Cambrai, Le Mouton Blanc

·      Fri.16.11.07. The final leg of our journey would now take us north towards the coast. Facing a possible six hour drive, initially through the undulating landscape of northern Burgundy via Beaune, Dijon and Troyes but later over the flat plains of the Champagne region around Reims then onto the flat rolling plains of St. Quentin and Cambrai in Picardie, we set off at 10.30am. The bullshit regularly draining from Cockney Micks mouth had become the trip’s staple joke especially when we were about to undertake a sizeable journey, today was no exception. “Fackin’ ‘ell I’ll get to fackin’ Cambrai in too ‘ours, put in a shift of foateen ‘ours, pick up a cheque for five graand, open a bockle of the best red, knock up a Chinese, roll a big ‘un” ‘an be in bed at ‘arf past wiv some local trollop and still get up again at ‘free, ‘an drive annuvva foa ‘undrid K, yeah!”

The busy town of Cambrai had grown sizably since our last visit 20 years ago the scale felt daunting at first having spent the past five days travelling through rural France, but as the rush hour crowds dispersed along with the traffic we began to appreciate the civic pride of the imposing baroque Hotel de Ville, the manicured market square the quite huge ‘department’ railway station which I would suspect was the original reason that a town of such importance had developed exactly where it was. The Mouton Blanc was definitely undergoing a revival as the rooms had been scrubbed, re-designed boldly ‘made-over’. Our room in particular was of a ‘boutique nature’ with lavish richly decorated furnishings, purple wall hangings a sumptuous bath-shower wet room, known in France as an Italian brothel.

The sheer quality of the food on Thursday could not possibly be matched so the group decided that something cheap, cheerful known the world over as ‘junk’ would be more appropriate, we were not disappointed. Nostalgically reflecting that we had not had a bad meal throughout the trip now was the time for a change, a quick snack with the emphasis firmly on the liquid content as opposed to solid nourishment. I had earlier spotted an attractive bistro-bar around the town square having striking leaded lights on the frontage giving it an appeal of age and history. Unfortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The recent refurb had been for a ubiquitous Irish bar with clichéd symbols of Ireland festooning the interior. We were met by an over excited typically rude waiter who couldn’t wait to get us seated thrusting a menu in our faces before we had even sat down. The evening went from bad to worse as he ignored the requests for drinks becoming very impatient when we couldn’t order the ‘food’ fast enough for his liking. Needless to say the grub was pretty awful, burnt steak, unrecognisable fish, dry chilli, inedible meatless ‘chickin’ lickin’ wings and by now an even more sullen waiter. The only positive from the meal came in the shape of a traditional Flanders dish of chunks of cooked meats fused in a pool of jelly. But, everything else was dreadful so I volunteered to make our feelings known in the form of “Just because we are English you don’t have to serve us shite”, or “we look like dumb northern Herberts, but we really are food critics from the Daily Telegraph!” definitely something in the best French along those lines. But I was persuaded not to bother: nevertheless the Doc took over, calling the waiter across he began, “You know this hokum about giving me the wrong meal first, it doesn’t really matter which side of the oxo cube you look at, eggs is eggs, France is not England, comprenday! That’s put him in his place!” I am sure that the arrogant, bewildered waiter understood every single word. We had been ‘done’, effectively tuttled, professionally burgled we had taken it right up the arse.

We drowned our sorrows in our boutique boudoire swilling down the last of the Lidl lager combined with cheap red wine amused by Kenny’s antics emerging into the bedroom from the balcony via the bathroom in Buster Keaton fashion.