Before you think the rant has been beaten out of this ageing old rug with a broomstick, and I was beginning to think so myself, think again.

I landed in Nice today for a conference in Cannes. I know this sounds exotic, but it's not. Nice looks, well, nice. Something is nice when it's not interesting. It is closely related to Blackpool and Durban, it's Durban in the late seventies with a twist of lime and a dash of Redbull. It's sickly sweet, caffeinated and tastes like shit. Too many graying old farts with ebony prostitutes and too much wearing of white. It's trashy, Las vegas à la française by the sea. There are shops providing lip tattoos and botox for the ladies, in plain view, lunch hour treatment.

The whole experience is a blast because it's a business expense, I'm officially here on a business trip for a software conference, so if you want to call it work, be my guest. The day consisted of a reception where we, the valued customers, the delegates got to mingle with each other and exchange fascinating technical jargon; 'So, how have you deployed your metadata integrator?'

I entertained myself by conducting a small critique on the canapes, which weren't bad since I went back for seconds and thirds. The wine was not bad either and I met up with a few old colleagues, we all joked about how the good old days were over and how hard life was. I was invited to dinner on a private beach for the Swiss delegates which was, well, nice; as in not very interesting. Once again I entertained myself with a small critique on the food. The food was good and the wine was superb.

My colleague from Cologne was interesed in investigating the nightlife in Cannes, which one would expect to be riveting and debauched, sadly it was neither. The only place we could find was an Irish pub, Morrisons. We decided to ask the very good looking blonde barmaid where the nightlife was and as the complex algorithm began to work her two blonde braincells into an answer, we realised we were not going to get one, it was clearly too much to ask. A drunk Frenchman, now the only thing more unreliable than a Frenchman is a drunk Frechman, decided he would direct us to 'downtown'. His directions consisted of 'Zis way zen zat way and Tack Tack Tack. I shit you not.

A few more propositions later led me to believe that what he was thought was nightlife was infact some paid for sex. We found ourselves back on the seafront with nothing to do. I proposed that we go back to hotel as my motto is if sleep is better than what you are doing at the time, then that's what you should be doing, sleeping. We found a series of bars and entered one of them. Another blonde in Burberry opened the door to let us in to the cavern of deceipt. We order two beers, pay 20 Euros and get on with it. I'm elsewhere because I can't hear a fucking thing except Eurocrap being pumped out of the sound system. I get the urge to ram a 1500W speaker down the throat of the Disk Jockey/Idiot to see what kind of output I can get. There's a group of alpha idiots chasing tequila slammers, they've hit the happy stage of drunkeness and they're hugging eachother, the love is all around. I fumble in my pockets for a spare handgranade, pull the pin and slam it down the throat of Alpha Idiot number one. My beer is nearing empty and we realise we never got any change back. 2 beers can't cost 20 Euros so we query with barman who conveniently doesn't understand a word we're saying. We get the messages through to him, short of drawing pictures and saying 'donnez moi 10 euros, cunt'.

He compensated the attempted theft with two free shots of Cointreau after which he stole our lighter. It appears the only thing more untrustworthy than a drunk Frenchman in Cannes is the place that's making him drunk.

Back to the hotel for some sleep. I shall report back.