Barrie Davies’ journey to the Liverpool-Real Madrid final reaches its zenith as the crew enters Paris. Read Part I of the two-part series here.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious for. My befuddled brain, lost in a candy floss cocoon of weird and hallucinatory scenes that alternated from disembodied frogs legs doing keepy-uppy with an Adidas Tango ball, to Zidane headbutting my chest after an incendiary and eye-popping and nostril frothing altercation about which Metro line was the most efficacious to get us to the Eiffel Tower, to Jean-Paul Sartre’s strabismus eye being caught in a full-length dive by Albert Camus attired in a goalkeeping kit, must have fleetingly scuttled out of her insensate shell for the odd nibble at the real world that still flowed ineluctably around me. Albeit, my brain had done this in secret, almost as if it needed an urgent dose of reality to counteract whatever recherche cocktail of extravagantly exotic intoxicants had seized control of her cockpit and, by default, her autonomy. But she wanted to do it circumspectly and surreptitiously, like a mouse in the attic wearing rubber-soled shoes, and not awake my lugubrious and drugged inner self in the process. My brain had regained a smidgen of alert consciousness behind my back and I was virtually oblivious.
One of these staccato friezes of life existing in spite of everything made me think we had already arrived in Paris. The converted Transit van My Associate had “chartered” had halted at some traffic lights. Out of the window, I could see the latticed iron work of a tower looming imperiously above us, casting a shadow.
I must have mumbled something like, “Ahhh, la tour Eiffel. Voila!”