Author: albarclay

A quick run in the morning to Yves de Manoir. All the local police and security are clueless and they love to toot their whistles. I just had a pair of staple removers and I was on my own. Without someone to take the van I ended up being pushed from place to place until I was about a mile from the venue, at which point I reversed up to a bus stop right by the entrance to the official car park and told them they were going to have to get me towed if they didn’t like it, but that I was only there for as long as it takes to walk to the stadium and back.

Michael was there to take receipt. It took less than ten minutes. England was losing to Argentina in the women’s hockey. I just did my job and went. Loads of noise from the stadium. Nobody towed me but I had to have a heated discussion with the car park lady.

I’m still going into venues all the time but I can’t be fucked with going by van unless it is crucial or way too far to walk. It’s so obstructed. I’m so over these clowns.

The van gate guys are there all day, but they are mostly astronomical wankers and they don’t want to work. They’re not here to work, they’re French. It’s not worth having to get past their desultory shit. Even at VNS today I had some lardy old twit forcing me to jump through all sorts of hoops. Not because they were necessary. Just because… It’s idle work syndrome. They sit there all day doing fuck all. When someone shows up and everything is in order they don’t just wave through as they feel like this is their opportunity to justify the fact they’ve been rearranging their testicles for the last three hours. The other option for me is to walk miles though. I don’t have time for that shit. So for venues like Vaire Sur Marne Nautical Stadium I go sealed and then have to justify why I’m there in my unusual French. Today they made me get Marcus to come and wave at me from just inside the compound. I very nearly started playing the clown music.

Then a harness to Eiffel on the metro as the roads are closed, and a chance to return my media upgrade card to Micheal. I’ve got another one now. I find him in the beach volleyball. He has been quietly insistent over the last few days, using the Australian “eh” for gentle emphasis. “Drop it back when you can eh” It’s a clever little linguistic motif. In two letters it kicks responsibility to the recipient. It’s neat. I know it’s important.

I get myself onto the Champs de Mars. I’ve learnt to ask nothing of the site managers so I’ve switched on my resource management and I’ve arranged my accreditation swatches so that a high numbered media pass is the first thing the average Joe Potato sees. I meet with M and in a bout of boyish enthusiasm that we share he takes me up to the media tower between matches. “I’ll start to get anxious after about ten minutes,” I tell him. We look over the crowds. We take a selfie. We both start to get anxious as we are both here to work. We both tell each other we’ve got shit to do, which we do do, and we shake hands. Good lad that Aussie. Without getting that pass before I sorted my own I’d have been turned away for two deliveries.

“You two look similar,” observes Lou. I’m not posting his picture here as no permission. But he’s a solid geezer. We both use “unthreatening alien” as a way of breaking the rules while people mend them around us, we have both honed it to perfection, we know a fellow grafter when we see one. “I knew you’d need that pass mate. It’s why I let you make off with it.” Good lad. I believe him. “I think this is the best situated stage I’ve ever worked at,” he says. And I get it.

Gustave Eiffel was working with metal at a time when that was the new sexy thing. He put a small private apartment at the top of his tower, as you would. He used it as an office and to sweeten deals with the likes of Thomas Edison. The Liberty that stands in the bay in New York to remind people that the landgrab we call USA was largely pulled off by huddled masses of immigrants – he made that.

His tower still stands, monument to the optimism and fire of The Industrial Revolution. Guy de Maupassant, the French Chekhov, hated it. He ran from it in horror the first time he saw it. He was a humanist and a contrarian, a syphilitic social commentator, detesting the flock. Were he alive today he would have been happily using the word “sheeple” 5 years ago and now he’d be pretending he had never done so as he’d have realised it is a word for wankers. Like how the intolerant currently misuse “woke”. Clever clear human, Maupassant, but convinced he was the only one, perhaps as he was the only one at school or something. It happens to a lot of people.

He made a point of eating in the Eiffel Tower restaurant because it was “the only place in Paris I don’t have to look at it”. What a lot of discomfort for a soundbite.

