Half a chicken, part 1

I started this blog to move on from my French experience, put the past to bed, and start to write. What does this have to do with half a chicken? All will become clear. But be assured that if I had not risen to the half-a-chicken challenge, I would not be where I am today.

Let's go back to my ad on the notice board in the Russian department of Toulouse University, with the strip mysteriously torn off it. I am an avid leaflet and strip collecter and rarely follow anything through.

So I wasn't expecting to arrive home later that day to find my flat mates agog. A man had called. A man! The score was one-all with my Bulgarian flat mate, who was planning her lesson for her first ad respondant.

I had four flatmates, two English girls, a Norwegian girl and a Bulgarian girl. The reason that we were all foreigners will be obvious to anyone who has lived as a foreigner in France for any length of time. There are certain things reserved just for us. To put it another way, not many French people would have agreed to pay that much to live in the damp, cramped basement of a town house with hessian on the walls, the better to see the snail trails. We even had our very own pervert who would make stealthy visits to w**k over our post, and any laundry we were foolish to leave hanging out of our windows. Lovely.

Our first contact with the locals came through the French girl who rented a room on the light, airy first floor of the house. All we knew about her was that she was preparing a state 'concours', and needed peace in which to work. This translated into her banging on the floor everytime she felt we were in danger of pouring a third glass of wine. In extreme cases, where talking or worse, laughing, persisted beyond about 10 in the evening, she would (metaphorically and physically) descend to our level and knock on the door, provoking hysterical giggling, shushing and dares. I first learnt of the fierce French desire to enter state service from this young lady.

Anyway, I took the number, dialed it, and was puzzled when a French male voice answered the phone...