Hand of Henry

I've been very colour co-ordinated today. Currently, I'm wearing brown cord pants, brown tan shoes and a coffee brown T-shirt. The remarkable thing is that I dress in the dark, so most days I don't know what I've got on until I step out of my bedroom and into the light of the hallway. The fact that I managed to put on clothes of all the same hue today is a remarkable coincidence, and one that I'm not going to question. 

When things go well like that, it's best not to look too carefully into it. 

You could say the same thing about Henry's handball and France's qualification to the World Cup final. Understandably, Ireland are distraught. It was a remarkable bit of cheating. Ireland have even demanded that the match be replayed. France, on the other hand, have a guilty little smirk on their face and are busy trying not to look at the video replay. C'est la vie, and all that. 

The revelation that Henry is a cheat is supposed to pose something of a moral dilemma for Arsenal fans. Can we still love Henry now that we know he's just another dirty foreign cheater who steals World Cup places from hard-working, plucky, salt-of-the-earth teams from the British Isles? After reading a variety of blogs about this issue,  the common consensus seems to be: 

1) Henry's still a legend and one handball doesn't change his status

2) Henry was wrong, and Arsenal fans don't condone cheating

3) Ireland can't complain because all footballers cheat

4) Ireland had chances to finish off the tie, so they can't complain 

5) Isn't Robbie Keane a total cunt?

There's nothing wrong with these points. However, I think the more pertinent question is why do we think Henry should be faultless? Aside from his footballing skills, Henry is a man like any other. He wants to compete in one last World Cup, and is desperate to go to South Africa. So when the opportunity came along, he handballed to win. It's not an attractive quality, but it's a perfectly human quality. 

The thing is that these things happen. Footballers cheat. Referees miss handballs. Wrongdoers can succeed. Unless someone does something sensible about it, like introduce video replays, there's not a lot you can say about it. Footballers are going to handball balls into the net if they think they're going to get away with it. It's unfortunate that Henry did it to Ireland in a very important game, but it's a bit like me pulling out clothes at random and ending up with a colour co-ordinated outfit. 

It was just dumb luck. 

End of the line

The train slips gently out of the station. A tiny, almost imperceptible bump, an we're away. It gains a bit of speed as we pass through the suburbs of Paris, and now that we're in open countryside, we're hammering down the line. It's got to be at least 300 kilometres from Paris to Calais, but we're going to do it in under two hours. 

I gave my guidebook away this morning to James, the Irish guy from Wrexford. He's just starting out, and I'm finishing up. It feels nice to give it away. It's letting go of a little bit of the past. That book's been with me for six months now, and it's all I've breathed at times. I've traced the legs of my trip on the maps, and I've poured over the historical overviews to refresh my memory of things past.

But it's over now. My time's up, and it's better to let it go. If I'd kept it, it'll be up on the shelf in a month's time, and won't budge from that spot until I feel like a bit of dusting. It'll be nice to think that James will get some use out of it, and pass it on to the next guy when he's finished with it. 

James seems a bit lost, to tell the truth. He tells me that he's sick of Ireland, and he's going to stay away until the thought of returning home doesn't fill him with revulsion. He's after an experience that's so completely different to his way of life that he'll have a renewed appreciation for al those things he's taken for granted. 

I suppose we're all looking for the same thing. A lot of the people I've met have the same disaffection for the life they lead, and want something else. And they're all wandering around, trying to find it. 

Like Taylor, who followed his girlfriend to Spain and ended up running a hostel. I wonder if, when he's having a drink on the balcony and watching the sun bounce off the Alhamra, he marvels about how the steps from Iowa to Granada. 

Like David, the itinerant English sketch artist, is wandering around southern Spain until he doesn't feel like he has to anymore. He gave up his corporate job a few years back, and he's saving up for another pilgrimage to Santiago. He calls himself the lost photographer, and he always says that when he finds out where he is, he'll stop and stay. 

