KEY POINTS:
Why is it that British airports more closely resemble zoos than some zoos I've been to?
Six hours stuck in Manchester airport en route to Edinburgh yesterday were near enough to tip me over the edge. The flight was inexplicably delayed - it was a decent enough day - and the halls were teeming with shell-suited women and geezers with buzz cuts wearing white trainers and drinking Carling Black Label. Oh, the humanity.
It was a world away from the almost pastoral surrounds of Aix-en-Provence, or cosmopolitan Paris for that matter, and brought home, for me at least, the folly of playing some matches in Edinburgh and Cardiff. Why? This is France's World Cup. The country has embraced it. It has cultures and rhythms of its own that jar with the United Kingdom.
It was obviously a political decision, France needed Scotland and Wales' votes to tip out England's bid, but the IRB should have vetoed the move.
Having said that, Edinburgh is a great city but one that was clearly ill-prepared for the influx of New Zealanders doing their OEs in London. Queues for restaurants near the Royal Mile were up to 90 minutes long meaning ambitions to 'float' a meal were often left unfulfilled.
So such troubles the two nights before in Paris. France beating Ireland was entertaining enough but a Thursday night out in Bastille was even more rewarding.
Walking home after a traditional French meal of guacamole and fajitas my colleague and I passed a bar that looked strangely inviting. It had a slightly bohemian feel, there were posters of Edith Piaf on the wall and the barman-owner had a stack of vinyl and a turntable behind the bar.
We met a lady, 64 and slightly inebriated who took us on a stilted-English journey through Voltaire and Jean-Paul Satre. We were bluffing but getting by.
Suddenly we were being berated for being in France and speaking English. It was a fair cop but the fact she was speaking to us in English rather made the need to speak ridiculously poor French redundant.
We were also told it was not a tourist bar; it was a French bar. "That's OK then, we're not tourists, we're working."
Why do I get the feeling there's a few of you thinking, "yeah, right".
