To Europe and Beyond #6: Calais, France - Calais, France

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So it came to pass that after my skin-stripping exploits in 'Crepe-land' (and subsequent reflection upon my schizophrenic laughing fit) I, a disconsolate fuckwit of an individual, began to view this whole spiritual epiphany through vastly different eyes.

I was tired, both emotionally and physically and confused to the point of madness by the waves of pain washing over my crimson-red chin. I had a shit-coloured goatee beard, and eyes which had begun to purport all kinds of weird shit to my steaming brain and from all of this I suddenly began to wonder just what in the seventh plane of hell I was actually doing.

I mean, where the hell was I and what kind of shape was I actually in?

A long, long way from home and on very dangerous psychological ground, that much was for sure.

I had a sudden urge to be back in a land that I knew, to crawl back to my bed and only come out when the sun began to grow cold and fall from the skies, to run back to my dear old 'mummy' and have her stroke my hair until this all went so very far away.

I wanted normality back. Maybe breaking free from the shackles of regime was an area forever denied to one who had become so indoctrinated into the minutiae and the games of accepted society.

I wanted my job and my office back, and all that went along with it.

I wanted my large breasted secretary, my mid-morning cup of tea and my lightly buttered scone. I wanted my comfortably arse-shaped e-z chair and the familiarity of my computer screen and my perpetually ringing telephone. I wanted my heavy workload back and I wanted to be freed from the search from freedom.

Suddenly I was very aware of how very alone I felt and, on this journey and on many journeys to follow, it would not be the last time.

Huge towers of doubt began growing on the previously peaceful, organic landscape.

Maybe I had grown too old for all of this shit, too long in the tooth for all this upheaval and change. Maybe I was too inflexible and too comfortable with my own set of peculiarities, neuroses and habits to be able to reinvent or re-find myself.

Maybe the life I had found myself in had been the life that I had been tailored or designed for.

'You can't teach an old dog new tricks, old son', I said to myself in a tone of utter despair, fully realising the implications of the old proverb.

Then, once again the victim of the most monumental mood swing, I heard a voice inside me say,

'Maybe not, you miserable little shit, but how many times have you seen an old dog summon up enough strength and vigour to rip off a man's balls with one good clamping of its slavering jaws'.

Perhaps it was just the tiredness that was whacking me out and disabling me from keeping one line of thought or one mood for more than ten seconds.

I mean, my excited departure and the following journey had seen me accumulate less than five hours sleep in the last three days.

Perhaps a good old feast (no more crepes though) and a solid 12 hours of fluffy pillowed oblivion would set me back on an even keel.

Jesus, that was it, I needed to regulate the flow of thoughts to my brain by amusing my rapidly diminishing intellect in other, less feverish pastimes such as stuffing myself stupid and sleeping the black sleep of the dead.

So, sighing, and even more wearied by this latest game of emotional ping-pong I return you to my original train of thought as I headed back to my vehicle in search of a food substance far less perilous than a crepe so hot you have to measure its temperature in Kelvin rather than Fahrenheit.

I had trudged perhaps half a mile when my nose found itself hijacked by that bastion of everything that is good and proper about France: the French Bakery. Subtle traces of fresh, crusty bread mingled with the lip-dribbling essence of dreamy cream delicacies eased themselves into my nasal cavity and made their delightful way to my stomach. In moments I had the trail marked out with all the skill and dedication of a Cajun tracker dog.

A little bell tinkled to announce my arrival as I entered the aforementioned heaven-sent bakery, and moments later I emerged, after the kind of peculiar conversation only available to a raving mad Englishman and a confused (and more than a little frightened) middle aged Frenchwoman, 80 francs lighter, with a veritable Santa's sack of goodies slung lightly over my shoulder.

I whistled a happy little ditty as I eventually found my car, and within minutes I began my feast.

In moments, the seats and dashboard of my Citroen AX became thick with a lustrous snowfall of bread flakes and blizzards of pure icing sugar as I ate and ate and ate and then ate some more. I ate until my stomach felt full, then I ate until my legs felt full, until my ears felt full and then until my eyes felt full and began to seep pure custard down my chubby little cheeks.

I ate more in that glorious hour than I had in the last week, perhaps even the last month.

The cross-cut batard was the first one to bite the dust, lightly smeared with a sachet of butter before being torn apart my keen incisors.

Next, the crusty buns, delicately flavoured with cheese, fell prey to the slavering black hole that had replaced my mouth, followed shortly after by piccolo rolls and a delightful, mustard-flavoured loaf.

