We're Living on Dog Food … So what?

So, we've spent the last 4 or 5 days indulging ourselves in a 'French Experience', in quite a variety of ways. It's the country, when all's tallied up, that we will spend the most time in - some 2 weeks - hence worthy of our serious investigation, intrepid explorers we….

First came Paris. A seething beautiful mess of a city, we were all struck by its very visible and chaotic  charms. Our initial concerns as to the impossibility of parking the Mobile Ape Tank were soon allayed by some local help (after James and Alex had spent 3 or so hours trawling carparks that it wouldn't fit into) and we scored a semi-legal perch a minute from our hotel digs.

The show at La Feline - a funky little street-level grotto of a bar, evidently decorated by someone with a major foot fetish, no complaints here - was the scene of probably our favourite show to date. The small but packed house took kindly to our sonic indulgences and we later conjoined to spill out onto the street outside for an animated, and somewhat difficult to retrieve, night of jibberjabber and some excellent swamp rock DJing courtesy of Dimi Dero.

Mention must be made of a certain barmaid - tall, slender, exotic,with incredibly alluring eyes - she was the vision splendid of some collective idea of what a Parisienne femme fatale could be like. As we also gleaned that she was probably the girlfriend of the lovely and gangster-like owner of the establishment, Pat, we bashfully accepted our drinks from her, numbed by her barside allure, and put that one in the bank.

We stayed at a cool little hotel in an area called Menilmontmartre; lots of Algerians, Islamic garb, pigeon shit, boulevards, the cemetery housing the Lizard King (oh, yes, the loyal legions of stoned anarchist poets were there, along with aged American tourists), grubby and fascinating at every turn. We quickly got lost only to discover the first half-decent Asian food we'd seen in aeons, and promptly wolfed down noodle soup delights, dosed up with beaucoup amounts of chilli goodness. Pure satisfaction. Heads up to the local Algerian cuisine, our random stabs at the menu proving strange but delicious.

Alex and James, au contraire, are much more sophisticated and rarefied apes, and for reasons the rest of us found hard to grasp, being in Paris, decide to eat French food (!!!) only to then feel compelled to lord their superior grasp of gastronomy over us. We have far to go, evidently.

So, we left Paris for a few days in the tranquil French countryside. One of Alex's oldest friends, Jim, and his wife, Genevieve, have generously had the mob of us as guests in their quaint little 300-year old, ramshackle, but supercool, cottage, nestled by a river some 300kms from Paris. The exchange was that we chop down a 12 metre tree smack bang in the middle of their tiny courtyard. Operation Koala, as it was soon named, saw soundguy Ren doing ninja moves around the upper reaches with hand saws (oh no, no chainsaws for us…) for most of the day as the rest of us noble engineers directed from below (read: yelled contradictory commands to the poor guy) We got it down after many hours of labour and our passage here was paid.

This small window of solid R&R before our soon-to-kick-in-mental-schedule has been proving to be a godsend. Relaxing to home cooking, playing guitar, listening to Jacques Brel cassettes, swimming in the frigid river, riding bikes along the riverside trails, sampling the superb local Anjou variety of plonk rouge, followed by the evening rabble of 7 Australian guys (and one rather loud and passionate Frenchwoman) getting stuck into the raucous art of 'cultural exchange'. Alex has been fondly returning to his native habitat of soft cheese, fresh-baked French loaves, and a variety of delicious locally-made pate-like substances that resemble large slices of Chum/Spam/offal-loaf. Invariably failing to bother with the correct name of this meaty gear, it has been labelled 'dog food' and we can't get enough of it.

James saw fit to entertain some of the locals last night, playing an ambient show in the small square outside the village's sole restaurant. In the gorgeous warm evening we collectively felt most blessed to have this wonderful opportunity to enjoy this beautiful place and time. Then we proceeded to get smashed (aided and abetted by the local restauranteur's supply of chocolate-like hashish) and keep the entire village awake with our loud heathen banter. C'est la vie.

I've discovered a supply of French graphic novels here in the cottage - surrealist cosmic sci-fi brilliance by Jodorowsky and Moebius (these guys invented the modern graphic novel, hands down) and have been working up my high-school French spending hours deciphering these excellent pieces of pop literature. I hope that these lessons prove useful with chatting up French women at some future point.

I sit here writing this missive in the cottage's courtyard, surrounded by approximately 15 loads of was he male clothes, trying desperately to dry in the cool sun before it is stuffed into the stinkbag for god know how many more weeks. This is no laughing matter, we will all breathe easier, literally, from these efforts; the small washing machine here has not stopped grinding the crap from our undies etc for the last 48 hours. If one could feel sorry for a non-sentient machine-box, this particular machine should be it.

A bientot.