Month: July 2024

Here I sit at the edge of the sun, in the summer square in Noisy. It’s stone here, the only plants are in cages. But the people run free in space, just financially caged. Street life. Children chasing a battered football into the road.

Last week a sports hall up the road that is being demolished put a load of half decent Adidas footballs out onto the street. Good workmen there. I have worked alongside managers who would have told the workmen to put the balls into boxes first so nobody can have fun with them. Christ, I once did a job with a producer who asked me to throw away a huge amount of expired beer, and then got in the van with me and accompanied me to to the tip to make sure I threw it out. Special place in hell.

Everyone is kicking balls everywhere and running around and shouting. It’s ten to ten at night.

Today I finally had the Grand Palais experience I’ve been waiting for. This is the venue where I met Roadkill and Bob – blogs passim. I went to the gate, got in through the gate with my van, and helped some people out. Mostly it was distribution of stuff. It also partly involved a fucked boom lift. I had some jump leads and a portable charger with extension cable. I thought I was gonna have to jump the thing, but actually the thing started fine, he just doesn’t like it as there are safety features that cut the engine when you try and make it do dangerous things.

Lunch in central Paris. Then back on the road and I think I’ve finally cracked the accreditation fuckery. “Don’t go through Curtis.” It’s as simple as that, it turns out.

Early start tomorrow, and it is turning to night now. I just came outside as I wanted to be in a different place to write this. Jack and Darren are dropping off scaffolding late tonight. I’ll go get it early tomorrow morning. The team have got an 8 hour window overnight where they have staff to build the scaffolding towers, do whatever they need to do, and break the towers. They start at 11pm, and I’m gonna need to get my van ready to pick it all up at 6 really because once the work is finished they won’t stick around, and if the team has gone then I’ll be loading scaffolding on my own at dawn with hotel staff telling me I’m supposed to be gone and not helping.

So it’s bedtime. In my hot sweaty room. I think I’ll leave the fan on all night. It made me dream of rain, but it’s probably better than making myself into bed pie. It’s hot in Paris.

It’s always very varied here.

The heat adds to things. We had a van with broken Aircon so of course it fell to me to drive it back to the van rental and change it over. Oven on wheels. You can’t have two vehicles in your name at the van rental at the same time, so the fact that I do is an absolute triumph for dyslexia. I had no pride so when my name was mangled by the first place I kinda just let it slide. The manager of the second place was very much the cliché of Monsieur clean shaven disapproval francais. He wouldn’t allow Kieron to rent because he only had a photo of his licence. He honestly would have been happier if he could block us than if he could solve it. I was there to solve it and solved it by having had the Dacia allocated to me on a dyslexic spelling of my name, and knowing it, and using a different address. He checked name and address multiple times as I had told him I already had a vehicle with his company when I was trying to overcome the photo thing : “The branch at gare du nord were fine with a photo of my licence” He seemed disappointed and upset not to have worked out how to obstruct me. Thankfully he didn’t check driving licence number – I almost thought he would. Too lazy to input it all. So I’ve got two vehicles with the same company, neither of which will actually be driven by me. We are all insured, sure. Even beyond the company I always have full full shiny comprehensive I do drivething insurance. Just broke the rules about multiple cars. I could have probably solved it slowly and less fraudulently. But I saw a fix, saw a prick, and used the fix to bypass the prick. Fraud, ladies and gents. But to overcome an obstructive ponce who wouldn’t let it go in kierons name despite a passport and a photo of his licence. Needed the real thing? No. Kieron was English. The guy was a prime example of the well turned out French racist.

