Dinner Parties and Britney Spears

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Travel Guide Full of Lies

I might have mentioned this before, but my favorite way to learn about a city or a country is to wander around a city blindly and without regard to whether or not I’m in a safe part. To date, this hasn’t led to any altercations, mainly because wandering around blindly has the consequence that I look confused and scared, to the point where people who would otherwise rob me feel pity for me.

The Student and I wandered around a large part of Lille that day, and I’d equate it to unlocking parts of the map in an RPG. Now, I could easily tell you about everything we saw that day. I could tell you about stumbling upon a cathedral that Pascale hadn’t even seen. However, what I’m going to do is share with you part of what I like to call “The Travel Guide Full of Lies:”

___

 I decided that I would go to France. So, the first thing I did was book a ticket for a service called the Eurostar. It’s this giant beast of a train; consisting of about thirty to forty coaches and two large engines on either side. Going from Ashford International to Lille in just over an hour, it puts planes to shame and the ferries… well, it buries and spits on the ferries. (Avoid taking a ferry at all costs. You may think that there is something magical about travelling by water—especially if you’re from the landlocked states in the U.S., where we occasionally go out on man-made lakes and pretend to be pirates—but there’s not. The drinks are overpriced and, more often than not, there’s a delay for no apparent reason.) If you decide to take the Eurostar, I recommend booking as early as possible. I got a round-trip ticket to Lille for about £55.00 by booking in advance; considering the ease with which I traveled, I’d say that it was a good price.

So, arriving in Lille, I met my friend, who kindly agreed to let me crash in her place and sleep for about twelve hours a day. (This trip was the most restful I’d ever had.) Now, I had been awake since four in the morning—having caught the 6:57 from Ashford to Lille, I first had to shlep down to the train station in Canterbury and then catch an early train to Ashford—and so, when I arrived in Lille that morning, I was very, very tired. We made some arrangements concerning the keys to her building, she went off to class, and I slept for five hours.

When I woke up, it was two in the afternoon, and I was, for the first time in a very long time, fully rested and not artificially stimulated from coffee. I threw on my layers of clothing (the whole time I was in France, it was below freezing) and walked outside.

The first thing I noticed when I hit the street was that I had to watch what I was doing. Having lived in England for a few months, I was used to cars coming at me from a different direction. So, now, having a bus barreling down at me sent flashes of New York City through my mind and I ducked back on the sidewalk. Shivering in the fetal position on the ground, I heard a maniacal laughter from behind and above. I peeked up and saw a man about six feet tall with a long, scraggly beard standing over me. I could smell the reek of wine and whiskey off of him, and I, for the first time in Europe, was completely terrified. Then, in an accent I couldn’t quite place but which I knew was English of some variety, the man said, “Fucking French, oi?”

“You English?”

“I am, lad. I am.” He paused, turned to a pair of French students making their way down the street and screamed such vile obscenities about them and their mothers that I could never, even if I were forced at gunpoint, replicate them on page. This was my first encounter with Eddie. When the French students passed, Eddie looked back at me and said, “From the looks of you, you’re an American. Still, better than the ----- ---- -- - ------ -- --- ----- frogs here. So mate, you want to see Lille, does you?”

I nodded weakly.

“Good. For some food and a pint somewhere—proper pint, none of this ------ - -- -- ---- French --- - ---- - ---- they call beer. Too sweet, you ask me. Have to go for one at an Irish place—which isn’t much better than the French, but it’ll do. So, for some food and a pint, I’ll show you around. Call me Eddie.”

“Call me Ishmael,” I said. No chance in hell I was giving him my real name.

And so we set off into the city. We weaved in and out of disreputable-looking streets, Eddie occasionally kicking a sleeping homeless man and then laughing, until we happened upon a canal. The canal, it seemed, moved around a large park. This being winter time, the park was largely abandoned. There wasn’t a lot to see, since most of the trees were bare, and the few animals I could see were either ducks, squirrels, or rats. “This,” said Eddie, “is the King’s Canal. It was dug by King Louis XXII—”

“I thought the last Louis was the XVIII,” I said.

Eddie glared at me. His bloodshot eyes dilated and he took his hands out from his pockets. I caught a glimpse of them, right then, and saw that they were beyond grimy. Covered in dirt, dried brown stuff (I shuddered to think of what it actually was), and grease, I had to think of a way to get Eddie to put his hands back into his pockets, if only to get them out of my sight. “But then again,” I said, “you’ve lived here longer than I have.”

“’S right, I have. So,” he said, putting his hands back in his pockets, “the canal being dug by King Louis XXII, it was called the King’s Canal. In 1768, the people of Lille found a witch by the name of Henrietta, tossed her into the canal, and then set the canal on fire—it, at that time, being covered by a fine layer of oil. You see, mate, this entire area was, at one time, a vast oil field. And then, when the Lilliputians—as these people are wont to be called—set the canal on fire, it set the rest of the part of the city on fire.

“When the flames died down, they found that park.”

“Are we going to the park?”

“Course not. Not today. Today is a holy day in the park, and we, not being French, cannot enter into to hallowed ground on a holy day.”

It has come to my attention, just now, that this is to be a travel guide. Looking over what I have just written, it looks nothing like a travel guide. It, in fact, looks like one of my stories. Sometimes, I tell you, I am the biggest fool around. If it looks like a story, how are you to believe anything in it? Oy gevalt, I’m such a shlemiel.

So, henceforth, the format of this piece shall change to something more fitting for what it is trying to be. We will be going from region to region, as led by Eddie the Englishman—with a few eateries highlighted for your pleasure. Please note that, mostly because of my tour guide and my finances, none of the eateries will be fit for romantic escapades, frequent visits, or, in some cases, returning a second time. Please also note that, although Eddie the Englishman had been a resident of the city for quite a while (as he put it, “as soon as the bloody EU came about—had to get away from the ---- - -- -- ---- --- ----- back in England”), he was, and probably still is, certifiably insane. If I had to guess, I would say that about 95% of what he says is ill-informed or downright wrong.

Lille – Overview

Lille is a city of over six million people—most of whom are cleverly hidden underground, so that the city only gives off the appearance of having nine hundred thousand people.

The city is home to hundreds of cafés—all of which are run by authentic Frenchmen, so be ready to try out that miniscule amount of French you learned ages ago in high school. Never order a “croque monsieur.” All Frenchmen eat scrambled eggs for breakfast, kebab for lunch, and horse steak for dinner. No one orders a “croque monsieur,” and if you do, the proprietor of whatever establishment you are in will know you are a tourist and not only spit in your food, but probably defecate in it. The best thing in a French café is, if you can get it, a good British beer. The French wine they serve is worse than sub-par, and everyone knows that the French, as a rule, want to be British, anyway. Barring that, espresso is usually good. (In Eddie’s words, “But you might not be able to take the espresso, you quavering Yank wanker.”)

The districts you’ll probably be interested in are Vieux Lille (Old Lille), the Centre Ville (City Center), Euralille, and the big park in the northwest part of the city. Starting from the City Center, we will go in a meandering, haphazard route—much like the one by which Eddie took me through the city—looking at some of the places to eat, visit, and drink.

