The Unity

The marvellous thing about early morning rises is the chance to be abreast of world events and much, much more.

The 3am scream from the boy is nothing new. Neither is the game of musical rooms and beds.

Surprisingly I couldn’t get back to sleep. So from my cushion complex comfort zone on the floor, I listened into BBC World Service.

After a few hours of that I thought it best to start on the day, my birthday.

By the time everyone was up at about 9.15, I had views on the debacle in Pakistan in the wake of the Bhutto assassination and the allegedly rigged polls in Kenya. I’d also absorbed a feature on the ineffectiveness of New Year’s resolutions.

And through surfing the internet I’d managed to find some help on converting tracks from my Itunes library into an MP3 format so they could be transferred onto the MP3 player I’d acquired for my eldest.

I followed the instructions and deposited the 30-odd songs selected by the eight-year old.

What a hip cat.

But as one of the World Service programmes was suggesting the internet and interactivity is changing the rules of modern journalism.

People are blogging. Really?

By the time I’d laid on breakfast for the brood the only thing to do was to retire to bed but then the boy decided to join me and I guess I was back to square one.

The Rethink

I should really be writing this in a cafe in St Germain. But I'm not. I'm in central London.

But the thrust remains the same. I'm looking at the essence of the blog.

Having been allowed to take unpaid leave of absence from my work in London, I'll no longer be travelling between Paris and London on a weekly basis.

I'll be staying in Paris. The reasons for this are quite simple. I'm going to tend the flock while my partner goes to Argentina to work.

The only way to take advantage of a chance like this is for me to take time away. We're not entirely sure when she's going but at least when the moment arrives I'll be prepared.

For a while www. parislondonreturn.blogspot.com won't be an address that accurately portrays the whirligig that I call my life.

Fortunately paul's chateaudeau at least covers me in terms of the Trade Descriptions Act.

And that's important because you need trust. Especially nowadays with social breakdown occurring all around us and our leaders bereft of ideas.

Hang on. The year in review comes in a couple of days. We're still supposed to be full of Christmas cheer.

The Letter

I received a missive today from the Eurostar chief executive, Richard Brown. The idea, it says, is to keep me informed about all the latest developments.

Since the super fast tracks opened, punctuality is at 93.9%. I have to say I don't know if this is better than before since no information is given to me.

So let's assume that 93.9% is better than it ever was. Wow. Good stuff.

There's another part of me which says about time too. Britain joins up with the rest of Europe which has been whirling around in high speed luxury for a while.

The letter then comes onto the thorny subject of the lounge which should have opened a few weeks ago but which has had an array of teething problems as I discovered a few weeks back.

During the reconfiguration we've got an ersatz lounge in the departure hall. This is cordoned off by dark velours curtains and within the domain we've got most of the creature comforts the old lounge at Waterloo had.

I dare say when the St Pancras one is finally revealed to us it will be spectacular. The rest of the station is, if a tad belittling.

Mr Brown says he'll inform us of the opening of the lounge.

I find lots wrong with the new station but I can't fault the PR offensive. It's as slick as the high speed line.

The Kick Inside

Needless to say a semblance of national footballing pride has been restored with Lyon's 3-0 victory at Rangers.

L'Equipe was lyrical on Thursday morning and slapped a picture of Karim Benzema (Lyon's teenage two goal hero) over its front page under the headline: Un pur bonheur.

Well, we all know the similarities between football and sex. And I'm not about to descend into that realm.

The kickabout with Simon on Wednesday night was just what the doctor ordered. In fact just as we left I said it was akin to being really young again. An impromptu game of football with a couple of mates over the common.

As Simon is coming back from six months out with a knee injury, it was a light workout passing the ball with another bloke called Patrick.

To cite one from the array of self-affirming cliches ... restoring confidence ahead of sterner tests ahead.

Simon's wife had an article published in the New York Times today and it seemed linked with the ethos of getting back on the bike.

It's good to know that the state is keen for this kind of re-training. But with the teachers getting ugly and willing to strike over the sizes of classes and working conditions, there's clearly a need to concentrate on what happens before we get round to perpetuating the species.

The Downsize

The advice after falling off a bike is to get back on straight away.

So after the 10-1 thrashing last Saturday morning, the offer to go and play 5-a-side with Simon's team just seems too good. Even if I don't have the appropriate footwear.

After all I don't want to be frightened the next time I go on a pitch for a competitive game. I watched the Marseille v Liverpool slaughter on TV last night.

It was horrible. Horrible. The Marseille boys seemed stricken. Stevie G roused his international Scousers and the rest was slaughter.

Good for them. The main sports paper L'équipe described Marseille's destruction as La Lune dans le caniveau ...the moon in the gutter......I knew this phrase as it was the title of the second film of Jean-Jacques Beineix who shot to fame back in the early 80s with Diva.

During my term at the British Institute in Paris I did a project on Beineix from his time in advertising, via shorts to his feature films.

Le cinéma du look and its flashy abstractions.

Anyway that was long before Beineix was anywhere near Betty Blue and the uberpout that was Béatrice Dalle.

Wednesday's L'équipe has naturally turned it's attention to the Rangers v Lyon match at Ibrox. Lyon need to win to progress to the last 16. Rangers merely need a draw.

I'm going to go and see the second half with Neil over at the usual pub near Chatelet.

That's providing I can literally get on my bike after the 5-a-side kickabout.

The Slaughter

I always get a bad feeling when the opposing team do their warm-up routines across the pitch in a synchronised phalanx.

After all this is supposed to be Saturday morning jollies, not testosterone-fuelled combat.

But when they stripped off their identical tracksuits to reveal their names on their football shirts, the feeling got worse.


When I saw Tito 13, I felt relieved that I was only going to play in the second half.


By the time I spotted Kaiser 9, I was starting to hope that the niggling hamstring might snap me out of having to take part altogether.


I watched from the touchline and it was an even opening 10 mintues. But AS Cheminots scored two quick goals. Even though we pulled one back they increased their advantage soon after and nothing else happened to stem the tide.

I wished that we could have played them three weeks earlier when the cheminots (railway workers) were all on strike and holding the country to ransom.

Perhaps they would have forfeited the game. It seemed that the lay off from actual work had reinvigorated their team and now they were expending their pent up energy on dismantling newly promoted sides.

To use a cliche. We were given a footballing lesson. When I went on in the second-half I started up front but was drafted back into midfield to stem the tide.

But by that time they'd taken their foot off the pedal. It was 9 or 10-1 at the end.

The dressing room was actually quite ebullient after the defeat. Everyone realised that the opposition was just better on all fronts.

The railway workers are planning another round of industrial action starting on December 12. I'm hoping it's going to drag on.

We play AS Cheminots at their place in early January.



The

The Director's Cut

I felt as if I'd been granted a reprieve. Blade Runner — the way the director really wanted it all those years ago — hadn't disappeared from the screen at the Renoir Cinema in Russell Square. So I went to see it.

The last time I saw the film was on the giant screen at La Villette in Paris during the open air summer shows there. That was so long ago I can't remember.

It was altogether cosier in the Renoir on Monday night. But as the credits rolled and I saw the names such as Rutger Hauer and Sean Young, I wondered what had become of them since their halcyon days of 1982.

Daryl Hannah is now a big eco campaigner. I know that as she was featured in one of the British Sunday papers last weekend. Harrison Ford is simply big and Ridley Scott is massive. Indeed the Renoir's programmers can congratulate themselves on harmony. They have Scott's latest work — American Gangster — also showing.

About half way through I began to ask myself why I was sitting there. I don't have the same forensic knowledge of Blade Runner like I do of Star Wars (Episodes 4,5,6) so any extra, extended or deleted scenes would have been lost on me.

I don't even have any of the compromise cuts on DVD. Was I just succumbing to hype?

Well it was entertaining so why not. There's nothing wrong with such intellectual feebleness. This allowed me to take in the Louise Bourgeois at the Tate Modern on Tuesday morning.

This is a big show. Call it a retrospective even. She's 96 and still going strong, experimenting with forms and ideas.

There were so many shapes and concepts to admire but the most salient for me was an etching in ink and pencil from this year entitled: Where my motivation comes from.

And the etching states: "It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive."

Go girl.

The Lust for Life

I'm going to do my utmost to stay injury free because it might extend my life.

I missed Saturday morning's match. I felt I could have played but didn't feel I would have had that devastating turn of pace - so crucial in my angles running game.

As part of my rehabilitation for next week's game I cycled over to the radio station for a day of surveying international sports.

On Canal + Sports they were showing the English Premiership match between Chelsea and West Ham.

It made me angry. Chelsea got rid of Jose Mourinho because he was avowedly no frills. And what I saw on the box was a spectacularly workman like 1-0 victory over a defensively minded team.

I have no reason to return my support.

There was a mass of traffic on the roads in the evening to the point where I had about three close calls as the motorists failed to spot me as they tried to turn right and through the cycle path.

I'm not quite sure why the system is set up this way. Pedestrians are ushered across the road by the green man at the very same time that drivers are urged to turn right. The idea is that cars and motorbikes will give way to pedestrians.

What it often leads to is deluded flair merchants in the cars slaloming through the banks of pedestrians. Very bizarre behaviour.

After the third near catastrophe I realised that I don't usually cycle on a Saturday night during the winter because I'm invariably lugging a bag load of football kit and therefore on the metro.