As an Englishman in Paris, surrounded by English in Paris, I have really started to notice something cultural. It is hard to put your finger on, it is insipid. But… the more French you speak the easier they make it for you… But even within that, they want to make it harder for the English wherever possible. When I first hit it was with Roadkill and Bob at GPL. Even with communicable French they were more interested in making things hard for me than helping, because Bob had met me the day before and they had constructed this whole “Bad English people shouldn’t be involved” narrative. Because, as Bardot told us, Le Diable est Anglais. Most sane English people would never be able to countenance how the French don’t like us, because we largely think of them as being cool well turned out humans who eat well and are a bit too chilled out for our purposes. Bob was at the warehouse the other day. “BOB!” I said, about a foot from his ear. He ignored me so hard it could be heard in Sweden. Ponce.

French people running venues are deliberately failing to find solutions when it is an English team without accreditation trying to deliver, even though the accreditation fuck up was pretty much universally French. Some people are more interested in culture war than making this mad great big thing work. It’s tempting though, isn’t it. “We need this bungee to work. This bungee is just the other side of the fence in a van with two people anxious to deliver it. The English haven’t got a working pass and neither of them speak our language (we sent Scott and Mel). If we don’t solve it we still get paid and we don’t have to work so hard today and we can blame falling behind on the English. Let’s all go get a pasty.”

Idiots. But my French has woken up now. I’m partly thinking in it. With simple communication it is now easy for me to bypass the racism by appearing to be French. Anything more than a sentence or two and I’ll be exposed, but when they ask me in French where I’m from, I tell them I’m Spanish cos it’s half true and they don’t hate the Spanish like they hate UK. None of the people I’ve done that with so far have switched to Spanish, but it wouldn’t faze me if they did, I’d likely just switch to English as the universal. Which it is, guys. Deal with it.

I was taken by surprise by the past today, in the strangest fashion.

I’m on this job because of someone I met loading tables onto a van in Shoreditch. He introduced me to an event company that has brought much mad joy into my life. He is a man of few words, but I’ve always felt fellow feeling with him and enjoyed his lack of nonsense.

He worked out who my dad was last week. “Was your dad Norman?” “Yes”

Dad was racing everything long before people were putting it all on the internet. He was one of the survivors from a small crew who left the army after WW2 and fell into making things go faster. He was dragster racing in absolute deathtraps, running through however many fucking gears those things had, momentarily being faster than anyone. He was racing powerboats before they were safe when they were just engines too big for the boat, lifting the prow. There’s a cine video mum took where he flips and barrels at top speed. Without the barrel, broken necks all round. He just turns round and keeps going. He was called world champion for it multiple years including the year I was born. He was a multiple winter Olympian, first man to waterski across the Irish sea, one of the first to cross the Swiss Alps in a hot air balloon. Majestically stupid shit he got up to. He taught me how to drive just in time, his declining years overlapped with my mid teens. I know engines a bit because of him. He did so much stuff at a time when drivers were engineers as well. You didn’t have a team. It was you and you with you.

In 1968 The Daily Express sponsored a London to Sydney marathon, and dad thought it was a load of pomposity so he entered it in a vintage 1920’s racing Bentley. He and his mates Keith and Patrick were running interference while everyone else had modern tooled up rally cars. They were never very popular with the “this is a serious race” crowd, being jokers who wanted to see if they could win anyway. Their car needed repairing and they ran emergency repairs on a boat and were disqualified by the joyless.

Darren’s dad won the same race in a Hillman Hunter.

And here we are in Paris together, and Kester is one of the first humans I’ve met for a long long time that can tell me things I didn’t know about my dad, and somehow we’ve been workfriends for over a decade now. Life is bonkers.

I’ve wanted to try and follow in my dad’s footsteps, in a car that is fucked, maybe avoid Afghanistan, make a documentary. You need a team of three. I know who I think the third should be… Through the land of oil… … Nothing happens by mistake and my brain is going tickerticker now… Energy. Movement. Everything for a reason. Lord alive.

Problem is, Keith’s daughter flogged their Bentley as part of a job lot. Hard work to find a new one… But I’m always up for a project.

Driving. A day of driving. Place to place to place to place. Through the summer streets of Paris.

