My final day at the call center was strange – on returning from my exit interview I discovered my team had laid on a French buffet of cheese and Freddos, painted their faces with moustaches and tricholores, and were wearing berrets next to a banner which read “Bon Voyage Tom.” The afternoon was spent on and off the phones, and on returning home I drank the wine they’d kindly bought me and fell into a deep sleep. After visiting the Hodges grandparents I embarked upon my seccond trip to Shakespeare and Co.

*****

I can tell I’m now in France. Writing this on the megabus, even the clouds look French – they hang low like lazy loushe French clouds that’ve sat for Mannet and Monnet and now decedantly condecening over the French landscape: one part cirocumulous to two parts Gallouise Rouge. The fields are French too – all green and brown like biscuit box lids depicting thhe Brittish countryside in the 1950’s before it became dissilusioned and dull. You remember those field biscuits dont you? The trees are the Frenchest of the lot. Never seen such a fucking arrogant larch in my life – they posture like arborial waiters with the bill.

Yet another silly blog entry from your correspondant in the field, and soon the city, we must soon discover what has changed in Paris since my last soujourn to Shakespeare and Co. But wait a minute – I cant flash forward (not without upsetting the gendarme) so before I arrive and tell you all about that, I’m going to employ that most nostalgic of litterary conceits: the flashback.

I remember it as though it were only yesterday when I boarded the Megabus in Edinburgh at 10.45. It was only yesterday but feels like another life. In a warzone. Dadda had very kindly driven me into town and was kind enough not to observe how vauge I was about how to get to the bus station, contenting himself with ranting about it perenial point of peevishness: the Edinburgh trams.

I bid him farewell before boarding the worst megabus I have yet embarked (and thank fuck subsequently departed) upon/from. The syntax of that sentence rather got away from me, but I think I clawed it back. So, instead of a normal Megabus this one was rented by Megabus from another company. I suspect that company specialized in transporting livestock. The seats were smaller, harder, and more cramped than even the usual low MB standards, they’d packed the coach completely full, and the arseholes in front of me decided to recline their heads into my face. Swelteringly hot I sweated for eight hours in this portable black hole of Calcutta before eventualy falling out of the bus and into a cafe at around 7.30. Revitalised I returned to the station to pick up the bus I am on at the moment (because I am a very strong man and like to show off), by conrast a very comfortable and spacious bus with about four or five spare seats. One of them is next to me because I put my headphones in and pretended to be asleep. I deserved the luxury.

It is peculiar to say the least to drive down a platform and onto a train. I felt like a matchbox toy, and owing to the complete lack of windows we might as well have been traveling by Tardis. All I experianced was the bus rocking around for apparently no reason before driving off again. I don’t think I made the experience less eerie by choosing Led Zep IV as the soundtrack.

And so we come back to the Frenchness of France, the orriginal point ofthis little essay. Except we now have to do the flashforward which will involve me waiting for more stuff to happen as I count down the kilometers reminding myself that like the currency over here the numbers are bigger than in the UK. Two things I write best are Frenchness and structure.

On arriving at the shop I met Alice, Milly, Jethro and Larissa. Alas after my 36 hour ordeal I wasn’t massively coherent. I had a shower in the new tumbleweed shower and emerged semi-naked into the studio to discover all the new tumbleweeds. A good start I felt. New tumbleweeds are: Hannah, Holly, Sam and Nathan. They’ve been writing pornography and read some out to me. Grand Prelats was as lovely as ever and a dossed down in the children’s section a happy man. I’m back, I’m here, life is good.