Sitting out the game meant that there wasn't the agonised gait as I wended my way to the Gare du Nord this morning.

It was fluidity in comparison with last week.

On the Eurostar I finally got round to watching a documentary on Edwyn Collins. It was directed by Paul Tucker, a mate of mine from university, and charted Collins trying to recover his poise and bearing following a stroke two years ago.

It was extremely moving. The shots of all his guitars from his years of performing juxtaposed with him at the physiotherapist trying to unknot his right hand.

Playing the guitar with anything approaching his former aplomb is out of the question for the moment.

But his wife said working on the new album had rekindled is lust for life. He knows what's wrong and won't be told otherwise, she stressed.

"The great news is that you're back to being stubborn," she said to her husband. ... "The great news is he's back to being cussed ....awkward," she confided to the camera.

Laughter......

"Steady on," says he turning away. "Good God."

"So this is cause for celebration," she continues with a mischievous giggle.

It captured their dynamic of fight, tenderness and optimism.

Brilliant stuff.

Sets you up for the day.

The Light Interlude

Well the strikes according to me made its appearance in the guardianweekly podcast and in comparison with the other items on the show, mine was decidedly the most interesting.

No I joke. It was the least beefy of the pieces. There was stuff about George Bush's Annapolis extravaganza, the election result in Australia and a look at Anglo-Soviet shenanigans a year after the poisoning in London of the ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Just before I went into the studio on Monday, my interviewer, Isobel Montgomery, was talking to Ghaith Abdul-Ahad from Baghdad.

He was on a visit to London and had just dropped into the Guardian to say hello to a few people but once word got around that he was in, he was all over the shop giving interviews.

Ever considerate about other people's needs to go and hit the joys of Selfridges, I didn't delay him with another plea for an interview. After all this is not that kind of blog.

Well, what on earth is this kind of blog? Simple really. It's just an airy reflection on a life spent between two of the juiciest cities on earth.

There are plenty of places to find perspicacious insights into the onset of armageddon. But for the moment I'm keeping it breezy.

The Buy-Off

Hurtling through northern France on High Speed 1 — or HS1 as I constantly see in the brochures — I wonder if I’m a one.

I’ve been musing on atavistic parochialism.

How could this in any way be related to moi? I live and work between Paris and London; I studied French and German at university, hell I’ve even lived in Karlsruhe.

But when it comes down to it. Am I just a south London boy at heart?

What launched me on this quest for inner enlightenment was Sunday night. I arrived at the flat where I grew up and the calf injury sustained during my self-styled heroics on the football field on Saturday morning began to feel better.

Is there a mystical energy in Streatham that revivifies the locals? Perhaps. But at any rate its centripetal forces didn’t replenish me enough to be able to run for a bus on Monday morning. It was more of Quasimodo like gallop.

But on Monday morning I did feel considerably better. And then there was the preparation for the podcast interview on the south bank and a plangent cry for the lost terminal at Waterloo. Face facts Paul. You're Clapham-born and Streatham-bred.

It might explain my brooding brow during the journey to St Pancras International from home in south London. It is much longer. But I cannot argue about the voyage to central Paris — that is spectacularly shorter.

And it’s going to get sweeter the longer the Business Premier Lounge is under construction at St Pancras International.

Outside the room where it will be eventually housed, there was a long table containing a crop of national newspapers.

Genial Eurostar staff ushered travellers to the fruit bowls and soft drinks on the flank and a particularly well-groomed young Eurostar suit was spending time apologising to an equally well-buffed woman.

“How long is it going to take to finish?” she inquired.

“Well, two weeks ago it was completed,” lounged the suit. “But then there were some problems with the heating. And the thing is with this building….and quite rightly so…you can’t touch anything without English Heritage being there. So that’s what’s causing the delay. We hope it will be ready before Christmas.”

Maybe HS1 really stands for High Smarm One.

The way he was looking at this lady, you felt he’d like to obtain her telephone number for heritage purposes.

And who could blame him for she did indeed look lovely even at six in the morning.

As I went to get my bottle of water I thought that his kind of smooth patter deserved its rewards.

But that was before I encountered the mother of all pitches.

I was handed a large white envelope. It didn’t contain money sadly but a message from the chief executive Richard Brown.

“Dear traveller," it began chummily.

"Welcome to St Pancras International and thank you for choosing to travel with Eurostar today.

"I am delighted that you are among the very first of our valued travellers to benefit from high speed train travel, direct from the centre of London to Continental Europe.”

Well obviously there I’d disagree since St Pancras International doesn’t seem that central to me. But this is about me embracing fresh concepts and spaces.

“At the present moment finishing touches are being made to our new Business Premier Lounge, so I am very sorry that this service is not available for you today.

"I would like to offer my sincere apologies for the natural inconvenience and disappointment.

"I hope you will accept the enclosed gift voucher as a gesture of apology and thanks for your understanding for the delay to the opening of the Lounge.”

Said voucher is for a gift box of fine wines and I am to contact Tordoffs, Eurostar’s wine importers, to arrange delivery.

Well that’s mighty neighbourly as a Western gunslinger might intone.

But could I be won over by such crude gimmickry? While I was on the cusp of succumbing I thought a glib renaming of the Bee Gees song — How cheap is your love? might bolster my scepticism.

No. Not really. It's too good a deal.

Not even a staunch south London boy can look a northern gift box in the mouth.

Especially if that's where the contents will end up.

The Self-Promotion

It was just like being interviewed for a radio show. The wonderful world of podcasts. There was a little studio on the fifth floor at 119 Farringdon Road and there I was asked about the travails of the strike.

What was it like? And what will happen next? There was nothing new to say. But at least I was saying it in a new venue.

I went to the National Film Theatre on the south bank cafe to collect my thoughts before going in for the chat. It was a bright morning, the sun reflecting vividly on the snake of buildings on the north side.

I'll miss my Sunday mornings in Waterloo. Perhaps I need to take a Sunday morning and walk around St Pancras Interntaional. I might discover its charms.

The New Era

Two hours and 25 minutes? That’s barely enough time to read some of the papers and start writing something worthwhile.

Oh the joys of travelling between Paris and London. It was my first journey on the Eurostar since the London terminal was shunted up to St Pancras International on November 14.

Thanks to the debilitating virus which rendered me less than vigorous for a couple of weeks, one of the biggest transformations in British communications has passed me by.

But I've lived the change. I looked out of the train window and saw the darkness of the Channel tunnel. So not much change there.

The Frequent Traveller Lounge in Paris wasn’t at all like I remembered it before my illness.

There were Sunday papers. So I got a hold of the Sunday Times. Needless to say there were articles about England’s midweek loss to Croatia.

The debacle has quite rightly been weighing on the brightest brains in English sports journalism.

What’s been exercising my mind since the defeat has been just how long my boy is going to be affected by the gastro going round his crèche.

At about 3.15am on Thursday morning he woke up and started coughing. It progressed as smoothly as the passing in the Croatian midfield into regurgitating the previous night’s supper.

I wondered if he’d somehow witnessed England’s abject performance at Wembley and was giving his response.

But no this was an intermittent tummy bug.

On Thursday night his rejection of the evening’s supper arrived at 11.15pm — a much more convenient time for parents.

He and bits of his cot were mopped up and he was back in bed and sleeping before you could say: “Don’t back off the Croatian midfielder….. he’s going to shoot from 25 yards."

On Friday morning I fed him his Cornflakes and did my impression of the England defence.

Nothing shot out so he was taken along to the crèche. Since then he’s been fine. It’s been my turn for affliction.

I played football on Saturday morning for the first time in about three weeks. I only had about 30 minutes in me but because we only had 11 players I realised I had to prepare myself for 90 minutes.

My mistake was to go to my usual slot in right midfield. You need legs for that and 40 minutes in they’d gone.

I went up front. I truly love it up front. Especially the dream state it allows me to enter. Once embedded I can continue my delusion of running angles à la Hernán Crespo. Sure enough we went in at half time 2-1 up. I did not score but I truly believe it was my sly canter which pulled the defender out of position and gave the skipper the chance to shoot and score.

As I was eased through the lush Kent countryside on what has now been dubbed High Speed 1 — or HS1 as the Euro initiated call it — I still felt that my header against the crossbar when we were 2-1 up was pivotal.

If it had gone in, I don’t think they would have come back. As it was 15 minutes later they were 3-2 up. It came back to 3-3 and in a diabolical decision I was deemed to have fouled the goalkeeper in the prelude to one of our team scoring a fourth.

I still maintain that the goalkeeper got to a 50-50 ball cleared it poorly and then hit me.

But the ref didn’t see it that way. In fact the ref didn’t see a blatant foul on one of our players before the other side scored their third goal.

What fascinated me was the amount of kicks the other side dished out and how all these middle aged blokes, many of whom probably spend a good part of their week behind a desk, went about the pitch proclaiming that football is a physical game.

You take a look at some of them and think: You may well be right and what about your physique?

As for my own, I went into the match worrying about my left hamstring. I was pleased to emerge with said hamstring alive and twanging concordantly.

It’s my right calf that’s not so clever. I think I was kicked there as I was shielding the ball to bring a teammate into play.

Or is this my way of saying I overdid it?

