Bastille Day fun

Yesterday kept alternating between sunshine and short but quite heavy showers, so I was a bit concerned about whether or not the fireworks would be on and whether or not we would all get drenched and miserable watching them. Still, I had a rendezvous across town at 9, so I waited for a particularly heavy shower to pass and headed out to the pub to meet up with Laura and Philippa. Luckily, it rained again quite heavily while we were in the pub and we got fine weather for the fireworks at 11, which lasted for about 25 minutes. That's really bang for your buck!

After the fireworks, Laura went home and Philippa and I went into town to meet up with a girl who does Sh'bam and Zumba with me at the gym and her friends. Exciting, new French friend! She comes across as very timid at the gym (and said as much herself several times in the evening), so I'm a) impressed that she had the courage to suggest we met up after we got chatting about Bastille Day plans on Friday and b) found it hilarious how drunk and extrovert she got. Life ambition fulfilled: going out with a French girl who's way drunker than me. Score! We put our gym classes to good work on the dancefloor - even though Sh'bam and Zumba are as much or more aerobic routines as dance per se, I think they do help you get loosened up and more in tune with how to move on the dancefloor.

Philippa went home just before the bars closed and French Marion, her friend Jessica and Jessica's friend Olivier and I went on to a club where we had to wait in line for like half an hour and then pay to get in, which made me grumpy. The music in the club was pretty crap and, even worse "DJ Jeff" kept interrupting the songs every 30 seconds to shout "DJ Jeffffffffff" at us. FFS, after the third time everyone was well aware that DJ Jeff was in the house, so shut up and stop ruining the rhythm of the songs to tell us about it!

Anyway, Olivier took Marion home not long after we got there, so I basically had to stay with Jessica, which was fine, even if I wasn't having an amazing time, we were dancing, it was okay. She kept going off periodically to do whatever, but still, I was okay dancing by myself, even when some guy came up behind me and rubbed his arse up on me and I pushed him away gently, and then he came back and was all "what did you do that for?" and I had to shout at him, because it's one thing busting the inappropriate dance moves, it's another thing getting mad at ME about it.

I think every time I talk about going out it involves me shouting at French men, but there you go, clearly they deserve it. I didn't even tell you about the last time we went out with one of Charlie's friends and he said we should go downstairs to follow "trois putes" who just headed down to the dancefloor and when I asked him not to use the word "putes" he said, in English, "should I say bitches? whores? sluts?" Is it just me, or is there some sort of nouveau acceptance of misogyny going about these days? Even Charlie, who is normally very feisty, was all "he doesn't mean it in a bad way, he's just joking" but that's one thing that I don't find at all funny. Plus we were sitting by a spiral staircase going up to the bathrooms and he was sitting there trying to look up girls' skirts as they went up and then talking about what putes they were to be wearing short skirts. Excuse me, shouldn't we be talking about what a pervert you are for basically lying down in your chair to get a look at them?

Anyway, Olivier finally came back and I probably should have just left at that stage, but he and Jessica went off to get a drink and she came back by herself and we danced a bit more and then I asked her where Olivier was because I wanted to leave (sorry this story is getting long and boring) and she was all "I don't know, he left, I don't think he's coming back, all my stuff is in the boot of his car", so I was kind of pissed off because I couldn't just leave her, but at the same time I was like, he was just here, why did you let him go off knowing he had all your stuff? And what was your plan for dealing with that before I said I wanted to go home? Eventually I got her to go look for him, so I was stuck in this club by myself, with a headache, tired, waiting for a girl I didn't even know to get her act together, listening to the crap stylings of DJ Jeff, so not very happy. After half an hour, she turned up to say she found Olivier and he wanted to wait till the club closed at 4.30, in about 20 minutes. I said I was leaving straight away and she gave me puppy dog eyes, but I was having none of that, go do puppy dog eyes at irresponsible Olivier, instead of me! I'd been out for nearly 8 hours, that's a full work day (or one and a half work days, here in France), and when you wants to go home, you wants to go home.

So that was my Bastille Day. It probably sounds like I had a worse time than I did, and also that I am an angry, angry young man, but it wasn't that bad, especially the first bar we were at.

I may have gotten a bit carried away taking photos of myself with my tricolour nails. I'm awfully vain for someone who looks like crap most of the time

Fireworks (I messed around with the colour on this one)

Me and Philippa at the first bar

Marion and me, doing a bad job of being "gangsta"

Fireworks