Well, I’ve had better days. That seems the best way to start off an account of a day which started badly, got steadily worse and was only saved by a bit of rugby, though even that was in some horrible rain so I’m not going overboard about the rugby.
Started off alright, would rather have not slept through my alarm – or in fact, got up, turned it off and fallen asleep again – but I can deal with that. Just had to shower and get out the house. A half-eaten packet of digestive biscuits doesn’t constitute my normal breakfast but hey-ho. It was Friday, I was knackered after a tough week.
I was also receiving my long overdue transport card that afternoon from the club. My last one had expired and I had been getting by with bought tickets and chancing my arm. Given I was already late I couldn’t be bothered standing at the machine and buying a ticket. I hadn’t for most of the week, and due to the odd open door/gate and some commuters teamwork I had managed to get through the whole transport system and pop out at the Boulevard Raspail with no ticket. How very Parisian.
And so typically, when I arrive at Denfert Rocherau to change from my suburban railway onto the metro (requiring the validation of a ticket), it’s crawling with RATP employees, with one big chap strategically placed by the door that many commuters just pile through ‘unvalidated’. There was tension in the air. I had to think, and fast. I knew I didn’t have a valid ticket, and watching some old chap getting hauled back after his ticket failed and a subsequent attempt at legging the barrier didn’t fill me with confidence. I pulled an old ticket from my grubby pocket, put it in and received a loud negative sounding beep and a red light.
A woman came over and took my ticket, asked me something, I explained it didn’t work. She knew this already. We were discussing my issue in French, asking me questions about how I had got this far with this ticket which she knew had been used on Monday...I was caught out. So I did what any Brit abroad would do and played the dumb foreigner. She was having none of it. 40 Euro fine – bang. I was having none of this. I started to check the exits, maybe I could leg it back onto the train and get off somewhere on the sly. I had momentary visions of a Paris wide manhunt, me versus the RATP, hiding in baggage compartments as staff were mobilised at every station.
But I didn’t have the cojones so got my wallet out instead. Though I still had one last throw of the dice. Normally I would be ashamed to say something like this but was I heck paying 40 euros to this woman. I played the Racing Metro card, went all out, emphasising the word ‘metro’. It worked. For today, she reduced it to 25 euros. What a lovely woman you are, nice to see some solidarity between the transport workers and the club...yeah yeah whatever.
So this, combined with problems on the metro that I eventually got on made me half an hour late. When I eventually arrived, getting 15/20 in my phonetics test was not enough to lift me from my gloom.
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