The Sunday Ishmael: 18/05/2025

 Travel Narrows the Mind

(and the bronchi)

The Gare du Nord smells very strongly of stale piss. In the heatwave week before last, the stench was choking. In the environs of the station are deposits of human excrement. The streets and pavements are stained. My first thought was that maybe the French aren't good sanitation engineers? Maybe their hauteur doesn't unbend to actually dealing with shit and piss? Then, from the coach windows as we negotiated the transfer between the Gare de Lyons and the Gare du Nord, I saw the lines of pop-up tents. 

Hundreds of them, sheltering under bridges and underpasses, hard by the traffic. Where else but the streets to fait vos pee-pee and poo-poos? Not surprising the French police make null effort to stop migrants boarding rubber dinghies and setting off for Britain. They're glad to be shut of them.

Whilst I was away in foreign parts, having my mind narrowed, 18 year old Maheen Kamran was elected as a councillor for Burnley Central East with 1,357 votes, taking the seat from Labour in the Burnley Central east seat. 

She said she wants to encourage public spaces to prevent “free mixing” between Muslim men and women.

“There’s a big aspect of free mixing, Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I’m sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don’t have to sacrifice their health.” 

 She's got the right idea. And it's not just Muslim women who don't want to share their spaces with Muslim men. 

They are everywhere in Paris, Muslim men, looking dark, aggressive and dangerous, shouting and gesticulating, taking up all the seats in pavement cafés, no women in sight. Then there are the pop-up tents, lined up in tent-streets under arches, under bridges, in doorways of abandoned buildings. 

And the thieves - we were warned, repeatedly, but it is still surprising- the boldness of the thieves. One of our party, standing on a train platform, grabbed the hand that was in his shorts pocket - the bloke ran off. One woman had her rucksack opened by two young women who had cut into our group as we walked along a street, one holding up a black umbrella to disguise what she was up to. The same woman had her purse stolen from the same rucksack in another city. You learn to carry your bag in front of you and never to take your hand off your suitcase. The tour guide instructed us in the sport of spotting pickpockets at the Gare du Nord - we stood on the mezzanine, looking down at the crowds - the thieves have no luggage, eyes everywhere looking for their next victim, often in groups, usually barging into the victim, passing the goods on, then striding away. I spotted one thief - male and Caucasian,  but he clocked me and moved quickly out of my line of sight. 

On the railways, when the train stops at a station, you have to watch the luggage racks, because they are just by the doors, thieves hop on the train from the platform, grab a bag,  then jump off - the doors close, the train moves off and there's another holiday ruined. The police, who are everywhere, and armed, seem unable to stop the thievery.

The Eurostar, au contraire, was rather marvellous. Very swift, comfortable seats, leg room and toilets. No views, though - just a long, long tunnel of blackness. I had hoped for external lights to see the configuration of the tunnel, but non. I was served a little meal of soft French cheese, salmon flakes and pearl barley with a small roll, a third of a bottle of white wine and a madeleine with a spoonful of blackberry jam in its innards. The waiting person was a tall and stylish black Parisian in lipstick, bleached white hair and nipped-in jacket - I think he was a bloke - but all I know for sure is that he was very elegant in his tight Eurostar uniform. Around me my male fellow passengers competitively advanced their anecdotes - all retired, they were trotting out tales from the classroom, (there were a lot of former teachers) - stories already old as they had been advanced, raised and trumped at the dinner table in the hotel. As Sartre told us: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" 

The French Riviera in the morning, England in the evening - 14 hours door to door. Absolutely exhausted. Me and trains - we're done. 

I picked up another virus on my holidays and I've been strenuously coughing up my lungs for the past week - hence today's  subtitle - travel narrows the bronchi; so apologies for being absent from duties.

Most of my holiday was spent in hilly Tuscany, where the little girls, it seems,  traditionally were gun-toting.

So. Italy, France - been there, and, to misquote Marvin, from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Europe. Loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

Unfortunately for the rest of us, Sir Bloody Starmer does like it and is busily rowing back from Brexit. He is meeting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa in London tomorrow, to negotiate away our hard-won freedom from Europe, a Europe sinking in a morass of illegal migrants, pickpockets, train thieves, Muslim discontents and stale piss. He is insisting that closer ties with the EU will be “good for our borders, cut bills and boost jobs”, ahead of a summit where he could announce a deal. 

God knows how he makes that out. 

The disconnect between the political classes of Great Britain and Europe and their peoples is so huge that aforesaid political classes have no idea about the daily reality of the lives of those people who work for a living - apart, of course, from Big, Black, Beautiful Foreign Secretary Lammy, who has had an embarrassing and expensive encounter with a taxi driver.  Lammy tried to extract maximum benefit from his attendance at  King Brian's state visit to Italy last month. Having had their travel to Italy paid for by the British tax payer, Lammy and his partner (I think that means sexual partner rather than business partner) decided to go off for an extra holiday in France - taking a taxi for 360 miles. Expensive form of transport, hein? 1,550 euros to be precise. Lammy kicked off and refused to pay 700 euros of the bill, so the taxi driver, in fear of Big Black, Beautiful etc, and his gun (yes! the taxi driver alleges our Foreign Secretary was gun-toting - must be the Italian influence) drove him to the nearest police station. 

Bet he wishes he'd taken the train.

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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, from the writings of our founder, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.  

You can buy the Quartet from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.