My driving setup on event work like this is well established. A magnetic phone holder that attaches to the air vent. Otherwise you cook your phone in the sun. A charging wire that connects to the cigarette lighter, not just the car USB. So you definitely get charge rather than some janky system trying to connect your phone to the car. Bluetooth the phone to the car instead. Otherwise it won’t work properly and won’t charge. A spare port in the charger for your inevitably unprepared passenger.

Then I tune into local radio as I drive. And I Shazam all tracks that take my interest, making my Shazams into a long list of tunes that I will turn into a Spotify playlist at the end of the job. Then when I’m in the old folks home, the nurse can play my playlists from these incredible random jobs all over the world, and I can momentarily forget that I’m doolally and my legs have fallen off, and think I’m back in that hot summer in Paris when we made The Olympics.

Local worldwide radio is frequently somewhat repetitive. My playlists have been short because they’re playing the same old well represented musicians on repeat to generate interest in exchange for spondoolicks.

In Paris there is FIP. A little radio station under a big umbrella. I found it on my habitual first day quest for the most varied local radio.

105.10 – (in Paris). France Inter Paris. Coming out from Romainville just next to the warehouse.

FIP first broadcast before I was born. For what it is, it is wonderful and creative and so French that it is still going. They aren’t repeating tracks – a minimum of 48 hours. They DJ from 7am to 11pm. Outside of that it replays selections from the previous day.

It’s so French. Global art and culture is largely dictated by money. Behemoths have invested in certain cultural voices and they can often lead the cultural narrative because of the sheer volume of money put behind the voices they decide to select. Other voices can make themselves heard, but it does help an individual in the arts if they come to the attention of a behemoth. Affordable art fairs still work with galleries. FIP doesn’t care about all this. Vous n’êtes plus là, vous êtes sur FIP. Respirez, vous êtes sur FIP. Escape. Breath. FIP.

FIP is part of the necessary interference to this restricting model of serving art to people. You might occasionally get a Taylor Swift song, but it won’t be every five minutes. They are painting with a broad brush. There are multiple DJs and they will still have personal favourites, and a desire to share voices new to them. One of my regular driving time DJs is putting out a lot of Cassandra Jenkins, who reminds me of January Thompson – I like my ethereal American female singer songwriters – always have. But a lot means three different tracks in about a week. Enough for me to notice as I like her sound. I impulse booked two tickets to a gig in Brighton in November after enjoying multiple tracks from her latest album “My Light My Destroyer”. They even played Liz Lawrence a couple of days ago. She’s a Stratford upon Avon lass and I met her through Minnie when she was finishing her wonderful first album, Bedroom Hero. FIP reminded me she’s got a new album out – Peanuts. It’s ace. Talented friends, and finally a radio station putting them out there because they’re good, rather than transactionally.

The FIP DJs are clearly great listeners, cataloguers and artistic pattern makers. They theme songs, but the themes shift. Sometimes one sound flows into another, sometimes it will be three upbeat songs of loneliness. We go into opera, to classical music, through the whole history of modern music, everywhere. NAS plays next to Flight of the Conchords plays next to Madeleine Peyroux. Loads of French music, some of it so so cool. I’ve enjoyed Brigitte Bardot (Le diable est anglais), Jacques Higelin (Crocodaïl), Sporto Kantes (Lee). It’s my favourite side of the French cool thing. No judgement. No promotion. Just music played actively to make a better frame for the listener.

It is on different wavelengths in different parts of France, and occasionally Radio France snip off the head of one of the local broadcasters because not enough people are listening. But if you live there, tune in. No adverts, virtually no talking, no playing the shit the behemoths want us all to be listening to. It’s brilliant.