His writing is dirty in the human detail. He taught me aged fifteen that fingernails and hair grow after death. Many of these curious voices push to the front through self-importance. He was one of them. Doctor Holland got me onto Bel Ami at school. I am very close friends with men very like the protagonist.

Anyway, the tower. The lightning nexus. Here in the electrical storm, I drove over the panels laid down over wet ground, not stopping until my back and front wheels both hit the concrete floor, carrying signage material. I slowly and carefully unloaded everything on my own as dawn broke somewhere behind the clouds.

Then back into the mangle until, at about ten past four, I emerged from Velodrome having brought some seriously industrial staples to make sure the signs don’t fall on the riders. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Thankfully that’s why Ffion is here, and even if she can’t get accredited she can take the driving. She took me home and then I chucked the key out the window down to her so she could give it to Ali to get in and I could pass out naked on the bed for three hours.

Now I’m up watching the boxing, which is at North Paris Arena – Tiny’s venue, which makes sense. He’ll like men hitting men. Lots of little things making a big thing.

I’m quite proud of myself for letting myself stop, and I’m happy Ffi saw it and immediately took the slack. It’s a calm before a storm right now, despite meteorology. It’s time to rest, having been on go go go. I’ll sleep a proper sleep tonight. And I really know this crap now, even if some venue managers and security are making it hard – the key is to handball over time. Very few deliveries won’t clear pedestrian security if you speak French, have Tools of Trade Sticker and don’t give up. Van entry is generally fucked as the local security team keep moving the goalposts and restricting delivery windows even though they are manned full time. I’m sure it’s because someone has decided that signs are never important, and that’s my Macguffin for being here on response. Tell Alexis at VEL that signs aren’t important, now he’s got a massive load of rapid staples and a gun that will stop them from falling on the cyclists. Tell Herless at DEF that they aren’t important when I found some sealant that will make damn sure nothing falls in the pool mid race. Prevention is always invisible. That’s the point. And I’m on a lot more than just signs.

The French security idiots can’t quite make sense of the fact that a man with a box of sealant and guns can be classed as an emergency delivery, so they’ve kicked us down priority as we are mostly anglophone. I had a security guard on his first shift today tell me before I had spoken but after he had seen my company name that he couldn’t understand a word I say. I immediately asked him if he was Polish, he responded in French that he was French but he couldn’t understand anything I said at which point his supervisor who knows me told him he should be able to understand me and I asked him how he had decided he couldn’t understand me when I had said very little if anything to him. It was an exposé of the fuckery. “The DW guys speak no French”. He’s learnt that. I had a security guy say in an undertone “You don’t understand a word I’m saying do you,” while smiling and nodding, and then looking surprised when I said “That depends on if you’re saying anything useful or not.”

I’ll keep doing what I do. Get the stuff to where it needs to be, learn the system, game the system, seek cracks, find them shored up. I can be like a white hat security hacker. I know enough to spot flaws in the system, and when I exploit them someone retrospectively closes the loop. But… it’s frustrating. I’m largely known to the gate managers. Some of them are helpful, personable, decent. Others are absolute twitbiscuits. Others are just being careful. The clown show music is reserved for ALX and INV. EIF/CDM/STE have been surprisingly helpful at security, perhaps to balance the arrogant venue managers. It was at CDM that the guy tried to diss my French, but that’s just detail – they largely treat me like a real person with a job to do.

I cover so much ground, it’s nuts. But the local obstruction is off the fucking scale. Ffi can’t even get accredited. They’ve closed it for the whole games. Absolute clowns. Still, I’ll hopefully give her enough info that she’ll be able to do the me for the paras, as I’m going home.

“No smoking. No farting. No sudden braking.” I’m not driving. Ali is. “We probably don’t need to go this way,” he says. We are going up the Champs Elysee. “How often do you get to do that?” he says.

Every day… Often a few times. It’s ace being the connection guy.

But not in an explosive van.

We nicked Dean’s propane canister about a week ago. I dropped it off on Pont Alexandra at 2am connected to a blowtorch. He wants it back. He lives in the warehouse yard and has barbies in his van. We needed a hotfix to dry the roads when we believed it wasn’t going to rain throughout the opening ceremony. Literally hot.

