10 Years On - Part 4 of Account of Cycling Northern France

Having read four Georges Simenon short stories in the weeks before I went on this trip I was keen to try andouillettes, a tripe sausage popular in northern France and favoured by Georges Simenon's most famous character, Maigret. It was a terrible mistake. They seemed to consist of white-grey tubing with the consistency of wet rubber. The meal I had on this evening in Arras was probably the one which I hated the most of all the food I ever ate in France. I always felt I should do things properly and have an aperitif but actually I dislike almost all drinks served as that, bar some kirs. On this occasion I had a Calvados which I disliked, though again I drank it as I felt I should fit in with how things should be done in France.

My nervousness with talking with women also strayed into my holiday. The woman mentioned in this account was in her 20s (I was 31 at the time) and sitting at one of the restaurant's outside tables. Reflecting on the situation, these days, I think she probably did not want to be bothered anyway and would have resented me trying to talk to her. Women in Britain envy those in France, able to dine alone without hassle, so I might have got myself into difficulty if I had spoken to her. Anyway my French was probably not up to sustaining a conversations. As it is, holidays as an adult have always been very solitary affairs and even when I have been with other people on holiday they have often been unwilling to compromise and do some of the things I like to do. One, even eight years on, is still angered, because, when in the Canaries I wanted to go cycling around the island and coming back from a day away from him and our mutual friend, I was apparently too noisy in those few minutes and so ruined his whole day of lying on the beach. I find it hard to accept that me talking for short time ruined hours of sunbathing, but there you are. I am not a competent holidaymaker and clearly worse when with other people.

Some people I would not have wanted to interact with. At 'Café Au Bureau' there was an East coast American woman and her grown up daughter at the next table. The waiter spoke excellent English but the woman assumed he spoke none and yet bombarded him with very rapid orders along the lines of 'I want lemonade, you know 7-Up, Sprite.' '7-Up?' He asked trying to write it down. 'Yes, two and with ice, and some bread and another napkin.' It went on in this vein. I leaned over and freaked them out because they assumed I did not speak English and in my best Noel Coward voice said 'when I want another napkin I simply, hold it up and say "encore"'. In fact that is the easiest way to get 'same again' in a French place and is not rude. By now it was comic that people assumed I spoke no English. Just getting on a bicycle seems to shave you of any British aspects that people associate with you. That might not be such the case if you are cycling in the Alps or the Pyrenees.

I remember trying to buy a can of coca cola from a small shop, perhaps the one with the white facade pictured below and asking for a 'boite'. We had been taught when I had learnt French formally in the early 1980s that that meant either box or can in French. Given that the French government was pressing traditional French on its population at the time, for example 'voiture' for car rather than 'auto', I stuck with 'boite' but found I was seen as being very old fashioned by the young shop assistant who referred to a 'can' sounding like 'canne' which means a rod, as in 'canne à pêche' which is an often-mentioned 'false friend' for British people learning French as it means 'fishing rod' and not 'tin of peaches' as we would expect.

Another thing I notice from these photos is how interested I was in architecture and I shot images of what seem to be quite mundane, often very boring streets, it seems now, simply because I was struck by the buildings. You can see examples here and in subsequent postings.

Thursday 17th June 1999

Today I woke early and after breakfast, dozed. Then I went around the town, changed some money, got stamps and postcards. I looked around La Musée des Beaux Arts which had a range of paintings and local artifacts as the area has been occupied since Roman times and garrisoned with German troops. They also had stone work and kites.

I had tagliatelle at 'Le Petit Théatre', it was rather watery. I wrote postcards there and at 'Café Au Bureau' waiting for the cathedral to open. I looked around that, it is really bright and airy.

I then went back to the town hall which I had visited before lunch to go up in the belfry. This time I arrived for the guided tour of the underground tunnels built in the Middle Ages and used and extended by the British and New Zealanders during the Great War as here we are close to the front. I chatted with two British men, a father whose uncles had died in the Great War and his son. They were impressed by my cycling exploits. I then came back to sleep.

After that I finished my cards and went to 'Le Restaurant La Rapière' rather posh but reasonable, though I wasted money on an aperitif and hated the first course, a smelly sort of sponge and generally felt uncomfortable. I did not talk to the beautiful Oriental woman dining alone, though I doubt I would have done in Britain. I must remember how old, fat faced and scary I appear to people.

Back at my room I packed, it is getting harder to fit in each time. I continue to worry, now about: getting to Rouen; whether I should stay at Beauvais; arriving in any town on a Sunday; whether I can get back if I run short of money. I am not cut out for this sort of thing. I should have stayed at home.

Weather: Sunny and warm, some cloud especially later.

