I felt drawn here, the day after Theresa May finally signed the UK's suicide note. I used to come here often to sit on the cliffs and watch the ferries coming and going. Sometimes I would get on the boat as a foot passenger (three quid on Sundays) and go for a coffee in Calais, then come straight back. Just because I could. It's about thirty miles to France from here, and you can usually see the French coast clearly. On a breezy day you can even smell the onions.
Today Calais looked closer than ever, but of course the truth, from now on, is quite the reverse. And the same goes for the rest of the mainland, not least Spain: where I get my sliced meats; Italy, where I get my Prosecco; and Germany, where I get some of my colleagues. Something fundamental has changed. Something terrible has happened. This is the saddest day.
Calais used to belong to the English. Rodin's sculpture The Burgers of Calais famously depicts the year-long siege of 1346, when the locals survived only on beef and cider. Calais was England's last possession in France before it was finally driven out in 1558. Fifteen years later, in response to an argument with a small Huguenot, Henry VIII ordered Dover's giant cliffs to be built, as a defence against potential attacks from across the channel. Over 500,000 people from Kent were needed to raise up the great chalk edifices. Nowadays people think they're just part of the natural coast, which is laughable. How would they get so big on their own!!??!
In the 2011 census, Cliff was the most common name given to children whose parents were UKIP voters, which says it all.
Anyway, the spirit of European openness has always run through this blog, but unfortunately the UK has upped anchor and set sail for oblivion (somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic?). Therefore, dear readers, it must come to a close.
What a shame, what a stupid fucking shame (the UK leaving the European Union, not the end of the blog)
I wish I could have taken some good pictures to finish with, but these will have to do. My heart wasn't in it.
sorry about the vignetting I am not a professional
If you look really carefully at the above picture you will see a tiny black disc in the shrub near the bottom-left of the image. This is my lens cap. I dropped it, and it rolled down the hill, bounced up and somehow hung itself on the branch, like a Christmas bauble. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it really was one of the most unlikely things I've ever seen. So I didn't want to remove it before snapping.
