Here’s Why

I am a maaad woman.

Went to the swimming pool on Sunday armed with a kilo of sun lotion, beach towels, reading material (Stephen Clarke’s Merde, Actually), French and Campagnes Publicitaires courses (did not touch these).

Was there at 10.20 sharp. Got to the main part of the complex – swimming pool, toboggans, chaise longues. Grabbed one of them chaises longues, dragged it outside. Opened the door, then dragged it outside.

Made the chaise longue comfy, it est arranged the beach towel. Made myself comfy, it est rub some sun lotion on. Opened the book. Started reading and giggling. Wait. Go back three sentences. Rub the SUN lotion on. THERE WAS NO FREAKING SUN. In and out of big blankets of clouds. Out for 5 minutes, in for a hundred. Bared it for twenty minutes. Dragged the chaise longue inside, took my stuff back to mon casier, did a couple of laps.

Out of the pool. What do you know? The sun was out. Repeated above-mentioned procedure: grabbed chaise longue, dragged chaise longue… “Vous arrivez a vous bronzer, mademoiselle?”, the nice swimming pool invigilator came outside to ask me. I sensed his mockery. It was too blatant to ignore. The mademoiselle who sat on a chaise longue outside (there was no one outside, by the way), reading and rubbing sun screen on to protect her from UVs too lazy to come out of the clouds. A reality the whole of Clermont must have been aware but me.

“Qu’est-ce que vous lisez?” “A book on why France sucks?!”. “Un livre en anglais”. Exchanged a few other lines, including the guy’s turning out to know the book I was reading: “Ah, oui, l’Anglais qui a ecrit un livre sur la France”. Oui, l’Anglais.

Kept on reading, monitoring the sky and hoping the horizon would soon turn bright blue instead of dark grey. Dark grey is usually a good sign of not very good weather. Must get eye test, I suspect colourblindness.

Was enjoying Paul West’s comments on dog merde on Champs Elysees (it’s all over France, actually) when I felt a drop on my shoulder. No, I thought and said out loud. Then another. Drop. Drop. Drop. It had started to rain. It felt like England. And by now it had started to feel like a deja-vu all right.

Grabbed the chaise longue, dragged it inside, saying to myself that 40 degrees Celsius and a sun with my name on it would not make me do that one more time. I am not Britney, after all.

~ by Irina Gheorghe on May 19, 2008.