Singes capitulards bouffeurs de fromage

Ploggers, Ploggers, Ploggers.  I can only apologise for my protracted absence, and plead a recent cornucopia of overexcitement.

Sorry.

So, what have I been doing?  Well, TheBloke (TM), the romantic old fool, took me to Paris for the weekend for my birthday.  This lends itself to great jokes such as, "He took me up the Eiffel Tower", "We went on a boat trip: it was in Seine" and so on.  Paris was lovely.  Hot chocolates, croissants, snails, steak tartare, choux pastry and fondant chocolat all made it onto our Parisian palette...  But as ever, it's the mad bastards who stick in your mind the most.

So there we are, minding our own business on the Paris Metro, exiting at the station so we can go and see the Arc de Triomphe.  Apparently this was built to honour those who died in the Napoleonic wars.  Arc de Triomphe means "Triumph Arch", and unless my history is severely inaccurate, I think the French may want to investigate the naming of this.  It's generally not considered a triumph when you lose a war.  But maybe for the French it is.  In the words of The Simpsons, they are after all "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".  Triumph!  We have surrendered!  Break out the cheese!  Build an arch!

Anyway, we were exiting the Metro station through large metal doors that automatically open as you approach them.  Obviously these are one-way, to prevent people entering the system for free.  So they are pretty narrow - certainly only wide enough for one fairly slimline member to pass.  They are also opaque, so you can't see what's through them until they open.  My steel door opened as I approached.  I went through.  Unfortunately, at the same time, a mad, French, peasanty fare-dodger decided he was going to use my exit door to get a free ride.

There wasn't room for both of us.  I used my (let's face it) fantastic A-level French to say loudly, "Non!  Non!"  Of which, he obviously took absolutely no notice.  He pushed me.  I was forced up against the metal bars.  "Non!" I said fluently again.  But fat, ugly, stupid mad bastard French peasants will not be appeased.  And he ignored me.  Luckily at this point the doors closed behind me and he was thwarted.  Thwarted I say!

(Though I heard him say, "merci" to someone behind me, so clearly someone was more charitable than me.  "Merci" by the way, means "thank you".  This is why I got an A at A-level.)

There's always a story whenever I go to France.  Previous incidents have involved:

• Mrs Nunn almost getting arrested for (not) shoplifting at Carrefour
• Asking a supermarket employee if there were condoms in the organic jam
• Trying to buy peach wine and ending up with vin de peche (basically Tesco's "good with fish")

TheBloke (TM), a non-Francophone, learned three French words: "croissant", "oui" and "quoi".  These days, that's enough for an A* at GCSE so I'm thinking of entering him this summer.