Ali and I are the only people on our miniteam who are successfully through checks and accredited. I didn’t know if I’d manage the thing solo, plus it was quiet at base. So In roped in Ali. About an hour ago we walked through the grounds of Grand Palais and then through an indifferent security, carrying a huge fucking great improvised blowtorch and nobody batted an eyelid.

I trust Ali not to crash and turn us into a fireball now the thing is in the back of my van. I can smell the propane but it’s probably just on my hands.

So I’m happily writing my blog now. Left the house at half 5 today and will leave at half 4 tomorrow. None of us sleep but I’m feeling very unsleeperated currently, and those heavy headed arseholes at CDM are my drop off tomorrow so that’ll be fun. I’ll finally get to meet Nico and I might need a shower afterwards.

Same old same old random. I’ve got Ffion on my team suddenly and I’ve been encouraging her to drive vans in difficult places cos she keeps doing it brilliantly and nobody dies.

The new game is working out what rules the venues have about deliveries. The more I establish where storage areas are the better I can drop what people want at times that suit me without disturbance. Apart from the CDM alphas who are too busy vanishing up their own arseholes to expedite things.

I’m loving this work drawing lines between people and shifting shifting shifting. There’s been an electric storm over the city for two days. Maybe that’s why they’re so uptight under the tower. The clouds have been spiking lightning, at times threatening and at times glorious. The world is doing sports, while thousands of sleepless men and women run around caring too much about ridiculous tiny things.

I’m almost home. Will seal the Luton, fill it with signs, seal it, fill in the papers, make myself wet, then faze into Dreamland. Should be asleep by eleven. Better than nothing. Irregular early mornings… yuk

I’m often running in something that will be needed but has been forgotten, and I’m usually going to get in before the delivery that has forgotten it. This has led some of the venue managers to misthink. “Al arrived at 6am with staple guns and staples and then a load of wood and banners came at 8am. We didn’t need Al to come at all. The tools should just have gone in with the materials.” If I find out the load has gone missing something I’ll usually be able to get it to the venue before the load. Some venues are getting very extra about it when things come though, and they can’t understand the time scale.

The guys at the Eiffel Tower in particular are annoying me now. Absolutely no help at all accessing the site – they seem to think the security bods will let me in without an upgrade pass. I had to nick a broadcast one, with permission, kinda. Then every time I ask a question I get a monologue. “I’m bringing something in to you. Might be worth mentioning it to local security to expect a van.” That one led to a monologue about how security worked from someone who has always been inside one compound rather than someone who is attaching different bits to himself the whole time and flitting between calm and active, French and English, firm and soft, charm and certainty, all in the name of detail to smooth this huge event. “Let me do my job so you can do yours,” I said to him. I totally held my ground as he seems to insist on making work for himself by obstructing me, and then moaning that I’ve made work for him. We parted friends and I got the code to his lockup so now I can make small drops without disturbing anyone. And I’m happy I held my ground with him even though it was harder. I know and trust myself in this work.

Sometimes though it is right to check. I was given a “drop everything and take this frane to Eiffel” type deal so I dropped everything, left the warehouse, thought better of it, parked up and sent photos to Scott. “I’ve got about twenty of those frames just gathering dust,” he said. “Why the hell are they sending you with another one? I don’t need it.” I didn’t take it.

Many venues now have made sense of how to use me. For the venues where I have the passes and the location of their container and the combination, I can be trusted to go there on my strange peregrinations and to leave a photographed delivery. It’s easy when you know how it all works, but every venue works differently.

Tomorrow, apparently, I’ll have to drop by half 6. Last thing I feel like right now. It’s been a long hot day into evening and bed is calling.

Roiling grey skies and regular flashes of lightning. “I’m fucking fed up of this shit,” says one of you artic drivers. He’s been waiting for Curtis to seal him. It has been a hot hot day. Hard work for these athletes, who stride around in the stadiums godlike.

