This is Eurostar en route to Paris. The lady from Wimbledon is vainly asking for a pot of real tea and has settled for that other Home Counties standby, the Gin and Tonic. The train is tres en retard as 'the train in front has a problem' apparently. But after a bit of bumping and boring we barge past and are, in the end, only un peu en retard=slightly late running as National Express would insist for anything under 90 minutes late. Then there is the queue at Le Guichet to surmount-5 Japanese travelling together going to 5 different destinations and have neither French nor English between them-the Guichet Clerk is not put out-proceeds in her sweet slow way, rattling on in fluent French (naturellement) and sends them all off to Versailles which closed two hours ago. Mal chance! Then the Hell of Chatalet Les Halles-Line A has temporally been mislaid and finally, very finally, the haven of St Germain en Laye. Le Nouveaux Huttonian est arrive

One tip for National Express-model your 'customer announcements' on Eurostar, Short and to the point. And make them bilingual. When in France Eurostar uses French first, then heavily accented English. How about Scotch and English? For full Eurostar effect the Scotch announcements should be made by a Cockney

with a very bad cold

Labels: France

  ¶ 8:32 AM