ShopliftingWhen I was young and impressionable and on holiday in France, I followed some friends into a sweet shop and we each stole something. I was so mortified by this, I returned them.
My lack of French hampered this somewhat - they had no idea why the small English boy wanted to add some chews to the open box, and saw it as an attempt by a nasty foreigner oik to contaminate their stock. Not my best day.
What have you lifted?
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chthonic, Thu 10 Jan 2008, 11:13)
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Free food in FranceOk this wasn't intentional and I'm still not sure if I did actually steal anything.
Got dragged to Paris for the most unromantic 4 day holiday imaginable so the ex-missus could run the Paris marathon.
Not being the slightest bit interested in running (not at the time anyway) I was not prepared to stand somewhere en route and wait 4-6 hours in 30°C heat to maybe get a 5 minute glimpse of her (the wait could've been less but I was on holiday and not prepared to get out of bed before 9am). I was left on my own for a day in a foreign country where I couldn't speak the lingo. Luckily Parisiens aren't as snotty about foreigners as they are rumoured to be and the staff at the museum of inventions looked after me well and kept me entertained for the morning.
It got to 2pm and I was a bit hungry so wandered down to the cafe to find a croissant or 5. This was no ordinary cafe though: the racks where you would expect to find baguettes, pastries and the like were bare but there was a buffet laid out on some of the tables which everyone was tucking into so I grabbed some stuff and went to pay. Unfortunately there wasn't anywhere to pay - no till, and no staff anywhere. Couldn't speak French so couldn't ask anyone else.
I sat there munching to see what everyone else was doing about paying but after 30 mins nobody else had left so I walked out and went to look at analogue computers and crays in the wing I hadn't visited yet.
I was expecting someone to come after me when I left the museum but nobody did. The rest of the day I was expecting some french policemen to come and beat me but they never did. I was then expecting the border police at Gare du Nord to have a photo of me in their booth and to stop me leaving the country, but they didn't.
I was in british territory then and a burden was lifted from my shoulders: the police here probably wouldn't do anything about it, it wasn't intentional and I felt so guilty afterwards even though raw bacon isn't particularly nice and the cup of tea was revolting.
Length - Loughborough to Paris: 411 miles apparently.
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thistle, Thu 10 Jan 2008, 21:27,
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