France v Scotland (Part 2)
29 September 2007Continued from France v Scotland (Part 1)
The four musketeers arrived timeously at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, checked our bags in and headed for the airport bar. By this point the beers were starting to bag up a little, so Cider and Blackcurrant was the drink of choice.
It was at this point that myself and The King Of Bebo noticed we had not checked in our kilt pins. Although we don’t normally look like terror suspects, we were by now on around our 8th drink, unwashed, unshaven and talking in a slurred, drunken language that did not quite sound like English. After a quick confab, The King of Bebo had the ingenious plan to attach our kilt pins to our sporran chains, so they looked like part of the decoration.
The worrying this is it worked perfectly and we waltzed through security with 2 potential stabbing weapons. They did take great care to make sure there wasn’t a bomb in my shoes though. For the record, there wasn’t.
Another drink on the other side of security and it was time to board the plane. We were in boarding group B (how on earth do you get into group A?) so had to wait till last to board. Classic moment as the girl calling everyone forward checked in thick scouse accent “Is everyone here in group A”. 100 drunken Scotsmen shouted back with perfect comic timing “A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A”. Repeat that in a scouse accent and you will get the joke…
I’m not a massive fan of flying. Well flying I’m OK with, it’s the thought of crashing that scares me really. The King Of Bebo knowing this did his usual “Is that supposed to happen” every 5 minutes throughout the flight. Hillarious. A couple of rounds of warm Heineken are ordered over the 90 minutes or so of flying to steady the nerves and we touch down at Charles De Gaulle in one piece around 10.30 PM.
I have learned from experience on previous Scotland trips that the one thing you should do on arrival is get a taxi straight to your hotel. I still have nightmares about a night spent in Milan wandering aimlessly around till 4 in the morning searching for a street without a map, or a hope. So, some Euros out of the cash machine, a taxi into town and the first chance to practice my Standard Grade conversational French. Sadly the taxi driver does not seem impressed to learn that there is a gorilla in the back garden 
We arrive at our hotel around 11PM, have a quick wash and head straight back out again in search of the nearest pub. The nearest pub obligingly offers itself to us about 50 yards from the front door of our hotel. My round.
“Quatre grandes bières s’il vous plaît”.
“How much!!!!”.
Let me first clarify the type of establishment we were drinking in. This was not your trendy, west end wine bar. No, this was more in the mould of say The Saracen bar, indeed if I screwed up my eyes a little I could have been in Possil. 24 Euros for 4 pints and the barman even had the audacity to leave a little plate for a tip. Welcome to Paris pricing.
We downed the pints and decided to venture out into the main square at Place de Clichy, stopping on the way to pick up a couple of cold beers for the 5 minute walk from a tabac. Well, The King Of Bebo, THYB and myself picked up a beer. Not Bovril. No, Bovril picked up a bottle of wine for the 5 minute walk.
Arriving at Place de Clichy we spotted a bar that was open till 2am and went in to buy some more extortionate beer. THYB and myself got chatting to a group of African guys from the Gabon embassy. Can’t really remember the details of the conversation, but they were top blokes. Oh, and one of them really reminded me of the Ugandan guy from Fonejacker. Fortunately he didn’t ask me for “My bank account details”.
We stayed in the bar untill it shut around 2.20 AM or so and decided to head home as it had been a long day. Bovril however had other ideas and decided to try and pick a fight with a dodgy looking French Algerian bloke. Fortunately I managed to stop him before he followed the guy into the Metro where no doubt he would have met up with some more dodgy looking French Algerian blokes.
Finding our way back to the hotel safely, myself and The King of Bebo decided that the only thing to do after a long days drinking, walking and talking nonsense was to have a fighting/wrestling match (friendly of course). An epic contest ensued with limbs and, as we were kilted, other appendages flying everywhere. All looked lost when The King of Bebo had me in a choke hold, but I managed to escape and fought my way back into the match with a full nelson. After about 20 minutes a rare flash of common sense prevailed and we decided to call it a sporting draw.
And so ended our first night in Paris, tomorrow the day of the game…