The Exterior of La Musée des Beaux Arts in Arras, June 1999

Views of the Front of Arras Cathedral, June 1999

The Interior of Arras Cathedral, June 1999

View from the Beffroi of the Town Hall of the Place des Héros in Arras, June 1999

View of Arras Cathedral from the Beffroi of the Town Hall, June 1999

Buildings around the Place des Héros in Arras, June 1999

I have realised now why I took this photograph, the building on the right with the two white cars outside it is the hotel that I stayed in.

10 Years On - Part 3 of Account of Cycling Northern France

I remember leaving St. Omer without breakfast, despite having paid for it, because the staff bar, the maid told me, had not got up. Something similar happened in a place I stayed at in 2000. This was the day I was most mistaken for a Belgian. At 'La Coupole' museum which was a V2 base built by the Germans and looks like something out of a James Bond movie, they asked me (in French) if I wanted the tape recorded tour of the museum in my own language and when I said yes they gave it to me in Flemish. Fortunately I was able to retune it to get the English commentary.

The riding was not that tough and reading these accounts I seem a pitiful cyclist, worn out by some hills. I know from recent experiences on a bicycle that these days I cannot cycle even a a kilometre without getting nauseous, but in those days I had been doing 60Km trips on a Sunday. Years later I found that I had been making mistakes with handling my diabetes while on cycling holidays, but I do not think that explains how weak I seem to have been on these trips. I suppose I was driven by guilt more than pleasure in doing these holidays. Also I knew that I could afford nothing more expensive. When you are paying £50 per week rent and that is tough an expensive holiday was impossible, but I felt I had to have one. Looking at how unhappy I was afterwards though, I increasingly think I was wrong.

I remember struggling to clear one of the last hills before Arras and being overtaken by a teenager asking me why I was finding it so hard. I did have too much luggage, but he was right that I was very poor at my chosen hobby. A year later a more sympathetic elderly man overtook me on a lesser hill but was not derisory; discretion often comes with age, but he was probably thinking the same thing and I felt as low as on this earlier occasion.

One thing I have noticed in scanning in these pictures, is how few people appear in my photos. Arras, shown here, has a population of over 45,000 people and Amiens, featured in subsequent postings, has over 135,000 people. Yet my images seem to show these towns after an attack by a neutron bomb with most of human life wiped out! To some degree this shows how quiet French towns can still be even in June. Given that August is the month when most French holiday, this was not a time when most people were away and the schools had not even broken up, so these pictures are from normal days and evenings in these towns.


Wednesday 16th June 1999

Today I got up promptly and after paying the maid for the room left at 09.00. I knew the route would be long but not how hilly, almost immediately I was up and down hills. Most I could climb without getting off.

I took a side route to see 'La Coupole' the V2 launching base and looked around the interesting musem. I got sandwiches there for lunch so could keep on cycling.

After Therouanne it was a straight road but tough with a series of plateaux, the worst were at Ames and Divion so I simply got off and walked.

I managed to reach Arras at 16.00 and went to the tourist office. I had not seen places like yesterday in St. Omer though there were a couple. I was too exhausted to look so I went to 'Le Diamant' a 2-star place they recommended, right on the main square. It is 280F per night which seems standard for town hotels. Arras is a pretty town.

I showered and slept for ninety minutes. Then I walked around the town which has busy stretches and quiet streets. I ended up at a Tunisian restaurant just next to the hotel. My wander helped me get familiar with the town. The restaurant was 'Djerba La Douce'. I had a coffee outside the 'Café Au Bureau' then came back to read and watch television.

Weather: Sunny and very hot.

La Coupole near St. Omer, June 1999

Entrance to La Couple, June 1999

Ruins beside Road into Arras, June 1999

Place des Héros in Arras, June 1999

'Le Diamant' was to the right of the picture on the right-hand side of the road you can see leading off in that direction.

Details of the Town Hall in Arras, June 1999

Dutch-style Building Facade, Place des Héros in Arras, June 1999

Shop Fronts in Place des Héros in Arras, June 1999

Buildings around La Grand' Place in Arras, June 1999

Nick Griffin and the Poppy

You may have seen the open letter from the British Legion to Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP (British National Party) and now an MEP. For those who do not know, the BNP is Britain's largest Fascist party who believe that anyone who is not purely Caucasian cannot be British. Some members of the BNP have said that Griffin and his fellow MEP, Andrew Brons should not represent non-white constituents in their area. The BNP has labelled Dame Kelly Holmes, Olympic gold medal winner and a real role model in sport (and served in the British Army for a number of years) as not being British because she is of mixed-race origin. The BNP are happy for these people to die fighting to defend Britain's interests but will not give them the recognition of being British. The BNP refer to British citizenship as legal concept unrelated to what they see as the 'indigenous population'. As I have said before, that means expelling everyone who arrived since the Celts were dominant in the British Isles; Welsh/Gaelic/Cornish should become the national language.

