Disco infernal..

I recently had the misfortune of going to a night club.

Now those of you that know me and of my age will be asking "why on earth did you go in the first place?".  For those that don't and to give you some idea, when I fill out a survey I have to tick the box '50 - 55'.  But it's not as daft an idea as it sounds, my wife is younger and evergreen, it was a leaving do for one of our fabulous work colleagues (actually about her 6th, but who's counting?  Obviously me..)  and I used to love night clubs in my youth, so I thought 'why not?'.

I guess my clubbing salad days were the 80's - 1980's not 1880's - and the music was fantastic.  A heady mix of The Trammps, Donna Summer, Sylvester, Kool and the Gang, Michael blooming Jackson for Pete's sake, it was epic.  There was melody, lyrics ('burn that mother down y'all' - almost Shakespearian), tunes and variations of pace or BPM - beats per minute - which gave the whole experience variety and tested the mixing skills of the DJ's.

The Trammps, who performed Disco Inferno, a disco hit in 1976 but still going strong in the 80's.  It's not surprising there was a fire with all that polyester around, I mean one spark..

I appreciated that this was probably not going to be the playlist in the night club of 2015, unless it was an 'Old School' night, probably spelt 'Old Skule', which I'm never sure is done to add a sense of some juvenile element to the proceedings or just to annoy English teachers, which it does, immensely, and breathe..  However I wasn't prepared for the assault on my senses that I received upon entering the place.

At this juncture I should add that the club was on a holiday complex which clearly attracts an eclectic mix of weekend clients, in the same way that a tavern in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie might attract a range of different characters. You know the sort, one eyed sea dogs, bling covered nouveau riche, men the age of Keith Richard acting like men the age of Justin Beber, women the age of Tina Turner gyrating like Miley Cyrus, if only I was hip surgeon..  It was mainly a collection of holiday makers of all ages and young men and women from the UK and Ireland who are expats up from Dubai for the weekend searching for cheap booze, which they had apparently found quickly and in abundance.  I think we in the wider world deserve a thank you from the towns and cites of Europe, as by accepting these youngsters in to our expatriate community we are stopping them from projectile vomiting in your high streets every weekend and giving them the opportunity to empty their innards in a warmer climate.  Taking one for the team.

So I entered the room and immediately thought I had happened upon a worm-hole in the space time continuum because clearly I was now in Guantanomo Bay.  The water boarding had obviously not worked and we were now experiencing intense white noise torture. This was music - and I use the term loosely - clearly written by someone who doesn't like your ears, I say 'your ears',  I mean my ears.  Reassured that I wasn't in Cuba by the lack of cigars and vintage cars, I made my way to the area our group had occupied.  I should mention at this juncture that I was, as usual, the old man of the group and no-one else was phased by what they were hearing.  For me it was a metronomic, electronic row.  A sort of electrical version of metal dustbins being thrown down concrete stairs at regular intervals.  But surely this was just one track, soon order would be restored and Variety introduced along with his friend, Tune.  No, not at all.  It transpires that now every thing played has been mixed to within an inch of it's life in to a monotone, mind numbing, teeth rattling assault on your senses.

Edvard Munch, 'The Scream'.  Allegedly painted after going to the same club.  Honest.

Believe it or not, I am not a stranger to modern dance music, or at least I thought I wasn't a stranger.  I have Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams on in the car for goodness sake so you can understand my confidence in thinking was down with kids.  But these dance tracks are clearly not trance, or acid, or crap enough for the club market so they are re-mixed until they all sound the same.  After all, who needs all that song writing and creativity rubbish?

Daft Punk, who wear masks so you can't see them crying when idiots ruin their efforts.

Now I completely understand that every generation has to send a hero up the pop chart, if they didn't we'd be trying to dance to Green Sleeves, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the new stuff is better.  I also get that I am not supposed to like this sort of music, it's not made for my generation.  I'm sure that Mrs Beethoven senior was heard saying: 'Oh Ludwig why are you still putting out that 'boom boom boom boom' rubbish?!  Why not write something cheery like that nice Mr Vivaldi?'  And for some reason I think his mum would have talked like a cockney tea lady circa 1950's.

One similarity with discos of old was the complete inability to talk to anyone as the sound from the speakers was too great.  Hence conversations are attempted at close quarter, enabling you to smell the fags and booze on the other persons breath, mmmm, it's that heady mix of nicotine and stale alcohol á la pub carpet circa 1970.  How come no-one has ever bottled that?  What's not to like?

