The Longest Weekend Part 1: Thursday Night After Training

...Some friends visit and I undo any training I've done over the last 6 months.

Although I was aware of their impending arrival, nothing could prepare me for the exhausting terror that lay before us.

After training on Thursday evening, I received a text from David and Keith prompting me to meet them on the quays by Notre Dame. At about 10.30pm I reached the agreed spot on the Seine to find them enoying smuggled contraband. Yes, that's right... Red Bull (it's illegal in France and rightly so). There may have been some Aldi or equivalently cheap vodka in their Volvic bottle but I neglected to ask them. Either way they seemed pleased with themselves.

Our first port of call was to the Long Hop, a bar where David used to work. His friends there (friends I would later compare to being friends with your heroine dealer) were so pleased to see him they decided to try and kill the three of us with alcohol.

As the evening wore on and the Long Hop was preparing to close we began to plan our next move. David lead us to a night club with a student night somewhere near the 7th via another bar with some friends of his, the Vileune Dingue (or VD's -lovely). Unfortunately, the lovely bouncers on the door informed us we couldn't get in. This all lead to our first taxi journey of the evening and undoubtedly the most ridiculous.

I knew that my friends from the Irish College were heading to a big student night in a place called Mix by Montparnasse, so I suggested we try and head that direction. Eventually, we got a taxi and we tried to explain where we were going. He seemed to make up his mind after a while and started off. He dropped us a very small bar. Our suspicions should have been raised when the bar only had a small porthole window in it, through which the bouncer looked out. We walked in the door, myself in the rear. The taxi driver had brought us to a brothel, we made a sharp u-turn, we walked out of the door.

After several minutes of hysterical laughter, we paused to wonder what to do next. In the end we did what comes naturally to people at that hour of the night - we went to get a kebab.

As myself and Keith tucked into our Kebabs it became apparent to us that David had disappeared. As I reached for my French Mobile to call him it also becamse apparent that my French mobile had disappeared and as Keith reached for his, that his mobile was out of credit. I tried calling him several times on my Irish phone but couldn't get a connection. I sent him several texts in the hope that he couldn't answer because he had no credit and told him to meet us at the Irish College, which was nearby and which we all knew how to find.

When we got to the Irish College we managed to get in and to regroup for a while in the Kitchen - it was now pouring rain. Eventually, I heard someone calling my name from outside the window. David had found his way to the Irish College - he didn't seem best pleased. Apparently public urination is frowned upon in France, along with most of the western world. When a plane clothes policeman approached Dave and told him as much, David's natural reaction was to suggest that he should go away in no uncertain terms. David spent the next hour in a room in the police station.

With the three of us united once again we set off for David's where I spent the night sleeping on the floor. In the morning David explained there was some cushion which could be arranged into a mattress in the wardrobe...