Centre Ville - City Center

The city center is, as far as I can tell, made up of two or three very large plazas, around which are shops, offices, and the general nucleus of the city. I do not know the correct names of the plazas, so I’ll just call them Rihour Plaza and The Plaza Right Next to Rihour. If you are going on Lille’s Metro, then the stop you’re looking for is—you guessed it—Rihour.

Places of Interest

At the time I was there, the plazas were decorated so that Christmas virtually oozed through the air. To give you an idea of the size of these plazas, the city set up a gigantic Ferris Wheel in the middle, and there was still room enough for a thirty-person snowball fight during a snowfall. Around the plazas, you will notice a few things of interest. Most immediately, you will notice the Theatre Du Nord. (Eddie insisted that this meant “Theater of the Norm,” but I have my doubts as to the veracity of that statement.) It is a large building by nineteenth century European standards. Its stones are grey, it has a very impressive staircase, and, apparently, the French have prisoners perform plays from time to time. Turning left from the Theatre, you will notice the Lille Opera. From traveling to Paris last year, I was a bit surprised to discover that the Lille Opera looks a lot like the Paris Opera. It, like the Theatre, is distinctly 19^th century French and is one of the cultural landmarks of the city. (Leonard Cohen is doing one thing or another there at some point, so it must be a fairly big deal.)

If you walk South from Rihour, you’ll come to the Place Du Républic. It is a large plaza in between the Prefecture and the Musée Beaux-Arts. On one side, there is a fountain with a large sculpture of what I assume to be modern art. According to my guide, the sculpture represents the French bowing down before the British.

The Prefecture looks like what one would imagine a palace to resemble. It was actually built while the Romans still occupied Gaul, and, it is rumored, that the last Roman legionnaires occupied the building until World War One—inbred and deformed, but proud Romans shouting insults in Latin through the iron bars of the strong gates to the last. According to Eddie, these last Romans were killed in World War Two, when the German Army occupied Lille, saw the malformed members of the XII Felix Legion, and were so disgusted that they ordered a Luftwaffe air strike within minutes of spotting the beasts peeking through the large windows of the building. After it was razed, the Germans had the thing rebuilt the same day, “because if it’s one thing the rotters can do,” said Eddie, “it’s make things go up quick.”

Across the plaza is the Musée Beaux-Arts. (I am pretty sure this means The Museum of Fine Arts, but Eddie insisted that it means The Museum of Artists named Beau. That is, of course, ridiculous. There is not one painting in the whole of the museum by a man named Beau.) This is actually inside what used to be a nineteenth century palace. Inside the museum, you will find some beautiful paintings, the names of which I cannot remember. I always had more of an eye for antiquities and big hunks of rock, and the only paintings that stuck in my head were ones involving men gutting fish and David impaling Goliath’s head on a sword. Admission to the museum is €5.80 without concessions.

Places to Nosh

My eating experience in Lille was twofold: On the one hand, I was on the budget of a student, and on the other, I had to hide whatever meat I ate on the street from Eddie, who had a tendency to leap on cooked flesh with all the hunger and thoughtless greed of a ravenous dog. So, I am afraid that I cannot give you the full review of food throughout the city—not just in the centre ville—that I would otherwise be able to. I can, however, tell you that many of the bakeries that are sprinkled throughout the city are quite good—and cheap to boot. A baguette at €.80 should easily feed two people, and if not, there are plenty of newsagents that sell cheap sandwiches.

Let’s, however, assume that you want to lead a healthy lifestyle on your travels throughout the city and the continent. You’re going to need some sort of meat and fruits and veggies. Fruits and veggies are easy: France has the good graces to have plenty of independent green grocers who sell fruit and vegetables for fairly cheap. Meat is slightly more difficult. The places on the street that sell the meat will sell you greasy stuff that will probably leave you rushing towards the nearest public toilet. However, considering that many of you are American, this is not a problem.

My guide’s favorite place to eat, though, was a place he called La Maison Du Dumpster. I followed him down a few back alleys in the general direction of the river, and genuinely wanted to see the sort of place that would name itself after a trash receptacle, but, about the time we passed a kebab house, he stopped me. “I’d better go in, laddy,” he said. “They don’t take kindly to new people, and even though you’re not a ---- --- ---- ------- ----- Frenchie, you’re still a ---- ------ American.”

“Well,” I said, “do you need help ordering?”

“Fuck you,” he said, drawing closer, his eyes taking on the insanity aspect I’d noticed before. “Never assume I need help just because I got a little grey in my beard, you tosspot.” He suddenly calmed, laughed, and said, “Just kidding. It’s take away. I’ll get you something nice.”

So he disappeared down the alley and returned a few minutes later with two Styrofoam take-away containers. I opened the one he gave me and saw something that looked like a cocktail of trash. I think that, in the middle of the container, I saw a spit the sort of which kebab houses stick doner meat. I asked if this were safe to eat, and my guide threatened to open my throat so that the gulls could drink my blood if I didn’t eat what was in the container; so, naturally, I ate. And, all told, it wasn’t that bad. There was just a hint of lemon and garlic that I wouldn’t expect to see from something that looked like burnt lettuce, but it just added to the all around surprising flavor of the package. After we finished eating, Eddie demanded €3.00, which, in my opinion, was a pretty good price for something that equated to a pound of food.

I do, however, recognize that there are those among my audience who would not enjoy eating suspect foods—even though the price may be cheaper than anything they would otherwise come across—and, for them, I would recommend either going with baguettes, fast food, or ingredients to be found at green grocers’ sprinkled throughout the city.

Range of meals: €.80 - €5.60

Quality of meals: Meh – Strangely delicious

Watering Holes

“But what about the nightlife?” some of you may be asking. This I can answer with a severe degree of confidence. You see, by about eight o’clock at night, Eddie would be too exhausted to continue our tours, start shouting at random passers-by, and eventually pass out in an alley. (I’m not sure how he made it, but every morning at nine, I’d see him waiting for me outside the apartment. He must have had a fantastic inner GPS/alarm clock.) After he passed out, I’d return to the apartment via Lille’s metro system and make ready to be dragged around like a wet rag to wherever my friend already had plans.

As I mentioned before, my French is workable. I wouldn’t be utterly screwed and abandoned if I were travelling around the country by myself—unless I was in an area where the accent was the French equivalent of Glaswegian. While I trailed around after my friend, I picked up a little more here and there. (Apparently, there is a French phrase that, when translated literally, means, “You’ve missed the point entirely.” Naturally, the way languages and national senses of humor work, this idiom means, “You’ve hit the nail on the head.” I have, by now, forgotten the French.) We went from bar to bar, and eventually apartment to apartment, leaving me a shattered husk of a man, but my friend, God must have blessed her with such constitution to outlast Hercules. Whereas I would have to drag myself out of bed at half past 8 (so that Eddie wouldn’t start chucking rocks at the window), she was up and out of the apartment at seven in the morning.

So, where to drink?