This sense of the BNP that black, Asian and mixed race people are good enough to die for Britain but not good enough to be British comes particularly to the fore in Nick Griffin wearing the poppy. I accept that any person can wear the poppy symbol (and it is not the real flower, it is the plastic/paper ones produced by the British Legion to raise funds for disabled service people and their families) around the time of Remembrance Sunday in November, but in June and associated with an election it is wrong. Remembrance has always crossed all political boundaries. People might disagree about going into the particular wars but they do not disagree about the sacrifice. The vast bulk of people who have been maimed or died in Britain's wars have not been professionals, rather they have been ordinary people pressed into fighting and have generally died horribly and in a state of terror that few of us could comprehend. Griffin walking around with the poppy, clearly trying to draw some of the machismo associated with the armed forces to him, is incredibly offensive. We know that he views people's lives as having different values. He sees a white person's life as worth something and a black person's life as worthless. When that person is blown to pieces by a shell or a landmine in Afghanistan and their blood and bone is sprayed all over a road, can you tell whether that person was black or white or mixed race? A person defines themselves as of value by how they act not by whose legs they came past when being born. Everyone can take their lives far away from their roots or cling firmly to them; it is not pre-defined. What defines them as contributing to the UK or not is how they live their lives.

Fascists naturally assume that they have a monopoly on all the things they see as 'strong' notably patriotism and anything connected with the military. What they forget is that the bulk of patriots and certainly military personnel actually disagree with the stance people like the BNP take. If you are being shot at by insurgents in Basra, you are not going to check the colour of the skin of the men around you who are helping you stay alive. This is not to say that there are not patriots and military personnel who are racist, it is just to challenge the easy assumptions people like Griffin make about others views, based on their own perceptions of these things. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to give it, its full title means different things to many people but to the bulk of them, not the twist the BNP puts on it. To assume, 'oh yes, of course everyone in the British Legion must support our views, because they were in the military weren't they' is a massive error on the part of the BNP. They forget that hundreds of thousands of Britons died killing Fascists and Nazis and bringing down their regimes. The British Fascists took no part because they were imprisoned, rightly be suspect as potential traitors: that is the heritage of BNP not the real sacrifice of ordinary people in war to free the world of their brand of politics.

Nick Griffin's life is worthless. He simply brings misery wherever he goes. He insults the millions of men and women of so many ethnicities without which Britain would have suffered far more in its history than it did. The recent case of the Gurkhas shows that Britain possibly even more than any other country in the world has had armed forces drawn from an incredibly wide range of ethnic groups. Nick Griffin has no honour in him, because he cannot bring himself to honour non-white people who have fought to defend the country he pretends to love. I am glad that the British Legion have spoken publicly at him hijacking their symbol for his own sordid activities. They are honourable, they wrote to him privately first, but being the low-life that he is, he ignored them. Of course, Fascists are highly arrogant and believe the rest of us see the world wrongly. As they were shown in the Second World War, it is they who have the view of the world wrong and we need to be robust in emphasising that there can be no successful world if there is no tolerance of all the peoples living on it.

The Insidious Lethargy of Being Unemployed

Since I started this blog in May 2007 it seems that I have gone from one crisis to another. Back then I was in my third house in two years and was facing the pressure of a nasty landlord. Having resolved that and the shock of bills from Newham Council and the Inland Revenue for a flat I had bought in London in the 2000s which ate up more than a year's salary, I was looking forward to a period of a little calm in a house that I had jointly bought. Of course, I had not expected redundancy to appear. I suppose I cannot be blamed for not anticipating the recession given that so many apparently skilled economists did not predict it. I was more prescient that them in some ways and in late 2007/early 2008 was saying UK house prices would imminently fall sharply to the scepticism of estate agents who at the time had a shortage of properties to sell (it turned out in the branch of one that the bulk of the photos in the window were of properties that had already been sold) and being hounded by the landlord I had no choice but to buy the house at the peak of prices and get a fixed rate mortgage at what now looks like a madly high level of 5.98%. At that time interest rates were rising sharply and it was better than some rates I could have got. Of course, I did not realise I would be so short of cash that I would not be able to buy my way out of that deal when interest rates fell to levels that previously economists would have said were impossible. My car dying earlier this year did not help.

