On Friday night we went and saw Big Fish, since I pretty much hated the book I wasn’t too thrilled about seeing the movie, but the movie was OK. We had originally gone to the theatre hoping to be able to catch Hidalgo in VO but no luck, I guess we could have seen it in French but I hate to pay what amounts to about $10 per person for a movie I’m not going to understand. The Impaqt crew would say that that’s exactly what we should have done, but that’s a lot of money for something I’m not going to get a lot of and S would get even less out of. So we opted for the only VO movie playing and that was Big Fish.
Then dinner at Le Carpaccio, a favorite restaurant of mine, where I apparently ordered a plate of thinly sliced raw beef with a side of salad and wedges of pizza crust. What I actually ordered was Le Carpaccio de Bœuf, of course not knowing what a ‘carpaccio’ was. I got three plates, one with the beef topped with a pesto sauce, slices of parmesan cheese and olives, one with shredded lettuce and one with wedges of plain pizza crust type bread stuff. If anyone knows how I was supposed to assemble this meal let me know. I ate the raw beef and cheese, nibbled on the bread and ignored the green leafy stuff. All in all it was not bad if eaten with a glass of wine or two.
Next we popped into Killarney’s for a bedtime pint of beer, ok a ½ pint and chatted with the barmaids, Lucy and Colette; two lovely young women (WHO ARE IRISH), both English speakers. A nice French woman hearing us speak English introduced herself as Nicolette (? I think) and her husband Fred. She shared with us – in French – her adventures in the US when she spent a couple of weeks traveling the country by greyhound. She had gone from Miami to Las Vegas and ended back up on the east coast somewhere. She had loved the US and found Americans friendly and able to understand her limited English. Score one point for helpful Americans.
We finished our beers, S had Guinness and I had a Beamish Red, and headed for home.
On Saturday we were meant to be meeting up with Mags back at the pub for the France v. England rugby match. We arrived at the pub around 8ish for the 9pm match. We were only two of four customers in the place at that point but by 8:30 the place was packed. At around 8:45 I got a text message from Mags saying she wasn’t going to make it but that we should enjoy the game. No problem Mags, I was mostly there for the beer anyway.
We had staked out two stools near the door and in front of the bigger of the TV’s. Not knowing a darned thing about rugby the highlight of the evening for me, besides the 3 full pints of beer I drank in the hour before the game started, was when I had to use the bathroom and when the two national anthems were sung.
The bathroom experience was one of those things that tell you you’re not in Kansas anymore. I had spent the day hydrating myself for the evening ahead to try and head of a hangover and so after my first pint my bladder was full and I HAD to go. I asked Lucy where the bathroom was and she pointed to a door at the back of the bar. I opened the door to find another door right behind the first, opened the second door and started to walk in when I noticed a man standing just inside and to the left. He was peeing, and there is apparently no door to the urinal. I quickly backed out the doors and waited for him to exit. When he left I went in and noticed that if I had just passed him by, the women’s bathroom was just up and on the right. Apparently I was showing my American prudishness, what I should have done is just ignore the man and keep going on to my little closet, it’s what any French woman would have done. Ah well, live and learn.
Then we come to the singing of the anthems. First the British anthem was sung on TV, and one lonely man stood up in the bar and sang along loudly, and a bit drunkenly. The French in the bar were respectfully quiet. Then when the French anthem was sung everybody else in the bar stood up and began to sing. It was a very moving moment and I felt a bit left out of the singing.
Once the game started I was pretty much lost, it seemed a bit like football but a whole lot rougher. Someone could get hurt playing this game. All these large men dog piling on each other, no pads, no ‘downs’ to stop the play.
(It reminded me of a game we used to play in elementary school, we called it ‘Smear the Queer’ [I was a young innocent catholic school girl and had no idea the name of the game could be bad OK, all I knew was that that was what the game was called.] Basically jump on the person with the ball and take it away from them.)
Some of those rugby players had thighs bigger around than I am and that’s saying a lot. The game moved quickly though and France opened the scoring with what appeared to be a field goal or something, they got three points for it whatever it was. Then France scored again, a ‘goal’ this time, if that’s what you call it, which gave them an additional five points. The noise level in the bar began to rise considerably.
Shortly after that we headed home. Why? Because people in bars smoke like fiends and the French doubly so. My eyes were starting to tear up from the smoke and I was starting to sneeze. When I looked at S his eyes were getting red too; it was time to go. Final score ended up being something like 24 to 21 for France.
Today is a milestone in the Missy in France Blog. I keep my Blog as a word document. I add each new post to this document so I have a copy of it and then post on line from there. Today’s post began on page 100 of this document and that’s page 100 of a document that is typed single spaced and with only ½ inch margins all the way around. Who knew I could write so much.