The Puzzle

The first thing you must realize about Lille is that it is a University town. Even better, it is a University town consisting of nine fucking Universities. This means that there are a lot of students bouncing around at any hour of the morning. And, what do students do when they’re not putting off work? That’s right, drinking and drugs. As such, there are tons of bars around Lille. Not pubs, mind you, but bars. Living in England for a few months, you start to forget what a bar is like. If this is the case with you, I suggest you go to France and find yourself a bar. Anyway, there are quite a few good bars, but there is one I really, really enjoyed. It was called The Puzzle. They—and, honestly, I’d imagine most other places in Lille—had a beer called Laffe. It was deep red and twice as potent as the stuff I got in a pub in England. “Ha!” I said. “And the British thought they could do alcohol.”

After about four Laffes in this bar, the world was something with which I was deeply in love. I wanted nothing more than to be one with the world. To embrace it. To make it mine and, after a fulfilling career, buy a house in the country with it. Have a few dogs. See our kids every once in a while. Maybe take up a hobby. Even the house band—fronted by a man who looked like he was trying to combine all the bits of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Jim Morrison into one—sounded like they were the best in the world. (Through the alcohol haze, I remember that they were playing blues-rock, which was a definite plus in my book.)

The bar itself was divided into two floors. Up top was mostly standing room. The serving area was in the center of the floor, with a booth and a table on each side, but, apart from that and a staircase leading down, it was all standing room. Opposite the bathrooms on one side was a stage. It was a small stage, but one that any decent band could use. After all, if a band is playing in a place the size of The Puzzle—not small, but not big, either—then chances are they don’t need a lot of room to set up their equipment.

Downstairs were two very large couches, in the center of which were a few tables. The downstairs looked like a wine cellar and was probably one of the more unique places in which I’ve imbibed. If you don’t get too drunk in the place, it’s quite enjoyable. If you do get too drunk, then you may, like me, start getting paranoid that someone will come downstairs to seal you up in one of the cellar walls.

Quality of environs (1-10): 8

Price: €4.00 for .5L Laffe.

Overall experience (1-10): 7—would have been higher were it not for the possibility of being sealed in the walls.

Other Drinking Establishments

As I mentioned above, Lille is a university town extraordinaire. There are more cafes and bars than I’ve seen outside of London thus far. If you want a relaxed time, and a place to perhaps have an existentialist discussion about how life suffocates the individual, then you might want to find one of the many street cafes. The Centre Ville has plenty of them, and choices range from the low-key to the massive. If you want bars, then the only limiting factor is how loud you want your music.

The only word of caution I can give you is to watch yourself on the streets. Lille is in France, and as everyone knows, France is infested with mimes. At sundown, the mimes get aggressive, and will attempt to build invisible walls around you. I have seen the effects of these invisible walls, and there is no escape. You can find mime-repellant at most newsagents to the tune of €15.00. The price may seem extravagant, but when you are approached by a troop of white and black-clad delinquents, you will think yourself lucky.

___

As you can see, I am incapable of coming up with anything that has reality as its basis. However, the good news about all of this is that everything up there in terms of price is true. Anyway, moving on.

Christmas Time - dans francais!

We walked out of the metro at Rihour, up the stairs, and were greeted by the utmost in Frenchness. The only thing more French than what we saw would be walking out of the Paris metro and seeing mimes on unicycles and playing accordions. It was Christmas time, and, naturally, the city of Lille decided to set up festivities such as: a giant Ferris Wheel, speakers blaring pop music, and street performers blowing fire, and the smell of vin chaud. Next to the Ferris wheel was a carousel, and next to that were a bunch of crepe carts. This was exactly what I needed to escape England for a little bit.

Of course, I’d made a promise to myself that The Student would think I despised everything about the French, and so, outwardly, I snorted and said, “Fuck, if this were ‘murika, they’d have a big fuckin tree instead of of this Ferris Wheel shit.”

“You are lying,” said The Student, shaking his head and looking around with a smile. “Know how I know?”

“No I ain’t.”

“Yeah, see, that’s it. You’re lying because you’re using that fucking redneck voice you use to make fun of idiots.”

“N—no I’m not.”

“Whatever, man. Breathe it in. A country, a people who are outside enjoying themselves instead of complaining about the weather.”

I decided that I’d give it a rest.

The air was crisp, clear, and the smell of food of all sorts filled the air alongside happy French chatter and music. The plaza was home to some of Lille’s major cultural attractions, like the Theatre du Nord. All of the buildings were classy. Even though the temperature was hovering around zero, the street cafés were open and busy. People sat out in the gated-off areas—heating lamps buzzing above them—with their drinks steaming in front of them. I looked around at the skyline. Church steeples, the Hôtel de Ville’s spire, and the bell towers of the city’s cathedral shot into the air. I grinned. “Coffee?”

“Petit café?” asked The Student.

“Smartass,” I responded.

We set off for a café where we could grab a take-away cup of espresso without waiting too long. In England, you spot these things by seeing Lottery signs. In France, you spot these places by diamond-shaped signs that read Tabac. We walked into one and were greeted with the following sight:

The room was a lengthwise place, with a bar and a cigarette display. There was one person behind the bar. Opposite, there were a row of seats next to the window. A few older people sat at these, sipping from espresso cups and looking outside. There wasn’t any music playing from speakers, but the door was open, and the music floated in from outside. This was to be the norm for most of these mini-cafés. We went up to the bar and flexed our French muscles for the first time by ordering a couple of espressos.

The guy poured the espressos, gave us the cups, and spat rapid-fire numbers at us. I can barely handle numbers in English, much less French. Luckily, I had The Student and digital readouts on the cash register. We paid, took our cups outside, and went back to the square. Maybe it was because I didn’t speak the language, but the city of Lille managed to do Christmas without kitsch. America has a very bad habit of doing just that, making you come down with diabetes every year from the Christmas marketing spree—and, from everything I’d seen in England, it was the same there.

For me, Christmas was another opportunity to be a cynical bastard. “Oh,” I’d say, “Christmas is a sham. Look at all of the commercials and shit dealing with Santa. Santa is Coke’s mascot.” But, like the Grinch, when I walked into Rihour square, my heart grew three sizes. The Student, from what I could tell, just looked happy to be somewhere other than Canterbury. He walked around with his steaming cup of espresso and smiled warmly at the world.

“Nice place,” I said.

“I know, right? Somehow, I doubt we’re going to get robbed or anything out here. Chavs don’t like happiness.”

We walked down a small street and found ourselves in another square. If there was one thing the French liked, I thought, it was their public squares. This one was also  surrounded on all sides by street cafes, some bars, and a couple imitation English pubs. In the middle was what they refer to as an Alpine Christmas village. Think a bunch of quickly thrown-together wooden buildings with fake snow on the roofs, some pine trees sprinkled along the walking paths, and French Christmas music.

By this time we’d finished our cups of espresso. I turned to The Student, pointed to a sign, and said, “My friend, what does that sign say?”

The Student adjusted his glasses and looked at the sign. “Vin chaud.”

“Exactement. And what does that mean?”

“Hot wine.”

