I’ve been packing up this evening as I head home tomorrow via London for a week of home cooking, Edinburgh weather and much emotional hugging. Plus my birthday... Impossible to express through a keyboard my joy at heading home so you’ll just have to make do.
This is also an appropriate time to step back and evaluate the last 3 months. Crikey, 3 months. In many ways I see this as the end of Part 1 of the Parisian adventure. From feeling horribly like an outsider not welcome who had lost his rugby mojo somewhere near Geneva and for whom the very idea of a rugby ball filled me with dread, I now feel like a valued member of the team, a well known face around the club and, in many ways, a bit of a Paris local. Where once I felt very uncomfortable here, I now am the opposite. This is maybe down to a change of mindset from being very uptight and becoming fixated on details to relaxing, shrugging my shoulders and, God forbid, acting a little French.
Rugbywise, this shift can be represented by the slipping of my socks, once firmly under the knee, to somewhere round the ankles. I’ve played 5 matches against Brive, Massy, Oyonnax, Dijon and Bobigny. There have been some very tough times – in the heat of a match and also post-match. The long train journey back from Oyonnax was a dark time when I questioned an awful lot whereas the baptism of fire in Brive was an occasion I revelled in. I am really enjoying the opportunity to get fit with the one-on-one help of a highly motivated and engaging fitness trainer who has the gift that all good coaches have: perspective. In fact, that’s probably something I’ve gained and perhaps it’s easy to see what I mean.
The vast improvement in my play was never something that was to come in the first few matches. Playing 10 with a new team is tough enough but when I don’t understand what my scrum-half or 12 are saying it becomes a very lonely place. So, my standards have been relaxed. It’s impossible to boss a match out here in the same manner I strutted around New Field knowing every player inside out, every inch of grass and every wind. But that will come. The trip, nay, the pilgrimage to Clermont-Auvergne on the 5th December is an outstanding date on my calendar. By this time, I hope to be firing.
My language skills are improving every day. Proof of this is the way I managed to hold my own in a hilarious discussion (plus the fact I actually understood the hilarity) about the vagaries of British humour versus French humour. The French love talking about sex, it’s something they’re very comfortable with. No euphemisms, no embarrassment, it’s everywhere from my French classroom to the changing room. They just find it hilarious, and when I reflected on this conversation I felt a surge of pride in the way I took part. That was all, just taking part in a conversation! There’s more here for a later post, I feel, let this just be a taster.
So when I kick a conker through the Luxemburg Gardens in the morning with only the dwindling numbers of early morning tennis players for company, or at lunchtime, with the equally dwindling numbers of tourists, I feel comfortable here. I feel equally comfortable as I juggle microwaveable sausages and an overflowing pot of boiling gnocchi in the kitchen, even if I am sharing it with a flatmate who I haven’t so much as looked at for over a month.
I’m nigh on fully fit, with a fantastic week ahead of me after which I return for matches in Bourgoin, Bressane, Massy and Clermont before Christmas.
“Oh, mon dieux!”
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