Feeling bored so I'll relay a true story to you from the time I was around 19 years old and ran away to France. When I got out of Gare Du Nord train station I found a drain and dropped my passport down it. I broke my debit card in two and put everything in my pockets in a bin except some Euro notes I had. Some North African beggars implored me for money as I started my exploration of Paris by foot.
I tried talking in the few French phrases I knew to a few people but they weren't open to talking. I bought some grapes from a greengrocer using only hand signals. I noticed how small the French cars on the road were and there were lots of joggers and motorcyclists and mopeds. I had multicoloured hippie clothes on and a shaven head at the time. By the way on the way there, I travelled through a central London train station and was surrounded by commuters on their way home to Kent. And they all had grey and black sober clothes and there was I in my pink and yellow hipware with a rainbow coloured scarf around my neck. I did get a fair few bemused and amused glances.
In Paris I walked all day and looked at the people dining outside cafes. I had had enough of life in England where I was going nowhere so the question was what to do next. Again I tried talking to people some more and got blanked. By night it was colder than I expected. I had it in my mind France was a lot warmer than England and because of the time of year hadn't expected a cold evening. I had no jumper, coat or anything to keep me warm. I was shivering, lying down on a bus shelter bench in who knows where on the side of some main raid and near some closed shops and high rise apartments.
A tall man with a ponytail approached me and asked how I was, he actually spoke English abut had an Eastern European accent and sounded and looked scary so I replied to him in my broken French to repel him. He looked like a pimp or drug trafficker. His eyes were cold and his face lizardlike. He threw up his arms and headed off, annoyed. Some Chinese students or tourists walked past, blissfully in their bubble.
I couldn't bear it anymore. It was freezing, I was scared. So I took off all my clothes and started running along the side of the nearby motorway. There were a few late night drivers on the roads. I started to hear horns blaring. I kept on running barefoot along the tarmac into the night. Then there was the sound of a siren. In a minute a police car was chasing me. It parked and two officers jumped out with batons. They caught me eventually and handcuffed me while I shouted at them "Je suis faux pas!" (What I thought meant I am a social blunder. I don't know if that is really true. I still don't know the French language.)
They took me to a police station when I was put on the floor in front of the reception desk. The police station was different to a British one. It was small and in an old building that appeared to have built in the 1800s which had a tall door and windows. Near me there were two doors with bars on them, with spaces in between the bars. You know like them police cells they show you in American TV shows? Where the person detained puts their arms through the bars. I was amazed such cells actually exist. The man inside one of them looked like a career criminal and he eyed me curiously. I continued to shout out at random little bits of French. Two female officers came out from the staff room and were standing on their tiptoes behind the desk to get a better look at my penis. They were giggling.
A senior male officer came out to the front near me and leant down by me. He put his face right near mine and his hands on my shoulders as he started to make baby noise. "Goo-ji goo-ji goo'ji". I broke out laughing and he started laughing too. Some of the officers were talking to one another but I had no idea what about. About half an hour later I was loaded into a van and taken to somewhere else, where a man in a white coat greeted the officers at the door. I was led inside and put into a room where I was placed on a bed and strapped down. The man in the white coat crossed himself in the Catholic fashion, muttered something and then left the room and closed the door.