“Oui, mon ami. And what does that mean?”

“Mulled wine.”

Nothing more needed to be said. We walked over to the stand, ordered two glasses, said a quick l’chaim and drank. The day suddenly improved from good to better, and we commenced proper wandering.

We Arrive At Pascale's; Sleep

In about twenty minutes, after the ride on the metro—during which Pascale drew a diagram of the line we were on and circled the important stops—and a short walk, we arrived at Pascale’s apartment.

It was in a big apartment building in the southern part of the city. Walking along the street to her apartment, I was hit by the realization of a couple of things that I already knew, but didn’t actually think about. The first was that cars here drove on the right side of the road. Now, of course, I knew this as a fact beforehand, but it’s one thing to get off a ferry and spend a few hours in a dingy port town and to get off a train and spend five days or so in another city. What I’m trying to say is that I got out of the metro station near Pascale’s place (Port du Douai) and was almost hit by a city bus because I’d been trained to look a certain way in England. “Jesus Christ,” I shouted.

Pascale laughed—mainly because The Student had the same reaction to the same city bus.

“Okay,” I said. “Think America.”

“Duly noted,” said The Student.

The second thing that I knew, but hadn’t thought about, was that I was in a city. The English call Canterbury a city, but, truth be told, it lacks all defining characteristics of a city. The international presence in Canterbury is made up of take-away shops and students at the university. A city, by virtue of being a large place, has an international presence that influences the culture. In terms of architecture, Canterbury has two modern buildings: The one I noticed first is an apartment building near the West train station; the second is the library of Canterbury Christ Church (which The Traveler, a guy named Gilles, and I infiltrated much later in the year). Other than that, the architecture is largely composed of either 1960s blocky buildings, a shopping area, and Tudor buildings. Fair enough—but, after a while, you start to yearn for a reminder that you live in the 21st Century. And, of course, one of the most important characteristics of a city is the bustling atmosphere created by the movement of people and vehicles. Traffic in Canterbury is, a good portion of the time, stuck in place, and the people walking around the city are shoppers, tourists, and students. It’s a relaxed atmosphere, don’t get me wrong, but, in my opinion, you need a certain amount of franticness every now and then to wake you up—like a shot of strong espresso.

Lille, as a counter to this, had energy. Even out where Pascale lived, where it seemed to be in the not-quite-upscale area, the equivalent of a blue-collar neighborhood in a city, there was the immediacy and necessity of being somewhere. People had places to go, and, if they didn’t, they wanted to go somewhere. Walking around wasn’t a way to waste time, but a way to get to where you needed to be. You could see it in these people’s faces, that they lived in a city, and, thus, acted as such. It was at this moment, right after dodging the city bus and crossing the street, that I looked around, saw some people’s faces, and realized that, damn it, I really missed being in a city. “Bloody Canterbury,” I said.

The Student grunted. Presumably in agreement.

We walked up the stairs to Pascale’s place (she showed us how to work the locks as if we’d never seen the mechanisms before—this, I learned, was because The Student could never unlock the door to their house in Park Wood, even while he was sober), she picked up some stuff, showed us the bed, and dashed out the door to make it to her morning classes. Her schedule was intense. It was everything I’d hoped my schedule as a postgrad would be. She was in class from nine to seven at night, she had responsibilities on the university’s paper, she had projects, she had deadlines—it was, shockingly, like she was earning her degree.

I, of course, didn’t think about this that first morning. I thought about how I’d beat The Student to get the bed. Instinct took over. I shoved him to the floor and dashed up the ladder to the top of the bed. I should explain: Pascale’s room was tiny. It was like a single room in most dorms in the states—essentially closet sized with enough room for a bed, a desk, a warddrobe, and a couple of chairs. Like most space-conscious students, Pascale had converted her bed into a bunk, and thus squeezed some precious floor space out of the arrangement.

“What the fuck, man?” asked The Student, holding himself on his elbows and staring at me as if I’d just stabbed him in the back.

“My bed. You brought a sleeping bag for a reason,” I said.

“So did you.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Fine, whatever.” He unrolled the sleeping bag on the floor and climbed in with one fluid motion. Would’ve taken me five minutes to get it unrolled—clearly, I’d made the best choice for all parties involved. “How long are we conking out for?”

“No more than—” I didn’t finish the sentence before blackness and unconsciousness swept over me.

I woke up six hours later at the onset of the afternoon, stretching and blinking. The bed was in disarray—I’d done the usual of apparently convulsing in my sleep. I put on my glasses and looked outside. Through the small rectangle of Pascale’s window, I saw people walking outside in giant parkas. Still cold, then. I took a pillow and hurled it at The Student, snoring lightly on the floor.

He woke with a snort and looked around. “What? What time is it?”

“One in the afternoon.”

He flopped back with a thud and groaned. “I suppose we should go out.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Neither of us moved for a few minutes. He took the initiative, though, and splashed some water on his face from the nearby sink. I followed suit, nearly tumbled out of the bed, and put my shoes on. Then began the process of layering. You see, Canterbury never got truly, truly cold. Never in the sense that one had to throw on four layers or face the threat of some sort of frostbite. I’d looked at the weather forcast for Lille, though, and saw that it was going to be below freezing all day every day for the time we were there. I was prepared. T-shirt, sweater, jacket, pea coat. I couldn’t move my arms, but, damn it, I’d be warm.

The Student came out, did the same, and we walked out of her apartment, locked the door, and left the building. We stood outside, teeth still chattering. I pulled down my hat. “Where to?”

The Student shrugged. “Centre de ville?”

I blinked at him. “Don’t start that French shit with me, boy. You speak English while I’m around, less I bust a cap in yo ass.”

“Mangez ma merde,” he responded, and started walking.

Travelling The Next Day

Unless you have been up all night, drinking, carousing, and doing things of a questionable nature, four-thirty is not a pleasant experience. I opened the curtains, saw darkness outside, and groaned. Even the birds—which, around Canterbury, seemed to wake up in ecstasy every morning—sung in a register and tempo which I took to mean, “This hour should not exist.” Still, I was going to get another stamp on my passport, so I manned up, took a shower, made a quick breakfast, heaved my duffel bag over my back, and walked outside.

Woolf College, deserted, looks like a prison under lock down. At least, shivering in the darkness in my pea coat, my wool flat cap pulled down low over my head, that’s what I thought about. I stood out there, waiting for The Student to head down my way from his block.

He wore a puffy brown coat—the sort of thing you’d expect to see on a child with an overprotective mother instead of an adult in grad school. The hood was pulled up over his face, and I saw that he was wearing corduroy pants and boots. He had a backpack, a messenger bag, and a sleeping bag with him. “Yo,” he called.

“Yo,” I answered.

He walked up to me and we turned towards the other side of the College, making our slow progress to the footpath. “Big coat,” I said.

“It’s cold,” he said.