Anyway, I have characterised my approach to redundancy as like being in a very slow car crash. There were warning signs last August that I picked up on, which is why I attempted suicide. Having failed that, I was faced by the over-optimism of my boss and the woman in my house about my future where I am working. Of course, by February it was confirmed as mistaken optimism. I get redundancy pay of £1400 for four years' work. A friend of mine got £7500 for 21 years' work, so I suppose I cannot complain, but I think you should get a minimum of 1 month's salary. I know companies moan that they cannot afford it, but that is because in the UK they always hang on too long and fritter away the funds they need to lay people off. British workers are cheap, we only get 12 salary payments per year, not the 14 that they get in Belgium and yet companies here still seem incapable of actually factoring in labour costs to any of their calculations and see them as a soft element that they can squeeze. For some reason, their capital expenditure, they feel, is far harder to reduce.

Of course, I have struggling to stave off unemployment, but given the level I have reached, job applications are involved and I have spent coming up to 80 hours and written over 85,000 words in applications in the past four months, to no avail. What I have noticed is with my third failed interview (with no expenses for a round trip of 255 Km; no feedback on the interview either) the lethargy which comes with unemployment is already creeping on me. There is a great deal of weariness from the start on my part as I saw all the pain of unemployment back in the 1980s and hoped that it would never haunt the UK again in my lifetime. In terms of my personal circumstances I am constantly spiralling around all the elements of hindsight trying to find the time and place I should have done something different to avoid ending up here. Ceratinly buying a flat in London, especially in Newham and not selling it the minute I got work outside London was a huge error. The charges Newham Council levied (£14,000) for work to the estate could probably have been avoided if I had bought somewhere different. I should not have trusted the Inland Revenue's initial assessment of my capital gains tax, which was wrong by £10,000. However, even if, through selling the flat immediately I had escaped these charges it would have only lifted my financial burden now (I borrowed money to pay off these sums) and not made my work more settled. Given that I have so few savings because of the loan repayments (and through trying to not get into so much debt using savings rather than larger loans to settle the bills) I probably could financially stand be unemployed for longer than I will be this time, before my house is repossessed. In addition, life has been very spare throughout the past four years, constantly having to cut back. Now it has got to the extent that we are removing light bulbs around the house to cut down on electricity costs, but for the past four years there has been no going out and cheap holidays and now no holidays and a 12-year old car. I do not want the high life, but it has been wearing to have to scrimp for so long now with things clearly now going to get worse still rather than better.

The advertisements on the radio about 'finding your way back to work', as if you have somehow lost your way, not tossed on the scrapheap by greedy employers, emphasises how finding a job is a job in itself. Yet, anyone who is unemployed knows how difficult that is. Your energy and enthusiasm burns up easily especially as an unemployed person you fall immediately into that second-class citizen status 'enjoyed' by tenants, disabled people, etc. People feel they can despise you and look on you as lazy, despite the fact that mass unemployment has been a feature of life in the UK for the past thirty years. Apparently it affects men more than women. In my experience, which is limited, women seem to more miss the things they cannot have because they are unemployed, whereas for men sometimes there is a Spartan appeal about that, 'we can rough it' attitude that actually gives some spark. They say women are more used to shifts in their lives. Even now, the number of men who move house so that their female partner can get a better job are far smaller than the number of women who do the same for their male partners. Motherhood is an immense change that many women experience or have knowledge of through family and friends who have children and they know that it can turn your world upside down. The menopause is another thing that men do not have (or possibly they do, but it is not as apparent, certainly) and yet all women will experience.

Women are the mistresses of change, men prefer stability because with that comes a sense of self and actually self-importance. In an age when men seem obsolete this is even more important than before. The problem for men when losing their job is the associated loss of status and self-respect and I am already feeling that, at times it is an almost physical thing as if someone literally is trying to castrate me, I feel it in my testicles. It seems mad, but it is the truth. Loss of self-respect is immediate and leaves a legacy of fear in you even when you get another job. Employers were worrying last year, that this fear in their workers had subsided too much, they wanted the return of the 'whip of unemployment' and must be delighted that they have got it back.

The cry 'get a job' is not as common as in the 1980s, but the sense that the unemployed person is still unemployed because they are 'not trying hard enough' is an enduring one. It is tiring constantly applying for jobs, lowering your expectations further and further in what you apply for. I accept that people must be 'actively seeking employment' to be entitled to benefit, but they seem to get absolutely no recognition for all the effort they put in unless it leads them into work. Back in the 1990s 24 out of 25 of the applications I submitted did not get me an interview, 125 out of 126 applications did not get me a job. So far 0 out of 20 applications has got me a job. Yet, there is no recognition of the days that have gone into that work. The incessant nature of looking for and applying for jobs is a real burden, then facing taunts from people on top of it is sometimes impossible to cope with. Such things just feed the sense of 'why bother?' and 'there's no point'. If 80 hours of applying can get me no work who is to say 160 hours or 800 hours of applications will. Yet, I have to keep trying despite my mental and physical exhaustion. People seem to expect someone who is being made redundant to work hard (in fact harder because there is so much to tie up) until their very last day. However, that is ridiculous. Putting aside bloody-mindedness at an employer who has snubbed you, there is the exhaustion as you now have two jobs, the one for your employer and the one assigned you very vocally by the government, of finding another job.

