England through the eyes of a Frenchman - Blackpool

I thought while we were ‘up north’ a night in Blackpool to see the illuminations, tacky souvenirs and dated Guest Houses would be funny and make him smile.  I think they did in a scary kind of way. Monsieur X likes to talk a lot but after a morning with his fellow art lovers the shock of driving though Blackpool town centre left him speechless.  No more Picasso lots more pound shops. 

His first (shocked) Blackpool observation as we drove around the back of the tower trying to find our Guest House and a car park: ‘I don’t know the English word for it, errr maybe cheap’ ‘tacky?’ I said, he agreed.

 

A positive point was the Guest House, the Carlton on Albert Road, great position behind the Tower (a few minutes’ walk away) and it looked like it was recently decorated, no 1960s gross wallpaper and a flat screen television but it still had some Blackpool personality.  Monsieur X is more used to the Carlton Hotel in Cannes and the next morning when his breakfast was served by a man wearing shorts and t-shirt he said ‘this would not happen in France’.

I know Blackpool looks better in the dark but I wanted this Frenchman who lives in the beautiful South of France countryside near the coast to see why so many English people visit the Mediterranean Sea in the summer.  Still shocked we walked to the end of the North Pier a perfect location for any zombie/end of the world films to be made. There was just the two of us, an elderly couple and man ‘working’ on the carousel, it wasn’t a surprise he had no customers on this cold and windy day. Monsieur X said ‘It’s like I’m back in ze 1970s’ and looking down onto the brown sea ‘ah ok I understand why the English go to France and Spain for holidays no blue here’.

I think we had only been in Blackpool for an hour and he needed a Guinness and a siesta to reduce his fear factor level from 10. But in a hotel bar opposite the Carlton, we witnessed two drunken old ladies showing Monsieur X that the drunken young English people he has seen in Spanish beach and French Ski resorts don’t actually grow out of the binge drinking habits. Old Lady A fell over in the bar and has she was helped up by other people in the bar, her friend Old Lady B said ‘watch her hip, she’s just had a new one’ – this was at 4pm. He fear level went back up a few numbers.

The evening opened his eyes to many sights mostly unsightly, yes the illuminations was interesting ‘just like Christmas lights in the street but lots of them’ he said, but the hen do groups dressed in onesies, a middle-aged large women wearing a teenager’s summer short dress or the ‘pièce de résistance’ would have to be the six women still in their leopard print pyjamas with unbrushed hair sitting on the step outside their hotel having a cigarette the next morning.

 

I’m finding it hard to remember if Monsieur X enjoyed any of this time in Blackpool.  He liked the tower and the ‘comedy blanket’ on the sea front.  I introduced him to the world of money waterfalls, where you waste your 10p or 2p coins hoping to win and you can’t go to an English seaside town and not have fish and chips on a Friday, so Harry Ramseden’s was a must and he did finish off his large portion and the bottle of wine.

Has we left the town behind, he said ‘Please don’t bring me back here’. Ah oui at least Birmingham will look good now.

Blackpool:  Merde!

 

England through the eyes of a Frenchman - Liverpool

My last trip of 2013 wasn’t very far and it wasn’t somewhere I haven’t been before. It was home and it was cities I had visited many times, but this time I saw them from a French point of view.

Five nights with my French friend Monsieur X, I was excited and nervous because every time I visited him he showed me beautiful areas of France.  I couldn’t walk him around the Bullring and Brindley Place for 4 days so I took him to a different part of England every day including Birmingham.

Monsieur X took a Ryanair flight from Marseille to East Midlands (no flights to Birmingham), and then my out of date Sat Nav took us to Liverpool.  We were only 10 minutes away from our  destination when it took us though a derelict part of the city, closed factories, industrial estates and a corner pub with smoking tracksuits and dirty hair puffing smoke outside – not a good start.

Luckily for us our hotel for one night didn’t have this view and was on our tourist walking route. The Dolby Hotel was clean and basic and the size of bathroom was what we paid for at £44 a night, yes the bathroom was very small.  The selling point was free parking and position as it is by the docks.  For Monsieur X he didn’t feel like he was in England until the heavy rain storm started when we just parked up outside the hotel.

I personally think English Cities are all the same, same shops, same bars and restaurants chains.  But Monsieur X likes lots of types of music so I thought he would find the Beatles story interesting. He did enjoy the Carven which was very busy on a Thursday night (full of tourists) and the singer played ‘Here Comes The Sun’ his favourite Beatles song, so that was gold stars for me.

 

His observation on a wet Thursday night ‘no one goes out in Liverpool’.

Next morning we had a full breakfast outside the Gallery café, Albert Docks so he could smoke and after the waitress took our order outside and asked me to go in to pay first, his second observation was ‘you English trust no one’.  A few hours in the Tate gallery, seriously what is so special about a few folded blankets and video of couple of hookers having a tattoo?  At the time there was a Chagall exhibition which to me was nice paintings to Monsieur X it was amazing works of art.

Liverpool:  C’est Bon

Fear of 40 - 18 months until leave the 30s group

Not a great start to this 18 month plan. I’m typing away crying my eyes out, so excuse the bad grammar and thank God for spellchecker. My glasses are steamed up and eyes full of tears. My cat passed away at the weekend, my car’s back window smashed in  and one of my few friends (and my French crush) has gone all distant on me without any reason and I know if I called him again so soon after our last pleasant conversation on New Year’s Eve I will officially be his pathetic stalker.  Ah oui give him space, offer my hand of friendship later on in the year.  Oh Come On! Don’t lie to myself, maybe call next month.  But it bloody hard when I’m so upset about my cat, my boss is driving me crazy and all I want is someone to talk too.

Anyway onwards and upwards! This is the first day of the rest of my life…etc etc blah blah.

Every Monday morning I dread my day of work, of course 99.9% of the population probably feel the same but it’s not so much the being overworked underpaid problem.  It’s the question that always gets asked – ‘what did you do at the weekend’.  I did this, I did that, we went here, friends came to visit etc. Then it’s my turn to answer ‘Nothing watched a bit of TV’.   I knew I would end up a lonely old cat lady living in Birmingham but I never imagined reaching this milestone at 38.

I long for the Mondays I can give a different answer or for the Mondays where I actually enjoy going to work. I just got to find that job – being chained to a desk, man managed and my work timed and documented is not the life I want. I’m very lucky to have a job but settling for any job isn’t good enough.  I have hope that the day will come when my situation will be Monday Blues free, but I want it to come sooner than later.

Have you ever seen Eat Pray Love starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert it’s an OK film nothing special but it did make me think about my situation. I’ve been back home (and single) for 6 years and was looking for some inspiration.

I like eating (and Italy), I only pray during football games, lottery draws and when my boss says ‘can I have a word’ before I get a bollocking and as for love, I can’t remember what that is. However the freedom to travel the world and experience new things and meeting new people makes my feet itchy again.  But where do I start?  Write my things to do before I’m 40 list and follow Elizabeth Gilbert example.  She started her journey by learning Italian, so maybe I should get the dust off my French books and give learning the language another go, well it will be my 4^th attempt after school, French best friend, and then evening classes.