I nodded. We were talking like we were in a Cormac McCarthy novel, and my overactive imagination started kicking into gear. There was no doubt that we’d get waylaid on the path by highway men. Sure, we’d reason with them, but, in the end, they’d strip us of everything of value and, because I thought of The Student the weaker of us, would kidnap him and use him for slavery. They’d kill me. No doubt there. Cannibalism might be involved if it turned out we were in The Road. As for The Student’s belongings, well, I’d be happy to let Rebecca have them.

“Supposed to be this cold in France?” I asked.

“Yep,” said The Student.

We continued on in silence. Walked past Eliot College and were now in the woods. Lapsed back to Cormac McCarthy mode. I listened to the wind for the sound of hooves on ground. Maybe diesel-powered trucks, belching smoke and driving through the woods. I’d hear gruff men shouting to each other, “Look for signs of camps.” They’d hold guns and have ammo. We’d be easy prey for killers. I wasn’t a killer. The student wasn’t a killer. I started sweating. Dead giveaway if any of them had a powerful nose. They probably did.

“Quiet out here,” said The Student. He shivered in his coat.

“Yep,” I said.

Yes, The Student would definitely be the one of us to be cut down. The arms of his coat swished against the side. Easy sound to recognize. He should have worn a wool coat. Could have told him, but that would have been useless. He wouldn’t have time to go back to Woolf to get it. The highwaymen would catch him by then. I wished I had a revolver on me, but they were illegal. Not that laws had much to do with a wild land like this. I looked to my left. A fox dashed through the trees.

We made it through the footpath and into the neighborhood at the bottom. Silence here, too. Now they didn’t even need to come through the woods. Just had to drive down the roads in their massive cars/big horses. I shook my head and snapped back to reality. I really should have had some coffee that morning. Reading No Country for Old Men the previous night probably had something to do with it. (That’s the thing about the UK. Even if you get lost in the countryside, you’re probably no more than two miles away from a country pub.)

We walked to the train station, bought tickets to Ashford, and waited. I looked at the station clock for the first time and saw that we were half an hour early. I grunted. Well, at least we definitely wouldn’t miss the train.

As the time got closer, a few people in business suits arrived at the station and, generally, looked even more miserable than us. The Student fell asleep on the station bench and I took out a book to read. Doing that was harder than I thought it would be. Apparently, my brain had no interest whatsoever in concentrating on reading at six in the morning. I closed my book (the new You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? by Richard Dawkins—chosen by the head of the course for a module next term) and took out my wallet. I have a habit of keeping receipts long past the time when they are useful. After I realize that I have no idea what they’re for (generally because the ink has faded), I use them as scrap paper or bookmarks. Today, though, I would use them as pellets to harass The Student. I did so, and he stirred a bit.

Finally, the train arrived, I pushed him awake, and we got on and both promptly fell asleep until we arrived at Ashford.

After passing through French customs and getting on the Eurostar—a mammoth train that was, at this hour, surprisingly full of people who somehow had the capacity to talk—we fell asleep again and woke up as the train zoomed into France, briefly stopping in Calais.

By the time we got to Lille, predictably, I was more tired than I had been at six in the morning. You’d think that after four years spent napping in the mid-afternoon after getting no sleep the previous night, I would have remembered the sorts of problems that came from not getting enough sleep.

We got off of the train and walked into the station. My initial reaction was that it was big. My second reaction was, “Jesus fuck it is cold in here.”

The Student nodded, shivering a little himself. “Little bit, yeah. I understand that they need to keep the sides open so trains can enter and leave, but you’d think they could have... I don’t know, doors or something in train stations. Christ. This place must get boiling hot in the summer.”

I turned to him and said, “How can you think of summer at a time like this?”

We walked a little ways down the platform. The Student displayed a method of looking for people that resembled my own: He looked through the crowd, occasionally waving at someone, and then quickly retracting his hand as he realized he didn’t know that person after all. We walked through the train station—a place about the size of London Victoria with one major difference: Lille-Europe was actually modern. Nothing against the train stations in England, but, for the most part, there’s no difference between their appearance now and what they probably looked like a hundred years ago (save, of course, digital displays that tell you exactly how late your train will be). Lille-Europe is a big bastard, made of concrete and plate-glass up top. Shops, a couple of cafes—basically, normal fare for any transportation depot.

It was around this time that I noticed something that, for some reason, hadn’t registered before: I was in a non-Anglophone country. More so, I was in a country where, even though I was essentially on the level of a five year old with mental difficulties, I could speak the language. I looked up at one of the blue signs showing where platforms and the metro were.  “Hey, Student,” I said, pointing to the sign.

He paused in his searching and looked at me. “Yeah?”

I nodded to the left, towards some escalators, an elevator going down, and a group of ticket machines. “That way to the metro.”

He looked over. “Yep.”

“What, aren’t you surprised—nay, shocked and amazed—that I could discern where the Metro was, using only my skills dans français?”

“The symbol over that ticket machine is a white ‘M’ in a square. It’s obvious that that’s where the Metro would be. Look, I need you to shut up for a second and think where my friend would be.”

“You’ve got her number, right?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t pick up.”

I didn’t even realize that The Student had been on the phone at any point since we got off of the train. That’s what I get for being amazed by signs in another language, I guess.[1] I looked around, trying to think of where I would be if I were a French college student. Naturally, my first inclination was, “a café!” But then I realized that such an answer was a disgusting stereotype and that I should be more sensitive in the future. My second answer to my question was, “in a boulangerie!” That’s when I came to the conclusion that I’d spend the entire time in Lille giggling away to myself about the Frenchness of the city while The Student hid his face or otherwise disassociated himself with me. I saw a sign pointing outside, to a plaza separating Gare Lille-Europe from the mall (in the part of Lille called Euralille—essentially, offices and this shiny, shiny shopping center). “How bout there?” I said, pointing to the sign. “People like plazas.”

The Student shrugged and we followed the sign, walked down an escalator, and found ourselves outside in a snow-dusted plaza with a couple of statues and a bridge to our right, following the main road to the mall. It was early enough that there weren’t many people out, and those that were were dressed in overcoats, boots, and gloves. A few flakes of snow fell lazily from the sky, and a stiff, cold breeze made its way across the plaza. Off in the distance, I saw the skyline of Lille—mainly made up of cathedral and church spires, with, confusedly, the upper half of a Ferris Wheel in the distance. I nodded. I liked this place. Granted, I hadn’t really set foot outside of the train station, but it seemed like it would definitely be a nice change of scenery—if nothing else—from hanging around Canterbury so much.

The Student’s cell phone rang and he answered it. “Bonjour, Pascale! Ça va bien? Oui, oui. Ah, er, where are you?” It seemed The Student’s French was on par with mine. “By the platform? Must have missed you, okay. We’ll come back in. Au revoir.” He pressed a button (hitting a few others with his gloved finger), and put the phone back in his front pocket of his coat. He nodded and said, “Right.”

“You know something?” I asked as we made our way back to the escalator.

“What?”

“Everything here—it’s all so... French.”

Thankfully, escalators keep going up even when you don’t. The Student stopped his ascent and turned back to me. “What?”

“I mean... the Frenchness of the whole place is just insane. You can practically smell the garlic in the air.”