I am beginning to think I cannot go through this again and regret failing to kill myself last year. I think I could be clear of yet another round of humiliation and mind-numbing process with no end in sight. Of course I will be chastised by those people who say absolutely absurd things like 'you make your own luck' (I am proof that that is a lie, however hard I work, however many precautions I take thing after thing goes wrong for me in every aspect of my life: house, car, job, relationships, health, holidays, computer, there is not an aspect which is not blighted by bad luck and I would have had to be omnisicent to have foreseen the bad consequences of so many actions which at the time seemed the best option) and that I must work to find work, because it offends them that anyone might find the process exhausting and somehow that is morally bankrupt in their eyes. Looking back at my story 'Technido', I am sickened to think that once again we are going through all of this rubbish we had in the 1980s once more. So I drag myself through yet more applications and beg people to be more understanding about just how unpleasant, how tiring and soul-sapping it is to be unemployed. It is not our fault, go and moan at the employers who laid us off, shout at them 'get a conscience', rather than making our lives more unpleasant by portraying us as lazy pariahs.

10 Years On - Part 2 of Account of Cycling Northern France

One thing that comes back from reading these accounts is how often I got lost cycling and wasted so much time especially entering and leaving large towns. The other interesting phenomenon of this part of the trip was just how many cyclists I met in this area between Dunkerque and St. Omer. One time when I stopped to consult my map (partly for a rest) at a crossroads, in a matter of moments six cyclists coming from the different directions stopped to help me out. Farmers would shout out 'Bon Route!' from the fields as I passed. Cafe owners expected me to come back through there sometime in the future, though I found later that was because they thought I was Belgian rather than British. This area of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departements run up to the border with Belgium. In those days there were two currencies, the French Franc (worth about 10FF:£1) and the Belgian Franc (worth about 80BF:£1), so it would have been far harder simply to cross the border than it is these days with the Euro in both.

The Logis hotels and restaurants are an association of establishments with a high quality of food and reasonable prices. They were a little out of my price range in 1999 though came into it in subsequent years. I carried far too many guidebooks on this trip none of which I used and one of them listed the Logis outlets. I was pleased with myself in St. Omer where I startled some British schoolboys in a postcard shop by suddenly speaking to them in English and helping them out to buy their postcards. However, later in 'Le Seven' I was rather changrined when a party of three Midlands businessmen and their wives, seemingly stereotypical of the middle management of many British companies revealed very fluent French to the extent that they were joking in that language with the proprietor. It shook up my middle class, Home Counties assumptions.

Interesting is my fear that I would be unable to find anywhere to stay each evening. Given how early it was in the season and the price range that I was willing to consider I should have been more relaxed. However, it reminds me of how terrified I was of things going wrong in the 1990s and on this holiday often expected to have to sleep in a field. I cannot believe I actually quoted the very naff single 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)' by Australian director Baz Luhrmann (born 1962) though it did reach Number 1 in the UK charts in 1999.  Niewlet is actually Nieurlet.


Tuesday 15th June 1999

Today I woke early and breakfasted at 08.00 and chatted with two Australians heading off to Brussels. I then dozed before setting off at 09.00. I took some photos around the town and found my way out of it, South along the canal, without problem. Coming up to Berques the diversion threw me out a bit and I had to navigate around the villages to get the right route.

There were a lot of serious racing cyclists out training who wished me luck or gave directions. I encountered my first hills and got a great view over the valley. I turned off the road outside St. Omer and had a light lunch in a village called Niewlet.

I got to St. Omer at 13.00 and feel a bit of a cheat as I was only cycling for a few hours. Tomorrow it is much farther to Arras. If it gets tough I may stop at Bruay or Béthune which are nearer. I came along the canal and around the centre seeing some British coaches, the first British vehicles I have seen since leaving Calais harbour and there were school parties in town. I followed the signs to the hotel district and was tempted to stop at a Logis, not one in Dad's book, but went on and found a room above a bar, single but very clean and cheap.

I showered, then wandered around the town. It is very typically French with old alleys and buildings. I spent much of the afternoon in the main square doing postcards and drinking Diet Coke. I looked around the cathedral then returned to my room and slept for two hours.

