It's a tiring schedule now as all training has been moved to the afternoon. On Wednesday and Friday evenings I don't get back into the flat until 10:30 and then it’s about 11:30 before I get into bed before being up at 7 again! I’m sure it’s something I’ll get used to though. Today I’ve been making full use of my day off: doing all my washing, some shopping, some tidying up, rediscovering what my bedroom floor looks like and so on. This afternoon I headed into Paris to the Auld Alliance Scottish Pub to watch some English rugby and some English football and just generally to just temporarily remove myself from France. Similarly, there are some areas of my life which have remained the same: I still have weetabix and milk for breakfast, I still get through extreme amounts of McVities Digestive biscuits, still listen to Radio 5 Live before falling asleep and can read the Times online. This doesn’t mean I’m rejecting what France has to offer while ensconcing myself in a little British bubble, not at all! In fact, I often smear a crepe with butter and sugar and stick it in the microwave thereby making myself a crepe Sucre. Plus I’m starting to find the loopholes in the metro system, the doors which are always open at each station. As tourists fiddle about with the machines, I slip through like a local. I’m pretty much Parisian.
Tomorrow is an exciting day as it is the first competitive match of the season. The usual Dollar fixture has been replaced for me by one against Oyonnax. You won’t have heard of Oyonnax but it lies 24.5 miles west of Geneva, up in the French Alps. We’re taking a train to Lyon and then a 1 and a half hour bus up through the mountains. I’m fully expecting a windy little road to a lovely alpine village where the rugby is taken very seriously. All the talk this week from my team-mates has been about how Oyonnax will just be looking for fights and how we should expect fights and get stuck into fights. So I’m sure it’ll be an adventure, if a bruising one.
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