The Curse

If I was a believer in curses, I would think I'm the victim of one. At the very least, I seem to have had a run of very bad luck.

It all started with a weekend trip to Paris. This was my Christmas present to G and I had planned the weekend meticulously. I had booked the Eurostar to leave at 8 am on Saturday morning and return at 10 pm Sunday night. I had found a hotel recommended on lastminute.com to stay in and a restaurant for Saturday's dinner that was ranked on lastminute.com as the 7th best restaurant in Paris. As G and I hopped onto our Eurostar train to Paris, I was brimming with confidence that the weekend would be a complete success and the best Christmas present I had ever given G. Perhaps the bad luck was the universe giving me a bit of a kick for being so cocky.

The hotel was okay. Granted, it was in an area of Paris where wearing a bullet-proof vest might have been advisable but, given where we live in London, we could cope with that. Saturday was spent in the Louvre and wandering around Paris and we did have a lovely day. The trip started its decline when we took the hour-long journey to get to this highly recommended restaurant in the middle of nowhere. I am not sure who has been recommending this restaurant and giving it such positive reviews on trip advisor, but I rather suspect it may be the proprietor and his/her friends. When we arrived for Saturday dinner, the restaurant was half-empty. Those in it were solely from the silver-hair brigade. Nonetheless, having taken a one-hour metro journey to get there, and given all the positive reviews, we boldly explained to the waiter in pigeon French that we had a reservation for two and took our seats at our table.

For our entrees we each had the scallops in lobster mousse. At least I think the dish was described as containing "scallops". In fact, what was served to each of us was a cocktail dish containing one scallop on top of some mousse. Although small, this would have been fine had the mousse not been full of an unidentifiable mound of small chunks of something purple. When asked, we were told these chunks were bits of carrot marinated in balsamic vinegar. And yes, they were as unappetising as they sound.

The mains were nicer. I had the bouillabaisse which was lovely. G's meal was a steak, which was fine, but the accompaniment was an obviously split béarnaise sauce. The meal was also to come with vegetables but on bringing it out, the waiter dropped the vegetables on the floor and they weren't replaced. All up, it wasn't a successful evening.

The following day was spent wandering around the Marais, one of the few areas that isn't asleep on a Sunday in Paris.

Then it was time for our return Eurostar journey. Upon arriving at the terminal we discovered it was absolutely packed with people. It looked like a rock concert gone wrong, with angry looking old people pushing and shoving and shouting at others for queue jumping (even though there was no discernable queue - just a heaving mass of people pushing towards the information counter). Eventually we learned that the station had earlier been evacuated due to "left luggage" and that the three previous Eurostar trains due to carry 780 passengers each had been cancelled. The Eurostar trains were now running, but it was a first-come, first-serve as to which train any passenger could board. Hence the heaving mass of people from the three cancelled trains. After joining the mass and pushing our way to the front, we finally boarded a train.

About an hour-and-a-half into the journey, we realised something was seriously wrong when the train suddenly stopped and all lights cut out. For a little while, there were emergency lights in the train but before long, they cut out too. It was some time before we knew what was going on and why we were sitting in darkness.

The reactions of the passengers to the situation demonstrated the breadth of the human character. One passenger, an American, continued happily to have a long conference on his mobile phone with his son's school in Australia. We learned all about his son, Henry, and his behavioural problems. It seems that the father had recently suffered a divorce from Angela and Henry was suffering from the fallout. The conversation was peppered with a cringe-inducing mangling of the English language such as "I had a really good educational two-way commune with Angela…"; "we had a great partnering conversation"; "see her light, believe in her light, because she's a good egg". He was oblivious to all the passengers around him giggling in response to his unusual turns of phrase. Meanwhile, another passenger, a young English woman, telephoned her parents and said in a very dramatic voice: "mum, dad, I was meant to be home now but I'm not. instead I'm in a train where we've been plunged into darkness." She either then hung up or her telephone cut out.

After an hour of sitting in the dark train we were told that the train had lost power and a new train was on its way. We sat in the dark train for a couple of hours, waiting. The aircon didn't work and nor did the toilets. This meant that it was very hot and smelly in our carriage. Eventually, at 2.30 am or so, the new train arrived and the 780 of us were evacuated off our train, one-by-one, and onto the new one, using two metal ladders.  Finally, we arrived in St Pancras station but, given the hordes of people, it took some time to get out and get home, and we found ourselves rolling into bed around 5 am.

On Monday (the next day) I was off to Lincoln for work, so there was no sleep-in. Unfortunately, the fast trains to Lincoln had been cancelled and I found myself spending another 8 hours on various trains making the return trip to Lincoln.

I arrived home that night shattered but was up bright and early for work the next day at 6 am as I had an early morning meeting.

Tuesday night I returned home, exhausted and longing for bed. Sadly, only two hours after retiring to bed I found myself waking with a stomach bug and spent the night bent over the toilet bowl, vomiting. I went to work the next day (Wednesday) but felt dreadful. In my delirious, sleep-deprived state I convinced myself that someone had put a curse on me, and wondered whether it was my queue jumping (if it can be called that, given there was no queue) in Paris to get on a Eurostar home that was the cause of all my troubles.

I tentatively went home from work on Wednesday night, waiting for the next disaster to strike. Thankfully it didn't, and I had a wonderful night's sleep and woke this morning feeling on top of the world.

The silver lining to having a really crappy time is that when it stops, things feel marvellous. It's not taking much to make me happy today. Flushing a loo (and having it work), having artificial light and being able to keep my lunch down - all these things now feel magical and are making me smile.