"Comme une vache" - Cannes wash out!

Saturday was cold and damp all day, and I huddles under cover drinking
coffee and preparing for the meeting on Sunday am.
It doesn't feel right - Cannes in steady gray English rain.
Northumberland is warmer!
I peeled my eyes open at about 10am, and peered at the heap of clothes
on the suit case. Nothing waterproof and all of it in need of
pressing. So the morning was spent over the ironing board (glamour,
what glamour), and planning world conquest ("We should be in bed by
11(!) to ensure that we make the meeting bright eyed and on the ball.)
Lunch was a picnic, perched between the puddles in the UK Pavilion. It
was impossible to find a table in a restaurant or snack bar - the rain
had driven everyone in ahead of me.
At 5.00 I was offered shelter and a glass of wine in the deserted
Tunisian stand. The wine was cloudy, the glass as smeared as the filthy
sky.
Things perked up an a Brazilian cocktail event - the strongest
Caipirinha I have ever downed set the tone for the next few hours.
Then we gathered together an all female party to trail from the Carlton
to Le Suquet to find a restaurant that would fulfill the requirements of
the obligatory vegetarian.
Then - the sky opened. A downpour of biblical proportions, just as the
crowds were gathering for the Walter Sallis premiere, and my producer
and I were cutting through the back streets towards home.
We dodges, we ran, we waded through flooded streets. Alarms rocked the
night as cars rocked under the weight of falling water. Lights fizzed
and spluttered and plunged bars into darkness.
Finally we stood in a midst a spreading puddle in our shared studio. My
shoes had tripled in weight, and my feet were died a vile shade of
indigo - and my phone was stewing nicely in a pool of water at the
bottom of my bag.
Years ago I spent an evening with a group of execs who were celebrating
their 20th Cannes. They were trying to remember how it had worked
before the mobile phone.
On Sunday I will be forced to find out, first hand!