Rafle

When picking up the BH from the station in the early morning, after her trip to Normandy, I spied through the sheeting rain a row of blue-uniformed filth, national, railway, municipal and border. All of them packed rambo-sized sidearms and seemed to find elasticated trouser-bottoms tucked into Doc Martens the height of paramilitary chic.

It was another revenue raid, timed to coincide with the arrival of trainload after trainload of poorly paid workers and unpaid lycéens. They surrounded all possible exits (the handbook for the vélodrome d'hiv must still be used by our gardiens de la paix) and made everybody coming off the trains wait in the freezing downpour whilst they, in the dry, proceeded to check everybody's papers.

They were probably after fare-dodgers and illegal immigrants, perhaps the same thing in their eyes. The actual catch was socially more nuanced, with a fair few well-dressed followers of Marine Le Pen caught out too. The treatment meted out by the boys in blue was different, though, with anybody under twenty-five, or ever so slightly tanned, sent immediately, after being searched, to the paniers à salade, whereas the good ladies were asked politely whether they wished to pay with Carte Bleue or by cheque.