I got hot today just buzzing around. TRO (cadero) first, with Wyn in full rebellion after waiting too long for his signs. He’s ordered them from another company now, he tells me, looking at me hard for a reaction. He’s a smart man, Wyn. I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with him, but I’d do the pub quiz. He likes to provoke though. He’s tried it every time I’ve seen him. Says something controversial then looks hard at you. He hasn’t hit on something I give a fuck about yet, but he’ll keep looking.

After TRO I’m going to EIF (fel) but there’s no answer from Scott, my contact. Later I discover I’ve been messaging him on a French burner phone he doesn’t check, but at the time I actively want to get an upgrade pass before I go to the van check area, and he wants to control flow. When it’s secure, the clowns really want to turn people away. Without a venue pass the first time I try, I know I’ll never get in. With a venue pass I can work in my own way and get it where he needs it without bothering him. But he clearly wants to be bothered. He keeps a tight stranglehold on his passes.

Stuck in TRO is a young German camera op, and he has waited over an hour for his driver. “He probably hasn’t got a VAPP so he’ll never get here,” I tell him. He’s not answering his phone either. I check his boxes and give him a lift to his hotel. Then I call his boss. One good turn deserves another. His boss lends me a media upgrade pass. He’s an Aussie guy who’s just arrived in Paris and is still full of adrenaline and jetlag. His eleventh Olympics now counting winter. He started out like me, he tells me as he waves me in to his posh crowded catering tent where they give you free flasks. He knows I’m gonna rush. He just wants to share his excitement, and having been in my position he knows I’m not gonna stop for lunch unless it comes as part of the job.

The Champs de Mars are pretty big carrying boxes in the heat so we go by golf buggy. It’s about who you know. We drop off at Scott and despite all my workarounds he still won’t give me a spare venue pass. So Micheal took me to the gate. And I stole the pass he lent me. After all his hospitality.

Didn’t do it knowingly. Meant to ask him. Texted a suitably contrite apology. “No worries mate, maybe you can use it to get in so we can watch the volleyball some time,” he posits. “I won’t have time.”

I’m not here to watch sport sadly. I’m here to ping from place to place, to be undaunted, to learn the systems and look for the cracks. My EIF media pass is one of the last pieces in the puzzle that’s called “how to maximise the last minute nature of what I have to do”.

Lou thinks he might have been hitting on me. I never notice such things but I don’t think that was the vibe. I think he would have behaved similarly in my situation and now he’s management he can’t have the strange joy of hard solving, but he sees it and it is difficult to find people who will drop everything and immediately carve out a role for themselves and put the hours in without bringing negativity. Lunch was an interview in events terms, in the same way that the first time I met Kester he got me to drive him somewhere in a van. “Maybe I’ll have to get you out to Sydney.” He does cricket. Maybe I’ll get to come be responsive at The Ashes… That’d be a slice of life. A possible interesting confluence of energies here, at this vast metal antenna as the storm gathers over Paris.

I love my symbols. I’ve face-palmed multiple times when people have blurred the caduceus of Hermes, found on medic alert badges for the NHS, with the much more modern satanic snake in Eden. Being a regular tarot reader I also deeply understand how interpretation of symbols is not and cannot be universal. Our experiences and the bits of us we haven’t examined tend to determine how we relate to most symbols. There is a jumble of reference points out there. It is very easy for us to forget that our particular understanding of each symbol is not a universal understanding, it is personal.

There’s a fundamentalist movement brewing, led by the stupid, driving against anything that brings people together. It is fronted by the Russian troll factory, which is seeded deeply now across social media, uniting voices that feel that they’re on the margins. They’ve tricked the incels, they’ve tricked the hippies, they’ve tricked the survivalists. The content of the message differs but it is universally against togetherness. It’s driven by Russia who must hate these Olympic Games. They’ve been excluded. So their troll factories are relying on ignorance. I slept through the opening ceremony, but apparently loads of people have been encouraged to mistake Bacchus for Jesus. When I last checked in, Jesus wasn’t half naked and purple, but the troll factories will be in overdrive. The country that invented propaganda has been excluded from this playful event. They will do what they can to hurt it.  I’m surprised by how many of my friends are swept up in other people’s interpretations of symbols that, by right, should be theirs.