I must say out of the window it looked all very industrial wasteland. They're lucky the train is going at more than 180mph you don't want to feast your eyes on this strip of urban disintegration. At least the apocalyptic vista is soon replaced by a tunnel which is far beneath north-east London.

When I was a reporter at the Guardian I once went down the sewers in north-east London. Can’t remember what the story was about. I’ll have to fish it out of my cuttings book.

Maybe the boss on the newsdesk didn’t like me and hoped I’d get lost down there. Strangely enough I came back.

And like a woft from the fetid waterways so have Croatia.

England have been drawn in the same qualifying group as them for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

What are the chances of that happening?

Probably astronomical.

The cost of doing up St Pancras International was high too and I’m not overly impressed. Maybe it had something to do with my dodgy calf and having to walk from carriage 14 all the way to the exit which seemed like it was mile away. From now on I shall book tickets in the first five carriages on the way to London.

There also seemed to be another 300 miles to negotiate to reach the streets.

And Euston Road doesn’t quite have the same allure as the National Film Theatre, the Hayward Gallery and the view onto the north bank of the river Thames.

Oh I’m being nostalgic perhaps. No I think I'm being logical.

Begone thoughts of yesteryear. I must acquaint myself with change. A bit like the average French train driver and his pension plan.

I’ve been invited onto a Guardian podcast on Monday to talk about the strikes in Paris. I have said as long as I can make a blatant plug for what I’ve been writing about in the blog.

It mustn’t be too political, I’ve been told. Me political? Not likely. If there’s a chance of self-promotion, just lead me to the bland lands.

Maybe I’ll meet some of England’s footballers there.

The End

The Frog and Rosbif near Les Halles has a fantastic big screen but deeply dodgy wine. But I go there to watch the football and not because of the quality of their grapes.

But after seeing England lose 3-2 to Croatia, I won't even bother to whine. Coming back from 2-0 down to 2-2 was heartening. Then to capitulate was just the kind of drama one needed like a poor wine.

So England won't be performing in Austria and Switzerland. This is exercising lots of people on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme at the moment.

I'm pretty sure the police forces of Austria and Switzerland must be jumping up and down with joy. They won't have to deal with fans rampaging their way round the mountains.

The golden generation fails to shine. Oh woe. But maybe not. There's now talk about radical overhauls in England.

They're talking on the radio about changes at grass roots level. I love that phrase "grass roots".

If they are going to revamp at that level, then one thing's for sure. I'm not likely to see a winning team for another 20 years or so.

Oh well. Time to adopt another country. Any ideas? How about France? Not a bad choice Paul especially since I live here.

There was a small screen in the pub which was showing the Ukraine v France match and the French were cruising. They'd already qualified courtesy of Italy beating Scotland on Saturday.

And there couldn't have been a bigger contrast. England labouring, France polished.

Well at least Britain isn't under the cosh of a transport strike.

But then loads of French people don’t have to go and check their bank accounts because the government has lost computer discs containing sensitive details about who receives child benefit payments.

The British government's customs and revenue department has done this. And I have to make sure no one is pilfering through the billions in my bank account because of this blunder.

I want compensation for the mental turmoil I've been put under because of this catastrophe.

As for the anguish caused because of England's footballers, I don't think there's a currency to repay that kind of loss.

The Teachers

I was listening to the Cocteau Twins this evening and I thought of John Peel. God rest his soul. It was on his BBC Radio 1 programmes back in the early 80 that I first heard the band.

Wonder what has become of them. As part of my rehabilitation, me and my girl watched North By Northwest last night. She likes James Mason and I like Cary Grant's suaveness.

On the DVD there was a special feature introduced by Eva Marie Saint relating how Hitchcock went about making the film. Fascinating stuff especially since the next film he made was The Birds.

I don't think now is the time to go into Hitch's predilection for ice-cold blondes and menace.

But actually perhaps now is the time to continue the theme of threat. This was my second day of interaction with the strikes.

And I think the teachers did the road users a big favour. They were having a day of action in protest over rising class sizes and their general conditions.

This meant that one or other of the parents had to stay home and guard their offspring which, I assume, led to fewer people out and about.

Before going off the to radio station, the entire family stepped out for the park but the rain curtailed that jaunt. And we repaired to a cafe nearby.

I left everyone at Eric's as he was at home looking after his two children while his partner went off to work.

It seems to me the teachers, rather than increasing pressure on Sgt Major Sarko, actually let him off the hook. The atrocity of the train and metro strike was undermined rather than exacerbated.

Forget the special privileges of the transport lot. Commuters can get on their bikes, into cars and they can even walk to circumnavigate scant public transport.

But if the teachers go medieval, the current woe will look like a folk dance. If there is no school, a swathe of society will be helpless. You won't be able to go out and hire a nanny just like that — they're quite expensive and the ones who might not be pricey, might not be altogether legal.

So where does that leave you?

In my opinion the Sgt Major can stand as tough as he wants against train drivers but he ought to keep the teachers well onside.

Which brings me on to Wednesday night's qualifying games for Euro 2008. England are at home to Croatia, needing a draw to go through to next summer's tournament in Austria and Switzerland. Croatia have already advanced, but a win for the away side and a Russian victory over Andorra and it's a no show for England's finest.

I must admit I am in a quandary about this. England perennially fail to do anything significant and it's been agonising watching them dwindle just as they should be emerging as titans.

If they're not even there then I can just get on and observe objectively.

I will venture out to watch the boys.

This is the kind of collective experience I need to be part of.

The Return

Ooh la la, c'est la préhistoire.

I was chirping this little rhyme as I cycled home this evening.

I think that travelling in Paris is barbaric at the best of times but since the transport strikes it's become a jungle.

The social order has broken down. There are throngs of pedestrians spilling onto the cycle paths. Serried ranks of cyclists bunch up and jump red lights en masse and what's playing out is a symphony of despair.

It was my first day in the midst of the mayhem and I have to say that certain roads weren't as busy as I'd expected.

I was primed this morning at the crèche. The director asked if I could help her out by keeping the boy at home on Tuesday because the teachers are on strike. One of the crèche assistants has got children in school and there's no one to look after them.

The other assistants can't make it because they live so far away..........and there's not much in the way of transport. So the ramifications come down and tweak my nose.

Ouch.

The Game

As it happened I went to play poker on Friday night. A complete amateur with people who knew what they were doing.

Most of them did. There were two others who hadn't played before and really how difficult is it to lose money? We started at around 11pm.

By midnight I was starting to wilt physically but the problem was that I'd made more than my 10 euro buy in. I thought that leaving at 1220 with about 16 euros wasn't really the way to go about bonding with the guys.

So I set about losing it and I must say I was successful. I was out by 1.50am. The first to go but I felt I'd done enough to show to myself that I could play and win. And play and lose.

I think poker has come to me too late in life. There are so many other places to lose and gain money. I just don't see me being seduced by this game to such an extent that I'd forsake football on Saturday morning and take this up on a regular monthly basis.

But at least I learned bit about Texas ringjack or whatever it was I scalped myself with such aplomb.

I returned home to find a boy in a state of misery. He had his triple shot for measles, mumps and rubella about 10 days ago and as the doctor said at the time, if he's going to be unwell it should be in 10 days time.

Voilà.

So he's taken to waking up and just screaming. Some real hearty bawling. But as I'm recovering from a debilitating virus I am on hand or bended knee to soak up and salve this kind of cacophony.

I took him from his cot and put him on the sofa while I cosied myself into the cushion complex on the floor and listened into the BBC World Service on the earphones.

He calmed down and I went to sleep. This boy doesn't bluff. Why go out and seek thrills when you can stay home and live on the edge?

I got a letter from Eurostar today telling me that they haven't yet completed the lounge for frequent travellers at St Pancras International.

Apparently the station has got the longest champagne bar in this corner of the cosmos but as yet no lounge for the hapless souls who take the train on a regular basis.

As long as the vast majority are happily sloshed.

I've been offered a couple of complimentary drinks to ease me through this inconvenience, says the letter.

I must admit I only gave the missive a cursory glance when it arrived and ought to study it in more detail. My initial feeling was billions have been spent on a lavish refurbishment and the lounge isn't finished. How does this happen?

Odd. Especially since emails over the past few months have been telling how Waterloo is going to meet its eponymous end and St Pancras International is the zipping place. Only takes 2hrs and 15 minutes. That's not really enough time to fulminate about having to fraternise with the hoi polloi before boarding the train.

But that might be good for me. I'll really appreciate the ace facility when it is finally opened.

On the subject of aces, I've been watching the Tennis Masters from Shanghai.

Sport+ brings it to us about 11 hours after the matches have happened. So there's no element of suspense since I've already seen the results on the event's website.

Still I've been impressed with the abilities of Roger Federer to play averagely and still end up in Sunday's final. But I guess that kind of thing tends to happen when you're world number one.

Though Saturday's semi final saw a straight sets victory over Rafael Nadal, I just know that come June it will be Nadal lifting the Roland Garros trophy. But that's then and on clay. It will be interesting to see if the Swiss can overcome David Ferrer who's in his first major final on Sunday.

Ferrer's got nothing to lose even though he has never beaten Federer. It might be a case of beginner's luck.

A bit like me and the poker.

The Bubble

There’s never been a better time to be recovering from a debilitating virus. The exaggerator in me would like to say a life-threatening debilitating virus.

Ronald Reagan was known as “The Great Communicator”, I’d like the moniker of The Great Exaggerator.