The Student grunted. “Look, please don’t say this sort of stuff around Pascale.”

“Why?”

“Cause that’s not—it’s just mildly—just don’t say it.”

“Look,” I said as we came off of the escalators, “if I want to say something, then I’ll damn well say it. It’s my right as an American!”

“You’re in France now.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m surprised there aren’t fucking mimes everywhere.”

He grunted. I knew, right then, that most of my enjoyment this trip would come from harassing The Student. Not his friend though, she was letting us crash at her place and I’d be a good guest. But, so help me God, The Student would come to believe that my sole goal this trip was to shit on a crepe. I’d ensure that only he would hear me, and then I would proceed to make the most absurd jingoistic statements possible. “Hey,” I’d say, “let’s go get Freedom Fries, though I bet they’re better in Amurika.” Or: “Hey, look at that church. Ain’t got nothin on an Amurikan church. Bet they ain’t even got room for a revival in there.”

We made our way to the platform and then The Student was sideswiped by a short, thin, smiling French girl with brown hair, wearing a blue coat and jeans. The air went out of him in a rush and he dropped his bags.

The Student and Pascale exchanged a burst of plesantries in French—I’m taking it all to mean some very basic catching up (after all, though The Student had better French than me, his wasn’t far beyond the level of elementary)—and then The Student turned to me and said, “Pascale, this is The Narrator; Narrator, Pascale.”

I gave my winning smile—the one I take to mean nonthreatening and the one least likely to scare off children—and said, “Hey.”

Pascale smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.” She then laughed and said, “Oh, I get to practice my English.” She had a lovely accent—I’m assuming it was vaguely Northern French, but, as I’d find out, I can’t discern Parisian from Norman. She turned to The Student. “I haven’t since Canterbury, you know.”

“You’re doing fine,” The Student said.

“Okay,” Pascale said, “shall we go to ze train and zen we will go to my apartment?”

“Please God, yes,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”

The Student groaned.

“Okay, follow me.” She led us through to the areas that said ‘Metro’ and to a very bizarre form of ticket control.

Lille’s ticket system ran thusly: There were no homicidal gates. The ticket barriers didn’t look the least bit intimidating; they were clean, steel columns about three feet high with a little black slot with two, welcoming lights—one red, one green—above it. The purpose of the slot was to stamp the ticket. The process involved no chance of the ticket getting caught in the machine, a total time of one second—one point five if you were slow or confused about it all—and very little chance of getting crushed in any onslaught of passengers. I even took a few trips on this thing during rush hour and had no problems at all. There was a black line connecting all of the columns, running at an angle to the escalators, which, I think, served to tell you where you could go if you hadn’t paid for a ticket. The whole system ran on trust that people wouldn’t go through and ride without a ticket. (In fact, it seemed like the business that ran the metro in Lille only checked tickets twice or so a week—around five o’clock during weekdays.)

Of course, I wasn’t there that long, and I wasn’t in the company of ne’erdowells, so there is a very strong chance that I was only seeing one side of Lille—but, hey, I rather like my invention of the city.

Anyway, we walked up to the ticket machine—similar to any digital dispenser with the exception that it was, of course, in French. This threw me for a minute. I had to utilize my rusty, piecemeal language abilities to navigate through the machine. Suddenly, I was back in my high school classroom with the utterly insane Mr. Edwards, who stopped a lesson on verb conjugation to rant about the Concorde, and whose car was found to possess massive amounts of porn and hypodermic needles when he brought it in to the mechanic shop at the high school. I wept a little bit, then, and Pascale came over and explained exactly what I had to do.

I wiped my eyes and said a tearful, “Thank you.” I bought a day card (an easily-losable strip of paper about a third of the size of a credit card) and joined The Student and Pascale in the long schlep down the escalators and into our train.

---

[1] A while ago, I was in Houston visiting my brother. At one point, he took me to the Vietnamese part of town (which boasts the highest Vietnamese population outside of Saigon), and, I’m not kidding, I took thirty pictures of street signs that had Vietnamese characters under the English. Easily amused does not begin to cover my mentality.

The Epilogue to The Traveler's Second Tale

I jumped up and applauded when The Traveler finished his story. I’m not sure what it was about it—perhaps it was the fact that, like everyone in my generation, I’d grown up with Mario—but it really struck a chord with me. The Drunkard rose his glass to The Traveler. The Student looked at his watch and said, “Good story, my friend. However, I’ve got to go.”

“It’s three,” said The Drunkard.

“Yeah,” said The Student. “But, well, you know how the busses are. What with their not-quite stable schedules and propensities for being late. I figured that—”

The Drunkard reached up and gripped The Student by the shoulder, pushing him down. “Have a seat,” he said. “I insist. You can walk up to campus if needs be. The weather’s not that bad.”

“I saw a rabbit fling against the city walls, propelled by the wind, as I was riding the bus earlier,” said The Stalker.

The Drunkard shrugged. “Well, you know, tough shit on the rabbit, I guess. Anyway, I enjoyed the story, Traveler.”

The Writer cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on the table. It was clear he had something pressing to say. “If I may interject,” he said, “with a comment upon your story—for that is why we are here, is it not?”

“I thought we were here to while away the time,” said The Drunkard, “but I guess not.”

The Student snorted.

The Stalker slurped at his cider and said, “I consider your methods of interjecting when you did barbarous, Writer. Karma, as they say, remembers all.”

“Who says that?” I asked.

The Stalker turned to me. “People of note.”

“Anyway,” said The Writer, “it pains me ever so much to see you once again not sticking to real life. Why, oh why, must we all—except for me, of course, avoid real life? Why must we all cling to falsities like folklore, and, ah, characters from video games? The world is a place of enough existential confusion that a wealth of philosophically-charged stories may be produced. Enough to fill a library—and, by my reckoning, that’s only by one person.”

For all the pretension in that statement, there was a valid point. It was true that life threw enough challenges in the way of the average person that anyone had the potential to become a philosopher. And, for the record, I was never one of those people who believed that writing things of, to use a term that may be horribly vague, “literary merit” was a waste of time because such projects did not sell. I don’t think anyone in our circle was a subscriber to that train of thought.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” asked The Student to The Writer.

The latter raised his eyebrows. “Pray tell, what?”

“You’re being an intellectual fascist.”

The Traveler grunted. “You don’t change your mind often, do you?”

“A constantly changing mind,” said The Writer, “is the sign of a weak mind. We must hold to our convictions if we are to have any effect on the world’s ways.”

“However,” said The Stalker, “what you’re failing to grasp in your infantile, posturing mind, is that when faced with the possibility that you’re wrong, it is perfectly acceptable to admit you’re wrong.” He slurped from his cider. “For example: When The Drunkard’s flatmates dragged me out to Madame Guillotine, I realized that skinning and hanging a rabbit from his door frame was the wrong way to take criticism. And, thus, I have not done it again.”

The Writer cleared his throat. “There’s a slight difference between skinning a rabbit and refusing to change your mind.”

The Drunkard returned to the table. “Is fuckface talking again?”

