Coffee Helps

Le Flatmate lives in what we’d probably describe as an old tenement building. The rooms have high ceilings and massive windows that I like to hang out of at night, watching the people down below hurrying through the streets, sitting at tables on the pavements, and talking in a language that I don’t understand half as well as I thought I did. It’s a friendly place, and I’ve settled in very quickly.

I encountered one of the downstairs residents yesterday evening as I was waiting for the lift, which is at the end of the entrance corridor in a kind of half inside, half outside area next to the bin enclosure. As the lift clanked its way down to meet me, I heard a faint scuffle nearby, and turned to see a large rat staring at me. I don’t know who was more startled.

I’m a bit nervous about rats. Mice, I don’t mind; tame rats I can cope with. But dirty, bin-hoking rats with manky tails and skanky diseases? Urgh. I shuddered involuntarily, and Le Rat took this as an invitation to come closer. Panicking that it was going to run up my leg and/or eat me, I shrieked and dropped my bags. “No, no, get away!” I howled, forgetting that a rat in France might not understand English, especially with a Ballymena accent. My fear was unnecessary, as it was simply bolting for the crack in the floor from whence it came. As I watched the manky tail disappearing from sight, there was a loud clunk behind me, prompting another terrified squeal.

It was, of course, only the lift. As its doors slid open, I was faced with a dilemma. Get in, and risk Le Rat and his family scurrying in after me as the doors closed behind us, leaving me trapped and at the mercy of a skanky rat family? Or take the many, many stairs, arriving red-faced and breathless at the apartment, imagining rats at every corner, poised to leap out at me?

I turned, left the building, and visited the café across the street instead.

Coffee helps.

Filed under: coffee, Fear, French, Lyon, paranoia, rats