But that would jeopardise my future writings. Who would believe in me? Who believes in me now?

Anyway, now is not the time for ontological doubt. Or perhaps it is as I recover from a debilitating illness.

The doc has said I have to take it easy if I want to return to full fitness. So go easy on everything…like swimming.

I asked about yoga. She said see how you feel.

So I went along on Thursday night. I felt less flexible than before but given what I’ve just gone through, I’m just happy that I feel. Perhaps I exaggerate.

During the same consultation with the medics (it has a war zone ring to it) I thought it prudent not to ask about playing football this Saturday.

I want the doctor to take me seriously.

With that thought in mind, I declined the offer to go and play poker on Friday night. There’ll be about eight guys there. There’ll be pizza. Good pizza too as one of the players is the owner of the pizza house venue.

There’ll be beers and smoke. In essence all the things that make men men.

No wonder that I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to acquire some hunkiness.

The snag to this latter-day quest for machismo is the 1030pm start. We’re in France so is that 1030 for 11?

As I’m virtually horizontal at 10pm at the moment, I don’t think it’s for me. You need energy to bluff and that’s not something I’ve got in abundance. I have no doubt I can bluff. The boys plan to do it on a monthly basis and this is something I’d dearly love to do. High stakes (50 euros), testosterone, pizza, beer, smoke.

But even when back to full heartiness, 1030pm or so is a bit late especially with a 9.30am kick off on Saturday morning. And I have a commitment to greatness on the football field especially since I’m doing the yoga to assist me in my quest for balletic exploits on the pitch.

Helas. The choices.

The poker crisis helped me to realise what a jolly bubble I’m living in. This whole strike is passing me by.

In years to come I’ll be asked: “What did you do during the strike?”

I’ll have no answer because I’m a strike profiteer. I’ve not suffered at all. I have no tales about 20 mile traffic jams; scuffles in the metro; punch-ups in the cycle lanes or anything like that.

I’m in a state of serenity and this has little to do with the yoga. I heard that the disruptions might go on until November 26. Surely that’s just a nasty rumour.

Jamie – owner of the pizza restaurant and instigator of the poker night – reckons one of the big rubber companies is fomenting the dissent.

Since I thought I’d been struck down by germs introduced into the atmosphere by international terrorists, I’m inclined to be open to a plethora of theories. After all it is possible, well, the former is at any rate.

I do know that what we’re living through is a terror. There’s fear of change. There’s fear of accepting the reality. L’exception francaise has been proudly promulgated as one of the wonders of the modern world. It shouldn’t work but it has been.

But its moment is over. That might elicit schadenfreude in many quarters; I don’t feel there’s anything to mourn. Maybe that’s because I’m not French.

But even as a Francophile, it’s easy to see that l’exception has had a good innings and now it’s time to advance in a different way.

My second job as a journalist was at the Nottingham Evening Post. Back in the late 80’s it was still possible to witness the devastation on the Nottinghamshire villages of the pit closures. Once the colliery was gone, there was nothing. It was barren. You could taste the desolation as you drove in. What else could they do? They readapted for sure.

But since then I’ve always been sceptical about any politician who says that change is an easily manageable phenomenon. I don’t believe that it is.

What are people angry about here at the moment? Not about not working but about their spending power after they’ve been working. That’s a fair concern. But it’s hard to win people over to your cause if they’ve never had a job.

Even from my vantage point of Chez Prune after dropping off the boy at crèche, it’s fairly clear that change is necessary in France. Sgt Major Sarko isn’t a genius by predicating an entire political life on that. What’s striking is that his political adversaries haven’t tried to manoeuvre onto this ground because that is where the future obviously lies.

Disruption, transport chaos, street protests it’s really the last hurrah of the ancien régime.

The terror comes next.

The Showdown

You knew it was going to happen. It was just a question of when. Students are it. Gas and electricity workers are at it. And the bus and train drivers are too.

It's strike time. And the country starts its meltdown. When was the election? 200 years ago? No but six months ago and as far as I remember, there was an overwhelming poll for the Sgt Major.

He told everyone what he wanted to do while the socialists were committing hari-kiri. And the majority lapped it up, well they voted for him.

There were always going to be those who were going to attack outside the ballot box and I suppose this is their moment.

It's all being offered as the battle of toughness. The Sgt Major and his überreformer persona V the benighted.

The thing is if the Sgt Major loses then what? More of what we had under President Chirac? And if the special privileges are maintained? Well it will be the majority paying for the few.

It's intriguing. Waiting for the denouements is fascinating. Well that's because it's not my pension at stake. That's because I don't need to travel today.

Me, me, me. Good grief this stuff is catching.

The Future

Parisian traffic notwithstanding, I should live long enough to show the boy the correct way to watch the six Star Wars films.

I've been merely struck down by a virus, the doctor told me this morning after my latest trip to her surgery.

Though I will live for at least another few years, I am weakened and I've been told to avoid work for a few weeks.

This recuperation, of course, coincides with the huge changes that are happening with Eurostar.

Sunday would have been my last journey into Waterloo from Paris and the return on Tuesday morning, one of the last out of the terminus before it closes to Eurostar services on November 14.

But thanks to sickness I can forget about the swan songs and nostalgia. The next time I go to London for work it will be on the new super fast line into St Pancras International. Twenty minutes will be hacked from the journey time, I'll descend at a "destination station" and more importantly Britain will be part of a vibrant high speed European network.

Blighty's only been a decade in the catching up but it has at least arrived.

I'm just curious to see when Eurostar will increase the prices as their way of helping the travellers lap up the splendours of this brave new world.

The Decree

Creativity is supposed to flow during illness, says one line of literary ideology. Oh dear.

It's true that I've not committed anything to paper of late. But I have been productive.

I've generated samples on demand for various doctors and chemists. I have doused the sheets in rivers of sweat and as for my interactions with the toilet......


Still don't know what's wrong. I went to the doc on Thursday after a few days sleeping. She got me to walk through the waiting room with a little plastic beaker — which I did with a nonchalant dignity.

I offered some liquid into said beaker and walked back through the waiting room. People in waiting rooms have nothing better to do than look I guess. I decided it was the dashing pink Oxford shirt and light chinos combination that was catching their attention and not the hapless sap on the way back from his first instant urine sample at the doctor's surgery.

Today's blood test was more straightfoward. I dropped the boy off at creche. Forewent the coffee at Chez Prune and went into the lab. They had really good music on. Some classy jazz and there was a Nespresso machine available for general use just outside the cells where they deprive you of your blood.

I said to the doc as I left her cell: "You've got great music here. Please pass on the compliment to the boss."

She was genuinely pleased that someone had noticed. Clearly they must have had a recent meeting to discuss how people can be made to lose their vital juices in a much more harmonious environment.

The silky sounds of jazz.

"On the jazz" is a phrase often used in the A Team. It is supposed to denote a plan or series of schemes of impudent simplicity.

So the leader of the A Team, Col John "Hannibal" Smith, would often be praised for being "on the jazz".

And having used this opportunity of sickness to watch certain episodes from season 2, my only conclusion is that Stephen J Cannell, the co-creator of this particular 80s classic, has been on the jazz for many years.

Because I've been sleeping at times when I'm usually awake, I've been left awake at times when I'm usually asleep.

And for these junctures, I've wheeled out the Rockford Files starring James Garner. Recuperation is a joyous process.

The Rockford Files — which Cannell sired in the mid-seventies — are just such timeless vignettes of how to elude pomposity and venom.

Listening to Rockford talk his way out of a putative dead end has sent me off to sleep with a smile.

This bout of enclosure has also helped me solve a question which I posed a few months ago in parislondonreturn.blogspot.com and I think I have the answer.

The viewing of the Star Wars episodes has definitely got to be chronological even though I've just rewatched episodes IV, V and VI chiming in and out of consciousness.

True, because of this I've missed quite important slabs of denouement. But since I know the story quite well, I can safely decree the boy child — when he is of a decent age — will be shown episodes I, II, III, then after a day's rest— IV, V and VI.

I shall not turn.

If my present ailments do not allow me the force to actually perform this task myself, then it shall be put into my will.

Shares in houses and insurance funds are one thing.

Appreciating Star Wars is a matter of galactic import.

The Appearance

The boy was having his afternoon snooze and I was contemplating the shopping list when a call came through on the mobile.

Would I go on France 24’s programmed called The Debate to talk about Arnaud Clement’s comments about match fixing in tennis?

Having hosted a programme on RFI for 18 months called the Crossroads Debate, I know just how dodgy these things can be.

So I asked for details about what I would be expected to say.

“Oh just a few opinions about what the ATP should do about it,” said the researcher.

“Is there going to be anyone from the ATP there?” I asked.

“We’re trying to get someone…

“Anyone from the ITF?

“Not yet….

“Well,” I said. “I’ll just double check to make sure if there are no problems this end and I’ll call you back in half an hour.”

France 24 sent a taxi — a silver grey Mercedes. It arrived at 6pm and as soon as I arrived at their headquarters 45 minutes later, I was met at the entrance by a young lady who took me down to the make-up room. I was prettied up — as if that was necessary — for the cameras.

I was taken up onto the set where the presenter, Andrea Sanke, was at her seat chomping through a packet of crisps. She asked if I and the other studio guest wanted anything.