The Writer sighed. “And the crass voice of the day returns to the table. Please, Drunkard, find your way out of conversations that are above your comprehension. Perhaps you should find your Cloyd friend and talk to him about NASCAR.”

The Drunkard responded in a quite civil way, I felt: He threw his whiskey in The Writer’s face. (I wondered just how much money The Drunkard had to be able to afford literally throwing it all away on drinks. The man must have been walking into some serious debt when he finished here.) Then he stood up to order another one. The Writer nodded and said, “I may have deserved that.”

“Do you not agree,” said The Student, “that dipping into pop culture in order to illustrate a point might just be the way some people think? I’m not saying that’s the way The Traveler thinks, but—”

“Some times it is. I thought having a piranha plant pop into a story would be hilarious.”

“Ha!” said The Writer. “You see? He didn’t even go into it with any sort of thought of having a deeper meaning! There was no commentary intended on the purposelessness of the modern middle class life. No wise message about—”

“I really, really wish you would shut the fuck up,” said The Stalker.

“—the way society chews people up and spits them out,” continued The Writer.

The Stalker dragged a palm down his face. “Really, I wish you would stop talking. You’re giving me a headache.”

“In short,” continued The Writer, “your tale, Traveler, was mindless entertainment, worthless to the point of vapidity. Void of substance. Lacking any value. You have wasted the time of everyone at this table.”

The Traveler took all of this with one eyebrow raised.

The Stalker, however, was clenching and unclenching his fists. “One more word from you,” he said, “attacking this man’s story, and I swear to God I will hit you.” There was something different about his voice. The undercurrent of terror was gone. Now, I think, there was only the voice of a normal man tired of hearing someone who’d—and I’m going to lapse into a bizarre phrase here, one that I wouldn’t normally use but seems to be the only apt thing to say—gotten too big for his britches. “You’re prattling on, mimicking things your instructors have probably said in workshops to students trying to write things for fun.”

“Ha,” said The Writer, leaning back in his chair with a triumphant grin on his face. “That’s where you’re wrong. I haven’t been in a single workshop this year.”

“That’s fucking it,” said The Stalker. He leaped out of his chair, about to dive for The Writer when The Traveler blocked him and walked him out to the beer garden.

“Um,” said The Student. “Right. Well, look, Writer, perhaps you should take his story as a commentary on the tropes of folklore. Something to poke fun at the inherent pessimism of a story about a being that possesses people to fulfill a purpose.”

The Writer snorted. “Oh, good. A spoof.”

“Your mom’s a spoof,” said The Drunkard, returning to the table.

The Writer’s head drooped. He took off his glasses, folded up the end bits, and laid them, gently, as if his spectacles were a flag being put to rest upon a coffin, on the table and said, “Drunkard, your method of argument is infantile.”

“So’s your face,” said The Drunkard.

The Writer placed his glasses back on his head, nodded, and got up from the table and left the pub.

A Cheshire cat’s grin spread over The Drunkard’s face and he took a triumphant sip from his glass of whiskey. “The day is mine, huh?”

“I guess,” I said. “Student, should we head out? I haven’t started packing.”

“Woah,” said The Drunkard. “Where are you two going?”

“Lille,” said The Student, standing up, “in France.”

“And I wasn’t invited?” asked The Drunkard.

“Er,” I said.

“Well,” said The Student.

“Nah,” said The Drunkard with a laugh, “don’t worry about it. The French don’t really have the best of beer, and I can’t drink wine to get drunk. Feels like blasphemy.”

We said to say goodbye to The Traveler and The Stalker (if both of them came back in considering they had been out there for a bit, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that The Stalker had cut The Traveler’s throat for getting a glimpse of... I don’t know, the dual nature of his being.) Then, we left.

The Traveler's Second Tale

Frederick Smythe-Tensington Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D.
The Hedgerow
Yaxley-upon-Stour
Yaxleyshire
YX2 8IS
4 August, 2010
Dear Mr Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D.,
In answer to your query posed the First of July: No, I am reticent to admit that I have not followed the current cricket contest between England (God save the Queen) and Pakistan. I find sport abhorrent in its very nature and something to be enjoyed by only the common folk in our country. As you are well aware, in my youth, I would make my way down Oxford Street upon my horse, Mercury, and trod upon those who I deemed common—so it is, of course, unlikely that I would have anything to do with those vagabonds. (Before you waste precious ink distilled from the fat of whales—as I know this is the only sort of ink you use—allow me to state two things: Firstly, I was never charged with a crime, for, as you know, I am related to every MP of note in the Southeast, Southwest, Midlands, and Greater London area. Secondly, no, I do not judge you for enjoying sport, I simply state my only preference.
In regards to your question about whether or not the recent election was favourable to those of us in, shall I say, higher positions, I need only turn your attention to the recent decrees put forward by the Prime Minister. I say, “eat shit,” as our American brethren would say, you dirty council house-dwelling proletariat. And I do not feel I must make a point upon the imminent dissolution of the Film Board—that amoral institution responsible for besmirching the name of Film. There are, of course, those rogues, the Liberal-Democrats working in supposed co-operation with the Conservatives, but I sincerely doubt they are making their presence known beyond flailing around Parliament, shouting and crying like some puppy squashed in the road. Rather amusing, I must say. Of course, we here in Fizzleshire are an admittedly removed lot—those whose income totals less than £300,000 per annum are removed to Kent. (I had briefly considered embarking upon a diatribe on the subject on that miserable excuse of a county, that stain upon England [God save the Queen!] but I am quite certain even you are beyond the point of hearing anything new I have to say on the subject.)

