In the first few days in a new place, particularly a city, it’s impossible to be anything but a tourist. Tourists follow specific behaviours which make them incredibly susceptible and gullible:
Look up, even when it's raining
1. A propensity to stare upwards at objects such as shop signs, bricks and common birds as if one was watching the moon landings;
2. A complete lack of concern for flaunting tremendous amounts of petty cash in public;
3. An implicit trust, driven by equal parts fear, uncertainty and doubt, in any native who offers assistance, even if in one’s homeland one would cross the road rather than accost the aformentioned helpful native;
4. A total inability to order off a menu without pointing;
5. Complete, grinding shutdown of all adaptive faculties. As a tourist, one is always on holiday. On holiday, the brain and a substantial number of voluntary motor functions become unavailable, rendering it impossible for one to learn even the rudiments of the native tongue or present oneself as a respectable, capable human being.
They only wanted a salad
This was the state I found myself in while sheltering from the roasting mid-day heat of mid-October Toulouse. The last hurrah of what by all accounts had been a rather damn fine summer, I was so unaccustomed in my Britishness to warmth in any way that I felt like I was being charged an hourly rate for the sunshine. I was sitting on a kerb in the archway of the town hall, the most magnificent building in the city and the centrepiece of Place la Capitôle, the main square. There was a market on, white tent roofs pitched like chess squares. Playing with a half-full bottle of rapidly warming coke, I watched Gemma and our friend Will (also abroad on studies) fluttering around the stalls looking for John (also abroad on studies). John is genuinely one of the nicest people I’ve ever met yet, for reasons unknown, a man entirely capable of losing himself in a crowd of one when in our company. That is not to say he can’t find his way, only that we can never find John.
John, John, Jooooooooohn!
The entire event must have lasted less than twelve seconds, but in that time I ran the entire gamut of human emotion. First there was confusion. A woman approaching me from the shadows, cradling her child, headscarf wrapped around her head, questioned me in French.
‘Pardon madame, je suis anglais,’ I said, summoning my entire reserves of French.
Again, this time gesturing towards my bottle of coke, then pointing at her baby.
Go on David - hand it over!
From this I was able to ascertain that she wanted my bottle of coke for her baby, and that I was not only being asked to hand it over, I was expected to hand it over. The second emotion came on strong, one of entitlement and almost total confusion. In the kind of blind panic brought on by these gaps in the social fabric, I resorted to swinging the coke bottle back and forth in a lolling slow motion to signify indecision. As with most cultures, the language barrier doesn’t stop at the spoken word, and she appeared to take great offence at this gesture. Shit. Maintain, I thought. Maintain and you will be fine.
Then, as she said these incomprehensible words, she snatched the coke bottle out of my hand, pointing again to her parched child. The petty theft took me by surprise, like getting slapped by a man. Clearly the warm coke bottle held no further value to me, yet a line had been crossed. How to react? Like a tourist. It was the only sensible option. I began to admire the brickwork of the arch and rifle through a wadge of cash as she disappeared into the market. As she vanished from view, I saw her neck the coke.
You lose, Mr Davies