I said a piece of paper and a few crisps. The paper was brought for me.

This was nothing like the cosy comfort of the Crossroads Debate. When I did my programme, I went down to greet the guests. I would buy them coffee while Ariane, the studio producer, would get the water and more coffees if needed.

But then I did stop doing it after 18 months. Ravaged by the stress of setting up the guests and making sure they had something punchy to offer.

It was a tight ship the Crossroads Debate. There were no surprises and that was pre recorded.

On Tuesday night I was really not that fettered. Not that it mattered as I didn’t have anything controversial to say.

My main point being that if Clement was approached and declined the offer then he should tell the tennis authorities about it.

He said at his press conference on Monday that he didn’t want to say when it happened nor how it happened.

Though there was a lot of coverage given to his comments, it doesn’t really take us any further.

My line is that if he doesn’t give some details privately to tennis authorities then he should be punished.

I returned home to find that another French player, Michael Llodra, had also declined an invitation to lose a match.

Well wow.

I’m not able to gauge my TV performance as the family didn’t see me. We only get the French rendition of France 24 on our cable package.

I phoned this morning to ask for a DVD of the programme and have yet to hear from the researcher.

Maybe they aren’t even going to bother to do me a DVD because my input was so appalling.

Maybe she had a day off.

And it would have been well spent out and about in Paris. It was crisp and sunny. My girls were at the school holiday club and I was in charge of ailing boy.

Into the buggy and off to BHV to buy some light bulbs and actually just get out.

The great thing about BHV is that it’s within spitting distance of the Pompidou Centre, so on the way back home we took that in.

We headed straight for the sixth floor and the panoramic views from the café restaurant concept that is Georges. We were sent to a yellow pod in the middle of Georges. I perched myself on the fringe of the Zone Jaune so that I could see out into the distance as far as La Défense if I craned my neck.

The boy got his milk. I got my coffee. Georges got 6 euros.

That strikes me as expensive. It was 5.50 for a long time. And really the high outlay is only palatable because of the vista. But if I have to almost go into a yoga position to profit from what makes the place so pricey, then I’m on the very wrong side of being fleeced.

No problem with the costs when beholding the view is effortless.

But maybe the zone jaune is a pre-lunch thing. I’ll have to make the final decision after going back one afternoon.

And that will be quite soon as the reason for being at the Pompidou — the exhibition about Giacomettti — looks spectacular.

I breezed through it this morning. Firstly because I wanted to get the boy back for lunch and his afternoon snooze and secondly because the show was packed.

I thought that if he started to wail because he was suddenly hit by a combined wave of hunger and tiredness then it would be a most unseemly retreat out of there.

Perhaps if I remained with a bawling baby, a couple of gallery assistants would offer me inducements to leave.

But would I throw an exhibition?

The Strike

Vive l’Air France. But it’s easy for me to wax lyrical about Air Food because I’m on the ground in Paris and not due to be flying somewhere.

The air stewards and stewardesses have been on strike of late. Of late are the school holidays, which started on Friday in the Paris region.

My sympathies go out to the thousands disrupted by the industrial action over pay and conditions but the movement has left me feeling relieved that we went to America 10 days before the holiday.

At least that way we got a holiday rather than spending our holiday at an airport waiting to go on holiday.

The timing of the strike was gruesomely appropriate — a bit like the RER B train strike on the day of the rugby world cup final.

I thought being inconvenienced for about 30 minutes at Charles de Gaulle airport on our back to Paris was difficult, but I really wouldn’t like to imagine the horror of trying to fill the void with three children if a flight were delayed.

It would have been worse for us as we were due to see my grandfather. But in the end this is all projection.

We were fortunate. Which is not the case with the football team at the moment. Travelled miles on Saturday morning to Mantes la Jolie to be annihilated 7-4.

We’re ravaged by injuries and having to get up early to travel to Mantes didn’t sit too well with my constitution nor anyone else’s it seems Maybe the trip to our home ground will have the same effect on the opponents.

Anyway after four games we’re second from bottom. We’ve played a couple of the top teams so I guess the season starts from after the half-term holidays.

By then I might be getting uninterrupted nights of sleep. The boy has not been well. In fact neither has his mother nor his elder sister.

I had to scrap the Sunday trip to London to stay and tend the flock. What a good shepherd I am.

Remaining here has given me the chance to catch up with episodes on the Rockford Files DVD.

When the Rockford Files were first on back in the early 70s, our TV didn’t have BBC2 so all I had to go on — as they say on the show — was my mate Eddie Flanagan telling me that it was fantastically successful.

I saw the repeats — though for me they were new — while at university and once I got my video tape recorder I faithfully recorded them off the BBC for posterity.

What’s great about the videos is seeing the tacky adverts from 1988. The DVD however provides me with one long extravaganza. Something to fall asleep to even as the sickly crew cough, splutter and wheeze their ways through the night.

I’ll probably be infected fairly soon for now I’m nursing a bruised toe from Saturday morning’s exertions. Somebody trod on it.

Maybe they didn’t like my joy at scoring our third, which I have to say it was classily dispatched.

I said to my eldest this morning that I scored a goal. She asked me if I was going to the world cup.

I said I was far too old and not good enough.

“You’re not that old daddy,” was her reply.

I might be scuffling around in the veteran’s top flight but I’ve got a Premier League daughter.

The Comeback

Well the Red Sox did it. They beat the Cleveland Indians and so have the chance to play the Colorado Rockies in the World Series.

I never thought that was going to happen. Fenway Park, which we walked past on our way back to our hotel in Boston, must have been explosive on Sunday night after the comeback.

Boston's return from the depths is the 11th time in more than a century of play-off baseball that a team has fought back in such a manner.

The Red Sox were the most recent to achieve the feat when they rallied from 3-0 down in 2004 to beat the New York Yankees, thereby becoming the first club in Major League history to make such a reversal from the brink of elimination.

Clearly this is not the simplest modus operandi. But maybe it's the Red Sox way. It wouldn't surprise me if they now go on and winthe next four games to win the World Series.

I might just keep a watching brief on it. But my sympathies are more likely to be with the Colorado Rockies since I have more of an affinity with Denver having been there a handful of times to visit my old university chum Frances and her family.

And it's home to Skyline — the ultimate sporting location.

The Agony

No two ways about it. Bad few days for English sporting heroes.

I logged onto the BBC website while I was in Rhode Island on Wednesday to discover that England's footballers had lost in Russia. This now jeopardises their participation in Euro 2008.

England's rugby chaps lost the world cup final in Paris as I was whizzed into London on the Eurostar.

I don't have a mobile phone which can capture the internet so I didn't know the score. While I was at Waterloo I heard a few lads singing and asked them for the result.

There were lots of disappointed drunken faces on the Northern Line down to south London.

Would Louis Hamilton restore pride by clinching the formula one world title on Sunday?

Woe, woe and thrice woe.

When I was but a young boy I used to get very upset at England's demise in football. I distinctly remember wailing when they lost 3-2 to Germany in the 1970 World Cup quarter final.

"They'll be back," said one of the consoling adults. I think it was my mum. But she was so wrong. England didn't qualify for the 1974 World Cup in Germany, nor the 1978 extravaganza.

By the time they were in the 1982 finals I'd found things like French and Gemany literature to interest me.

This was what was so interesting about being in France last summer. Experiencing the feeling of a place preparing for a football World Cup final. Marvellous.

Even if France had won, I don't think I would have gone down the Champs Elysées to celebrate frenetically

After all I'm not actually French.

But as I prepare to return to action this Saturday in my own veterans' soccer league, I take heart as it's better to have been within reach of glory than nowhere near it.

I must maintain that frame of mind as the team's first three games in the top flight have yielded one win and two heavy defeats.

And it's still early in the season. So there's no need to be even thinking negative thoughts.

Look at the Boston Red Sox. They were 3-1 down in the seven match series for the right to contest the World Series.

While I was in Boston on Thursday night game five was on. I could hear the TV upstairs in the foyer of the guest house we were staying in.

The Red Sox won that game and on Saturday they won game six against the Cleveland Indians to tie the American League series at 3-3.

Game seven is on right now and Boston are 2-0 up but as they're in the bottom of the third innings, I have no intention of going back to American time to follow their progress through to the bottom of the ninth innings.

I'll go to sleep and find out what happened in the morning.

Much more logical. And maybe that kind of clear, incisive thinking will finally kick in with the English Football Association.

The bigwigs there might actually pick a manager who has an idea about winning things. Steve McClaren, the present coach, is likely to get sacked if England don't qualify for next year's tournament.

One football writer suggested in one of the Sunday papers that McClaren should be shunted even if they do qualify and the FA should hire a certain José Mourinho, formerly of the parish of Chelsea, on a short term contract.

He knows how to create a winning team.

If England won without the putative entertaining style that cost Mourinho his job at Chelsea, I don't think many people would care.

Roman Abromovich owns Chelsea and is at liberty to choose his terms. Somehow England belongs to all. During the 2006 world cup, England weren't particularly dazzling under Sven Goran Eriksson and they didn't advance past the last eight.

It's really not looking that good for the national team.

Moreso since no major silverware has been anywhere near being added to the trophy cabinet for more than 40 years.

It sounds like the scenario at Chelsea before a smooth young Portuguese took control.

The Upgrade

As South Africa and England slug it out at the Stade de France, I speed to Waterloo in the Eurostar.