I just hope I can find a place as simply tomorrow, especially arriving later. As the Baz Luhrmann record says "do one thing every day which scares you". This holiday is up to scratch so far.

I returned to the same restaurant 'Le Seven' this evening and had fish soup to start then a huge bowl of mussels. I came home through very quiet streets and read and finished postcard writing.

Weather: Sunny and hot.

Old Lighthouse in Dunkerque, June 1999

Roadside Chapel on Route from Dunkerque to St. Omer, June 1999

Alleyway in St. Omer, June 1999

My mother particularly likes photos of alleyways so I had a tendency to take pictures like this wherever I went even though often they would end up as not particularly good photographs.

Church Spire in St. Omer, June 1999

Dutch-style Roof Facade in St. Omer, June 1999

Bas-relief on Palais de Justice in St. Omer, June 1999

Road over Bridge in St. Omer, June 1999

The reason for this photo is that I stayed in the bar which is the white building with the dark grey roof to the left-hand side of the road. Note the young cyclists in matching cycle helmets.

Views from my Bedroom Window in St. Omer, June 1999

10 Years On - Part 1 of Account of Cycling Northern France

As I mentioned last August when I did '20 Years On' from my Inter-rail journey around West Germany and Austria, I have always been rather envious of those people who have blogs in which they recount their great travels and fill them with wonderful photographs of the places they have been. As anyone who has read this blog knows, my attempts to even go on a mundane holiday have generally ended in very troublesome failure. Now finding money short and my employment future uncertain it seems that as in the 1990s (when I had four weeks of holiday in nine years) trips will be a rarity for me. Given my bad luck, it might be sensible to leave it that way. However, I did feel that I could capture a little of the excitement of having a travelblog by digging out accounts of former holidays. I have kept a diary every day since 1st January 1978, so can dig out accounts of my trips and combine them with the numerous photographs I have taken over the years. What follows over the next few days is just that, reproducing my cycling trip which occurred on these days, 10 years ago.

All the written entries are from my diary of the time and the pictures have been scanned in from photographs I took on the journey. This was the first of three cycling trips I made around northern France 1999-2002 and even on these I ran into some problems, though they were generally pleasurable events that I look back on with affection. The trip was a real break from life living above a chip shop in East London. It was a tough time for me. I noted a few days after getting back from the trip that I sent in my 71st job application since the previous December, so, some things never change! It just takes a lot longer to complete the applications these days.

Some elements of the account bear elaboration. I only had half an A4 page in my diary for each day's events so I had to pick what I included originally. The 'ructions' at Dover Priory Station was when on a deserted platform I parked my bicycle, heavily laden with luggage in front of the disabled toilet, because I had been unable to make it stand up against a pillar when I popped into the gentlemen's toilet and a railway official shouted at me and the bicycle fell over to the ground disrupting the finely balanced panniers. He stormed off, but it upset me. Other incidents I do not mention in the account are dropping all my medicines trying to buy a ticket from the machine at Waterloo East station and being at the wrong end of the platform there, because the train had two guard's vans and I had been told to wait near the front of the train, but in fact it was the rear one that was in operation and I had to run the length of the platform wheeling my bicycle so that I did not miss the train.

The bar I stopped in on the way to Dunkerque was incredible. It certainly looked over 70 years old. The drinks were on a shelf, not refrigerated. There was just an elderly man standing at the bar and the elderly barmaid. The bar was full of old furniture including an ancient table football set. Riding into Dunkerque I found myself on a dual carriageway, which being on a bicycle I thought was illegal so I hauled my bicycle and luggage out of a cutting and up to the smaller road running parallel which a short way on simply merged with the dual carriageway. I was to do something similarly foolish in 2002 on the way to Pacy-sur-Eure. Staying at the youth hostel overnight I found myself without any water, the drinks machine had been switched off, the taps and shower had stopped working and being so thirsty I was forced to flush the toilet and drink water from the bowl.


Monday 14th June 1999

Today I woke early but did not get up until 07.00. After breakfast I went to Waterloo East, difficult to reach as you have to come through the main station. They only had ticket machines but fortunately I had the right notes. The train left at 09.33. I had to change guard's van at Ashford. I started reading 'Shōgun' on the train. Despite some ructions at Dover Priory station I got aboard the ferry with only problems with my front luggage.

The crossing was very smooth. We arrived in France at 14.30 local time. I got lost in Calais but eventually got on the way to Dunkerque by the back roads and passed through beautiful countryside in fine weather. I had a quick Orangina in a bar/petrol station out of the 1930s.