After this, feeling the need for a hideous sugar rush, the chocolate croissant and the butter croissant bit the dust before I ended my croissant crusade with a heavenly blueberry-filled dream.

And now that the bread was out of the way I began to focus my efforts upon the kilo of assorted profiteroles, scooping them down my eager throat with all the inherent ability for gluttony of an American kid at fat camp.

Eventually I leant back away from the steering wheel (now pressing heavily into my swollen and bubbling gut), sighed wearily and (as you do in situations like this) realised that there were two options open to me at this particular time.

1. I could pass out and be found dead in the morning after either being robbed and stabbed by Gallic thieves or from chocolate- and carbohydrate-fuelled heart failure, or

2. I could lug my fat arse to the nearest accommodation and sleep until my denim flares came back into fashion.

I had no real desire to be separated from my belongings by a man named Francoise with a cruel knife in his hands and the glint of the devil in his eyes so, with some difficulty, I reached across the beach ball my stomach had become, started my vehicle and went in search of a decent place to lay my sleepy head.

Anywhere would do really, I was so whacked that I wasn't fussy. I was so tired and so listless from my feast that I would gladly have slid inside the moulding carcass of a bison if it contained a mattress, a duvet and a set of fluffy pillows.

As it turned out, the hotel that I eventually lumbered upon (after repeatedly attempting to kill myself under the British assertion that it was those damn French lunatics and certainly not I who were driving on the wrong side of the road) was not of a distinctly higher quality than the aforementioned rotting bison carcass, but at this point I was so tired that I was seeing stars and I knew that pretty soon I would be talking in tongues and professing a vehement belief in the value of worshipping Satan.

But, not to be put off by the strong smell of 4-year-old corned beef and sour custard (hell, after all, I wasn't exactly gleaming white myself, and the smell could very well be coming from me), and ignoring the fact that the manager kept farting while I was talking to him (which, in fact, probably was where the foul odour was coming from) I threw a handful of notes at him and barrelled on up the stairs.

I booted open the door, failed to register a blood stain on the none-too-clean top-sheet and a damp patch on the ceiling which was spreading even as I looked at it, dropped my bags and slumped onto the bed.

A clock which looked old enough to have been acquired from a car-boot sale held by Noah after he decided he no longer needed his Ark informed me that it was a little after 9pm – and that was the last fact I registered for 13 hours.

I was asleep in moments and I did not dream. I merely passed into darkness, too tired to care what happened to my earthly body, too tired to care about anything at all.

If I awoke, fine, if I didn't, fine. I had a bed and a sheet and that was all I cared about.

After years of subconscious misery, after day upon day of hidden and unheard dissatisfaction, after weeks of joyless monotony... my trip was finally ready to begin.

I was on the road, and that was just where I should be.

The cat was out of the bag. The tiger was out of the cage. The phoenix of my former, fun-loving, excited and excitable self had finally ceased to smoulder, looked at itself in the mirror, had a shave, brushed its teeth, put on its disco pants, raised a two-fingered salute to the rest of the world and finally rose from the ashes of conformity and self and social restraint.

And this time there was no going back.

The road beckoned me. The Sweet Lady of Freedom had bared her breasts, parted her legs and was inviting me to hop on and hammer away for all I was worth.

Well Sweet Lady, I've only got one thing to say to you, and that's get ready for one hell of a ride you crazy bitch because when I get up to speed, you'll think you've got a fucking tornado between your thighs!

I awoke feeling fresh and alive and full of the joys of a brand new spring.

My body felt supple and energetic, my mind was awhirl with a myriad of possibilities and a tsunami of hope and, after a breakfast consisting of a granite-hard chunk of bread and an apple of an entirely new shade of brown, I decided that I would get down to the real core of my trip, ostensibly to see as much of Europe as possible in the time available.

I had spent enough time floundering in the undercurrents of self-doubt and self-analysis; now it was high time I actually began to see what the world was going to show me.

Immediately upon exiting the 'Pit of Hell' Hotel (* the precise name of the hotel has been left out upon the insistence of my agent after he recently found himself being sued for defamation of character following the production of a particularly politically charged radio play of mine) I realised that there was little else to keep me in Calais, so I made the decision to get out of dodge as quickly as possible.

I was going to head south, that much I was certain of. It was a fine day and as I've always had a certain affinity for the lapping shores of any given stretch of coastline, I made the immediate decision to head to Boulogne and see what kind of trouble I could get up to down there.


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