Things are going well for Team GB, a result that helps push towards a justification of all the years these modern athletes have trained… “sport is changing forever,” says the ghost of my dad. “True achievement is about having a life of your own th at is rich and still being an Olympian. But now these countries are pushing out people with no life but their sport, putting so much money into it, so much time. When you still beat them it’s satisfying, but there’s nothing to some of these people.” Funny to think of dad in the context of this event. He’d have been right at home here. Hot summer again. We are all getting knackered. But the team is strong.

Ali’s birthday today. He told me it was gonna happen. I forgot.

He had the afternoon off and went into Paris on the metro. Pounded the streets. Lived the life. For the evening we had a rendezvous with Bouillon Chartier, his favourite restaurant. I love it there as well.

The Cadogan Estate stifled The King’s Road in Chelsea when I largely was in my early teens. They turned a place that was wacky and colourful into a horrendous tack of chain stores, by putting the rent up to price anything interesting out. Similar hijinks in Soho. Chelsea and Soho had a little string of restaurants that did what Bouillon Chartres does. Quick in and out, cheap but high quality. Such options are dead now in London, but for all the fuckery, Paris is still a city with low cost options. You don’t get so ruined by parking wardens – they want people to use the businesses.

We had a birthday meal. I was designated driver. People talk a great deal with booze. By the time I got home I was feeling absolutely talked out. Knackered. Winding down.

I’m off to bed now in a nice new flat, all scrubbed. But I can barely keep my eyes open. I want this early bed but it is getting later and later. Ali is cutting down trees with a chainsaw in the room just the other side of my head, I can hear him. I want to join him.

Bed bed bed bed bed. oh bed.

Greg rang to check I was awake at 1:47. My alarm was set for 1:50. I sleep talked to him. Then I crashed down for precious precious 2 minutes and alarm caused a reflexive sideways roll. Clothes were laid out and aftershave. All my bags packed as we have to check out.

Clothes happened and I carried my bags down and left them by the door. Ten minutes walk to the little enterprise van that Morgane is taking to forever away. It’s still raining. Contact lenses cos it’s dark, and drive back to the door. Sling the bags in. To the warehouse.

A pool of light. Forklifts. Shouting.

I leave the keys on the seat and my clothes in the van. Into the Luton and off. Am I awake yet? I think so.

The French are deeply creative in their fuckery. I keep thinking I’ve got the solution, but they keep working down the list. “You need a QR code on your vehicle.” “The QR codes are only day passes. Look on your sheet for the infinity symbol.” “Ah but you need to have accreditation for this particular venue.” “I do. It’s here.” “Ahh, aha but you are not sealed.” “Yes I am.” “But this seal doesn’t match the ones in the pad” “that’s an old seal” “THIS ONE IS BROKEN, YOU MUST LEAVE IMMEDIATELY ” “That’s not one of the ones on your list”

The guys at ALX GRX GRP camion gate (I can’t be having with these acronyms – this is roadkill’s gate at Grand Palais – they are almost impossibly obstructive. I get the need for security but this is a hunger for mistakes, and I have a feeling it is reserved for Anglophones. There is nothing that can be done to solve it. Trust me. I’ve tried charm, neutrality, pretending not to understand french, using my french that is getting really good now, silence, excitement at French victory… they have decided to be pricks. So I quietly respond by watching the clock as they go through their checklist of reasons I have to be turned away. Their intention with me is to reject. Even with every tiny little detail fine they still make me fight them. And I’m francophone and was francophile until I realised the extent to which they generally hate the English.

So I have all these clueless francs milling around looking for reasons to reject me. If I’m still there after twenty minutes I play trombone clown music loudly on my radio and I’ve seen that they know why I’m doing it. It makes me very happy. They don’t quite know what to do with it. They haven’t asked me to stop yet as that would be admitting they’ve noticed it and they know I’ll just pretend it’s the music I like. Circus music puts a very different context to them as they cluelessly run around with their bomb detectors waving pieces of paper and looking frightened and one person doing what the previous person just did in circles and shouting and tripping over ladders and “it’s your job” “no it’s my job” “why I oughtta!” As I said though, local security. Fuckwits. Toujours. It’s global.

