Best of friends

I was looking for the Palace of the Kings of Mallorca, and lost my bearings in the maze of narrow side streets that comprises the old quarter of Perpignan. In a street so narrow I could span it with outstretched arms, a youth on a motorbike roared past me doing a wheelie. Further up the street, a man relaxing in the doorway of a stationery shop was happy to direct me.

‘English?’ he said, wanting to talk. I admitted as much. He nodded towards a portable TV set on the counter just inside his shop. On the screen, in glorious sunshine, the band of the Grenadier Guards was marching down the Champs-Elysées playing ‘Rule Britannia’. It was the annual Bastille Day parade and the Guards had been invited, presumably, to mark the centenary of the Entente Cordiale. It was impossible to watch those glossy bearskins in the Champs-Elysées without fantasising that, while I had been wandering the Pyrenees, Mr Blair had successfully risked his political career on an invasion.

‘Entente Cordiale, pah!’ said the stationer. ‘Our countries have always been the best of friends — in spite of what the politicians or your press think.’ To illustrate the strength of that historic friendship, he shook hands warmly with himself. ‘And as for your Sun newspaper and its crazy antagonism,’ he went on, ‘it’s a pile of rubbish.’ ‘Ah, but what you must understand,’ I said, ‘is that we in Britain value humour more than intelligence.’ ‘The Sun’s insults are supposed to be humorous?’ said the stationer. ‘I don’t believe it.’ ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Belligerence makes us laugh.’