And it's no, nay, never, No nay never no more, Will I play the wild rover No never no more.

These evening trips to team training provide some of the more surreal moments. This evening was no different. I was in the car (no bus this evening) with my old pal who first brought me to Racing and who organises the Crabos and recruitment in general. We had been driving around 20 minutes, discussing mainly Scottish rugby, our amazing national ability to keep hold of the ball (and do nothing with it, I retorted), and difficulties in numbers (around 40,000 in Scotland compared with 20,000 in the Paris area alone). After we had exhausted all chat possibilities we went rummaging through his cd collection and with great excitement, my driver insisted I find his cd of Irish folk songs.

Eventually it was found, ‘Irish Pub Songs’, and this kept us more than occupied for the rest of the journey there and back as well. Before we knew it we were belting out ‘The Wild Rover’, with myself singing more of the actual words, though only just. Singing about the River Liffey while literally driving along the banks of the Seine was quite extraordinary, as was my chauffeur’s knowledge of the tunes, he had every little fiddle solo par coeur. He was clearly very touched by this music, I thought it was nice to just sing-a-long like we were in some Limerick pub. At one point, while mentioning his lack of words, he pointed out that one song was clearly very heartfelt and full of folklore and history and pride. I didn’t tell him it was about some cheeky goings on down by the Liffey with some maiden’s skirt.

If ever my ancestors try to find me, they would do well to look in the French census records, as of last night, I am on them! A woman came to the door and handed me lots of sheets and said she would be round tomorrow evening to pick them up. She was gone by the time I was starting to make my excuses. So I battled through these forms. “Anniversaire...can do that, sexe, can tick male, nationalité, yep” and that is about as far as I got. There were individual forms and a flat one. I haven’t the slightest idea how our flat is heated, the size of the rooms and all sorts of things like that. There are so many blanks and bits scored out and written again that I am awaiting a knock on the door from the Police and my imminent arrest for contempt of the Republic.