There was no space on the trains from Paris on Sunday morning. But of course there was room aplenty on the Saturday night.

It wasn’t the ideal way to end 10 days in the States — taking a train to London.

But since I have commitments in England, I must be flexible.

And that approach seemed apt given what Air Food at the Boston check-in had done on Friday afternoon for our 5.30pm flight.

I explained to the assistant that when I forked out the cash at the Air France outlet at La Maison de la Radio, I’d been led to believe that I would be getting seats with individual TV screens on the flight over to Boston from Paris.

When these didn’t materialise it was something of a disappointment. I told her that as I’d been holding a child who had just fallen asleep in my arms, I wasn’t in a position to pursue the point with the staff on boarding the aircraft

She said that in the Jumbos we were travelling in, these sorts of seats were only available upstairs. I asked if it was possible to have what I thought I had paid for.

She said she’d look at the plan on the computer for me. She lowered her eyes and after about 30 seconds furrowed her brows.

That seemed to be a bad omen. So not to appear too aggressive I said that it wasn’t a problem if we couldn’t get the seats, I’d take it up with customer services when I got back to Paris.

She kept consulting the hidden screen. She could have been watching the sports channel or re-runs of Hill Street Blues for all I knew but she looked up and said authoritatively: “There’s some space opening up ... I’ll go and ask the flight manager.”

I watched her go over to a man. In the distance I saw their mouths open, some nodding and gesturing.

She returned and said the flight manager had agreed to let me and the three children go upstairs to where the TVs lived — or to put it in competitive service industry speak — to the seats that I thought I had paid for.

I was grateful for her help and a little ambivalent about being too emollient for wasn’t it me who had suffered most monstrously?

Well, away from the exaggeration.

I thought if I was trying to blag an upgrade, mine wasn’t an implausible yarn. Why wouldn’t I want an eight and five-year-old to be distracted as much as possible during a seven-hour trans Atlantic flight?

I said by way of eulogy that we’d flown American Airlines during the summer and that we weren't at all happy with the experience. I even got the girls to comment on the flight 10 days earlier from Charles de Gaulle.

There was a spontaneous paean encompassing the friendly staff, the culinary excellence of the Children’s Meal as well as the Goodies Bag of crayons, puzzles and toys.

This was not a bellicose family unit.

For all the honied words, the check-in operative probably knew she was doing her in-flight colleagues a favour.

The flight back for the girls from Boston to Paris was thus much better than the return journey back in July. It was an improvement for me too.

In the summer the boy screamed solidly but then there were two adults to share the duties of calming the bairn who was teething. This time he slept for the first couple of hours as the meals were served and then woke up as everyone was settling down for their post-prandial nap.

I gave him a set of complimentary headphones to mangle and dreamed of post-prandial naps.

The daughters were having none of that. They were transfixed by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which they watched at least 4,000 times.

In the moments while the boy quietly drank some water, I reclaimed the headphones and dipped into the latest instalment of Potter. But, for me, the magic was lost in French.

The man in front of me was busily tapping away on his laptop and had the screen on the channel, which showed the flight status. What a waste.

We seemed to be over open water for a very long time. This, I thought, might be a metaphor about my parenting skills.

Worse still it resuscitated my query about whether — in the event of engine failure — we could watch our own descent into oblivion on the screen.

I felt I'd been doing a fairly good job of not believing that I was at 400,000 feet. Trying to keep the boy relatively quiet helps me remain distracted.

A stewardess came through and scythed through this symbiotic self-congratulation by asking me if there was any way I could get him not to cry out.

I said I was trying but if people wanted to sleep at 9pm in the evening…then I was out of ideas.

Actually later I realised that there was something I could do. I took him off to the nearby bathroom for a nappy change and we stayed in there. He was altogether jauntier on the fold down flap.

I was perkier too. There were bright lights and a wall of mirrors into which we, actually forget him, I could look.

I wondered if I appeared haggard enough. Here I was in charge of three children and I have to admit I was looking far too good. The eyes were neither sunken nor hollow. There was even a soupcon of sparkle.

I felt the bright red and orange floral shirt suggested an unwillingness to convey the air of a colourless, hapless dad. And the bottle green cotton trousers oozed confidence with smear absorbing tones — so crucial while travelling with offspring.

The boy was quiet. He was just looking at me in the mirror, looking at myself. He smiled when I looked at him in the mirror.

My eldest daughter halted all this muted masculine mirth. She wanted to use the facility for its central purpose.

When I tried to go again — so to speak — I felt constipated. We left because I thought about the incongruity of being in an upgrade and spending time in the toilet.

I might as well be looking in the mirror in bog standard economy.

But at the same time I didn’t want to inflict shrieks of the boy's frustration on the other passengers. But in the end it's a 20-month-old baby in a noisy aircraft. The eight and five-year-old who could have been banshees were serene.

Gaby, who was drafted in to sit next to me by the stewardess at take-off and landing, commented as we neared Charles de Gaulle that they were impressively quiet.

She complimented me for coping admirably with them all. As she’s a lecturer in international law at Harvard Law School, I felt bound to tell her the truth and nothing but the truth.

The girls were under a sword of Damocles. They knew we’d been upgraded and they understood that our seats downstairs were empty.

They saw that I wasn’t really watching that much on the screen and most importantly they knew (for such are my parenting skills) that I’d be quite happy to go downstairs with them at the first sign of consistent naughtiness.

I got Gaby’s card and promised to buy her a drink the next time we — the adults — were passing through Boston. I figure that any stranger who’s willing to lend a hand is worth buying at least one drink.

Gaby had five hours to wait in Paris before going on to Tel Aviv.

“Five hours,” exclaimed the eldest. “That’s almost as long as the flight from Boston.”

So grateful was I for Gaby’s small act of kindness that I said it was a shame that we couldn’t invite her home for breakfast.

After landing at 6am, the children and I got to the Charles de Gaulle RER B station at 7am to discover that the rail unions were staging a day of action — thereby drastically reducing services.

The next train into Paris was at 7.28am.

Gaby had, it seemed to me, got the better deal.

As we trundled our way into Paris on the RER I told the girls that their behaviour on the flight had been impeccable and gave them huge hugs and kisses.

I'd taken them to see their grandmother and greatgrandfather. Four generations had been together for 10 days.

Whichever way you travel, that's a first class experience.

The Honor System

I became aware of the "Honor System" thanks to an episode of Seinfeld entitled The Contest.

This involved the four characters betting on who could last the longest without masturbating.

As they could not monitor each other’s movements, they had to rely on the "Honor System".

The beauty of the writing was such that the M word was never mentioned.

I came across the honor system in a field in Jamestown last Friday. Hodgkiss Farm was selling some of its wares and we swung in to survey the goodies.

My mother picked the corn and I looked around for someone to take the cash. No one.

Then I saw a box with a little sign saying pay here and that the honor system was in operation.

My grand father, who’s visiting from Jamaica, could not believe what he’d just witnessed. An unmonitored box with money in a field.

I paid the $6 for the 12 corn on the cob and at supper out that night everyone agreed that the corn was very sweet.

My theory is that if we hadn’t paid then we’d have been ill. Call it corn karma.

On the subject of eating, I descended from the trans Atlantic flight from Paris absolutely stuffed.

Air France excelled itself to the point that I forgot about my hatred of flying because I was just savouring the cuisine.

Air Food gave us a complimentary glass of champagne, which was such an elegant touch as was the meal especially for the children. It was an altogether better experience than the American Airlines atrocity.

And such urbanity went part way to appeasing my chagrin over the lack of individual TV screens which is why I opted for Air France to travel to Boston with three children.

As it was, the 19-month-old slept for the first hour and a half and was on good form for the rest of the flight apart from the descent when he just wailed because he had to be belted in with me.

A few people cooed afterwards about how wonderfully well behaved he was. Maybe it was the shot of Dolipran an hour before boarding.

Maybe I just looked as if I wasn’t going to brook any kind of disapproval.

Being in Rhode Island in October has been unusual. Both visits before have been during the blazing summer months. The eldest is having great difficulty understanding that October sunshine doesn’t necessarily mean short sleeves. Maybe she misses the routine of school.

She hasn’t been given any homework to do. Her teacher says she should do a project about her time in the States visiting her grand mother and great grand father.

The middle child has been given maths and reading exercises.

I’m getting into Gafi le fantome and all his antics. I met the class teacher before we left and she outlined what the girl had to do on holiday.

As I decipher the instructions with the five-year-old and help her to keep track with her schoolmates back in Paris, I realise i'm living a derivation of the honor system.

From yoga to yohji

High hopes for the 9.10 to London were dashed as soon as I got into the frequent traveller lounge. No Sunday papers from Britain. I really thought that was just an 8.07 thing. Clearly not. I bore this latest setback with fortitude and picked up Le Journal du Dimanche which was obviously so delighted with France's 20-18 quarter-final victory over the All Blacks on Saturday night that it could only bellow: Enorme.

Since Saturday morning's front page of L'Equipe had said: Ce serait immense ..... I got the feeling that these papers were run by men with psychosexual projection issues.

But indeed it was big. France beat New Zealand to reach the semi-finals of the rugby world cup where they'll play England who did gigantic things themselves on Saturday afternoon by beating Australia 12-10.

These two results have left southern hemisphere rugby in a state of massive shock and certainly France must be fancying their chances of defeating England.

