In Tom Fort’s book Channel Shore about England’s southern coast he points out that whereas we call the sea that separates us from France the English Channel, the French call it merely La Manche. Which translates as “the sleeve.”
Fort asserts that this because we romanticise our Englishness and apply a defiant psychology to our island’s borders which have been invaded throughout history by conquering armies like the Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans; and non-conquering armies like the Germans.
The migrants camping in Calais desperately hoping to cross the Channel have friendlier intentions, but they are held back by international laws preventing their safe passage.
On Saturday there was a demonstration at Place de Republique here in Paris, one of several across Europe showing solidarity with the refugees and asking governments to do more to help.
I should have worn a t-shirt saying “I’m a migrant too.” Last week we migrated to France on a gruelling trip but one with the comfort of legitimacy.
We left England in a car weighed down with immense piles of luggage in the kind of rain usually reserved for bank holidays. The windscreen wiper settings on my newly acquired Ford Fiesta were not enough to deal with the deluge.
At Folkestone Eurotunnel terminal we were simply waved through the French border control. (French customs officers check passports in Britain and vice versa.) I held up our passports and the officer just said “ok”, smiling. It was a friendly, trusting gesture demonstrating the entente cordiale and ease of passage afforded EU citizens. His cordiality was misguided though. As I began to pull away my girlfriend reminded me that her Trini passport needed a stamp on the visa page. I reversed. Whoops-a-daisy.
On the French side the sun was shining and we hit the motorway listening to the French hip hop station Skyrock which censored out the swearing on the French rap records but allowed the obscenities on Rihanna’s Bitch Better Have My Money, including the N word, to go uncensored.
On the outskirts of Paris I pulled over to fill up the empty tank and almost confused diesel (“gazole”) for petrol (“essence”.)
We then parked up on a quiet side street and waited for a call from Canada’s biggest radio station, CBC Radio One, for whom I had agreed to do a radio interview about an article I had written for Vice in which I called for air shows to be banned after the Shoreham crash, where an old jet plane attempting to do a loop-the-loop crashed onto a motorway killing 11 people.
Having debated the rights and wrongs of aerobatic displays with Mark Miller, an aviation enthusiast from Vancouver, I pushed on to Paris and eventually found our charming little street tucked away just yards from the beating heart of Montmartre and its fashionable locals and eager tourists.
Hauling suitcases up three sets of stairs we could hear an opera singer practising through an open window.
Later, as evening crept in, the courtyard outside our apartment came to life as lights went on in windows, French chatter wafted across the air, a child played their recorder, people leant out of windows to smoke cigarettes and the old lady opposite fed a pigeon on her balcony. I had the snug, surrounded feeling of living on a council estate (something I’ve always wanted to experience) but in a historic 19th-century courtyard in Montmartre.
The architecture of the area is fabulous. The locals are trendy but not pretentious. Cars and motorbikes are rare. Cafes are abundant. And instead of the shy English reserve I’m used to, here people take you all in. The French aren’t afraid to look. It is considered a compliment, not rudeness.
Waiting for our washing to dry in a local launderette we went for a stroll, turned a corner and saw the magnificent domes of the basilica of Sacre Coeur cathedral. We sat on a bench looking up at it and giggling at the tourists, already imbued with the arrogance that we are home, not holidaying.
A few minutes’ walk down the hill is Pigalle with the historic Moulin Rouge and naughty sex shops.
The Metro system, meanwhile, is a gift that keeps on giving. Not merely for its cheapness but because it’s an anthropologist’s dream; watching the type of people that get on in the different quarters and suburbs, their clothes, their smiles, their perfumes (occasionally eau de sweat.)
On one ride a drunk man roused from his slumber and asked two ladies for the time. “Six heures,” they replied. “Ce soir ou matin?” he enquired, and the carriage laughed.
Laws and regulations are less strict than in London. People jump the barriers without tickets and you see no traffic wardens handing out parking tickets.
I hope, however, that my Ford Fiesta will be fine where I have parked it in “les banlieues” a train ride away, where it is free to park.
On the morning I left it there, in a place called Saint-Ouen, the neighbourhood seemed peaceful with just a few mums pushing kids in prams and old-timers shooting the breeze. When we returned late afternoon to collect a few things the police rounded up and searched some local kids who had called out warnings to each other as the van pulled up.
The adventure has begun.