Rock On

Why would anyone pay 35 euro to be covered in 37 unidentified varieties of sweat? Who would purposely subject themselves to multiple bruises and loss of personal space for 90 minutes of listening to the people around them sing Kings of Leon songs?

Me, apparently. And it was worth it! The last concert I went to where you could stand up was Peter Combe at the Adelaide Zoo in 1989 so this was a real treat. The noticably absent Newspaper Mamma and Spaghetti Bolognese made way for a good selection of stuff from the past 3 albums - glad they didn't just stick to the new one. Interestingly, there were more Brits and others than French people, probably because the O2 concert sold out all 22,000 tickets in an hour and France took 1 month to sell 1,800.

BUT, this was not what made the night for me. Picking up a post-show snack at Le Maccas, we met 7 kids from Brighton, UK who were staying at our hostel and had also been to the show. We were still buzzing and, strolling along one of the many boulevards in Paris, we passed the front window of a little place called Le Magenta. A group of about 7 adults - some around 40, some mid 50s - were inside drinking wine and made faces at us walking past. The place was closed, but knowing a rocking party when we see one, headed inside to join this outrageous bunch.

The owner of the restaurant offered us all drinks, on the house, and started kissing everyone (on the cheek), asking where we were from and rolling around with his drunken lawyer friends. One of them, a rather posh woman named Ariel (after a character in Shakespere's Tempest, NOT the Little Mermaid), told me that Normandy was (and I quote) "The Pissing Pot of France" and that Australia was the last place on Earth she'd visit because we're entirely a-cultural. But it was nothing personal.

Don't let anyone tell you can't party with your parents because this lot were old enough to be mine and they were hilarious. They turned up LFM and we danced around this restaurant till 3am to the sounds of Barry White and The Police. Rock on, I say. Reading #FrenchSafari: Rock OnTweet this!