I am bed-warming for a Wallaby, curled up with a goosedown comforter on a 27cm mattress with unique featherbed padding all supported by a box spring base.
I can't move because I don't want to move. It's the best night's sleep I have ever had and I am keen for more, but alas I shall have to give up my bed for a Wallaby come next year.
The Sofitel My Bed may very well be the secret weapon of the Wallabies for the Rugby Union World Cup 2007 in France.
 The chaps, or rather the chaps' minders, have chosen the university town of Montpellier and the Sofitel Antigone, in the south of France, for their six-week base camp. They will train in the town's tailor-made Yves du Manoir training stadium, travel from Montpellier to their other regional matches in Lyon, Cardiff and Bordeaux, and play against Fiji on September 23 in Montpellier's Mosson Mondial stadium.
The art of sports psychology is a multimillion-dollar business and the My Bed makes sense for a team needing recovery after a game, but I wonder what the Wallabies will make of the deep fuscia pink decor of the Sofitel rooms more suited to an Elton John tea party than a rugged front-row forward.
The psychology of colour says magenta is the colour of compassion and that while pink generates feelings of softness, warmth and love, it can also create emotional claustrophobia, and worse, emasculation. So I have decided to call it "red", a far more aggressive hue. They're blokes anyway, they won't know the difference.
Montpellier in the Languedoc region was founded in the early Middle Ages 10km inland from the Mediterranean coastline to stem pirate raids. Two hamlets were joined, a castle built and walls placed around the settlement. Now 250,000 people live in Montpellier and the ancient stone walls house what is known as the old city where cars are not allowed and cobbled medieval laneways lead to hidden squares filled with intimate al fresco bistros, jazz clubs, tea salons and quirky closet-sized stores filled to the brim with antiquities.
 It's a labyrinth of shopping worthy of any Wallaby widow with a credit card. For an ancient city it's filled with life, constantly buzzing with a student population of 65,000. Add a thriving gay community, the largest outside Paris, into the mix and this city is pumping come 11pm, well past any aspiring World Cup champion's bed time.
I first came to Montpellier in 1991, intending to spend a week with a friend enrolled in French school. Instead, like the Wallabies, I stayed six weeks thanks to a Frenchman called Jean-Luc, or Jean Marc – whatever, he was Jean Something or Other. I clutched baguettes under my arm like a handbag and had a running pastis account at the Petit Place beside my apartment.
 Mornings were spent wandering the market at the Place de la Comedie, the square around which the town is built. Then a drive to the beachside town of La Grand Motte 10 minutes away to top up the tan, mango daiquiris in the apartment's communal courtyard at five followed by a night of rum et citron in the various outdoor bars on offer.
To break up the pattern we'd embark upon a day trip to the old Roman town of Nimes for a bullfight in ancient stadiums; to mountain regions and Florac's jaw-dropping Tarn Gorge; or we'd head to the fortified city of Carcassonne, a Rapunzel-style World Heritage site straight from the pages of a medieval fairytale where I'd let down my hair.
Not much has changed in 15 years, the routine stays the same. My old apartment is still there but Jean Luc is not, neither is Jean Marc or Jean Something. The old town is just as charming, although a Virgin Megastore has moved in.
My backpack has been replaced with a swanky four-wheeled Samsonite and I can afford to dine Michelin-star style for one night if I promise not to eat for the next two.
Le Jardin des Sens was opened in Montpellier in 1988 by Jacques and Laurent Pourcel and was awarded three Michelin stars in 1998, which means it's good, very good, and can charge top dollar for degustation dining filled with foie gras, langostine and confit.
It also means it has the licence to sell smelly cheese, thick gooey wads of which would be considered a weapon of mass destruction in other countries.
Here it is considered more perfume than pungent, but then garlic is the Chanel No. 5 of the Languedoc region. The cheese in question smelt like dead socks left to rot in the dark for over a year then ripened in the sun. No doubt Le Jardin des Sens will be filled with rugby folk.
This already vibrant town will be filled with rugby supporters watching the games on big screens in Montpellier's plethora of squares and bars. Everyone's a home team coach come World Cup time but while the wannabe coaches are still propping up the bar at 3am, the Wallabies will be tucked up in My Bed.
In my dreams. |