As was inevitable, one customer got in to a heated debate with a bouncer, who was more at the 'brick outhouse' end of the scale than the 'gets sand kicked in his face', so the youngster was unceremoniously removed from the establishment over the security guy's shoulder, priceless.  I overheard Hades and Dante having a conversation along the lines of 'seriously, how could we have imagined this?'.

So was this my last visit to a night club?  I hope not.  I have fond memories from my youth (can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday though?) of nights/mornings out with my friends, so I may have to give it one last go, but when the music played is going to be more to my liking.  I want to go out on a high note as I'm sure did Steven Gerrard.  In case you weren't aware he is a football player who made over 500 appearances for his club, Liverpool.  Unfortunately in his last game they lost 6-1, not the finale he was hoping for. If that script had been written by Hollywood he would have headed the winner in the 90th minute, probably past a diving Sylvester Stallone, and if you get the movie reference there give yourself a bonus point.  Nor a French script either, where he would have caught cholera and died on his wedding day, have you ever watched a French movie?!  No, this was an English approach, 'no need to show off old boy'..

Boules to that..

 Let me tell you about the time I played in my first (and probably last) boules tournament.

We were on holiday in France, staying in a small village in the Haute Loire département.   It is the annual 'vogue', a four day fête where you can enjoy such delights as a fun fair, travelling circus, car boot sale and several music events.  But the highlight for the more competitive residents are the two tournoi de boules.

Hats were compulsory until 1959, then the Beatles came along and changed all of that..

Now you may think that boules is just a jolly pastime that you've dabbled at while on holiday and that you've seen locals play over a pastis and Gauloise, but that simplification would be like saying all football is about a bunch of blokes kicking a ball around with jumpers for goalposts (which is in effect what it is..), what you are really seeing is France's national obsession, their beautiful game.  Have a look at French TV, they regularly have televised games and many towns will have a Bouleodrome, a boules centre which often includes indoor facilities to allow year round enjoyment.  Suffice to say some people take this very seriously and travel around their region in the summer months making a few tax free euros, if they're good enough.

Hence there are two boules events at the vogue, one strictly for people from the village and another more serious event for all comers.  So my beau père and I enter the village event after clarifying that I qualify due to my close association with the place and more importantly that as an Englishman I offered little threat of appearing in the latter rounds and therefore stealing the prize money.

We duly turn up at the registration time, casually eyeing up our competitions, wishing them a friendly 'bonjour' with an undertone of 'I hope you lose'.  Most seemed to be family pairings, father and son, mother and daughter, nothing to dent our belief that we would at least give a good account of ourselves if nothing else.  The organisers took our entry fee then noted our names on a flattened out crisp carton, adding to the ad-hoc 'it's just for a laugh' ambience.  Then as time moved on, the more serious players began to arrive, noticeable by their natty little 'Obut' ball carriers and their sporty trainer/white socks sports combo, as opposed to my flip flops.  Please note I didn't use the word 'bag' in describing the ball carriers.  I'm trying to avoid any double entendres so you don't descend in to Sid James style sniggers at every turn, so get it over with now and we can move on, matron..  This was beginning to look like a serious competition, for a start these guys had their own kit, always an ominous sign, and it looked as if they had used it fairly recently. We hadn't played for a couple of years and the boules we had in the garage were turning a nice shade of rust.  I've had this feeling of impending doom before when I was the holder of the annual tennis club 10 pin bowling championship.  The following year a guy from the club turned up with his own ball, shoes and hammock like ball polisher.  Suffice to say he won.  After a delay of about an hour, waiting for the bandits to turn up, we started our first round match and I began to learn what this game is really all about.

Like most casual players, I had assumed the idea of the game is to get your ball nearer to the jack, or cochonnet as it's known in France, than your oppenents',  and indeed that is the concept but it's not quite the same as green bowling in the UK.  In that game, if you want to remove one of the opposition's balls (really, come on..) you have to fire it out along the ground, whereas in boules you have the third dimension of aerial attack. Although while watching some green bowling in England lately I noticed that some of the more mature players were using a sky-borne Barnes-Wallace approach, forced on them by arthritis or general maladies in the back/leg department.  I can imagine the banter over tea later about the validity of Earthquake Ethel's 617 squadron approach on the last end of the game..

