We were driven from Geneva to Zurich this morning.I was feeling a little worse for wear after too many beers last night and way too much food. I haven't been exercising too much recently and I'm piling weight back on. But got to have a bit of fun while I am here.
Everyone in Switzerland had seemed super sophisticated and swanky so far, but when we stopped for petrol, there was a family at the pump in front of us who had decided to have their lunch. Rather than parking up and sitting on a nice grass verge they had decided the best way to enjoy their garage bought sandwiches was to stand around the bin right next to the petrol pump (which did conveniently have a large, flat rectangular surface on top) and consume them there, with the wafting smell of gasoline streaming up their nostrils. It was the most chavvy thing I have ever seen. I hate the word chav and would never usually use it. But it was the only one appropriate for such a strange and depressing spectacle. At least sit in the car. Or go out in the sunshine. But eating your sandwiches around a bin on a garage forecourt is worse than those old couples you sometimes see in the UK eating their picnic in the Parking area of a busy A road, sitting on foldable chairs as cars and lorries speed past belching exhaust fumes.
I was glad to see that not all the Swiss are so refined.
I managed to get a little bit done in the car and so resolved to take the afternoon off and have a walk around Zurich with Jon Richardson. I think I made the right choice of which town to sightsee in. Lausanne had been shut due to the bank holiday and Geneva seemed too antiseptic and clean and boring, but Zurich is full of interesting architecture and has the cleanest, greenest river I have ever seen (would the Thames look like this if we didn't pump it full of chemical waste and human faeces?) which leads into a lake. The sun was shining and it was uncomfortably hot. Foolishly I had thought that Switzerland would be cold and snowy and so had brought no shorts or sun cream with me. I could have done with both this afternoon, and probably didn't need to have brought my jumper with me.
We sat and had a late lunch of bratwurst and fries and a bottle of lager in a touristy lakeside cafe. It was rather lovely and for some reason reminded me of being 14 and being on continental camping trips with my parents. I guess we spent a lot of time beside lakes back then, because that was the only real connection. It made me want to run around the lake edge, shouting swear words at teenage boys and trying to talk to teenage girls, but it's just as well that I didn't. That behaviour is understandable if you are 15 too, but if you're 41 you can get into a lot of trouble.
But sitting here in the sunshine, with a cold beer, I did realise that, at times like these, I have the best job in the world. How terrific to be paid to come to a foreign country, to do just 50 minutes work a day and spend the rest of the time lolling around getting gently fried by the sun and lightly pissed. If only I could give up the writing side of my job and just do the stand up I would be living a pastoral idyll. If I didn't have to do gigs in Birmingham and Reading and the like.
Probably good for my health that I have other work to preoccupy me though.
The gig was the best attended so far and it went pretty well. Jon and I walked back to the hotel along the river, the moonlight shining down on us. If we'd had just one more beer than who knows where the romantic environment might have taken us.
Unfortunately the adult cinema up the road from the hotel had shut at 11.
