Bonjour!

Greetings from Paris. Once again we have failed to find time (or venues) for keeping you up to date. So, picking up from the nightmare that was Saturday:

Reading: A tale of thrashed-out dudes and lost shoes

After a bit of a sleep in to recover from the cross-country jaunt that was Saturday we had a leisurely start to the day (apart from getting lost trying to find the laundrette inside the hostel) but then had to rush to make the train to Reading. The trip was smooth and the walk from the station gave us some hint of what were in for - many badly sunburned dudes buying masses of beer and already looking untidy at midday. Amy got us into the VIP tent (a godsend for the relatively clean dunnies) and after getting our first beer (a pint of Grolsch for almost $10) we fought our way out among the plebs. We quickly realised that Reading goers put their Big Day Out equivalents to shame - everywhere dudes were lying sprawled on the filthy ground, sunburned, comatose and generally dreggy. I got a few pics to prove it.

Our first stop was an Irish band called Republic of Loose who rocked out a folksy-style hip hop. Other bands included:

Funeral for a Friend
Operator Please (these Aussie youngsters seemingly have a huge British fan base)
CSS
Cold War Kids (a pleasant surprise for I didn't see them on the bill)
Nine Inch Nails

At the end of the night came the highlight - the reformed Smashing Pumpkins. I was so excited I had a rush of blood to the head and took on the mosh pit. About three songs in and loving it, disaster struck. The crowd surged backwards and I went with it. My shoe however did not and I lost it in the crap and filth of the Reading mosh. With the crowd becoming increasingly animated I decided to make a strategic retreat on my one good shoe, afraid of both injuries from stamping feet and the hepatitis surely breeding on the ground. Upon my escape I listened from relative safety then decided to bail as the shoe situation was not sustainable. One condundrum however was that the day's beer consumption had come home to roost and I had to avail myself of the no longer salubrious facilities. Striking up a single-serve friendship with a Briton named Clive I borrowed a right shoe and got about my business. The next problem then was getting back to London on one shoe. I had found one plastic bag to insulate my foot from the soil sewer but fearing that would be inadequate I paid one of the long-suffering dunny cleaners a pound to wrap my foot in sturdy plastic bags they had handy. Upon leaving I thought I looked a sight but on the walk to the train we ran into two other blokes with the same predicament (although their losses were due to them throwing each others' shoes into the crowd). Of course I had to get a photo. The trip back to London was a bit foul: the train was filthy and packed with louts. And of course it stopped at every station so by the time we got in the tube wasn't running. With some assistance from a kindly soul we got the right bus and passed out in bed about 2am.

OK, I hate to cut this short when we're already behind but this keyboard is back to front and it's taken ages just to do this. In our next instalment:

• French food and culture (smoking, bikes and baguettes)
• The Arc de Triomphe and the Champs D'Elysses
• A massive night out with generous hoteliers and French intellectuals
• A hang over
• Louvre
• Musee d'Orsay
• Notre Dame

Au revoir!