Reluctantly I leave Pietrasanta and Studio Sem and drive home.
I stop for the night near Milan with my friends Alessandro and Gaia. They pity my language skills and dress my toe. I set off in the snow.
Rain everywhere and the car is burning oil. The Swiss border guard looks like a cross between Raquel Welch and Michael Schumacher and wants 35 Euros to use the roads. When I finally agree to pay, a more benign guard appears to take the cash. Raquel is just there to intimidate.
The route turns westerly towards France and I consider heading further up through Switzerland to get the most out of my 35 Euros. But not for long. The only map I have is the sat nav. So, after stocking up on chocolate, I head into France.
Think about doing the trip in one day, but it is raining again - heavier now, as though it means it. So I slow to a crawl and watch the eta on the sat nav crank up the minutes. Then an hour.
I stop in Laon and guided by my wife on the phone and online, head for the Hotel des Arts. Well there is a misnomer if ever there was one. Hotel des Burgers and Frites might have been more apt. But it is clean and the proprietor congratulates me on my French which makes me like him instantly.
Downtown Laon looks like a pit;
but, like Peterborough, there is a cathedral.
I head up there and find the tiny streets cloaked in the mist left by the rain.
Damp air soaks up the light from the kettledrum floods that circle the cathedral. Apart from the obligatory small dog and lady, there is only one other person around. An amateur photographer with five lenses and a tripod. My phone camera looks ludicrous. But the lo-fi look in these captures the mood perfectly.
I eat in the cool and empty pizza restaurant...the one right next door to the fully booked family bistro. Vive la France.
As it turned out, I slept particularly well at Chez Burger.
I set off for the channel tunnel up through the flat lands made famous by World War I. There is little in this landscape to distract you from thoughts of those poor buggers shovelled, by the thousand, into sprays of machine gun fire. I tootle along counting my blessings at never having been to war.
If you haven't driven under the channel you have to give it a try. After the considerate and not at all vulgar funneling through duty free, the adventure begins. You drive into one end of a long railway train and carry on through until parked by a steward. Once stationary, each four cars or so are separated into carriages by automatic doors. All manoeuvres are directed by ladies in giant reflective jackets. You then slither under the sea for 30 minutes, emerge on the other side and, once the doors slide back, drive off. Magic. However, I have half an hour to ask myself ..why are the stewards all female and is there some mystical parity between them and the 'come hither'maidens at Staglieno? And how would I do it differently if I were running this?
Well in the first place,I would dress the stewards in togas and rags and have them beckon rather than direct passengers into the carriages. Inside the train, I would replace all signage and windows with images and memorabilia of French and British ancestors. No one in particular.
Flexiplus is Chunnel business class and, apart from the temporary boost to self-esteem, it confers certain privileges: flexible turning-up times, a parking spot at duty free and a special, slightly wider, lane for boarding. In the new world, Flexiplus passengers might expect to have their own ancestors displayed in the carriages.
And then the train arrives in the UK. I break open a bar of the Swiss chocolate for comfort. It is still sticky from being too close to the heater on the drive up. The cars in front of me suddenly move. As I hurry to start up and jerk forward, a square of chocolate falls into the footwell...moving gingerly, I feel around for it, fish it out and, as the car emerges into the light, see that it is caked in marble dust.
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