Girlie Grey, part one

The maitre d’ is hov­er­ing over my shoulder. An ori­ginal Picasso is hov­er­ing over his.

‘I’m ter­ribly sorry sir,’ he says in an accent so fluid I can’t tell if it is French or His­panic, ‘but there’s a problem.’

I begin to sweat under my cravat. It is Las Vegas, Octo­ber 2005, and I am about to reap the whirlwind.

It is the Alsace, Octo­ber 1998, and I am in the back of a Cit­roën 2CV going very quietly insane. The auto­bahn street­lights are fol­low­ing me. Twi­light is clos­ing in, and the trees bunched around the bor­der cross­ing are scream­ing at each other across the Rhine. Astrid and Gab­ri­elle are talk­ing in the front, but I can’t make out the words. I think it’s about me. Pet­ri­fied, I sink down in the seat as low as I can in expect­a­tion of the cramps.

In this state, there is no way for me to clearly remem­ber the reluct­ance with which, two hours earlier, I had accep­ted an offer of a second café au lait.

Gab­ri­elle and I are at the begin­ning of a three-month back­pack­ing tour around west­ern Europe which I am already con­cerned to find scattered with little hours of mad­ness. Hav­ing flown into Stock­holm three weeks earlier at the end of a thirty-one hour long day long to dis­cover my back­pack was enjoy­ing an unex­pec­ted but exhil­ar­at­ing side-trip to Bangkok, hav­ing to first sleep in, then dry myself with paper bed­sheets bought from the hostel which smelt — unfairly but con­vin­cingly — like urine, and then recov­er­ing the back­pack three days later with a long-lost sib­ling hug and an inad­vert­ently ardent moan which dis­tanced me from the oth­ers in the hostel foyer, I was find­ing the traveller’s life a bit like com­ing over the crest of the roller­coaster to find the rails miss­ing on the other side.

I made up for it by drink­ing a lot of cof­fee, and this, I reason in Astrid’s kit­chen in Freiburg when I start to come down, was prov­ing to be a tac­tical error. Some­thing is going on with me and coffee.

‘Per­haps you should try drink­ing some­thing else instead,’ Gab­ri­elle suggests.

I switch to Coke.

Two days later, after a long and thirsty walk in the Black Forest, it takes an hour to per­suade me, with admon­ish­ments that a entire nation is not try­ing to kill me just because its hos­tels offer mar­in­ated chicken wings for break­fast, out from under the blow-up lilo in Astrid’s spare room.

On the train to Florence, Gab­ri­elle and I reason it out. It doesn’t take long.

‘Let’s face it,’ says Gab. ‘You’re tired, you’ve had a rough start and neither of us can afford to eat properly.’

‘Agreed.’

‘And every time you have a cup of cof­fee or a Coke, it makes you sick.’

‘Okay, yes.’

‘And — well, a pain in the arse.’

I con­sider this. ‘I like me,’ I say.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Gab­ri­elle says, ‘you’re charm­ing enough, in your own way. It’s just that we’re going to be spend­ing the next three months together, and you may never get to do this again. You’re going to have to stay away from caffeine.’

I let Ver­ona and Bologna pass by in a funk of reluct­ance. I never much cared for cola drinks, but my love affair with cof­fee has been long, pas­sion­ate and at times down­right dirty. What will I do if I can’t have coffee?

The rolling fields of Tuscany roll by like giant rolls caught in the middle of the most sat­is­fy­ing roll of the sea­son, and I glare at them for enjoy­ing it so much. Sun­flowers, I note sourly. Grapev­ines. Veget­ables of some sort. More vines. Lots of vines. More sun­flowers, then more vines. What the hell do they do with all these grap—

‘I’ve got a plan,’ I tell Gab.

‘Fant­astic,’ she says.

In Florence, I switch to wine.

The maitre d’ is hold­ing both my gaze and, I am very aware, the atten­tion of every­one around me.

‘Is everything alright?’ I mumble.

He makes a well-trained sym­path­etic pout. From over his shoulder, a cubist woman’s eyes glower at me from one side of her head. ‘I am ter­ribly sorry sir, but we have searched the kit­chen and we have no Lady Grey tea.’

He watches me benignly. I didn’t order any tea. The tables around me have fallen silent.

Oh God. He has heard me.

…to be con­tin­ued in Girlie Grey, part two.