December 26 2000
On Boxing Day in Britain, all essential organs are paralysed, as if the spinal cord of the country has been hit by a curare dart. In France, they do things differently: in Beauvais, about 60km from Paris, it's possible to get a train or a bus or to see a doctor for a consultation. A friend who is staying with us has developed a painful eruption on her face. I agree to act as interpreter and take her to a pharmacy.
There are at least four in the centre of this small town. In the one we choose, they are keen to dispense advice, to phone to make an appointment for my friend to see a doctor, and to draw a map showing directions: " Allez tout droit à Burton's ." Burton's, the tailor, now all but extinct in Britain, acts as our lighthouse.
After a short wait, the examination is done and the diagnosis delivered: it's " le zona " - shingles. After consulting what looks like her exam notes, she makes a long list of ointments and antibiotics. The fee: 115F (£11), accompanied by an insurance claim form. We get the drugs and another claim form from the pharmacy, cost (it's the antibiotics): 875F.
We have a long conversation about the differences between medical services in France and Britain. None of us knows how the French medical system works. Presumably the doctor's bill and prescription costs are reclaimable. We are certain of only one thing: in Britain we would still be sitting in a casualty department.
Later a spontaneous focus group led by the younger members of our party (mostly in their 20s) discusses: is France better than Britain? The virtues of France are construed as follows: it's cleaner, they play better football, the trains stay on the rails, they make champagne and foie gras (this is a very non-PC group), every small town has a market, they are courteous, they present food stylishly, they wrap things artfully in shops, they have Asterix and a foreign policy which isn't sycophantically pro-American. It's also possible to get a good four-course meal and copious wine for £30 a head. Why is almost everything cheaper in France than in Britain?
The bad things are poor graphic design, hyper-kitsch flower arrangements, terrible TV, worse pop, Serge Gainsbourg (shouldn't he be on both lists?), odious lapdogs carried like parcels, unavailability of fresh milk, bad handwriting, reluctance to allow pedestrians to cross the road, and racism. This is followed by a complaint that France is too full of French people, and, as an afterthought, that France is too full of English people.
But, I say, what's good about Britain? We have good road signs, proper breakfasts, good meat, cheese, bread, Cornish pasties, beautiful countryside, hedgerows, impressive public ceremonies, even temperament, and an extraordinarily supple language and rich literature. And that seems to be it. I'm beginning to see why John Major ended up extolling warm beer and old ladies bicycling to evensong, and why car boot sales featured in the Dome's Self-Portrait section. But what we don't have, says my wife, is this: we don't speak up for ourselves. We don't know who we are.
December 27
The next day I see little evidence to doubt the strength of the French identity in the forest of Compiègne, where there is a memorial which commemorates the signing of the first world war armistice. The forest, which concealed a network of railway tracks and heavy artillery installations, was cleared for the train of the allied forces commander, Marshal Foch, and a train for the German deputation. The dining car in which the signing took place (or a copy) is inside a small museum and contains the table across which Foch forced the Germans to plead for an armistice.
Also in the museum are hundreds of photographs of the war viewed through stereo viewers in 3D. Outside the museum, through a mist, we can see two railway lines bowing outwards, either side of a monolithic granite slab which celebrates in huge letters the victory of the allies over the "proud and arrogant German Empire". It was these words and the humiliating terms of the armistice that drew Hitler to this spot to demand the French surrender in 1940. He ordered the historic railway carriage to be taken to Berlin and the entire site was ransacked. After the war, the French restored the site to its pre-1940 state, but there is little documentation of the surrender - or of British participation in the armistice.
December 28
I've been given an updated Trivial Pursuit for Christmas and make the frequent mistake of imagining that entertainment is a safe category. I fail dismally on questions about The Simpsons, Massive Attack, and the World's Most Desirable Human Being in the 1995 NME Brat Awards (you won't get it either - it's Kylie Minogue). I'm more comfortable with the history category. "Which former defence minister admitted affairs with Mrs Valerie Harkness and both of her daughters?", for instance. Any schoolboy of my vintage could have answered the question "At which England v France battle is the first V-sign said to have been rudely flashed?", but could they answer "Where was the armistice signed that ended the first world war?"
December 29
Today it snows. That's the beginning of a Wilfred Owen poem. I can't get lines of his out of my head. Today it's "Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces" - partly because today it snows, partly because I can't rid myself of the images of the dead, the mutilated, the suffering, the stoical and the cheerful men whose photographs I was looking at yesterday. The Germans had a word for it: Shrecklichkeit - frightfulness. The winter of 1916-17 was the worst in memory. A British officer said he was often asked: "Why do we always make our attacks in winter when any fool can see they're bound to be a failure?" That's war: senseless to the last.
• Richard Eyre's Changing Stages, the book of his recent television series, is published by Bloomsbury, price £30.
