It is June 2008 and I'm on my way to Angouleme, France. It is a rather big move to be making but never the less it has been done with my usual lack of preparation and readiness. I am moving because I have been offered an animation job, but maybe I will experience something new while I work. Sitting on the plane next to a friendly looking woman I decide to try out my first bit of French saying "Bonjour", and getting a friendly reply I plunge on further. "Tu Habite En France?", "Oui" she says "but I speak English". This is fairly fortunate as I would have had to end the conversation rather hastily with a "Desole, Je ne Comprends Pas" if she didn't. We talk about where we are from etc and she says she now lives in the Dordoygne, a place that I have visited for a weeks holiday and one of my only previous experiences of France. When learning that I am going to live and work in Angouleme she seems quite surprised and I detect a little sympathy. I get the impression she doesn't think much of the place, she asks if I've ever been before and I confess that I haven't and know little about the place except that they make Rizla rolling papers there. She says it's a tiny place and goes on to pleasantly insult every aspect of the town, converting all my tingling nervous-excitement into a disproportionately nervous, nervous excitement. We run out of things to say and I grab a quick beer from the passing cart to try to tip the ratio back in favour of excitement again. I pass the remainder of the flight reading my book until I can see France passing underneath and I stop to take a look. The first thing to notice is how much space there is, the gaps between houses seem vast and there are swimming pools in all of them except those that are adjacent to huge lakes. We continue on and I wonder what to excpect. My morale building new friend pipes up again to comment on the size of the airport being laughably small. I think about getting another beer but the flight seems close to landing and I realise I've got to find my way to the hotel and cope with checking in so I resist. Now as I say I am not the most organised person when it comes to most things in life, normal everyday things like filling in forms, replying to important letters, and things of that nature are of a constant and constantly ignored trouble for me. So in the organising of moving to another country, I was equally as useless. My flight was due to land at 20:30pm and my hotel's final check-in time was 21:00pm. In fairness this was the best thing I could possibly arrange and I really did try hard to find a better solution. I felt it would probably be fine until on the day of my departure I spoke to my brother, another champion morale builder who began laughing mockingly at the stupidity of believing I could even get hold of my baggage half an hour after arrival let alone find it, get a taxi, and drive to the hotel in time. Fortunately from his joyous mocking he also offered a possible solution. I would take my Mum's credit card which I had used to reserve the room and I could use the automatic check-in system.

And so after the flight had been delayed for 45 mins I now found myself landing in Champniers Airport, Angouleme at 21:15 knowing that I would indeed need that hastily drawn up backup plan. Decending the stairs of the airplane I get my first blast of an unholy heat the like of which I have never experienced. It was like stepping into a dry sauna and I immediately felt that this was going to be a bad idea. I have never really been a hot weather person, I like the summer of course and enjoy the sun but generally I feel more uncomfortable being too hot than too cold. I have been unfortunate in this respect by having a mother who will turn the heating on at the vaguest threat of cold, someone who when on holiday in Florida - which now I think about it is the only comparable heat to that with which I was met at the airport - when getting into the beautifully airconditioned car, a sweet haven from the dreadful Floridian humidity which earned a well deserved sigh of cool gratitude from the rest of our family actually illicited a "ooh, its chilly in here... can we switch it off?" from my insane mother. In fact when attending University I had a flatmate who must have been from the same planet, our heating bills were included in the rent so he would switch on the heating pretty much constantly for the entire year. We would chase each other round me switching it off and him switching it on.

Anyway, after the shock of the heat I join the cue standing on the run-way and look around at the airport which is indeed incredibly small. It has lots of independantly owned planes on the tarmac and the huge jet we've just arrived in looks extremely out of place. The airport building we are cueing up for is built like a garden shed and when you get in it is only really a little cubicle with a guy checking passports and the area for collecting your bags. The bags rather than being whizzed round on a conveyor belt just get shoved along some alluminum rollers, I pick mine up after exchanging a brief "au revoir" to Mrs Motivator who gives me a final "good luck!" with a pained expression, and I proceed out the door to the taxi-rank.

I get in a taxi and manage to ask him in french to take me to the hotel in St-Yrieux which I mis-pronounce terribly enough that he has to look at my piece of paper with the address written on it. He is an extremely amiable chap and I try my best to chat to him in french and he tries a little English, we manage to communicate fairly well and soon enough we are at the hotel. I explain to him that tommorow I have to go to a different hotel which is nearer to where I will be working and I arrange to meet him at 11 the next morning.

