2007 was supposed to be the year that Deb, me, Spanner, Tessa, and Big John trooped off to Brittany to relive the heady days of the Summer of 2005 (2005 being the year that I finally squared up to my obsessions and HMIM was born).
2005 was a great year - drinking, cheese eating, and the birth of treasured obsessions with Nestle Man and Self Tissus. So you can imagine that we were all looking forward to another holiday of drinking, cheese eating, flatulence, and revisiting those fine old friends. All was going swimmingly, the holiday was booked, John had packed months ahead as usual, and bought himself a new car and some new pants. Then, in February, John demonstrated his unsurpassed prowess as an awkward old bugger, and cocked the whole thing up by dropping dead. It was agreed by all that this was really quite selfish and a bad thing. It was also agreed by all that not going on holiday to France regardless would have royally hacked him off, so, we went.
Naturally, we revisited Self Tissus and Nestle Man, with interesting outcomes
which you can read about on their own pages. And in amongst all that, Pago came
along. Pago is the odd name for a range of fruit drinks. They have been
available on the continent for a number of years, but are currently rarer than
rocking horse crap in the U.K. Pago comes in a range of a fruity flavours, which
are discussed in painful detail below. It was nearly an
obsession in 2005, but so much time was swallowed by thinking about Nestle Man
and Self Tissus that I just never really got round to it. However, once we
arrived at the Beg Meil campsite in 2007, and I saw Pago behind the
bar, that was it. What really sealed it was the card on the bar depicting all
the different sorts of Pago. There were fifteen on there, and come hell or high
water, I was going to try every one. And so it came about that, every night when
we went to the bar, we tried a different Pago. We developed a nifty system where
a Pago was bought with every round, and everyone tried a bit. Saz usually went
last and got her own straw, the reasons for this being:
She was usually sat miles away, perched on a bar stool three times her height, banging away on a fruit machine without putting any money in. It seemed like a long walk at the time.
When she wasn't hassling the fruit machine, she was trying to show other children / parents / bar staff Nestor and it was hard to tie her down for two seconds to slurp fruit ooze.
She spent every evening eating revolting stinky cheese and onion crisps. I inadvertently discovered the ability of these malevolent entities to rape your palate for hours afterwards following an ill advised attempt to share the straw when we both sampled strawberry Pago. If you were considering combining the flavours of cheese, onions, and strawberries, I can recommend that you don't*.
Span bought a special notepad in Géant to write the results down, and developed a smiley face system, converting this to a score out of five for every flavour. A league table was born which would allow all forms of Pago to be compared with one another. The bar didn't stock all the flavours on the card, but they did have most of them, and we also found that the local Geant stocked massive bottles of three other flavours - giving us a grand total of fifteen to choose from. We gave each Pago a score of 1, 0.5, or 0, depending on how much we liked it. In order to get a bit more definition between the different flavours, I've applied a rather complicated score weighting system to allow the development of a league table for all the flavours. And here they are, from best to worst:
Picking and rating the Pago of the night became an enjoyable part of our evening boozing ritual (the other fun part was spotting 'Porcine Man', who I named for his somewhat swiney appearance - we never actually talked to him, but we did sneak a lot of looks at him). Sharing it round, everyone would give their verdict, and Spanner would tot up the scores. The worst flavours (the bottom row above) were nicknamed the forbidden flavours, and very nasty they were.
In France, a country which prides itself on turning out some quality
tipples, you can't drink this quantity of Pago in one place, night after night,
without
getting a reputation. Especially when you're wearing HMIM teeshirts and
you have a child who is seemingly obsessed with a piece of Nestlé
point of sale frippery. Thankfully, the barman, whose name eventually turned out
to be Christophe, was the understanding type. Although he seemed a little
confused at first, he soon warmed to the idea of us drinking our way through the
Pago fridge, and eventually took to greeting us with a cheery "Bon Soir! A pint of Pago,
oui?" in the evenings. Being the nice chap he was, he managed to avoid adding
"you uncouth English pig", verbally at least. When we finally completed our Pago odyssey,
the night before we left,
Christophe was pleased enough to shake me by the hand and congratulate us all.
He also passed us a blank Pago
menu sheet to take home and keep.
For the record, his favourite Pago is Orange-Carotte-Citron, and a fine choice
it is too.
I kept all the Pago bottles, much to Deb's disgust. Even more to her disgust, when we moved house in December, I still had them, and wrapped them all up in bubble wrap to make sure none got broken. I have a plan for them all, which is to create a lit display case, which I will call the Pagonator. The Pago's will be arranged in order of how highly they scored. The forbidden flavours will be ranged along the bottom, the more loved flavours at the top; something like the terraces of purgation in Dante's Divine Comedy.
I also took the chance to have a look at the
Pago website, which is extensive and an enjoyable way to while away a few days.
The best part in my view is the adverts, written in foreign and, for the most
part, very surreal. There's also contact details for those who would be
interested in distributing Pago in the U.K. I'm not interested in distributing
Pago in the U.K., but I am interested in drinking it, so I've written anyway.
Loose Ends
