The variety of shops here is quite astounding.

It takes you back to a time when a high street was a myriad of individual enterprises offering specialist wares.

For that reason one ends up wandering down the many of the pleasant streets, gawping at what’s on offer and then realise you are miles away from home and refreshingly there are hardly any pound shops and best of all not one charity shop in sight. 

What a refreshing change. 

They were a bit up-themselves in this shop

Yesterday I went past two wig shops, a specialist pump shop, and an aquarium decoration shop just to mention a few.  There are so many restaurants here and all of them had people in eating away and it’s only a Wednesday!

Again, I thought to myself, no crisis here.

The search continues today for a rugby club with a vet’s team. You would have thought that there would be e plethora of clubs but this is not the case.

I have another meeting with my bank manager tomorrow where I am going to discuss banking or am I just using that an as excuse to see the lovely Jennifer.  

I popped in to pick up my new cashpoint card that I received yesterday and told her in passing that she was the spitting image of Natalie Portman however from her reaction; I think something got lost in translation.

What was said                                                                      What was understood

Me: “Bonjour”                                                                                  Hello

JF:    “Bonjour”                                                                                   Hello

Me: “You remind me of Natalie Portman”                You look like Nigel Spackman

JF “What, the ex- Liverpool and Chelsea midfielder?”    Thank you very much

Me:  “Au revoir”                                                                               Goodbye

JF:     “Piss off”                                                                                     Good bye

I skipped out of the bank, a job well done.

Last night’s street pickings were a little thin unless you wanted cardboard boxes or a few pallets you were out of luck. Maybe it’s just Tuesday nights. I will be ready.

Instead I wandered through the local neighbourhoods trying to get a feel as to what areas are safe at night and which ones aren’t. Most seem pretty ok around the centre. There are understandably a lot of North Africans, they seem to be the majority of non-French in the city but generally all was ok albeit it was only 10:30pm. Maybe at around 4am it’s a different story.

I passed one restaurant with tables outside and a Jazz type band on the terrace and they even had a dancer entertaining the punters. Well it was only when I passed the ‘dancer’ that I realised that he wasn’t with the band at all, just a pissed up bloke prancing about like only a pissed up bloke can do.

He couldn’t dance like that if he was sober and his life depended on it I thought.

Natalie Portman in the Black Swan