If France reaches the final and then wins the whole thing, it seems to go without saying that I’ll probably be learning some new words for throbbingly mega.

I wanted to go to Tate Britain to see the Millais exhibition. But Monday has been taken up with car problems. The Peugeot cracked up and the man from the Automobile Association came to fix it.

It was a broken fan belt. Alan from the AA diligently went about his work, my contribution to the repairs was simply to stand on the pavement near the car and to look on purposefully.

My mechanical dexterity extended to putting my hand through the fan belt and spinning it round my wrist like a hula-hoop.

But this wasn’t Waikiki Beach. This was grey and gritty SW16 London where the cars race down the street and the house prices rise before your very eyes.

The Millais exhibition will be around for a few more weeks yet.

Why Millais? I first heard about him when I was a student in Paris.

I remember it quite clearly. I was in my room in the Collège Franco-Britannique at the Cité Universitaire in the 14th. It was hot and for some reason I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep so I turned on the radio.

The BBC World Service was airing some dramatisation about the life of John Ruskin and it necessarily took in his doomed marriage. As far as I remembered it wasn’t consecrated because his lady wife, Effie Gray, was menstruating on their wedding night. This so appalled the brain of the Britain that he could never bring himself to go anywhere near her.

The lady bore her frustration up to a point but finally spoke fully and frankly to Millais. As Effie was something of hottie, he thought that Ruskin was committing a crime against femininity and got her to divorce.

What followed was a ginormous scandal. Nevertheless the Pre Raphaelite painter married the girl himself. Effie bore the opprobrium and bore Millais 750 children.

As all this was unfolding during the early hours of the morning, I thought I’d heard wrong but I eventually found a library — this was in the days before Google — and the story — give or take a few disagreements over details among biographers — checked out. The couple actually had eight children.

Ooh la. As my friend Sebastian would say.

Education, education, education. As Tony Blair once said.

So Millais will have to wait until after the trip to America.

By the time I get back I fully expect fashion trends to be moving towards a model I have inadvertently outlined.

Yoga on Thursday was a non-starter because I arrived at 7.25pm. This was on time but too late.

People who hadn’t reserved had got there earlier. But as I had reserved I got there later but yet I was not allowed in.

There is an illogic at work here but I was unable to kick up a stink about this because it wouldn’t have been very om to be emitting fury outside a yoga class where I should have been calming down.

So I had to remain at one with my internal anger. Another reject was on the pavement outside.

She said: “Tonight is the first time I’d reserved and there was no place. Usually I don’t reserve…..”

I suggested going for a drink to drown our sorrows but once I’d unchained my bike I realised I didn’t have any money.

Laura said she had cash. So I followed. She also had an invitation for the opening of the Y3 shop in Rue Etienne Marcel.

She bumped into a few people from Bread and Butter on our way and we had pre-opening drinks in one of the bars near the shop. Once we were all sat down at a table I was asked if I was involved in the fashion business.

No. I was actually just out for a yoga session hence the reason for my appearance. “Don’t worry,” said one of the B&B men. “You’re wearing the right track suit.”

It was only when I got in that I realised that Y3 was a link up between Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas.

Hanging with the black clad brigade of the beau monde was an impromptu treat. I stuck with the orange juice figuring that if I started on the wine, I’d end up tottering and since I was in outré garb of grey sweatshirt, a holey blue track suit bottoms and black plimsoles, that would make more of a spectacle of myself.

And to a certain extent, I was in my natural habitat. I loved what Yamamoto did for the kimonos in Zatoichi a few years back.

More importantly I’ve been an Adidas boy and man. Only a few weeks ago I was buying the Kaiser 5 football boot for the new season not to mention some Adidas shin pads. I have sported in Adidas ever since I can remember.

I think I once toyed with Puma Brasilia but that was because Pele wore Puma and my grand dad adored Pele and Brazilian football.

So I soaked up the spontaneity of the moment. The German PR girl stopped talking to me when Yohji came in and went off to take pictures of him and his gang of exquisitely buffed acolytes.

I’m pretty sure I saw Yohji looking over at me at one point. I’m going to keep a close eye on the boutique. If I see a line of trousers with holes in them I will demand some kind of creative acknowledgement.

If there’s nothing I’ll know exactly how Effie felt.

happy holidays

I was just preparing to plunge my hands into the washing up bowl on Wednesday night when the mobile rang. It was Neil asking if I was up for the second half of a Champions League match.

“I didn’t call because I thought you’d be guarding the children while your missus was at the day –feel- lays,” I said.

No, he retorted, “The défilés were last night.”

“So what’s the look?”

Neil told me that the look from Jean Paul Gaultier — which is where his missus is a designer — is of pirates.

“But wasn’t that 15 years ago?”

“We’re all pirates now,” Neil reminded me.

Well after my fashion update, the brigand in me wanted to just leave the dirty dishes there. But admirable behaviour prevailed. I completed the assignment, got on my bike and met up with Neil at the usual venue.

Quigley’s Point is an Irish bar near one of the side doors of St Eustache, a massive church that somehow seems belittled by the sprawling modern complex of Les Halles.

What I like about the area around the church is that it is well illuminated, animated but yet the building emits a powerful calm.

Chelsea under Jose Mourinho used to pump power and as I went over to greet Neil, I looked up at the giant screen to see Liverpool trailing at home to Marseille.

“Chelsea are two one up at Valencia,” he informed me.

“I’m off Chelsea,” I replied. He laughed.

We were watching Liverpool’s increasingly frantic bid to equalise when one of the immigration officers from the Gare Du Nord came up to say hello.

I’d bumped into her when I was at the bar with Neil sometime last season during a Champions League match.

“The last time I saw you, you were having trouble with that bloke…”

I told her that I saw him in the Frequent Traveller Lounge without his family. She just rolled her eyes.

We got chatting and she told me that her three-year posting to Paris was ending and she was off to work at Calais.

This would lead to no end of domestic difficulties as her partner worked for French immigration at la Gare du Nord but there were secondments she could do in Paris.

Neil suggested that she could get medical leave if I attacked her during one of my next trips through.

She pushed her lip out while pondering the crocked genius of it.

I must admit it was inspired but ultimately flawed but then he is an architect.

An architect hailing from north-east England. So Newcastle United Football Club is the logical team for him.

And in the days when Chelsea were falling short in the Champions League, he used to say: “At least your team is in the Champions League.”
Couldn’t argue with him on that. Now that I am teamless I just looked at the results and thought about the surprises of the night.

The Chelsea win at Valencia was a shock given that Chelsea couldn’t beat their struggling neighbours Fulham last Saturday. So coming from behind against a team that had five straight victories under their belts in the Spanish league was something of a coup.

After the Liverpool match we stayed and watched the highlights from the other games and caught up over a couple of drinks.

His girls are learning to play the flute and guitar. From next week for 10 days I’m going to have to be teacher to mine.

I went to see the teacher of the six year old at 8am this morning to find out what she’d have to do while she’s in America.

I squinted as the exercises were explained to me briefly. I’m glad I’m not going to school every day.

As for the tasks for the eight-year-old, they are much simpler. She has to prepare a review of her trip, taking in things like the people she meets and what she does.
And then she can present it all to the class soon after her return.

Her teacher says that she can catch up on the lessons missed during the half-term holiday in Paris.

We’re obviously entering the realm of hothouse holidays.

Braque to basics

What’s to be done when the bleeding obvious actually happens? Do you stand up, clasp your hands and shout hosanna? Or do you sit down and growl about the lethargic pace of change?

I’m an upbeat kind of person so I’m more in the camp of singing songs of joy. But I have to say that the French education minister’s announcement a few days ago that from September 2008 there’ll no longer be school on Saturday morning is overdue.

When the eldest started to partake in this a few years ago, we viewed it as a quaint convention.

But since I’ve been indulging in the football, it has become quite awkward.

Yesterday was a case in point. My usual rendez-vous with the captain of the team is at 8.45am at Porte de Montreuil over on the eastern fringes of the city. And from there Renon drives me and another player, Walter, to various grounds around the Parisian suburbs.

The meet-up is usually achievable if I drop my girls off on Saturday as soon as the doors open at 8.20. I can then get the metro and be there with minutes to spare.

But now our team is in the top flight — things are going to be more serious. Referees are going to be slimmer and there are going to be prompt starts at 9.30.

So it was 8.30 at the Porte de Montreuil. I felt as if I was deserting a major offensive at home. The darling daughters had barely eaten their breakfast when I was on the brink of departing. As for the boy, the porridge wasn’t even in globules on his bib.

Reform is what Sgt Major Sarkozy said he was going to inject into French life. And I’ve no doubt that he is going to execute his directive but a fat lot of good that is to me in the here and now.

But maybe next year in the there and then I’ll be showering rose petals on the Sgt Major.

Got to Porte de Montreuil on time. We arrived at the pitch on time. On the field on time. Well before 9.30 only to find that the opponents hadn’t marked out the lines on the pitch. Maybe they’re into the expansive game.

So while a couple of their lads went round with some line marking contraption I continued my warm-up.

This routine is now embellished with a few of the stretching movements I’ve managed to retain from yoga.

I didn’t do anything too elaborate figuring that if I adopted the warrior position, it might transmit the wrong kind of signals.

Perhaps I should have as I was hardly combative during my 20-odd minutes on the right in midfield.

