"We go in metro!" Jean-Henri shouted across the noisy chamber. Strewn around was the collateral damage of a kta party in the dying stages. People passed out, empty bottles, wisps of smoke from discarded cigarettes hung in the air. Drunken yelling filled the room, layered over music cast by speakers on their last legs. It was 4am and the rabble was starting to disperse.

More brave souls answered his rallying cry and a small posse assembled, consisting of two Frenchman: Jean-Henri and Pierre both blitzed on alcohol and weed - key reagents for dubious metro exploration leadership; also three Australians, Harry Hardcore, Sheila and myself. Sheila was drunk enough to be borderline retarded and was unable construct sentences with less than 50% swearing.

Departing the chamber Sheila quickly dismissed walking assistance or support, fumbling down the tunnel careening from wall to wall like a pinball. By the time we reached the plaque her shoulders were starting to bruise. We couldn't leave her in the ktas or streetside with the hobos, so we resigned ourselves to carting her through the metro. Drunken confidence whispering in our ears that sure, we could walk 5 stations west to a minor sourthern interchange. Pas probleme! At 0430, an hour before first service we hauled ourselves under a roller door into the nearest station, except Sheila who I think we pushed under. I'm not sure if her arms were still functional at this point. Pleasantly deserted of people, we clambered over the ticket gates with all the dexterity and grace of the morbidly obese and stumbled off the platforms to the tracks.

Regular readers or those familiar with the Paris metro should know each set of tracks has one or two extra rails carrying power. These rails run at 900v, with up to 5000amps of current in em. If you weren't paying attention in high school physics here's the skinny: touch these suckers when they're on and you're getting turned into bacon. They don't differentiate between a lick, a fondle, or a full contact drunken stumble. You -> Bacon, end of story.

Inside the tunnel I shook Sheila until her eyes focused as best they could, called over Harry and instructed while pointing like a school teacher for added emphasis.

"The outside rails are live, DO NOT TOUCH THEM because, A - You don't want to die tonight, right? B - I don't want to lug your drunken corpse out of here. The inner rails are fine, the train wheels run on 'em. The center one is a cable tray. It's safe to".



Concerned it hadn't penetrated their liquor saturated brains I immediately tested my pupils.

"So which rails should you not touch?". Harry pointed correctly at the outside ones, Sheila just waved her hand around in the vague direction of all 5.
"Theeeeeem ones" she slurred back at me. Christ on a bicycle.
"Okay new rules, noone touches any rails anywhere. Sheila, you're walking with me." I grabbed her hand and pulled her in behind and off we marched after the 'leadership team' ahead.

At the first station we struggled up onto the platform to decipher the metro map and find which station we'd shambled into. It began with a "T", the rest was just a slur of baguette-speak. Perfectly clear though, was that we'd taken a different tunnel. This was the wrong station cap'n. My faith in the french leadership quickly waned. About this time a memory rose unbidden into my mind, a hazy dream-like recollection of a more sober hour when I'd seen Jean-Herni and Pierre munching something dried and brown from a small folded up piece of paper. I turned to Jean-Henri, the magnitude of the evenings stupidity rising exponentially in my mind.

"Oi you ate mushrooms, er champignons? Oui?" The bastard just grinned back at me, he was clearly off with the fucking fairies. He smiled like I just offered him a Rusty Trombone.

Now I did pay attention in physics but not much in biology so while I think the human body processes alcohol through your liver at the approximate rate of one drink per hour, I never understood how in moments such as these you feel sober almost immediately. As the most aware of our actual surroundings (for all I knew Jean-Herni and Pierre thought we were riding a cheese grater hovercraft over a cotton-candy rainbow right now) Harry and I took it upon ourselves to ensure there were no casualties as we marched back through a raccord (linking) tunnel onto the line we should have taken in the first place and began west.



After passing two or three stations, narrowly avoiding 3rd rail contact and discovering a layed up train we reached the home stretch into our destination station. With Sheila slumped onto my shoulder, my arm around her waist I looked across to see Jean-Henri stumble right, over the middle rails, then up onto the third. The live rail. Totally oblivious he tottered along it for 5 or 6 paces, swayed left and staggered back down onto the railway sleepers.

"Fucker you stepped on the live rail! What the FUCK?"
"Me? No, no I didn't. When?" he responded with a quizzical look.
"Just NOW, RIGHT NOW. 2 seconds ago."
"Oh. Farrrrrk!" Then he started laughing.

Whatever planet he was on life must be great but right there in the metro, 15 minutes before the service was to begin, this was absolutely fucking madness. The delirious bastard should have been dead. Before my eyes stood a ghost. Whether it was off, or on minimal power, or his thick soled rubber boots insulated him I do not know. This was too much. We need out now.

At the next station we hauled ourselves up onto the platform and within moments 4 railway security guards descended, yelling frantically in French. Too uncoordinated to run and too drunk to care we stood there looking at them dumbly. Hands open palms outwards, we had nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it. I'd heard stories about these guys, the RATP seccas, beating up graff writers they caught in the tunnels. Other than us the platform was empty. Nobody would see. At their hips they each wore a gun, a large black baton and an oversized canister of pepperspray. Clearly they were pissed off.



We put up no resistance so they collected our bags in a pile, lined us up against the wall and dressed us down in machine-gun French. The baguette-speak went over my head, whenever they talking to Sheila, Harry or myself we'd just respond with "touriste, I don't understand" and shrug our shoulders. They searched our bags for spraypaint but found only dirty kta clothes and more alcohol. Back in the ktas Sheila painted everyone's fingernails, so all five of us had fingers covered in flourescent pink. Busting our underground fag ring was clearly something the seccas couldn't handle alone and the cavalry was called. The cops.

By 0530, the trains had started and commuters were walking through the station staring at 5 pink-fingernailed drunks, covered in kta dirt up lined up against a wall by four angry guards. Four fliks arrived looking bored and tired, their long night shift almost over. Doing the paperwork to snap 2 blitzed french guys and 3 australians was the last thing they needed. Disinterested they collected our IDs, going through the motions not even pretending to give a shit.

In Australia or England we'd have been trussed up and bundled into the back of a paddywagon on route to the watch house and having our houses searched under the ridiculous suspicion we were some kind of tango-cell. Thankfully, the french are more sensible.

A call crackled across the radios and real work beckoned them elsewhere. They threw our IDs at the seccas and ran out of the station burning rubber up the road with sirens blazing. Disheartened the seccas hand back our ID, opened the station gates and watched us saunter out free as could be. A minute down the road we popped open a plaque du soleil and climbed back into the catacombs. Could this country get any fucking better?