And it connects me randomly with Lou. She lives in Kemptown, in Brighton. Some very smart music savvy Brighton denizens that she knows managed to keep a range extender running for ages before Ofcom pissed on their parade. FIP and the DJs are still well known and celebrated over there. Lou knew it immediately. It’s a little cool bit of Paris that crossed to habitually edgy Brighton. You can get it on satellite these days all over the place, plus stream it live. There’s even a FIP app in English. Bemused executives have noticed that people actually like authentic things.

But I’m so glad I’m here at this auspicious time for France, enjoying it live as I pound the streets as a tiny team for the whole world.

Le Geo. The Globe  Les JO. The Olympics. Vous etes ici pour Geo? Oui. Bien sûr. Toujours.

Yes I know we have made civilisation up. I’m very aware that we have gradually made sense of everything and then put in systems that help us all do what we’ve got used to doing in more efficient ways.

Pallets are a good example of how we are moving to consensus. Semi-Universal wooden things. There’s a whole structure of machines designed to move pallets. There is a whole economy of pallets that most of us are not aware of.

A pallet is a plate of wood. It looks like the pictures below.

You need literally millions of them for an event like this. They go in, they go out. I sometimes take an empty one these days when I collect an order from Brico as then they are less likely to make me strip it.

This photo is just for me to locate some lost wayfinding. But the wooden thing is a very standard pallet. That’s the size they usually are. Put things on them. Then you can move the things. Too many things? Wrap them up with giant rolls of film. You can put so much stuff on one of them.

Then you can either haul them with a manual pallet truck, you can nibble them around with that electric yellow thing which is jerky and less efficient than it looks, or you can go get stuck in with a forklift providing there’s room. Having experienced all options, I am now very much of the opinion that if there’s a truck available it’s the best option. Sadly they aren’t available that often, particularly for the likes of me. I’m just trying to solve problems.

Today I sent a team on a milk run. They had a bunch of venues, I wasn’t able to generate the contacts or drop offs, they did it all through Kieran and I didn’t even know their progress. I am trying to delegate. But if I’m gonna be managerial I need more info.

I’m just a cog though. The machine is huge but I literally don’t matter other than the fact they are asking me to buy loads of stuff. I could buy it on my credit card.

Suddenly there’s loads of people. We are building up to Dday so there’s gonna be a lot to do and more people will make it more possible to delegate. I think it was tricky when it was just Darren up there for a few days, so now we are all back we have helpers.

I’m still exhausted and feeling very ineloquent. I had some paint made up as apparently they needed it at the Trocadero, but I was sent to an entrance where I could at least stop the van but my drop off contact went completely off radar for an hour. I eventually just left it in the corner and sent a “how to find your stuff” video, as it felt a bit like they were making me wait because they had had to wait. I’ve got too much to do for games, but at least my pass is working again.

I saw the Eiffel Tower close up for the first time since I’ve been in town. Even had time when I was waiting to take a photo.

It’s all steaming towards us now. I am doing what I can, we all are, to try and make this a worthwhile event for France. It’s a huge thing, it’s beginning to look amazing, like with London everyone is worrying about the outlay… I really hope that it realises the potential it has. I want to be involved in something bright.

Right now I’m just wondering where the hell all the harnesses went when I’m away. I’m dreaming the dream. There’s a lot to think about, a lot to do and a load of random consumables lost somewhere near Paris.

I’ve got screws now, for however long. I’ve got staples. I just don’t have much else. And I’m tired again. It’s eleven. I had beer last night with the football and I’m not as good at early mornings after that as I used to be.

Helping. I’m still keeping my end up when I’m here. I can really feel the five days I was off backing up into my workload now I’m back. I’m gonna try and fall asleep in my hot little noisy room in Noisy. I’m glad that at least it’s summer here. It sounds like it all went to tits again in England. Concentrate, people! Dammit.

Thankfully, Darren and I decided not to make a big night of it. Jack went into town.”There’s a bar in Montmartre.” I like it in Montmartre, and if I’m going to be there on a work night it won’t be because of kickykick. I’m trying to have a generally positive life experience here, and that takes in the sockball, but only if the sockball doesn’t take me in.