We won the toss, which was about all we did win on the day, so the honour of throwing the cochonnete and taking the first shot was mine.  Thankfully I managed to get my boule to within about 4 inches of the target and stepped back, comfortable in the thought that this end was as good as won, rule Brittania.  Now please take the time to visualise a news clip released by the RAF of a target, a warehouse perhaps, being used for some nefarious purpose by an unseen enemy.  Next thing you know it's obliterated by a smart bomb, launched from thirty thousand feet, the warehouse is gone but the surrounding play school, hospital, pet sanctuary and old aged person home are untouched, not a tea cup displaced. Hooray for lasers.  

Now picture a grainy black and white picture of my boule, resting smugly in it's place next to a little white ball..  Boom, now it's gone but the white ball remains.  'That's a lucky shot' I'm thinking as I step up to try again.  Once more I am close to the target and once again Dead Eye Dick, as I am calling my opponent, launches another 'smart ball' to violently move mine away and so a pattern is established.  It transpires that this forcible removal of other people's shots is what the game is about, rather than the accurate placement in the first place, which is beginning to look like the easier bit.  We were therefore being given a boules lesson and resigned ourselves to a quick defeat.

It's fair to say our opponents were not overly chatty, but did reveal that they were not from the village but a large town some 30 miles away.  Ha!  But this event is for local people, maybe we can get them with a technical knock-out.  However the conversation with a rules official then played out in my head - 'Excuse me Monsieur, I do believe these players are not from round 'ere, I expect you'll want to disqualify them under rule 5 subsection 'C' regarding the lack of proximity of their abode?'.  'Bien sur Monsieur Rôti de Beouf, just remind moi of your address?  The Middle East you say, ah, tant pis...´.

So we retire to the bar area for a drink and to await the draw for the next round, and it became apparent that this was also part of the event, the drinking that is.  In fact, if golf is a good walk spoilt, boules must be a good boozing session interrupted by flinging a ball or two.  The break went on for the best part of an hour and seemed to be of an interminable time.  Some players who we're sitting next to us seemed to suggest we could go and have a practise while we were waiting which after our first match seemed like a good idea.  They were also from out of the area, I'm beginning to see a pattern here..

They won the toss and in time put their first ball close to the cochonnet. I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some training in so I attempted to fire it out, with great success.  In hindsight, this was the only time during the whole afternoon I managed this feat but from small acorns..  The rest of the game went their way, with me trying out a variety of shots in the hope that I found a technique that worked and generally not paying too much attention.  Game over, we strolled back to the bar in order to find our second round opponents, only for me to be told they had been those players and we had just been defeated again, lost in translation.

I should say that I do speak reasonably good French, but family and friends make allowances for my short comings by speaking more slowly and clearly.  I have often found than when engaged by random people the nature of a casual conversation without knowing the context and often including slang is often unfathomable.  Hence when asked a two word question by our second opponents I was completely flummoxed.  All I could hear was 'more balls?'.  Did this mean he wanted to carry on playing or was it an observation on the poor standard or our play?  It transpires he meant 'do you have any more balls to play in this end?', but the complete lack of any grammar and virtual lack of vocabulary just didn't give me enough to work on.  It's not unfair for me to add that the chap asking me this question was probably not France's answer to Stephen Fry, but a man who seemed to think that he'd only been given a limited amount of words to use during his lifetime and didn't want to waste too many on me.  Add to that the fact he didn't move his lips while speaking and you can understand why I was confused.

Another immense wait for the third round and then then draw, where we get a father and son combo and a closer, more enjoyable game.  Still lost, but the manner of losing was more agreeable.

So what did I learn about boules?  Well you need a laser guided smart ball and eye to go with it, we were the equivalent of a Roman siege machine, the only guaranteed thing our balls were going to hit was the floor. 

OK, it's not accurate, but whatever we hit will have a big hole in it..

Secondly, mark your balls (hang on in there with the sniggers, we're nearly at the end..). Ours came in a value set from Carrefour some had markings and others were plain.  I played with the latter on the assumption that everyone else would have lines on theirs. Not so fast Mr Bond.  I would estimate that 75% we're plain like the ones I had so at any given time I had not the foggiest idea of what was going on.  The only way I could pick them up with any certainty was to wait until everyone else had taken theirs and assume the remaining three were mine.  Even now I'm not sure I bought the same set back that I'd taken out.

As a footnote to this episode, the following day the 'open' event took place.  It started at 2pm and finished at 11.30pm, and my wife thinks golf is a time consuming game.  We also learnt from some neighbours that there was a bit of controversy about the number of players in our event who were not village people, that is people from our village rather than members of the disco group.  In our experience two out of our three opponents came in to this category, so if they were disqualified we would move from relegation zone ignominy to top third respectability, result.