I was having difficulty in the coach’s 4-3-3 model. Especially since Nelson, who was supposed to be advancing with me on the outside right had drifted into the centre.

I ceded my place and about five minutes later Nelson came off.

He was remarking on the touchline how the right flank had been substituted when we scored from a move down the left.

Our first goal in the top division. My approach at times like this is never change a winning team and though I was asked if I wanted to go back on I said that I was quite happy on the sidelines.

Especially since the opponents hadn’t scored. But as the second half wore on, they were attacking at will down our left.

The left back had endured enough after 70 minutes, so I was sent back into the fray on the left in midfield and we were back in a 4-4-2 formation.

Nelson was on the inside and when I was able to break up an attack I instinctively knew where to look for him with a simple pass so we could launch the counter.

Reviewing our 1-0 victory, I’d like to think I curbed my natural attacking instincts for the good of the collective.

I was told I’d made une bonne rentrée and that certainly didn’t need much translation or even explanation.

I set off for work at the radio station happy with my contribution. I thought I was walking to the train station when I suddenly noticed that I was in fact striding.

I slowed down, looked at my legs and took some rather deliberate footsteps to make sure that it wasn’t some victory-fuelled euphoria that had numbed the pain.

No. I could walk. Hosanna I can walk after a football match. There were no grimaces, no self-recriminations for trying to stop the icy claws of decrepitude. Praise be I can walk.

Perhaps it’s the yoga. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’d avoided the tackles of their No 12.

Even this morning I could walk. No delayed effects. But there was déjà vu.

For the second week running there were no Sunday papers in the Frequent Travellers Lounge for the benighted passengers on the 0807 from the Gare du Nord.

This time it didn’t matter because I had the laptop back after a 10 absence with a faulty CD/DVD eject button and I caught up with the film Kinky Boots, a heart-warming tale of fortitude in adversity.

Duly inspired I got on the bus at Waterloo and went over to the Tate Modern. I think I shall do an onslaught on the Tate Modern because it won’t be just around the corner when the Eurostar goes steaming into St Pancras International from November 14.

I was looking at Clarinet and Bottle of Rum, Braque’s painting from 1911. He created it when he was in Céret in southern France. Picasso was working alongside him and they swapped ideas to such an extent that they had problems distinguishing their own work.

Two ladies in their mid to late 50s were cooing over the piece, admiring the layers and the musical motifs.

“Would you put it on your wall?” I asked one of them. She said she most definitely would. “Would you?” she queried.

“I’m not so sure yet.”

“Give it a few years,” she encouraged. “And you’ll come round.”

They wandered off and I had a look at a few of the other pictures before returning to review the Braque.

“I must create a new sort of beauty,” the artist claimed in 1910. “And through that beauty interpret my subjective impression.”

That’s a pretty stringent mission statement. I’ve nothing near as bold as that to proclaim.

It would be pompous to attempt to throw out something like that too. But I have to say that I’m doing my best to live a new sort of beauty.

But can it be done without the Sunday papers?

Thanks for the memory

Eurostar has got to do something at la Gare du Nord. The configuration of the ticket machines, the French and British immigration checks means that logical queues are nigh impossible.

I don’t want to veer into the standard rubbish about Latin and British temperaments but the laissez-faire approach of staff doesn’t help.

It’s rare to see Eurostar footsoldiers intervene, marshal a queue and deter the “join anywhere” brigade.

I was shuffling my way to the British immigration desks this morning behind quite a tall young man, three women and a family.

From out of nowhere came a well-dressed chap in his early 50s, well-groomed and expensive of smell. He stopped, squinted to the left and then the right and went off in that direction. Seconds later he was back and he was hovering. The tall young man looked at him, the ladies didn’t seem to notice as he stood to the side of them, slightly ahead of me.

The young bloke and the women went to the desk on the left and the family advanced to the desk in front of me. Mr Well–groomed just stood his ground. When the family was finished he simply moved in ahead of me.

I said to him that I thought I was next and he told me that he was looking for his family and that he had children waiting. He did back away. However he must have got in behind me because by the time I was in the Frequent Travellers Lounge he was breezing past me heading towards the magazine rack.

I went up to him and said: “You didn’t have to push in front of me like that.” He replied: “As I explained I have children waiting for me.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, even though no sign of his family was to be found in the lounge. “But you could have asked me to allow you in rather than pushing in like that.”

He harrumphed and there wasn’t much to say after that. Must admit he didn’t look too keen to find his offspring as he tucked into an array of goodies in the lounge.

As I stood in the buffet car, looking out at the onset of the countryside, I wondered to myself whether I appeared the type to brook such rudeness.

I focused my gaze on my image in the window and thought I don’t look psychopathic nor do I look a puny diminished being. I look quite ordinary. And I guess that was at the heart of the clash.

Maybe his values system had broken down because he was desperately seeking his family. I should have followed him to see if he was telling the truth.

I tried to visualise his reaction as I started raging: “Where’s your family? Where’s your family queue barger?”

That would have freaked him out.

Clearly this avenue of thinking stems from utter disgust that the lounge did not have any British newspapers for the benefit of passengers on the 0807.

Of the thousand Sundays I’ve travelled between Paris and London, this was the one when I wanted to read the papers. Namely on the deconstruction of José Mourinho’s exit from Chelsea on Thursday.

I even asked the lounge’s receptionist. Nothing.

Despite the barbarity of the situation I remained zenic.

“I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so….”

Oh yes, the marvellous refrain from the Vapors song from 1980. And indeed I am. For though I’m south London born, I’m going to adopt the Japanese stance in terms of my sporting affiliations.

In the days when Channel 4 showed Italian football, there was a feature on how the Japanese fans followed a particular player rather than a team.

So in 1998 when the Japanese midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata joined Perugia – a lowly team in Serie A – the minnows suddenly saw their gates rise by 400 million Armani-clad Japanese tourists. The additions all loved Nakata and had opted to see him in Italy now that he had left Bellmare Hiratsuka

Perugia gained mid table respectability with the two-time Asian player of the year in their ranks.

Lo and behold he was snapped up by Roma who were accused of succumbing to the marketing department.

The iron fist motivator Fabio Capello, who was in charge of the team, said that wasn’t the case and I doubt many journalists would argue with Fabio if he says so.

Capello was vindicated when Nakata hit two late goals to secure a draw with title rivals Juventus.

Nakata’s reaction on scoring the equaliser from 30 yards would have graced an Akira Kurosawa movie.

It was as if Nakata was at one with the air as he breathed out his delight in a slow, grimace transcending not only the savagery of the strike but the significance of the blow.

Roma went on to win the title that year.

Since Mourinho strolled into Chelsea, it’s been nothing short of sensational and I speak as an old supporter.

I can date my Blueness to about the mid 1960s. The couple who used to look after me while my mum was at work — let’s call them nanny and granddad — since that’s what I called them — came from west London, from just around the Fulham Road near Chelsea’s ground at Stamford Bridge. He was a Chelsea fan and since nanny’s favourite colour was royal blue. Well the rest is schoolboy fanaticism.

At primary school supporting Chelsea was also the smart life choice. Clifford Rashbrook, who was in my class, was a Chelsea fan. No one messed with Clifford. Firstly because he was pretty tough. Secondly he had an elder brother, Glenn and the clincher was the eldest Larry, who — so the playground word went — had form.

As an old Chelsea fan. There was the joy of the 1970 FA Cup win against Leeds. The European Cup winners Cup victory in 1971 against Real Madrid.

And then the desert following the League Cup loss to Stoke in 1972.

The flourish after the 1997 FA Cup win under Ruud Gullit and more trophies under Gianluca Vialli was all about knockout tournaments. Pundits said: “They can beat anyone on their day.”

But the sad truth was they could just as easily lose to anyone.

Seeing a team succeed on the basis of consistency has been marvellous. Crushing pragmatism with the intermittent flourish.

But after two league titles, two League cups and an FA Cup in three years, the fabulously wealthy owner Roman Abromovich has dispensed with the services of the self-styled ‘Special One’. And since Roman is paying……

At the press conference on Friday, the new man, Avram Grant looked petrified in front of the assembled media.

At a similar unveiling for Mourinho three years before, the Portuguese was affability incarnate. After his side had vanquished yet another side, Mourinho could babble Euro foot. Spanish, English, I even saw him do it in French.

Roman and his generals Peter Kenyon and Bruce Buck say they want the club to move forward and that Grant shares the same vision as them.

What on earth could that be given the success of the past three years?

Apparantly it’s to play sexy, entertaining soccer. But that’s just what Chelsea used to do and they won very little while Manchester United and Arsenal and especially United cleaned up the trophies.

So the glory with gruel has gone and hedonism will be restored.

The schism between the two big men was probably inevitable . I think Abromovich will find that extravagance on the field won’t bring success unless it’s tempered with patience. Arsenal are the English model for that elusive alloy.

Do fans want pretty football or trophies? If the owner has billions in his bank account he can opt for whatever he likes. Roman has clearly feasted on success now he appears to want aesthetics.

Nanny and grandad didn’t live to see the Blues win a title. I’ve seen two. And I’ll never forget the joy when Frank Lampard scored the second goal at Bolton in 2005 to clinch the first title in 50 years

But I’m off my club of 40 odd years. I’ve turned Japanese.