Thursday 20th March

Started the day hunting for the nearest car-park to the hotel Mum is going to stay at. Found one (they are all underground in Rouen) and spent a few minutes watching the cars go in and out, contemplating the best way of actually driving there. Suddenly there was a loud beeeeeep. Two cars had got a little close going up the hill out of the car park, and the first had rolled into the second. More honking and some loud french followed. It was quite funny to watch, but be warned mum! Mum also wanted me to send a map of Rouen so I walked to the tourist office, and got there just before lunchtime closing. I was looking at the different maps, considering which was the more detailed when a man came up to me a babbled a load of french. ‘En anglais, s’il vous plait.’ ‘We are closing, do you want anything?’ ‘Ah, oui, this map’. So I bought the map and scarpered. The french are very strict on closing times and hate it when they are late for their two hour lunch. What a hard life they lead! So having got the map I headed back to the flat to write a note and to mark on where the hotel, car-park etc were. As I was turning the key in the main door, I got a call from Morgane. She wanted the big pot of paint from out of my room. Finally I have some more shelf space! It took a while to explain that I was a the bottom of the stairs, but she finally understood and came and collected the paint. 5 minutes later, as I was writing the note to mum, I received a phone call from Mary, asking if I knew where the post office was. That’s funny I said, thats where I was about to head to next. Mary was only two minutes away so she met me outside and we went to the post office. They don’t sell nice, cheap envelopes there so after buying some stamps, we went to mono-prix and spent a good 5 minutes standing near the bright yellow post box, putting letters into envelopes, addressing and stamping them. I bet we looked rather strange, especially as it was quite windy too. One woman came over to post a letter, and said something in french that we could not understand so just nodded heads. Back at the flat again, I got down to some work. I still hadn’t found a present to take to Anne, but I figured I would go out again later in the afternoon. Instead, I wrote about 600 words to Shaun. Its probably all gobble-de-gook but at least i’ve written something. Just as was considering going to find a chicken for Anne before the shops closed, I got a another phone-call from Mary saying they were going to the cinema later and would I like to come. Definitely, I said, so I abandoned my shopping task and started thinking about cooking tea instead. At the cinema, we saw ‘Paris’. Its a film about how the lives of different people intertwine and link together even though they may not meet. And this time we were in screen 6. Talk about extreme difference. First you have to walk up a narrow staircase and then you enter a tiny room. The screen was a lot smaller and there were probably only 70 odd seats. One wall was painted red and the opposite one was brick. But it had a really nice feel to it even though it was so small. Oh and I found some blu-tack type stuff. Its called Pate á Fixer, its white, about twice as sticky as blu-tack and I found it in the 2 euro shop of all places.