L'homme qui a l'esprit ouverte* (...ne pas!)

*I think that means 'The man with the open mind' but I guess it's a bit late to be practising my French because...

...we're off to Paris tomorrow! (With some very good friends of ours.)

Bert's first act of multi-cultural open-mindedness came when he announced that he was taking with him a curry from our (admittedly excellent) local takeaway 'The Agra' for his first night's meal. "What about the rest of us?" I asked, perhaps a little plaintively. "What about you?" was the predictable response.

Then he phoned our friends and made them (reluctantly) promise to take some Australian wine with them. "I'm not drinking that French crap," he announced with some disdain. We will no doubt remind him of that once the Australian is exhausted and we're all tucking into a particularly fine claret. Needless to say, Bert does not 'parlez la langue' so he won't understand when we tell him "Tu es vraiment dans la merde".

This is our typical last-minute scenario (and it's looking promising so far):

• "You haven't packed yet". You can say this to Bert at any point up to, say, 45 minutes or an hour before we set off, and you will be telling the truth.
• Bert invariably has a large number of (non-holiday) tasks to complete before we set off.
• Bert will be highly stressed for the last couple of hours before we leave.
• Just as we are all ready, Bert will go and do a lengthy dump (by 'dump' I mean 'have a shit', but actually he has been known to go to the municipal tip before we can load the car up).
• Approximately 15 minutes after setting off Bert will suddenly and magically mellow.
• Sadly, by this time the rest of us are irretrievably wound up.

C'est la vie!