This grand tour of mine is not being frittered away on dramas concerning body hair and chips, no no. As I mentioned in my previous post, I like to read on holidays. So far, I have been doing so with some success.
Among the literary line up was Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, which I got really very excited about. It reminded me of how rarely one gets the chance to read a clever and funny – laugh out loud funny – book. Once you start studying books in college, the hilarity content of one’s reading tends to dip sharply. All you can usually manage are gasps and snorts of incredulity – “He gets his sight back after holding a baby!” “He gets pushed down a well, crawls out of it, lets everyone believe he’s dead, flees to Australia, only to return some years later to discover his wife is a bigamist!” “Oh Don Juan, what are you doing in that harem!” – along with the occasional wry chuckle at Austen, or Rushdie, before the hero turns into a mute and starts wandering around the jungle having dreams.
Lucky Jim though, well Lucky Jim is laugh-like-you’re-a-bit-special funny. This chap agrees with me, and he gives examples. As for myself, well, I just wish Bill Atkinson was my best friend – when you read it, you’ll understand.
Like any good world traveller, I have been learning many life lessons on my summer holidays. As I am no longer in primary school, and have thus been cheated out of the chance to write a comprehensive essay on said life experiences and lessons this September, I will transcribe two of the most important of these lessons here.
Lesson Number 1: Do not ever take library books on holiday.
If one was to follow a trail throughout the charming villas of the picturesque and rustic regions of Italy and France, one would undoubtably find oneself shadowed by a series of half read books for children and young adults belonging to Roscommon County Library. Back then, my forgetfulness was punished simply by parental disapproval and literary disappointment that I would never find out the ending of The Mermaid Factory . However. Having missed the warning e-mails from Trinity College Library (which come under the somewhat unsettling title of ‘A Gentle Reminder From The Library’), I just had to pay twenty flipping euro to post Kate O Brien’s The Land Of Spices back to a friend of mine, with another flipping twenty euro tucked neatly in its pages to pay the overdue fine. If paying forty euro for a five year old paperback edition of The Land Of Spices doesn’t teach me a sound lesson about bringing the property of libraries abroad, I don’t know what will. Also, I had been really looking forward to reading it.
Lesson Number 2: When In Doubt, Always Order The Steak.
When in Paris yesterday, my young man and I, loathe to spend unnecessary money on public transport, walked halfway across the city to go to Chartiers, a restaraunt recommended by a cousin of mine. We got lost. I got cranky. We asked some confused elderly French people, a move which eventually bore fruit. We finally arrived at three o’ clock, which is not a sensible time to be rolling up for dinner at in this country. The place seemed a shade too ‘authentically Parisian’, overdoing it somewhat on the belle èpoque funishings. There were pigeons walking and flapping about the place, which I didn’t mind, but perturbed the young man deeply. Within this cavernous eatery there were about fifteen people still dining, none of whom were authentically Parisian, and most of whom had fanny packs. Sweaty and sulky, we turn our attention to the menus.
I had been having dreams about steak and chips since my cousin had told me about this place. I can’t remember if he said whether they were particularly good, but he mentioned them, which is enough, really, to get me quite worked up. However, my outward crankiness must have turned in against myself because I allowed my eye to be caught by the Poissons. Those damn fish get me self doubting every time. I certainly didn’t want to be fat as well as hairy in Paris, so if I only got one of the components of steak frites, and then a lovely piece of lemon sole, well, I’ve practically burned calories. So lemon sole with chips it is then. Only it’s not. Somehow, my French is so poor that when I say “pommes frites” it sounds exactly like “haricots verts”. When my terrified looking fish (I could tell, he still had his head on) arrived, he was accompanied by half a plate of sad looking green beans. Which I thought just came with it, until halfway through the meal I was still chip-less and too hungry and tired to do anything about it.
It didn’t help that the food tasted suspiciously reheated, but so disappointed were we (The young man recieved a chicken fermier that I think I may have seen before being served in Mother Hubbard’s on the way back from a school tour circa 1996) that we had to return back to our quarters for some chocolate flavoured Petit Filous. Which would not have happened if I had gotten the steak.
The End.
Lord Byron's Pistol Club 