More difficulty when I got into Dunkerque, a sprawling port town. The maps did not reflect the complexities of the town. I found it difficult to find the way through the suburbs to the centre. Eventually I reached the the youth hostel overlooking the beach, it was very quiet.

I showered and set off to look for dinner. There are a range of places along the beach. It was great to promenade and eat overlooking the sea in sunshine eating at the "L'Orphie".

I have spoken quite a bit of French but people launch into complex responses then think me terse when I cannot reply, but there has been little recourse to English. I need to brush up more phrases. I surprised a German family at the hostel addressing them in German.

I am drinking Orangina non-stop for energy and refreshment. I may eat my way through my money, the meal contrasted with today's stress. Finding somewhere tomorrow may prove even worse. However, it is a surprise that I got here at all. I will just have to take each day as it comes.

Weather: Sunny and hot.

View West along Dunkerque Beach, June 1999

Notice the 'Mole', the pier along which many British and French soldiers reached ships when escaping in 27th May -4th June 1940.

View East along Dunkerque Beach, June 1999

Dangerous Days for British Politics?

Well, I finally got to look at the European election results. They are probably the worst guide to what will happen in a general election than any other results because the system used differs so far from the electoral system used in all other elections in Great Britain (though not Northern Ireland). However, it is a good indicator of trends and attitudes. To some extent it has not revealed any particular disgust with politicians as the turnout at 35% is the same as it always is for European elections and shows the extent to which most people in the UK see no connection to what goes on in the European Parliament to their everyday lives, though they will whinge about the limits on working hours and the nature of their fruit. Of course, it is the European Commission and the thorough application by all UK governments (whether Conservative, even under Thatcher or Labour) of all EU regulations.

The UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) now have 13 MEPs, the same as Labour. There have been abortive attempts at parties which plan to get the UK out of the EU, notably the Referendum Party, but UKIP for all its problems has been the only one which has managed to grow. They have no MPs and are unlikely to get them with the system we use in our general elections, so there will be a disjuncture between our national parliament even after the next election, and our European representation. It is weird that a party that wants nothing to do with Europe will now have its members heavily involved there. What alarms me, and was apparent from the UKIP publicity, which in the areas I visit exceeded that of all the other parties combined in terms of quantity, is that effectively they are an extreme right-wing, nationalist party and given their views on 'protecting UK borders' they are like a light version of the BNP (British National Party) which itself has moved on from referencing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to more racialist viewpoints. UKIP's discriminatory policies have now added a bridge between the right-wing of the Conservative Party and the BNP and most dangerously are another party for whom spouting such bigotry is normal.

Of course, as Channel 4 News highlighted last night, the support for the BNP (British National Party), who got two MEPs (and importantly the money that brings), came from old traditional Labour voters. This is not a new phenomenon, you only have to look at early support for the Nazi Party in Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. This was an important constituency for them, and you have people moving between the Communists (KPD) and Nazis (NSDAP) quite often, sometimes depending on what social facilities each party could offer. The fact that extreme left and extreme right meet is something long known. If you reject democracy, it then simply comes down to emphasis on which groups you are going to attack. What is interesting to consider is where votes came from for UKIP. Some it is clear came from the BNP whose share of the vote actually fell. The only reason why Nick Griffin got in as an MEP is because support for Labour fell too. This is precisely what I said about each individuals vote counting far more when turnout is low (and in this case turnout from particular voters). I said this on the day and many Labour voters need to feel ashamed that they allowed the far right to get such a bridgehead because they did not get out and vote. As the turnout itself maintained, this suggests Labour voters were also replaced by extreme right-wing voters who in the past would not have voted at a European Parliament election. Interestingly, in contrast to France and Germany where the extreme left have done well, there is no sign of that in the UK. Perhaps we need something stronger on the left than Scargill's Socialist Labour Party or certainly have a different leader with more credibility.

We have always had people opposed to the EU. Personally I think it is a good idea which sometimes works imperfectly and the way to bring about change is not to turn your back on it, but engage more and get efficiency in how it works. On a purely selfish basis, myself and many members of my extended family have benefited directly from the EU (especially those of my family who are farmers) and we would all be worse off if the UK had stayed out. However, millions of UK citizens benefit from the EU and never notice. If the UK left the EU a lot of labour and social legislation we enjoy the benefits of would be under threat, the price of many goods would rise immediately, especially food items (the UK has long been a food importer) and actually UK farming would suffer immensely as it would be outside its largest market. Of course we could put up stronger barriers to Polish workers coming to the UK, but that is as much about employers tempting them here with low wages (though higher than in Poland) and using even illegal immigrants especially in the boom of 1994-2007. If employers had paid decent wages and not tried to squeeze out even more millions of profits then this issue would not have risen. British nationalists like the BNP and UKIP seem to believe that there is something inherently attractive about the UK compared to other countries. There is the element that we speak English which is commonly learnt in many countries, but if employers had not been drawing on immigrant workers then they would have gone somewhere that was. It is about economics, but of course for the far right they ignore all that and think it is some mystical force.