I just hope these guillotined chickens stop the ones who mustn’t enter. They are still lawpainting by numbers. The vast majority of the security guards here would be in the first wave of people to die in the apocalypse, while waiting for their Amazon order of water. Last words “I’m hungry!”

There’s some letter of the law over spirit of the law stuff going on. I let myself out through a fence today and ended up being literally manhandled by a man with no voice who then dobbed me in to the police who told me through the fence I should pay attention to the security idiots, and I said yes sir no sir three bags full sir, instead of “Officer, this man is a potato with legs.” Still, they park wherever they want and there is no poison army of yellow stingers out to punish mistakes. Some things are better in France outside of food and wine.

I got in eventually and once you’re in you are less scrutinised. I was badly operating one of their electric forklifts on the bridge as the rain was coming down in torrents and thank goodness I was in one of my Global Crew synthetic T shirts as it didn’t give me hypothermia. I still got absolutely drenched.

All done though and I squelched back and then had to fight into Vaire-sur-Marne, eventually getting a police escort through huge crowds. Walked past a fair few godlike humans as I took a moment to wash my hands and use the loo. It was pointed out I was in odd socks. I like odd socks. I want some excellent bright shoes now though. I’ve been outclassed on footwear.

Back at it, onto yet another milk run. There’s so much to do. The arrival of the athletes and the crowds bring it home. I’m crewing the fucking Olympics. My pass says “Technician”. What is my life?

Now I’m dropping to live venues and it is much more anxious. Perhaps it’ll settle. The things are happening as I walk by with something random.

I’m sad it’s raining. It makes me wet. And I want this to be a good event. Rain at the start of festivals means forever puddles.

I had a box of velcro that Tony wanted at his hotel. Despite the fact he’s peremptory, I got his velcro to his reception. It’s one thing every day with him and La Defense. Makes me value planning more highly.

I found excellent safe parking for my Luton next to Tony’s hotel, in sight of an all night roadblock just inside the exclusion zone. Then I took about twelve foot of jonk out the back, breaking the seals which pretty much calls it dead for ALX tomorrow. I like the clown show now though. I look forward to seeing these gruff people improvise, even if they are playing “No, but” while I’m playing “Yes, and” I’ll walk it all in.

So the jonk came on the metro with me, along with all the pissed up rugby gold winning french

“What the hell that guy carrying, is he stoned that’s a hell of a joint,” but they were very very happy to have it at Place de la Concorde.

So I stopped in a central Paris street on the way home for a bite. And a powercut. The whole street. Worrying. As a result I couldn’t pay for my meal on izettle. This is the future. He trusted me to go home and pay him another day. I have no idea if I’ll ever come back this way. But this is the trap we are making for ourselves with the bullshit of “proud to be a cashless venue”. Europe and America should be more Japan. Create a fuckable need. Contactless payment. Create cultural bollocks to drive it. “Cash is dirty.” “You’re funding crime.” Wait a few years. Then fuck it.

That hotel had no means of taking payment.

I am getting on the metro. I’ve booked a room by the van. Tomorrow morning I’ll handball the stuff onto the venue. zxx

I’m on the Pont de Carousel. We all have to stand a long way from the road and wait because someone left a Lime bike and they have to make sure it’s not a bomb.

I had to make the Luton into a mobile consumables scrim tools and wayfinding shop, because everything was just lined up by the side of the bridge while things were being set up. I’ve still got some signs that should be at Trocadero. Most of the scrim has gone now, but there’s a tiny bit left just in case. I’m giving out cable ties like sweeties. And a speedboat horse just came past underneath me.

The Seine is active with RIBs today, and the police are everywhere. Also the gendarmerie, doing their best to confuse things. One guy broke the seal on my van just because he could. I was discombobulated and he had absently pocketed my fucking driving licence. Now I’m having to work out how to get it back from the idiots. “Do you know how I might get my licence back?” I asked a policewoman and she just laughed when I showed her the video of the guy. “Ahh that’s a gendarme. They are unprofessional. We would never make that mistake.”

