Why?

Because Julie Goose, one of the Cocktail Girl's closest and dearest consorts, has shipped out to Bordeaux to live (with absolutely no thought whatsoever to who, precisely, would make me laugh in her absence), and this is one of her new locals. I Easyjetted it over for a city-break last weekend, and Goosie insisted that we swung by.

An English pub? I thought even you were a smidge classier than that.

I have to admit, I was rather bemused when Goosie first started mentioning 'the Hop', as it's known en France. 'But,' she insists, 'it's different in Bordeaux.' There is something of an English pub tradition in the town, because the Brits have been settling in Bordeaux for ages. (I'd be more specific but I can't be bothered to do the Googling.) So English pubs have a currency of their own in Bordeaux; they're more than a gruesomely tacky tourist destination, at least 80 per cent of the punters on any given night will be French, and have excellent wine lists. Better yet, any touring Brit indie band worth their curly mop-top hairstyles ends up boozing in the Hop after the gigs (The Kooks, Hard Fi, Klaxons, et cetera). But that's not why I went in the end.

No? Do tell.

It was more because the Hop has served as a location for much of Goosie's and her new French friends' more decadent adventures. Drunken loudness, significant interaction with slips of boys a fraction of their age ('Of all nationalities!' says the Goose, proudly) ... On one occasion, the Goose took her top off and sat at the bar. 'But crucially,' she said, 'I kept my bra on. That is important.'

It becomes clearer.

So we went. It was a balmy Saturday night and there was some manner of sporting event going on (I want to say rugby ... or maybe, the other one? You know ... football!) but the TVs are cunningly arranged around the room - which, since you ask, is all vaulted and stone, a converted 17th-century paper mill no less - so that the viewers collect at one end, leaving the other end free for the casual boozers, like Goosie and me. John the landlord and owner greeted Julie Goose as landlords across the world always do - as an old and valued customer - and poured us each a brandy of terrifying proportions.

Meanwhile you scouted the environs for 18-year-old French boys and the odd Kook, I presume?

No! Well, yes. But there weren't any. None that I fancied dusting down my language skills on at any rate (just as well, given that I'd tried to order a Diet Coke in a café earlier, and the waitress brought me a calculator). But the evening was convivial, and while the Goose didn't take her top off, she did show me where she'd sat when she had, and we got really quite drunk, before returning to her abode to track down our old friend the International Playboy on friendsreunited.com. Which we did! And he'll be my companion in cocktails next time, people!

· 11 Rue Parlement Sainte Catherine, Bordeaux, France