuming she was taking the piss (see first comment) I turned to my colleague and quietly muttered "Sarcastic bitch". I was pretty sure she couldn't hear me. I was very sure she wouldn't understand "sarcastic bitch". I ask you, at what point in learning a foreign langauge do those two words appear? I've just checked my GCSE French books and I'm quite certain neither are there. I dare say you could do A-level French without learning them too (especially these days when all you have to do is draw the Eiffel Tower and eat a croissant.) As you may have guessed they were fully aware what a sarcastic bitch was and took it with all the good humour you would expect from the French (see first comment). And we found we had little in the way of abuse to hurl at them once things went pear-shaped. In fact the best we could mange was "Vous etes poubelles" which I was assured meant "You are dustbins". It wasn't my most destructive comment ever.

However Ewok had saved the best comment of the holiday to the last possible moment. As we dropped him off at his home, he wondered out loud "Who's that strange man in my house? Oh, hang on, that's not my house."

Appendix (new term): A Sausage Dog Moment = Randomly thinking of something that was said between 3 and 6 hours earlier, realising how funny it was and laughing so hard it ruptures internal organs.

Postscript: I just looked up "poubelles". We were calling them pretty lice.

* Because on that day the individual in question had gone shopping then watched tv.