AlBarclay

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.

Tiny at NPA texted me twice at half three in the morning about gaffer tape. He’s got silver gaffer and I gave him six short rolls of black gaffer yesterday, to his hotel. At the time I told him “I’m the emergency guy, you know that right?” I know he’s got silver gaffer and a fucking Sharpie if it’s that important to him. But no. It’s a 3.30am text. I’m curious to know if that’s when he woke up or when he put his head down.

Darren got sent with his gaffer to the venue today but he forgot his roll of twine and almost had to fight the minotaur before finally lighting on the location of the north paris arena. Which comes up on Google maps.

Now Tiny is asking for cable ties to his hotel room and I’m sorely tempted to show up with some…

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. He’d have seen the read receipt on his 3.30am wakeywakey text. I’m not letting him get into the habit of it. He’s a big boy now. There are two excellent hardware stores twenty minutes drive from him. His demands are small amounts of things he’s already got.

So I took him off my radar today and did other things. The boats at the start and I ended up having to help one of the venue managers onto site as this is how obstructive the security guys are. English AND female? Push obstruct button repeatedly until dead. I snuck a delivery MDS to her and then got in the car with her. Then she sent me back with a van full of pallets and a mission to work out how to refuel the propane fuel. I delegated the pallets to Pedro and the fuel to Jack and flew out to Versailles.

Then into Paris central. We are close to opening now. Grand Palais was having a fire drill so I had to talk their stuff over the fence, and then to EIF. The Champs de Mars. A huge compound under the Eiffel Tower and I only had a pass for Invalides. Thankfully I’ve got a TOT sticker now. “Tools of the Trade” It means I’m allowed to openly carry a machete onto any of the Olympic venues. “Can you open this box please?” It’s a sealed box of cable tensioners. I immediately take my Stanley Knife out of my pocket and one guy at security jumps backwards as I open the box. His supervisor indicates how I’m using it to open a box, a reflexive move now. “He has a TOT. Pay attention. He’s obviously safe.” Oh how little you know, child.

“Shall I come back to warehouse or stay in the vicinity of the Eiffel tower and have a lovely meal on my own?” I asked the team. We are on top of it but for good old Tiny at NPA having the wrong colour cable ties.

Au bon accueil. Right here. I get to eat yummy food and watch the Instagrammers. Joy.

I’m waiting for the tumble drier. I’m glad there is a tumble drier. I woke up and my sheets were a bit pongy. It’s awfy hot in that room, even though I run the fan all night. When do I ever get the time to change the sheets? Now, it turns out. This evening.

I don’t really have the time though to be honest but I’ll make it. Walked home and got in at almost half ten. Stripped my bed and shoved it into the wash. Then put it in the drier on a thirty minute cycle that I reckon I’ll have to repeat a few times. Now it’s half eleven. I’ll be up another hour I reckon, and then wheels up from the warehouse no later than half seven. We loaded up a Luton with stuff for the boats and sorted out all the entry fuckery. We’re getting good at it now. I know in advance every time if it’ll have to be putting things through the fence or if they’ll let me through without question.

I’ve had my Paris driving spoilt forever. I have my very own lane to drive in. I shoot down it into town in my little van past loads of gridlocked vehicles. It feels incredible. And then if I wave my pass the police let me through their barrier into the central area and I can drive the busiest streets in the capital empty but for vans like mine. Yes, sure, I’m always in a hurry and stacked up with jobs. But after this is all over there will be strange memories of driving down the Seine on empty roads. Of parking my Luton next to a cherry picker just by Invalides Bridge, in the middle of what is normally a road.

Sometimes it’s useful to have a plus one. Usually I drive alone. Thankfully I had Edwin yesterday.

“Can you jump out and see if I can get under that? Send me a photo.”

That’ll be my vehicle heading to the boats tomorrow out near Torcy. VNS. Roof is unscratched. I didn’t continue.

Vaire-sur-marne Nautical Stadium. “the boats” I’m starting to be able to elongate the acronyms. My brain can’t hold homogenised information like that. I’m better attaching things to ideas as all the three letter codes swim.

Today I was in Versailles and Elancourt, La Defense, Montparnasse… Saw none of them. What is this Paris? Paris is a road.

In the afternoon I had a Frenchman in my van. Ali is back in the warehouse with all his Ali mojo. He’s on fire at the moment. He’s total Ali. Knowing he has it all in hand makes it much easier for me to start bussing things to people who want them urgently, and to start responding properly. I’ve got one or two venue managers who have realised I’m the sharp point of the stick and have started to try and get me to do their things direct. If it’s convenient I’ll do it, but I remember Kes on my first big job for him out in Saudi noticing I was being overused by a particular small group. “Don’t let them make you their personal driver, there’s too much else.”

I try to be the emergency response guy but don’t call me if you’re not happy with the size of the cable ties you’ve got. Call me if you’ve been spiking your timber for lack of screws and it’s starting to feel dangerous. Call me if nobody will work at height because there are no harnesses and the law says xyz. Call me if there’s a donkey in your venue and you can’t make it leave. Don’t call me because you think there’s a better colour of gaffer tape than the one you’ve already got please, Tony, with two excellent hardware stores twelve minutes from your one of about fifty venues. I’ll still respond. But before long you’ll have blown your credit and then, if that donkey gets in, you’re fucked as I’ll be prioritising the quiet ones. It’s often the quiet ones who are actually drowning.