I am frightfully sorry to hear the news that the only opening your progeny, Fitz-William Froderick Tinsing Rexley, B.A., could find in the Forces was in the Royal Welsh Guard. Now, yes, I am well aware of their spotless record and the history of the aristocracy in the regiment, but surely you are not letting that blind you to the fact that your son will be associating with sheep-buggering Welshmen. Of course, I more than trust that you have instructed him upon the proper manner of dealing with a Welshman: a stiff, back-handed slap to the face followed promptly by a truly prodigious amount of spittle to the face. Nevertheless, you may, of course, count upon Martha and I to send him a few of our excess servants in order to assist in the back-handed slapping, as I imagine there shall be quite a lot of it to go around.
So pleased to hear that you’ve acquired another one hundred hectares of land. I was even more pleased to read that you acquired it by raiding and setting flame to the adjacent council estate. Jolly good thing that you bought up the local constabulary a decade ago, isn’t it? I wonder, what is it that you are going to do with all of that new land? Will you be building a new estate? Or, as you did fifteen years ago, grow a crop of life-sustaining wheat, only to infect it with smallpox and have it sent over to the Ethiopians? Jolly good practical joke that was; such a shame you “caught flak” in the press about it. No matter, as it was fifteen years ago and all those involved—at least among the Africans—are dead. You simply must clue me in on the proper methods of raising, training, and maintaining a militia, as, you see, the local underbelly of Kentish society has taken to racing their motor-vehicles quite near my grounds. I wish to deal with the matter in a fashion that will quite obviously state my displeasure. (Spitting their corpses and sending them back to their mothers—who, no doubt, have twelve more children roaming around all willy-nilly—is not out of the question.)
And now, my dear Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D., I have something of a pickle for you to consider. You see, at the last market in Fizzle-upon-Fizzle’s Market Square, I came across a rather curious item: What is known, in some obscure botanist circles as carnivori piranti—in layman’s terms: a piranha plant. If you are not familiar with this species, do not feel ashamed: it is, as I said, quite rare in these Northern latitudes. It appears thusly: Like most plants, it has a long, green stem, off of which there grow leaves which, in the summer time of every even-numbered year, sprout seed pods—prickly little buggers which attach themselves to birds, quadrupeds, any number of things, really. The bulb of the plant is a red-and-white speckled thing. Quite lovely in its own right, it is marked with a white line spreading around the circumference of the bulb. This is where the plant becomes simply astounding. Upon sensing nearby prey, the bulb opens up along this white line and displays two rows of incredibly sharp teeth—rather like that shark’s jaw you showed to me last year when I visited your hunting trophy room.
As you are aware from my last missal, I had decided that I would rather enjoy a spot of gardening here and there. Endeavouring to embark upon this venture in the most proper way possible, I promised myself that only the rarest plants would make their way into my back garden—which, as you know, is larger than that mass of twisted metal and distraction known as Thorpe Park. And so, coming upon this piranha plant in the Market Square, I realised that I had, put quite simply, found the perfect specimen. And so, I gladly paid the £15,600 the Gypsy (for, sadly, we cannot have this Market without their presence) behind the counter—the proceeds of Martha’s last auction of goods stolen from the border towns of Kent more than covering it—and took the plant back home.
It was, at this time, no larger than six inches tall, and the Gypsy had assured me that it would not grow further than eight inches in height. (I know, I know, I should never trust one of their kind, but the excitement of finding such a thing was forefront in my mind, more so than it should have been.) I decided that I would tend to this plant personally. It had been quite a long time since I had engaged in any sort of manual labour, and my latest doctor (after sacking three in a row after they had told me that I should cease my habit of smoking thirty Cuban cigars a day), learning from his predecessors, told me that, instead of quitting smoking, I should spend ten minutes a week gardening. Such advice is well worth the money I pay him to avoid talking about my supposed ill health.
I went in the back of the garden, dug a medium-sized hole, and transferred the plant—roots and all—into the hole, to hopefully take root and make itself prosperous. Oh, it certainly did.
Within a week, it had grown to a foot and a half tall and had taken to eating other plants. Damned peculiar behaviour for a specimen of plant, cannibalism. At any rate, the blasted plant kept growing and eating other plants in the area of the garden until, quite suddenly, it stopped. I had been observing the plant with a curiosity normally reserved for scientists working diligently upon a cure for cancer, and, thus, I noted that it had begun consuming various specimens of wildlife in lieu of other plants. Once again, damned peculiar behaviour, I believe—and yes, I am well aware of the carnivorous appetites of plants such as the Venus fly trap, however, to my knowledge, that species does not snap out its stem to capture foxes.
That’s right, old boy, the damn thing took to consuming foxes whole. I must say, the beasts’ screams at night is a truly unnerving sound. Makes sleeping quite difficult. After a few weeks of the piranha plant continuously eating foxes that wandered into my back garden (as you may remember, ever since the November of 2008, my garden has some property that attracts foxes), it grew to double its size and began consuming my dogs. As I’ve told you before, I rather enjoy the company of the hounds—Irish Wolf Hounds, all of them purebred—and do hate to see them get picked off by a giant, red-and-white plant. Currently, the beastly piranha plant occasionally consumes a hound, though it has, by and large, taken to its new prey rather nicely.
As you are aware, Kent is overrun with an illegal immigrant population consisting of the Turks and the Poles. Well, one day, after the plant had eaten its tenth canine (luckily, I own over one hundred), I decided that, blast it, enough was enough, and ordered my driver Geoffrey (you know, the one with the stutter that we find oh so amusing) to drive me out to Kent to procure services from some of them. We went out to some Godforsaken little town infested with the working class known as Chatham and picked up a couple of Poles.
I intended to pay them the barest minimum I could: £0.10 for the day’s work. They protested, but when I made them aware that I had very powerful connections with the Home Office, and they gladly took the offer. And so, I dispatched them to my back garden, pointed them in the general direction of where the plant could be found, gave them a couple of shovels, and said Godspeed.
Well, the day progressed and, after enough time had passed so that I was sure that, by then, they had trekked the seven miles to the back border of my garden, I decided to walk to the top of my house—where I have the observatory—and see if I could spy what was going on. No sooner did I look through the telescope instaled up there that I viewed the bulb of the plant snapping up in the air with two pairs of human legs dangling madly from the mouth of the carnivori piranti. It had, you see, eaten the Poles. What’s more, it had grown to over the fifteen feet mark and thus surpassed the height of my garden’s wall.
I was in quite the pickle. You know as well as I that Poles don’t count for a penny in the world, but it was a bit of an issue, considering their corpses allowed the plant to grow another ten feet. Drastic measures had to be taken. Thus, I contacted my cousin, Lord Henry John-Smythe Smythington Wilkinson, who owns the arms manufacturing plant in Manchester, and placed an order for ten flamethrowers, to arrive at my grounds the following morning. Never let it be said that, when one owns the worldwide parcel delivery service, that anything is impossible. The flamethrowers were delivered to my door not that morning, but the very night I ordered them!
The next day, Geoffrey and I picked up a group of ten Turks, drove them to my estate, and outfitted them with the flamethrowers. As before, I instructed them as to how they would receive their £.10 per person, pointed them to the back garden, and made my way to the observatory.
What I saw would put any Hollywood war film to shame. Such a battle of plant versus man could never be imaginable. Flames shot up the sides of the plant—damned hard not to refer to it as a “beast”—the carnivori piranti literally screamed in such a manner that the pheasants I keep in another section of my garden broke free of their confines and flew through the air. (No matter, I shall simply order more.) However, at the end of the day, the plant triumphed over the Turks. and, one by one, consumed them whole. I’d hoped that the inherent inferiority of the Turk would kill the plant, but, alas, it was not to be, and the plant grew to a height that I was unable to measure.
It has now begun to snatch helicopters from the air and consume them whole. I fear that, if this behavior continues, it shall grow through the very stratosphere and find a way to breathe in space, consuming satellites and thus destroying my ability to communicate with my innumerable accountants, bankers, bookkeepers, estate agents, biographers, and tailors around the world. And, as I’m sure you are aware, such an event would, no doubt, impede your own ability to do the very same.
And it is so, my dear Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D., that I turn to you in my hour of need. Have you any idea, any inkling of a notion, of how I can deal with this pest? I would be in your debt.
Give my love to Louise, and do ensure that your progeny knows how to properly back-hand a Welshman.

Very sincerely yours,

Reginald St Smythe-Smythington Holst-Dulverton, B.A., Ph. D, M.D., J.D.

The Black Gate

Fizzlehurst

Fizzleshire

FZ1 7US