I have met the enemy and they are mine

This evening the French suffered another major defeat. Yes, the cheese eating surrender monkeys surrendered again...this time: to me!!!!

I kicked frog and I took names.

As I have explained before (though it's so unbelievable and hard to grasp that it is fine if you still do not get it) about once a month the European Parliament moves to Strasbourg for a week-long "plenary session." This is when they do all their voting on legislation.

The offices are basically the same. The people are the same. The work is the same. You just have to commute 5 hours to get there.

With several thousand people mobbing the city for short stays, you can imagine that plenary sessions are brisk business for the Hotels of Strasbourg. The demand for hotel rooms is so high that boats will be anchored in the river as "boatels" just for that week.

My office, like most, has a fixed booking for Strasbourg week at a respectable hotel. To loose a fixed booking is commonly regarded as a disaster.

So today my colleague informed me that whilst I was in the UK our hotel-for no conceivable reason-decided to cancel our fixed booking.

Like a good, polite, stiff upper lipped Brit he had taken this on the chin.

What the hotel had not reckoned with, however, was the presence of a freedom loving American in the office.

I picked up the phone resolved that as long as there was breath left in my body, I would win back that booking!!!

I will spare you the gorey details, suffice it to say: I was victorious.

My time here is drawing to a close, but I have no fear for the security of our booking. No indeed, the French defeat was so resounding that the very name of my office will strike terror into their hearts for years to come!