I’m home. It’s later than I want it to be but we are in the crunch now. I wish there were more drivers than we have in the warehouse – if two people were working as hard as I am with two different vehicles it wouldn’t be so stressful.

But Edgar the Frenchman was my plus one for much of today, renting huge drills. He flattered me after my first exchange: “I didn’t realise you spoke such good French.” My French is archaic and influenced by my Jersey childhood. This means my participles are all over the place. The road I lived on was “Rue au blancq” White Road. “Rue blanc” in french. That au and the q both fucked me over at school and still jump out at me now.

You know the often eastern European or Italian guy with poor vocabulary but fluent English? That’s me in french. “Hi so I’m looking for a little metal thing that I can use to put tension into a steel cable ten millimetres thick, it has a hook one end and an eye the other.” “You want a tensioner ” “probably”

My vocab is improving though. Having Edwin in the cab helped. Practice makes perfect.

Yesterday I drove with Mel to North Paris Arena simply because we had been told we could get proper accreditation there.

I’ve been working off a printout that I made and laminated myself. When someone caught on that it was hand made they anulled it and then I had another one made up. But most venues like you to have a special photocard and then another identification thing that is venue specific. With this system, for me to do my job efficiently, I would need about ten of those cards plus the special photocard. I had none of them yesterday. I had digital accreditation, Mel didn’t even have that.

“Hi, we need to get accreditation here.”

“We need to see your accreditation.”

“Here is my digital accreditation. We are here so we can both get physical accreditation.”

“Your accreditation is good. She must show hers.”

“She hasn’t got accreditation. We are here so we can get accredited properly. We have driven here because your venue is on this list where we can get accreditation.”

“You can go in and get accreditation. She has no accreditation so we cannot let her in.”

“She’s going in to get accreditation.”

walkie talkie

VOICE: “Nobody may enter without accreditation. Nobody.”

“They need to get accreditation.”

“They cannot enter without it.”

“One of them has it but the other hasn’t got it but they want to get it.”

“Nobody can enter without accreditation.”

I gave up at this point. I’ve been fine with what I’ve got. You just need good comms. Everyone has been good but Roadkill who doesn’t check his WhatsApp and won’t respond to an English number. If you can talk to someone you can make it work even if the venue is in lockdown. The only times things have not got to where they need to be have all come about because someone has given up. Like I did with accreditation yesterday. It’s easy to throw in the towel against persistent illogical high security stubborn. And it is generally better than the other option of them being too lax so I get it. This event has to be tight. Usually I’m a bulldog with these things. My brand of stubborn comes into its own when working around obtuse rules.

Today after endless fuckery I ended up at Yves de Manoir stadium trying to drop something that was wanted to someone that wanted it. But it’s locked down so we have to stick stickers over the doors of the van to prove it’s sealed, and they have to correspond to a docket. I was on my own and just as well. My digital accreditation and the sealed van and docket got me so far, but Omar is sharp as a scalpel. He sees I’ve got spare sealing stickers in my cab, just in case I have to grab something from Brico, sling it in, and reseal it. He doesn’t like it. He knows it means I’m someone looking for workarounds and he then isn’t happy with my lack of physical accreditation. “I’m not happy with it either,” I tell him. “But everything expects us either to have been booked in time for it to have been posted, or that we will always be in the same place. My job is to go everywhere. Can you help me here? This venue is on my list of places to get accreditation. Show me how to get it so you can let me in.” “Just down there,” he says, and with a mixture of suspicion and companionability he walks me to an accreditation booth that is actually OUTSIDE THE BARRIER, and that has French people working inside it on a SUNDAY. I fight my way through the flying pigs and now I’ve got the photo bit of my actual official accreditation. No venue bits so l will have to bother people for MDS passes every time but there’s only one per day so it’s about choosing my battles.

I’m sorely tempted to ask Morgan to send me one of each of the venue passes as I know I’m gonna be unexpectedly driving to many of them and I can never predict which one in advance. It’s based on what’s needed and how greatly it is needed.

So yeah. Summer and safety. I’m weirdly zen about how annoying it is overcoming security, because I am far happier having to jump through hoops than to run through fire.

And I’m learning this town. My evening drop was outside La Defense, which is in full lockdown. I had to stealthily arrange to meet a venue manager outside, who then brought my two small boxes of screws and one box of velcro through security instead of me. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. But having handballed the boxes myself for a few blocks after realising how easy it is to get caught in a one way system round there, I found myself thinking about dinner. I used the walk back to make a plan and found myself the first customer of the night here at Le Resto du Boucher. It almost immediately filled up with families. It is wonderful, and Halal meat so no alcohol on sale thus no temptation which is getting more and more important on this job as the hours get more unpredictable. I was out before 6 today and didn’t get back until eleven. That’ll start to look like a short day.

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.