KEY POINTS:
There is no cold fear equivalent to the one you get when you first realise you've lost your wallet.
Your blood freezes and your heart sinks somewhere below your knees while nausea rises from the pit of your stomach.
Sweat beads appear on sweat beads. I experienced that fear while waiting to check in to my hotel in preparation for the World Cup opener in Paris.
I'd just travelled up on a high-speed train from Marseille.
I bought a coffee in Marseille St Charles.
Now, as I went reached for my credit card, I was sans wallet. Merde! My World Cup was wrapped up in that comforting leather.
My personal credit card; the company credit card; hundreds of cold hard euros; my SIM card (broken phone, long story); receipts; a laminated photo of my kids.
No wonder I felt like the world was beginning to fall out of my bottom.
By my reckoning I had three options: to start frantically ringing around the world, cancelling cards and sorting out replacements; to race back to the train in the forlorn hope that a) the train will be there, and b) the wallet was still unmolested on my seat; or to break down in a blithering wreck in the hotel foyer. The last option seemed to be the only realistic one.
But I was in the presence of a photographer, Brett, who dispensed more practical advice.
"Get back to the station, go boy." Those words were the most inspiring I'd heard since "Run Forrest, run." So I ran.
Like the wind - or, at least, a gentle zephyr. If I yelled "sil vous plait" once I yelled it a thousand times weaving my way through the thronging masses at Gare de Lyon.
Platform C was located and the train was still there.
People were starting to weave their way up the neverending platform, locating their carriages.
I found myself thinking thoughts that on reflection seem vaguely racist.
"The French, how honest are they? What chances my wallet still being there? Not much." Did I even lose it on the train? Perhaps I was pick-pocketed in the station.
It was so busy any number of fiends had a chance.peCarriage found, seat found.
No immediate sign of wallet.
But then, down the side of the seat I saw its gleaming black cowhide.
The cards were there, the euros were there, the kids were in there.
Magic.
I walked back to the hotel with a certain joie de vivre. If Brett was better looking I would have kissed him, so he'll have to settle for a beer instead.
