Sticks and Stones 23

If I suggest a new way of doing things, Suzie will go out of her way to stick to her system. There’s no telling her. She’s as dogged as a staunch Tory on Election Day.
Take the sugar-bowl, for instance.
Leaving the sugar out on a convenient surface in a bowl with a top (to stop the cats getting at it) is far easier than having to fetch it every time from the cupboard. But there she’ll be, zooming from space to space for sugar. She’ll keep it in the cupboard and that’s final, even when she knows that it takes eleven actions (go to the cupboard, open it, get the sugar, go back to the table, put it on the table, open the lid, pour the sugar, put the lid back on, take it back to the cupboard, open the cupboard and replace it) each time she uses it (perhaps twenty times a day).
With my system, the sugar bowl is opened, the sugar is poured and the top is replaced; three actions! Bang! Whoosh!
She won’t listen, though. Suzie is so thick-skulled that a monkey’s fist couldn’t break it on a rock, even if he was in a bit of a tizz. I love her because she is brave, honest, beautiful and intelligent, but I also hate her for her false pride, her homely laziness and her belligerence.
It’s now January 2.
The party on New Year’s Eve was a shambolic charade in which I became the target to the crowd’s discontent. I’d been hired to DJ at Le Ver En Soie in Lavaur, the ‘trendy’ bar that was always full of oiks, for one hundred and fifty euros.
There weren’t many people there, just the forty or so eating the overpriced special menu, which was disgusting, and about ten drinkers at the bar.
Having stayed up till five-thirty the night before with Jeff, I was badly prepared. His drinking led to a convulsive fit, which had him curled up tight like an agitated unborn baby, wriggling spasmodically on the clic-clac. I thought he was having a seizure or something, but he told me that he was epileptic in the end.
‘C’est bon, Jim, c’est bon,’ he insisted, growling the pain away. After he’d calmed down, he decided to carry on drinking, so I asked him to leave because I was tired and pissed. Instead of leaving, he started to take his boots off to sleep on the clic-clac, as he has done before, so I had to rake him up off the clic-clac and remind him that he lived one minute’s walk away.
Back to the ‘party’, midnight passed with a few whoops from the restaurant and soon after they came out to dance.
There were a few nice girls there, but in the main they were fat and ugly with sober eyes and straight hair, the sort that might work as fonctionnaires.
The blokes were rowdy and drunk or just bobbing about, probably from farming backgrounds.
One guy, who had earlier taken his dick out in a contest with another in-bred imbecile, made rude gestures towards me in front of his country bumpkin friends, so I made the same gesture back, which shut him down for a while.
Three or four girls came to ask for music; ragga (no, it was at the flat because the boss didn’t want it played), rap (ditto), techno (yes) and Eighties (yes).
David, the boss, kept coming over with CDs for me to play to keep them happy, so I did that and went outside for a spliff and to call Suzie to say Happy New Year.
When I got back, a young guy was busy showing his girlfriend how to scratch on the decks. Luckily, the CD of Eighties French tack was playing, with ‘Voyage, Voyage’ (the ultimate French airhead-bimbo anthem) and all the other crap that they remembered the words to.
I chucked on Unkle’s ‘Reign’ and tried something to mix on it, but I couldn’t find anything, or I couldn’t mix, and I got to thinking that I just couldn’t think at all. I’d built the spliff up to the rafters.
My mind was as blank as the expressions on the faces of those who watched me blunder from the dancefloor’s circumference.
Searching for inspiration, I found only ironic recompense in Fine Young Cannibals’ ‘Johnny Come Home’, which helped matters only slightly.
I could feel piercing stares hitting me from all angles as I tampered with a Madonna CD that Guillaume had passed to me to put on.
Then, the guy that tried to take the piss out of me earlier came up and asked if he could see my records. I said he could and then suddenly remembered who this guy was. He was the fellow I entertained fictitious ideas of killing at the other bar.
He told me my collection was worth nothing in France and that I needed to be French to know the right records to play, and I told him I would never have his music in my collection, so he told me the French don’t like the English. It was as simple as that.
I shrugged and said nothing. Again, he insisted that my records counted for nothing here and I agreed, but I told him that if this little lot of records was in England, the place would be crammed with people paying on the door, which was a lie. He agreed, finally, that it wasn’t just the music that was crap.
By two, everyone had become bored of the same stiff faces, unhappy that no one else had come as promised for weeks.
I tried playing ‘Insomnia’ by Faithless and a few quirky beats with some funk and Blue Note, which would have been good with a bigger crowd, but they fell further into non-compliance. I was English and I didn’t understand them. Perhaps they thought I was secretly laughing at them, I don’t know, but the atmosphere finally cut in their favour when David told me he’d do the music from behind the bar on his CD mixer and shitty Stage Line speakers.
I drank a few beers and listened to the CDs skip and burp while the speakers danced with every half-heavy bass line.
The crowd were happier, and that was the main thing.
The feeling of true defeat came when, at four, with my kit tucked away in the back room, David offered me 100 and not the 150 euros he’d promised. It didn’t surprise me. They all do it here; get you to work, pay you less once it’s done and then offer you a glass of crappy champagne left over from a dinner table.
I drove back to the house that night because Clara has got used to going to sleep and waking up the next day with me there over Christmas. I find it hard to go back to the flat when I see her face at the point of leaving in my mind’s eye. Although Suzie and I aren’t shagging for Britain, we’re getting on OK.
Maddy has become quite dismissive of Clara when she seeks her attention, especially since returning from her father’s house in England. Clara watches too much TV while Griff and Maddy are fixed to the PS2 or their ADS consoles all day and all night. There is no getting over the fact that there is nothing decent to do for kids here, which makes me nervous and impatient to find a new home for everyone back in England.