h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's been an interesting week, by and large.

Steve, one of my housemates, is 30 today and is in the middle of a week of celebrating that fact. Lots of stuff going on, we're all going out tonight, having a party and all-in housewarming on Saturday and had a huge barbecue last Sunday.

Yesterday the four of us went on a jolly boys outing to France. A bit of an adventure, really. I was doing all the driving, and we left at half five - somehow, I'd only had about three hours sleep what with being excited about the trip and certain other things in my life...

Got to Calais realising we lacked a GB sticker and the headlamp deflectors required by French law, and headed to the nearest local supermarket. Unfortunately they didn't have a 'daft British motorists' section, and stocked neither. There was a sort of French Halfords nearby, and they couldn't help either.

So we bought a roll of electrical tape and a marker pen. Made a home-made GB sign on a piece of paper and stuck it in the back window, and roughly followed the markings on the headlamps to improvise beam deflectors with the electrical tape. Veronique, my Citroen estate, was promptly re-christened 'The Pikeymobile'.

Headed down the coast to a huge Carrefour hypermarket, and we all ransacked the place for cheap booze as you'd expect and I ended up going slightly manic in the red wine aisle - being a bit sleep-deprived and all. I'd found some wine that had been awarded a medal at some recent tasting or other, and experience has shown that these are very much the ones to go for. But one bottle of wine looks very much like another, and in between finding that one, going back to the trolley and then back to the shelves, I'd lost my bearings - and ended up running up and down the aisle flapping my arms like a penguin.

Eventually got out of there about a hundred quid lighter, and also just for a laugh having bought an orange vest (like Bruce Willis saves the Universe in in the Fifth Element - has anyone else noticed there's a whole genre of Bruce Willis films where has saves the world and/or universe while wearing a vest?) to go to the gym in, and we decided to head to the beach for a picnic. Calais beach was surprisingly nice despite the rain, there are lots of beach huts there much like in the beginning of Betty Blue, and it was very atmospheric. There's something I love about beaches out of season, and beach huts.

So we scoffed the picnic in the car and then went out on the beach for a quick kickabout with the plastic football we'd bought, rain notwithstanding, and had a whale of a time making fools of ourselves falling over in the sand and that. This was followed by a quick trip to the local Tabac, where I managed to buy a packet of 30 Gauloises (still can't quite work that one out) and we reconvened on the porch of a beach hut for refreshments - the others got stuck into the first tranche of beers and Steve smoked a cigar he'd just bought in the style of Hannibal Smith off of the A-Team.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Nipped into Calais town centre before the ferry home, made a quick trip to a creperie, and made the ferry home with one minute to spare.

And then the fun bit - as you can expect, Veronique was loaded up to the gunwales with four blokes and all their booze. So while we were doing 90 mph in the middle lane of the M20, the back rear having a blowout was probably the last thing we needed. Luckily I worked out what was going on in time, and got us on to the hard shoulder before anything bad happened.

Then came phoning Green Flag, and even though we were on a mobile, we had no idea where on the M20 we were, so had to walk to the nearest SOS phone to get a bearing for them, which it turned out wasn't particularly near. That was fun in the dark, with an endless stream of 38-tonners thundering past ten feet away. Guy came along to keep me company, and on the way back we decided to get our spirits up by singing first My Generation and then Come on Eileen as loud as we could - Dan and Steve said they could actually hear us above the traffic when we got within two hundred yards of them

The breakdown bloke turned up eventually and we had fun and games unloading the boot and dealing with a broken bottle of Captain Morgan, and he changed the wheel for us with the aforementioned juggernauts rumbling past about three feet away. Whatever he's paid, it's not enough.

So what with all that, we got back to London at about half past one. Not a bad day all-in, considering I'd done it all on three hours sleep. Fortunately I have the day off today - I suppose I'm going to have to go and do something about that tyre...

When I read the word 'blowout', my thoughts were immediately directed towards your other most recent journal entry

Me too...

Safe on that front so far. I'm trying to be quite about the whole thing. Whatever happens, happens.

Oh so she's into Buddists then? Next thing we know you'll be trying it on with tantric sex thingy...!

True.

And if your quoting from what i think you may be, the next phrase is "whatever, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something esle to happen", which may describe my current scenario.

I must confess my suspicions were the same as Grey Desk and Egons...

Hmmm a booze cruise eh? I have not done one of those for a while, could be a laugh...

"a jolly boys outing"

'Booze cruising', I'll be doing one myself in the next six to eight weeks. Although the motivation for me isn't the cheap beer and wine, it's the very cheap tobacco that's available 50 miles up the road from Calais and over the Belgian border.

Looking at my stash, I think I've got 15 packets left out of the 60 packets I bought back in February.

The more I think about it, the more I think how lucky we are that I didn't lose control when the tyre blew. It could have been nasty. Hats off to Mr Citroen and his engineers, I suppose.

Ah. How cheap? I followed my packet of 30 Gauloises with a more conventional 10x20 for just over £30.

Oh, that reminds me, is there a reason your car's called "Veronique"

How cheap are the fags? Very

The price I paid for 50g of hand-rolling tobacco was ?3.45, but you pay the shop in £'s cash. The 60 packs cost me £138.00 which is a saving in the region of £380 over UK supermarket prices

Kieslowski's 'La Double Vie de Veronique' is probably my favourite film of all time. All my cars have had names - a little sad, possibly, but it does no-one any harm. I started with a 1974 Renault 12 called Magenta, then had a purple '74 Renault 15 called Lucia. Then I borrowed a 1966 Riley Elf from my Dad, which I named Alfie, and after that I bought a '73 Ford Transit Campervan which became known as Pegasus. I swapped Pegasus for Alfie with my Dad after a while, but sold Alfie in October 2002. I bought Veronique in October last year just before I went to Leeds - the first car I've had that's been younger than me. I wanted a big old motor that could do motorways and that I could pile all my mates and their gear into.

It nearly worked, too.

you might have had more luck piling all the stuff into Pegasus

I now have this horrible image oif four blokes inside Veronique which is positively hardcore...

Stop it now!

The trouble with Pegasus is that he doesn't go above 60mph - this, plus the difficulties of keeping him in London, was mainly why I let him go...

that would have to be a DvDa, only availible from import from Holland

" the back rear having a blowout"

Is Veronique a three-wheeler, then?

B

Sorry... back rear offside. Mrs.

*heeee* what a great time you had and the only casualty was a bottle o Morgan - not 'alf bad