I HATE FRANCE

Went to France on Saturday with Henry and an empty boot ready to receive huge amounts of wine. Was up til 4am the previous night celebrating a birthday and despite my alarm not going off and the amount I'd had to drink I still managed to get up at 7:30. 3 hours sleep and a pre-midday wakeup on a weekend is not a recipe for a day of delight. However, didn't actually turn out to be too bad and although I flagged a bit around 2 when my hangover really started to kick in it was a really fun trip. We were heading to Cite Europe just outside Calais which is a giant mall with about 150 shops in. Due to my less than auspicious condition when I woke up we didn't print any directions on how to get there and assumed that such a large retail venue would be sign posted, especially since at least 90% of the traffic through Calais is looking for similar. However, turns out NOTHING is sign posted in France and we ended up driving round Calais for about an hour (after having driven halfway to Paris) screaming 'I HATE FRANCE' at the tops of our voices and it became our constant refrain for the rest of the day. There was also much discussion of the fact that as we were now on the continent we should be using the horn constantly, which didn't actually happen til I got back to London and had to alert drunk people to the fact that they were standing in the middle of the road. Its worth noting we'd only been in France for 45 minutes before seeing 2 people drive straight through red lights and one guy ride his motorbike down the wrong side of the road swerving round the oncoming traffic.

Although this was the worst planned trip of all time (neither of us even knew what the exchange rate was) it was really successful with many purchases including 36 bottles of champagne, 3 litres of fish soup, 10 croissants, and enough veal, foie gras and horse meat to have my British passport revoked. Had a lovely lunch of fish soup and beef bourgenion at a weird German themed pub in a Las Vegas (on a budget) style fake village at the back of the mall. We were both extremely happy to be back on British soil and would've sang Jerusalem as we disembarked the ferry if there was even a vague possibility it could've been heard over Girls Aloud. My signature driving moves of no lights at night and driving with the handbrake on were out in full force. I blame the hangover (and the French). It was nice doing something one on one with Henry as its been a while since its been just us without his boyfriend and we'll definitely be doing it again. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the trip was the complete lack of any hot french men. Maybe we're spoiled living in London but there literally wasn't a single guy worthy of even a second glance, then again I guess its not hard to imagine the French saying the same about Dover!