As I write, had I gone into central Paris, I would now be finding my way back here on the metro with bad adrenaline. The England team lost again. As is their job they led us on. The lionesses men’s team is pretty good, but they were no match for the Spanish.

I’ve been bouncing around today. My pass no longer works at all, which is totally not surprising and really really obstructive. All the security is tight as fuck, and there seems to be no track to have someone who can be access all areas. Unfortunately that’s my job so I’m building a catalogue of contact numbers and Google pins that help me get in and out of all these places, but today my card came up cancelled because it is. My contacts can frequently talk me through security, but it really doesn’t help that once again I’m looking like a chancer while dropping off essential wayfinding. Get me a pass for the event… It’s nuts that I can’t ever identify myself. I’ll solve it, that’s what I do. But it is annoyingly inefficient.

They are having a huge firework display tonight for Bastille Day. Earlier on they demonstrated the full might of the French military. Six planes, a guy with a moustache and some cannons designed to spit out white flags.

The Swiss are next door at least. They have an army. If someone takes over again they can come and liberate when the time is right. Meantime bof. Lucky the pilots stayed at work the whole time those planes were in the air.

And so back to Paris. OTHER PEOPLE have been affecting the organisation of our little kingdom, and can you blame them? I’ve been away. Ali has been away. Darren has been here on his own and someone else has been pulled in to help. But as a result I’m back to perplexing decisions. Two new blue boxes on the top row where EVERYTHING ELSE is yellow and honestly how did they miss that? How? It’s just an OCD thing but… And these stickers on the boxes like they put on your car window when it’s clamped so there’s no fucking way I’ll ever reclaim them from what they have been doomed to randomly contain without acid.

Some picks laid out already but lo and behold whoever did it doesn’t know the difference between hook and loop velcro and has prepared nothing but hook. This is likely a better idea than nothing but loop because lots of things come pre-looped. But that’s just coincidence. I don’t know if venues have already received boxes of just one half of their velcro. I have to trust not. Velvet and Crochet. That’s where that one is from. Lou told me that. She’s good with fabric. She’s good with many things.

We still have access to a transit van but someone called Karim has nicked back our Luton. It’s on his card. We can use the Dacia but it’s full of tools and has a placeholder tyre on now. There are two pickups, one of which is as long as an artic, and allegedly they’re what I’m to use to go to venues now. Today I disobeyed a suggestion to load one with a pallet for the Trocadero – I put it in the transit – and about twenty minutes later the sky shat rain and lightning for about an hour, flooding most of the roads. I was glad not to have put it into one of those things as it would have been jelly on drop off. They aren’t fit for my purposes. They’re for scaffolding and forklifts, with loads of ratcheting.

We need our Luton back if we are to be efficient in the week to come.

Today I was on my own trying to deal with stocktaking, responding to people’s extravagant demands, picking up the shortfall of what has been seized in customs, taking stock of what has changed. Random boxes of things have been placed in thoroughly illogical places up on the mezzanine. I’ve been shifting between organising and solving. I did a drive out late this evening and I hate that there’s a team member having a weekend off but I can’t blame him when I’ve just had five days off for work. Especially work that finishes at 3pm and let’s me hang out with my beloved.

I stopped briefly and had Italian food. Escaloppe Milanese with Spaghetti Napoli on it. Nom. I’m beginning to know my way around this town now, even if I’m living in the suburbs. At some point I’ll likely do a milk run and get back the shit people don’t want. Not tomorrow though. As if they needed another excuse not to work, tomorrow is Bastille day. Getting vans into central will be a mess. Plus Spain are playing football in some sort of final, and they beat France.

Easy Jet. Back to Paris.

I’m in the air, recalibrating my body and my mind for a long old job now as we push into and through this massive event.

