I open the batting ...

I got here in the end. We all had to shuffle off the train the other side of the channel for god knows what reason. Some chap in a silly hat, with his trousers pulled up far too high, spent a good 3 minutes giving the hair-dryer treatment to a poor collection of nervous guards. We’re all in the same boat chum, I thought, no need to make a scene. Glad we weren’t in a boat though, might have sunk or, worse, been stuck adrift like poor old Edmund Talbot.

I arrived at the bed & breakfast, from which I shall begin my explorations, at a late but not unreasonable hour (extended somewhat by a suspiciously roundabout taxi journey, I’m all for seeing the sights but I didn’t order a buggering tour bus). The landlady begged to differ about the lateness of the hour and chastised me in what may have been French and English interspersed, certainly couldn’t make hide nor tail of it and I mumbled something about ‘une probleme avec le train’ which seemed to placate her. She snuck off to her boudoir and shoved me into a box with a sack on the floor. Very well, I exaggerate but although one doesn’t expect 5 stars, I’d like a window that opened and a wall free of snapshots of the lumpen faces of her gangly children.

I had a brief poke around the apartment, which is not unlike my grandmother’s in Kensington except with less lace and a more porcelain animals. I checked to see which way the water circled when you flushed the toilet. Same as England. Good. You never can be too careful.

I slept in to avoid having to repeat the previous night's admonishments and woke to find a key and a note, which I ignored, and after finding some nosh in the fridge that didn’t smell too continental, I pushed off into the wilderness. Wish I’d bought a map, can’t be doing with those ridiculous aPhones before you say anything, bad enough that mother is able to call me abroad as it is!

First thing I noticed after walking for half an hour or so is there are an awful lot of McDonalds potted around the place. Oddly though, all the big yellow Ms seem to lead underground, the locals probably too snobbish to accept anyone eats there. In England we’ve painted them all green to show how they’ve become healthy, take note mes amis. Odd how much heat they generate down there though, who’d have thought you’d get a wafting warm breeze from 10 microwaves and a deep fat fryer.

I will give the city one thing today, it’s a delightful temperature. I sauntered pleasantly with my coat hung carelessly over one shoulder, trying my best to adopt the aimless swagger of the natives. I’m sure my impression was fairly seamless but I think I was often given away by my Cambridge hockey club tie, no chance you could have picked one of those up over here, as many people must have recognised as they greeted me in clunky English. I spent a few hours reading the Daily Mail in a bistro, 2 days old but what le dif? News doesn’t go out of date.

I decided to head back before I got too lost and I was rather pinched anyhow. I spent 15 minutes trying to get the blasted door open before the old crone pulled herself away from her gruel to come and play gatekeeper. She demonstrated, with a patronising air, how the locked work. Apparently just a key isn’t enough; you have to wriggle the thing around like some sort of combination lock. I told her I was not a magician. She stared blankly and raised her eyebrows. I think that’s how she gets into neutral.