Like Jiat, the reluctant Korean conscript, who's probably in the Baltic states by now. He's planning one big trip across the Trans-Siberian railway before he starts his compulsory two year stint in the army. He's shit-scared of the neo-Nazis in Moscow, but he's even more scared of his future back home. 

I don't know. Nigel's somewhere in Syria by now. Dylan's back in Alberta, enduring sub zero temperatures and planning his next trip abroad. Michael's back in Adelaide, preparing to go back to uni, and Mil and Sally are back in Melbourne enduring the heatwave.

I wonder if anyone ever finds what they're looking for. 

The Louvre

"You never do the Louvre. The Louvre does you. It's so big that you'll collapse after four hours and shake your fist up at the Louvre and shout "Damn you Louvre! You win."."

- James, the tour guide from a couple of days

I spent the whole day in the Louvre today. I figured it's a big place, and there's a lot to see, so I'd need a day to do it justice. I quite enjoy walking around museums, normally, and the Louvre is reputed to be the best. There's nothing like being a couple feet away from something so mind-numbingly beautiful that it still looks nice when behind a metre-thick pane of bullet-proof glass. 

It's quite a sight, the Louvre. They say that, despite holding countless works of art, the real masterpiece of the Louvre is the Louvre. It's a plush, grand, expansive, elegant, refined, sumptuous, decadent building. And it's big. 

It was originally designed as a fort to guard against Viking raiders. The old fort is still in the bowels of the complex, and you can walk around the foundations of the wall and the central tower. Over the years, the kings added wings and galleries and more hallways until they bankrupted the state and pissed off the peasants enough to spark a revolution. 

Must've been hard on the peasantry, but can't argue with the results. 

Wish I could say the same about the art inside. After all the hype, it's a bit disappointing, to be honest. The Mona Lisa is pretty homily. The Venus de Milo has a mannish jaw and flat hips. But the Winged Victory of Samothrace is pretty good looking - shame about the face, though. 

Paris

"I didn't know how people could fall love in Paris, but now I'm here, I can understand."

- Chris, the Texan guy from the hostel, as we walked along the Seine.

I don't quite know what to say about Paris. 

It is the prettiest city I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few pretty cities in the past few months. It's got the elaborate fin-de-siecle buildings of Prague, but without the gaudy ornaments. It's got the grand boulevards of Vienna, but on a larger scale. It's got the bistros of Madrid, and the elegance of Barcelona, and the teeming mass of London. 

The boulevards are lined with elm trees. The buildings are uniform in height and uniform in style. The Seine winds through it in a sweeping, lazy curve. And it's really something to see it when the sun's shining and the weather's reasonably warm. 

It incorporates a lot of the attributes of all the great cities I've visited, but it somehow wraps them all up in a sophisticated, elegant sheen. It's like all other cities are imitations of the grandeur that is Paris. And in Barcelona's case, that's literally true. 

But most of all, Paris is so damn French. 

I can't get over how French Paris is. It's so stereotypically, baguette-carryingly, cigarette smokingly, wine-drinkingly, cheese-eatingly French that I burst out in giggles about every five minutes. It couldn't be more French if everyone was called Pierre and wore berets and blue-and-white stripped shirts (which they don't). 

It's hilarious.

The other day, I was sitting at the top of the Champs-Elysees, near the Arc de Triomphe. This old, portly French woman sat beside me, wrapped up in a huge fur coat and bedecked with jewels. She couldn't have looked more French if she'd been walking a poodle that had been dipped in Chanel No.5. A gypsy woman came up to ask for money, and the French woman said "I don't speak English" and told her something else in French. Whatever she said made the gypsy woman very agitated, and she yelled at the French woman before she stormed away.

A minute later, in English, I asked her what she said to the gypsy woman. 

"Oh, I just told her to go away," she replied. 

I'm sure something was lost in translation - just wish I knew what it was.