Thankfully I met a young French lad who is really up for helping out. He’s been on the phone to the gendarmerie and generally trying to shift things which is good as I haven’t the time. He calls himself Fred, he drives vans, and I’ve saved him in my phone as someone I would call it I ever had to staff drivers in french speaking countries which, if you know me, is not as unlikely as it sounds. He’s a bright spark generally, and motivated. If I was an employer I would employ him.

I’m largely an energy shifter here. Moving stuff and retuning as I go. Big loads of random things go to one point, and then the next and then the next gradually getting smaller. Timber frames, loads of them, made up carefully by the chippies. “What the hell are they actually gonna use those timber frames for?” Ali said. They went out to Ceremony. Nobody had the staff to implement the signs into them. They came back. They’ll probably end up as timber again.

It’s magical being here. This is a nexus. But I’m up tomorrow at 2am and have to take all my bags out of the flat in Noisy and get on the road properly by twenty past. Argh. Night night.

I’m on my own and I’m knackered, but my last drop was at Invalides and then I could drive through all the police cordons running down the side of The Seine until I parked up in an abandoned bus stop just inside the barrier. Then I hotfooted it into the nearest open bistro and ordered me a magret de canard with spinach.

It’s summer in Paris so we’re all sitting outside. I’m shoving it in my face as it is very much food as fuel despite being high quality and with green things. The vibe here is extremely buzzy and makes me rather want to have a glass of their Brouilly, but it’s a great big truck and a long way home so I’ll make do with water.

Local security at events is always a bit of a shitshow when I think about it. This is off the scale but it’s a bigger event. All the different venues do it differently. I’m amassing a decent amount of experience at it, but you can’t teach stupid.

There was a guy at Grand Palais yesterday who had been told to let in all passes for his group of venues. So he was preventing access to everyone but the very small number of people who have access all areas. Let in all translates to ONLY let in all. But then TOUT is the French. The passes are in English. He could say that’s why he was essentially doing the opposite of what he was meant to do.

I was very glad my French is broader now when I went to La Defense with a van full of urgent timber. I knew they wanted it at the start of the day. By eleven I knew it was nobody’s job, aka mine. A huge pallet of 5.1m lengths of timber, 300m in total, just sitting there with some bungee and staples. “But you can’t take it Al,” says Ali. “It’s too long.”

It took me longer than I am happy with to work it out, and frankly without Mousa and my french it wouldn’t have happened. Mousa helped me get it in like this:

And off. See the red strip towards the top of the hazard tape on the van? That’s to say it has been checked and sealed at the warehouse. But still you have to go to a van check area and show your proof that you’ve been sealed. And it was noon by the time I got there so of course the checker is on a lunch break and there’s only one. There’s a number to call but no answer. Three vans.

We wait twenty minutes patiently and then I ring the number on repeat. Three rings, hang up, three rings, hang up, etc. It takes a while but they answer and then minutes later they are there. I have to go to gate 4. I go to gate 4. I can see the loading bay just the other side. They won’t let me in though. I have to go to another gate. At the other gate they say “This is the spectator gate and car park. Deliveries go at the gate you were just at.” “Yes, but the guy at the gate is a bit slow.” I go back to him. By now Herless and Mariona have both come out of the venue to try and help but these people are Grade A morons. I’m still being polite but it’s infuriating when I get back and can see the loading bay and he won’t open the gate. I’m sent round again. I end up at a third gate with a man in hi-vis waving “NO” to me, so I wave “hello” and keep coming. Then he is shouting “STOP STOP THIS IS NOT THE GATE” and I shout back “This IS the gate, I’ve been to all the other gates.” “Don’t come!” “I’m coming and you’re going to let me in.” Usually I’m bluffing but this time we’ve had all the accreditation done properly. I also have a collection of passes to get in on foot but I’m not carrying all that timber through security, TOT or no TOT. He is going to let me in.

Needless to say I got in. But seriously, what a clown show. What the hell is that idiot doing refusing to open the gate because it is supposed to be for athletes when they aren’t here yet. We open tomorrow.

Long long days and much to contemplate in all of them. I’ve finished my duck. It’s quarter past eleven. Time to find the van and get it home.