10:38am, 27th May 2007

The three of us are an hour and a half from Paris.
We have taken a route home that involves straighter roads than those we traversed on the way down to the South of France. Mostly I have slept. Which is a bit rubbish. Si did a spot of bombing the van down the highway at breakneck speed, which was quite fun.

The dashboard of the transit looks like a school cafeteria. Empty and half chewed bits of bread line the inside of the windscreen.

We are doing well for time. So we plan on chilling out in Paris for a little while.
I have not been to Paris for some time. I made a pact with someone that I would never go back without them, though this is kind of by accident so I figure that that might be ok.

Having spent ten days on the French Riveira showing films, being quite hot and generally annoying the other two, I now have no desire to return to London. Perhaps I will make a break for it in the capital. Tempting.
There’s a good hole to crash at on Rue St. Jacque around the 5th Eme.

We are now one hundred and thirty two kilometres from Paris. So states the road sign.
We’re doing seventy miles per hour. My maths is appalling, so I couldn’t tell you how much closer we are to getting there. I just know that we will make it to the border, as it were, and something will shift.

Cannes was obscene as a place. Useful, but fake beyond all recognition. A place fuelled by adrenaline and blind ambition; a place where people pretend to be friends. So, a lot like London, though with better weather and bigger boats. Paris always struck me as slightly more real a city. People seem less like idiots en masse. They don’t expect anything from you. Everyone is left to be themselves and instead people just nod politely at passers by as and when it seems appropriate.

London is close. Maybe not by transit van, but geographically the homestead is near.

Tomorrow morning life will continue as per and as Andy said yesterday, this surreal dream will come to an end.

We just hit a large insect at seventy five miles per hour.
It exploded over our windscreen. Poor bastard; though as it would know if it had been at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, and as the last ten days have proven

… do not underestimate Cannes in a Van.