“The only bigger thing is organising a war,” says one of the lads, and there’s sense in this. Here I am, trying to help smooth issues in supply chains. Trying to anticipate when we are gonna run out of screws or bolts or cable ties, or tools. That’s basically bullets and mortars, shovels and weapons. Big events need a lot of supply. The stakes are lower but the need is still there, and the practical headaches of getting the things that are needed from the place where they start to the place where they should be are all part of my remit.

Stephan in the warehouse deliberately sends things out earlier than scheduled because he thinks it’s efficient, but it means that last minute additions can’t be added. He’s proud of himself for starting early – he starts at 5 – and he shows his pride by causing problems. Then the drivers often offload things to the wrong venue if they have multiple venues on the list. That means that things that need to be in one place get ignored in another place, so while one venue has chucked 25000 unwanted screws into a corner, another venue is getting an Uber to the warehouse and asking me why the hell they didn’t get their 25000 screws.

I have no idea what I’m gonna walk into tomorrow having been away five days. I’m on the plane back and I booked a room in the little hotel opposite the warehouse as I thought there was a chance that my Airbnb room is now occupied. I’ll land, go straight there, get an early bed and then go in and assess the state of things early tomorrow. At least it’ll be the weekend so even though we are getting close to event day the French will still not be working so I’ll be able to get on without too many demands on my attention. I suspect I’ll just have a quartermaster hat on again tomorrow. Maybe a bit of pick-up driving.

Glad to be heading back in having rested. I feel new minted. Healthy sober summer seaside time with Lou, despite the weather. I’ve got some incense in my bag this time and some Palo Santo for smudging. Gonna pace myself, take each day as it comes and find time to connect with nature and sleep.

Or I’ll just work every hour that God made and then collapse on my face until my alarm jolts me up…

The best bit about teaching is that the day is over early. Last few weeks of term and it’s always hard to find workshop leaders so this is the gig I couldn’t shake for Paris. On the plus side though I’ve been totally able to work from Lou’s and then go chasing quality of life afterwards.

Maybe we brought the summer at last. Keep hold of it. Remembering that school is not quite broken up yet is helpful in remembering that we could well still have those endless months of heat and joy that we all remember growing up.

We managed to get over to one of my favourite parts of The Downs – Wilmington and the area around about. The Sussex Ox for a remarkable rack of lamb, knowing that they are hard to find in France. Then everyone should have a favourite tree. Mine is in the Wilmington churchyard, propped up with sticks, 2000 years old. Still alive, home to a bees nest, the Wilmington yew.

They’ve touched up the Long Man, so he is clearly picked out on the hill above.

Behind me and down the road a bit is the tree, a wooden temple outside a church. I’m sucking in the opportunities for nature right now as a lot of my life in France will be urban and concreted, dealing with fixings and consumables. This time with Lou has been a restorative nature shot, and a chance to pull back the spring ready to fire forward into strange french life again. I feel totally restored. Ready to go go go.

Tomorrow travel and then back at it bright and early Saturday, taking stock on the weekend before everything really starts going. When I booked it, I didn’t want to take the time to come back – I just wanted to go all the way through. After my runny tummy and vast amounts of sleep, no booze, healthy food and wellness and lots of lovely Lou I’m now wondering how I would’ve got on without this fire break. I’m champing at the bit to work again now. It’ll probably raise my productivity.

One more night in London. Needed to sort out my car so I can come back and it’s still insured and it won’t get towed for lack of parking permit or fined for lack of tax. Cars have so many parasites. I still love the things and the joy, possibility and money outweigh the outlay.

I’m in my flat. It’s dark. I’m quietly repacking, knowing what I need in terms of clothes now. For a while I thought I would drive to Paris, but frankly it’s pointless and the warehouse is crowded. One more car would be rude.

A bit of work that turned into a lovely break with some early mornings. Worth honouring the work, as it’s what I was driving in to do when the call came through about this.

Sure it’s raining again. But it was hot today. Flesh was out. It is coming…