as if afraid of disturbing my wakeful slumber. I think it may have been some time since she had sold a Virgin-Mary-with-Seashells Occasional Light. In any case, as the shop door shut behind me, I distinctly heard a whoop of joy.
Afterwards, to celebrate, I called in for a coffee at a popular cafe on the rue de Gaston Papin et Autres Dignitaires Obscures. Indoors, Calais seemed much more agreeably Gallic. People greeted each other with two-cheeked kisses and wreathed themselves in blue smoke from Gauloises and Gitanes. An elegant woman in black across the room looked uncannily like Jeanne Moreau having a quick fag and a Pernod before playing a funeral scene in a movie called La Vie Drearieuse. I wrote a postcard home and enjoyed my coffee, then passed the hours before dusk waving in a friendly but futile way at the bustling waiter in the hope of coaxing him back to my table to settle my modest account.
I dined cheaply and astonishingly well at a little place across the road - there is this to be said for the French: they can make chips -drank two bottles of Stella Artois in a cafe, where I was served bya Philippe Noiret lookalike in a slaughterhouse apron, and retired early to my modest hotel room, where I played with my seashell Madonna for a bit, then got into bed and passed the night listening to cars crashing in the street below.
In the morning, I breakfasted early, settled my bill with Gerard Depardieu - now there was a surprise - and stepped out to another promising day. Clutching an inadequate little map that came with my ferry ticket, I set off in search of the ferry terminus. On the map it looked to be quite near by, practically in the town centre, but in reality it was a good two miles away at the far end of a bewildering wasteland of oil refineries, derelict factories, and acres of waste ground strewn with old girders and piles of jagged concrete. I found myself squeezing through holes in chainlink fences and picking my way between rusting railway carriages with broken windows. I don't know how other people get to the ferry at Calais, but I had the distinct feeling that no-one had ever done it this way before. And all the while I walked I was uncomfortably aware - actually in a whimpering panic - that departure time was drawing nigh and that the ferry terminus, though always visible, never seemed to get any closer.
Eventually, after dodging across a dual carriageway and clambering up an embankment, I arrived breathless and late and looking like someone who'd just survived a mining disaster, and was hustled aboard a shuttle bus by an officious woman with a serious case of dysmenorrhoea. On the way, I took stock of my possessions and discovered with quiet dismay that my beloved and costly Madonna had lost her halo and was shedding seashells.
I boarded the ship perspiring freely and with a certain disquiet. I'm not a good sailor, I freely admit. I get sick on pedalos. Nor was I helped by the fact that this was one of those Ro-Ro ferries (short for roll on, roll over) and that I was entrusting my life to a company that had a significantly less than flawless record when it came to remembering to shut the bow doors, the nautical equivalent of forgetting to take off your shoes before getting into the bath.
The boat was chock-a-block with people, all of them English. I spent the first quarter of an hour wandering around wondering how they had got there without getting filthy, inserted myself briefly into the shell-suited mayhem that was the duty-free shop and as quickly found my way out again, strolled around the cafeteria with a tray looking at the food and then put the tray back (there was a queue for this), searched for a seat among hordes of dementedly lively children, and finally found my way out onto the breezy deck where 274 people with blue lips and dancing hair were trying to convince themselves that because the sun was shining they couldn't possibly be cold. The wind whipped our anoraks with a sound like gunshot, scooted small children along the deck and, to everyone's private gratification, tipped a styrofoam cup of tea onto a fat lady's lap.
Before long, the White Cliffs of Dover rose from the sea and began creeping towards us and in no time at all, it