The real danger now is that the language of the far right has become legitimate. I heard Andrew Brons, the other BNP MEP, talking on Channel 4 News last night about the 'indigenous people' of the UK (which in fact are the Celts, but he meant anyone white) as if this was a legitimate term. He dismissed the word 'racist' as being invented by a Trotskyite in the 1930s, as if that made it invalid (and in fact he seems to be ignorant of where his own views originated from in the biological racialism that developed in the 1860s) and was not challenged on his statement. Now that the BNP has a platform I can only hope that people will see how foolish so many of their statements are. However, where they succeed is by making their extreme views seem 'normal'. Again in the interview, Brons said that expelling failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants was a given as if that had already been resolved. The UK expels many of these people anyway, but there is no sense that represents thousands of personal disasters and deaths that the UK government contributes to on a daily basis.

Most alarming they do not consider anyone who is non-white to be able to be British. I have not heard how they view the 700,000 mixed race people in the UK. Of course, supposedly liberal West Germany maintained the law that only those with two German parents could ever vote. They also tried deporting delinquent children (aged 14+) of second generation Turkish settlers to Turkey a country they had never visited (naturally Turkey refused to take them). Finally Germany was compelled to remove this racist law that dated back to 1913. However, it shows how easy it is for racist policies to exist even in the 2000s when all of us go on diversity training. I know people who lived in South Africa in the apartheid era and what people forget is in fact the regime affected everyone badly. Of course blacks got it worse, but everyone in South Africa of whatever ethnicity had to be classified and if suddenly you were reclassified you found yourself excluded from certain services. Such an approach as in Nazi Germany immediately leads to corruption of public services and inefficiency. Of course the identity card system envisaged for the UK will play right into the hands of the far right. One reason why it has not advanced is because of how difficult it is and how costly. An apartheid system will be far worse. Also people forget a key reason why South Africa ended apartheid was not political but economic, you cannot bring the best out of all your citizens if you put them into different boxes and enforce segregation. The UK transport system is in a dire situation, imagine if you had to have 'whites only' carriages. The UK is too inter-twined with Europe to be divorced and its population is too inter-twined to try to bring about some artificial segregation.

British society has always been full of bigots and racists. It also has people like my grandfather (a life-long Labour supporter) who grumbled about 'the darkies' but always complimented how hard working the Asian woman next door and the black men he worked with were and could never see the fact that these people made up the group he saw as the 'darkies'. Any group in society is made up of individuals that we know. Whereas last week bigots may have bitten their lip now they feel they can speak out and that is going to lead quickly to millions of individual tragedies as they feel heartened by the election result and the sense that the views of UKIP and BNP are held widely and legitimate. We cannot now avoid race riots in the coming months. The UK is going to become a very unpleasant place whatever colour you are, especially if you live in a city. We can only pray for a rainy summer rather than a hot one otherwise it will make 1981 look like a picnic in the park. All good people need to constantly contest racist behaviour and use the term 'racist' when we see it otherwise we are going to be living in a country of armed camps.

Clearly both UKIP and BNP have not thought anything about the economy. I have mentioned how employers have driven economic migration by their desire for cheap labour. However, if we even begin moving towards far-right policies then the economy will suffer immediately. People forget why West Indian and Asian immigration was encouraged in the 1950s (and the same applies to Turkish, Yugoslav and Italian immigration into Germany) it was to fill labour shortages especially in the service sector (which of course has become the dominant sector of our economy since 1974) and to start intimidating and removing people in those industries is going to send the UK economy rapidly back into the 1970s. Hospitals would close, shops in many towns would disappear, the transport sector would be cut back. The UK has had immigration for over 2000 years, to try and rip out certain people from UK society is going to be like cutting off an arm because it happens to be your right one.

The fight against racism now has to be stepped up a gear. We need to work to squeeze the bridgehead the bigots have established and challenge their behaviour so that it does not become 'normal', it is always abnormal and abhorrent. Of course, if the Conservatives win the next general election, their policies will be infected by the rhetoric of the hard right, partly because they have very few policies anyway; there is no indication of how they would have dealt with the credit crunch, the bank collapses or the MPs expenses scandals at all. Of course, disillusion with MPs is at its peak and this is a golden opportunity for extreme parties to play on that, as Hitler did in the early 1930s. The price for their success will be a very high one for the UK economy, British society and millions of individuals to pay.