The hotel reception is most definitley closed for the night but I see the automatic check-in machine in the wall next to the door. I am thanking my brother at this point for his suggestion that I take the card, otherwise I would have been totally screwed. I dump all my bags at the machine and follow the instructions onscreen typing in my reservation number. Rather alarmingly the machine does not recognise my reservation number on the first attempt, the panic starts to rise. The second attempt reaps results as it remembers the details of my booking, then I have to insert the credit card. I do so and immediately I am met with a pop up window asking for the pin-number, "Shit!". This could prove a problem, I don't have a clue what my mum's pin is. I look at the booking form and notice there is a number on there that is described as a pin number and I hopefully tap it into the keypad. It rejects it with a flashing red "Pin-Incorrect" signal. Damn. I try the whole process again more because I have no Plan C than the belief that it will yield any better response, and after the inevitable "Pin-Inncorect" I give up in case the third attempt swallows the credit card.

At this point I start looking around for somebody who might be able to offer some sort of solution to my increasingly worrying predicament. I see a big camper-van in the car park with people sitting round it on picnic tables and vaguely wander in there direction thinking that if all else fails maybe I could befriend these people and earn myself an invite to sleep in their camper-van. I struggle over with all my bags and introduce myself, they are in fact German and several of them speak English so I explain my predicament and they go round the group explaining and translating into several languages. We go through that slow process of people offering up the same useless suggestions in slightly different ways until everyone has realised that I don't in fact know the pin number to the card I booked the room with. When we are all on the same page we manage to reach the conclusion that I am most definitley screwed. All the while I am thinking that if one of them payed for my room on their credit card I could just give them the cash, but I felt it would be a little rude to ask so I had to try to lead the conversation in this direction but let them choose to offer this solution themselves. This was not an easy thing to do as although they were nice enough people they seemed unable to conjure this seemingly obvious solution and instead new people joined in from the depths of the camper-van suggesting that I "try that automatic machine in the wall over there" and had to be brought up to speed on the situation. Eventually someone pointed out that the other hotel across the way had a reception open until 10, maybe I should ask there.

So I left my baggage with the camper-vanners and trudged towards the other hotel sweating proffusely from a combination of heat and panic. I realised I would probably have to get a room here which was twice the price of the one I was booked for, and I would probably still have to pay for the room I couldn't get into. I ask at the reception and the woman speaks not a word of English, but I manage to mime my troubles and when I tell her my name there is a spark of recognition. She dissapears for a moment and returns with a keycard to my room! "Ah! Merci Beaucoup!" I frantically thank her and bless my luck.

I skip off to the camper vanners and wave my keycard at them in victory, thank them for their help and notice another old woman exiting the van pointing at the auto check-in machine who has clearly just been informed of my problem. I take all my bags and go to my room. Up the stairs and to number 11, at least I think it's number 11. There does appear to be two different numbers on the keycard, 11 and 56. Feeling my evening's troubles may not yet be over I go to room 11 and and give a furtive knock at the door in case this is not my room, there is no stirring from within so I try the card. If you have ever used a hotel keycard you will know the frustration of repeatedly putting in the card and being beeped at often accompanied by a flashing red light. The key is not to be discouraged, just keep trying until it flashes green and you can enter. However in this situation after five or six attempts I obviously start to wonder if I should try room 56. The further thought occurs that this being France there might be something even more bizzare like the light flashes red when it unlocks and green when it's wrong, but no amount of wiggling the handle will open the door.

I look around and notice a woman watching me stood on the balcony, she waddle's over and although feeling that I need some assistance I can't help feeling that she will probably be a hinderance to the solution. She kindly takes the keycard and offers to show me how it's done, although speaking French I can tell she is saying something like, "it's quite simple dear look, you insert the card like so. Wait a moment, now thats important dear... don't rush these things. Then we remove the card like so and Voila!..... Oh..." Beep and flash of red.... And so she tries seven or eight times then stops and examines the card. "It's the wrong number" I assume she says in a baffled sort of way. I point out that there are two numbers and she feels the matter has been solved and beckons me to follow her to find room 56. After some time we find the last room on the uppermost floor is in fact room 53 so we were able to rule out this possibility entirely. We made our way back to number 11 and after a few more symbolic attempts by her another person who she seemed to know wandered up and offered their assistance with that superior knowing look of "Come on pass it here young man, i'll show you how it's done." After the first failed attempt and before he could take up the quest to find the ellusive room 56 I asked for the card back and went to the reception. We managed to avoid any more people being sucked into the repetetive cycle by calling the manager who let me into the room with a real key. I thanked him and then realizing that I would not in fact be able to leave the room without being locked out I tried to comunicate this. Unfortunatley his English was none existant, he just said "7am tommorow, come find me." And so I was stuck in my room for the rest of the night.