Dag 907: Paris on principle

There seems to be a new craze in the town of blogland at the moment and that is posting stories about trips to Paris. Any blog worth its salt is currently beguiling us with tales of bravery, resolve and triumph in the face of adversity from Paris. I'm not going to let the fact that I haven't been on any recent trips to Paris stop me from getting with the program. So here is the story of my school trip to Paris from arouand 1980 (give or take a year or so). No names or places have been changed to protect the innocent.

I was about 16 or 17 at the time and the night before we were due to set off for Paris I went to a disco at St John Fishers School in Harrogate. I have no idea how I came to be going to it as I didn't know anyone at that school (or it’s sister school St Aidens). I also can't remember who I went with, but I do remember that during the disco a girl called Harriet came up to talk to me and we ended up dancing together until the disco ended (so I probably didn’t spend much time with the person I went with – sorry).

I asked if she wanted to see me again when I got back from Paris and she said she did, so suddenly I wasn't as excited about going on the trip as I had been the day before.

I can't remember which airport we flew from, but it was probably Leeds/Bradford and I do remember that we landed at Charles De Gaul airport in Paris. I was a bit of a hippy back in those days and quite liked a band called Gong who had a number of French band members so I had already convinced myself that I would be bound to able to find a shop that had some Gong bootlegs in stock – there’s nothing like setting your expectations ridiculously high before a trip somewhere is there?

We collected ourselves and our bags together at the airport and piled onto a couch that would take us to our hotel. Once we got there I remember that it seemed more like a block of apartments than a hotel. The room I was assigned to was actually 2 rooms (you had to go through one to get to the other) and the first room had 2 single beds and the second room had 1 double bed. The bedding didn't match on any of the beds and the furniture looked like it had been bought from a junk shop. There were 4 of us in these 2 rooms so we decided to have a rota system so each of us only had to share the double bed once (or something - I can't actually remember how many days the trip was for).

From here on it all gets a little hazy. I can't remember the exact order that any of these things happened, but they all did happen, so I will list them in no particular order. No doubt other things happened too, but I either can’t remember them or don’t want to remember them.

We had a trip to the Palace of Versailles. I had a song by John Cale called “The Hall of Mirrors In The Palace At Versailles” so I was a bit more interested about this trip than I would otherwise have been, but not much. I seem to remember having a hot drink in some café somewhere as part of this trip and it may have been raining.

We went on a trip to some church that was up a hill and the roads were cobbled. I bought a hot dog in a French stick with mustard on it. It was the first time I had eaten one of those things and I enjoyed it very much.

On one of the coach trips the coach took us through the main red light district. We were all fascinated and gawped at all the prostitutes.

There was a group of girls from a school in Bath staying at our hotel. We got friendly with them and I got friendly with a girl called Daphne who had a big jumper with a banana on it (like the Velvet Underground album cover) that her Gran had knitted for her. I remember she slept in our room on the last night and I let her sleep in my bed while I slept on the floor - I hadn't forgotten that I was meant to be seeing the girl from the disco again once I got back home and wasn’t about to be unfaithful to a girl I wasn’t yet going out with.

Me when I was a bit of a hippy in Paris

We went to the Pompidomp Centre and there were various buskers and street acts going on outside, which I found pretty cool. I saw a French hippy with a really nice multi-coloured striped hat on and I tried to ask him where he got it from, because I wanted one just like that, but he couldn't speak English and I couldn’t say much in French so I had to give up none the wiser.

We wanted to get some booze to drink in our hotel room one night so I went out and successfully procured a small bottle of Pernod in my best French (which wasn’t saying very much). I then tried to by a bottle of Lemonade and could only manage "Je voudrai un boitaille de lemonade pour to take out" which just brought me a blank stare. I can't remember what we ended up drinking with the Pernod.

The Hotel didn't do food at night, but it did do breakfast (as far as I remember). All our other meals were eaten at the Moulin Rouge restaurant and we paid with vouchers we had been given when we checked into the hotel.

One night I was looking in a shop window and I noticed a man dressed as a cowboy standing next to me. He had very tight jeans on and he had something that looked like it may have been a truncheon inside the jeans going down one leg almost as far as his knee. I was pretty sure it must have been a truncheon – I certainly wasn’t about to hang around to find out.

A couple of guys went into a strip club and got fleeced by being made to buy an extortionately priced drink each and to make matters worse they reported that the stage was empty for the whole time they were in there.

By the end of the trip I felt pretty pleased with myself because I had learned all I needed to know about buying and using underground tickets in Paris.

That is about all I remember apart from the fact that I didn't manage to find a shop selling Gong bootlegs, but I did find and buy a couple of official Gong albums that I didn't already have.

Dag 899: What level of standby do you use?

A few weeks ago I was listening to radio 4 on my way into work.
It was the Today Show and they were discussing how bad it was to keep your electrical goods (such as televisions and DVD players) on standby mode when not in use. There was an expert being interviewed who was basically saying you must always turn everything off fully and never leave them on standby because it is much better for the environment.
The presenter asked her what you should do if you have an item that loses its memory settings when it is switched right off.
The expert replied that in such cases it is ok to leave the item on standby, but make sure it is on a very very low level of standby.

I don't know about you, but none of my electrical items have levels of standby, as far as I know. Maybe they do but I just haven't found the setting switch yet. Maybe all my electrical stuff is set with its standby level to ultra high so that they actually use more electricity when they are on standby than they do when they are switched on.

My advice to you is to go round and turn down all you standby levels to the minimum possible value.