are blankets, carpets, ceramic tiles, brushes, bricks, chemicals, felt and tractors. Beauvais’s only famous citizen is a lady named Jeanne Hachette. In 1472 the Duke of Burgundy laid siege to the town and all was lost until Jeanne killed an enemy soldier with an axe, tore down his Burgundy flag and rallied the troops. Her statue lies in the main town square and she is good-looking and well-built, in a bronze-casting sort of way. Her achievements are celebrated every October with a procession through the town where the women take precedence over the men. This day must be especially difficult for the French male.
The city centre was destroyed by WWII bombardments so the buildings are new but still ugly. I stroll along the main street, Rue Carnot, where there are estate agents who have perfected the pricing of houses to an amazing science, their windows displaying exact prices such as €183,564 and €242,973. I immediately stick out in the streets because I am the only person not carrying a huge baguette as if I plan to mug someone with it. I use my excellent command of French to buy my own baguette for lunch, and also largely for self-protection. A few people stop me to ask me questions. Do I look like I know about metered car parking and the one-way system?
The Cathedral of Saint-Pierre is a spectacular disaster. It was begun in 1225 and was to be the largest cathedral in Europe but its vaults collapsed in 1272. The French builders had another go soon after and built a 128-metre spire but this collapsed in 1284. Today it’s a stub of a cathedral, having a chapel, a choir and a transept, and there’s another church where the nave should be located. The cathedral’s astronomical clock required the co-ordinated assembly in the 1860s of 90,000 different parts, surely a feat only equalled by the average irate IKEA flat-pack customer. If this clock had been assembled in Ireland, we would have many pieces left, surplus to requirements. These would be discarded on the sly as a workman looks at his trusty Casio watch and announces, ‘Sure, it’s keeping good time, like.’ I stare at the clock for some time and realise it’s completely useless. I cannot tell the time by looking at the face.
There is a Son et Lumiére show but there’s quite a crowd here so I buy a ticket in good time. There are 100 chairs with headsets in front of the clock and I get a great seat in the front. The crowds thin as the show starts. No one else bought a ticket. The lights go up and people walk over to gawk but the area is roped off to stop freeloaders. They see me sitting on my own and maybe they can see a corner of the clock. The narrator in my headset begins an explanation, in much detail, of the first of the fifty-two different clock faces. The onlookers start taking photographs, the oldies with cameras and the young with mobile phones. I don’t know whether they photograph me or the clock but they send the photograph back to their mates. ‘This is the one guy who bought the ticket to watch that crap clock show in that half-built church.’ Towards the end of the show various wooden religious figures repeatedly move around the clock on wooden runners but, like BBC chat show hosts, there are few moving parts. The angels wave their arms about a bit and Jesus gives me a nod and a wink a few times. I’m not that impressed. I bet this happens every time.
I am not a huge fan of museums, especially the Imperial War Museum in London, which contains the three worst words in the English language, but the National Tapestry Museum is a top attraction. The huge carpets should be underfoot rather than on walls. Some of the tapestries took five years to make. My mother used to have a Singer like that. I walk the town in the evening but fail to find anything happening in any bars or restaurants. I slowly realise that by merely being here, I am in grave danger of becoming the nightlife. I return in despair to the hotel at 8.30pm. The manager prematurely wishes me Bon nuit. He knows nothing happens here. I am aghast to find Channel 17 has shut down for the night so I retire for a long soak in my brothel bath.
I always look forward to a large hotel breakfast, avoiding only melon balls on principle, what with the awful suffering caused to the poor melons. Today there’s a buzz of sombre conversation at the front bar where locals perch on bar stools as they down espressos, but they glare back. The manager waves me away as if I’m a beggar on the take. ‘Petit déjeuner. Ze back room.’ I sit at one of only two place settings, have cornflakes from one of two bowls, take OJ in one of the two glasses and eat two of the last four croissants. It would not be unreasonable for me to assume that one remaining guest has yet to dine.
Before I check out, I surf the TV and accidentally stumble upon Channel 17. I get twenty seconds of Olga on the same chaise longue until the broadcast ends precisely at 10am. I wait ten polite minutes to check out but the manager gives me that knowing look. ‘That porno channel just finished, eh?’ Upon my polite enquiry the manager shows me the timetable of the bus from the Gare to the airport. One bus leaves at 8.04am and the next leaves at 11.50am. I have missed the first bus and the second is too late for me. There are four hours between buses. They don’t use a bus timetable around here, they use a calendar.
I arrive by taxi at Beauvais terminal one nano-second after the Paris bus deposits ninety ginger Irish passengers plus bags. I stand in line out the door, drag my bag across bare concrete and check in by the building site hoardings. The overhead screens have twee pictures of little thatched cottages because all Irish houses still look this. Past security I wait inside the tent, which upon close inspection is a marquee in need of a party. One moment the apron is deserted and the next there’s 210 million dollars of Boeing’s finest hardware; all three aircrafts sporting the angelic harp on the tail with the tricolour and the EI aircraft number on the fuselage. The aircraft are bound for Dublin, Shannon and Milan.
Who ever thought a Paddy airline could fly Italians from an airport 80 km from Paris to near Milan for one euro? I enjoy a swirl of national pride. I want to strut my stuff inside the tent and tell everyone that those shiny aircraft are ours. Sure, it’s all we have as a nation: Guinness, Waterford Crystal (now made in Poland), Bono and the lads, Boyzone, Westlife, Saint Bob, the baldy girl who did the Prince cover, Terry Wogan, the ex-James Bond actor, St Paddy’s Day, Riverdance, the shamrock, the craic and this airline. Plus literary chaps like Joyce, Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Swift and meself, and also the Corrs, particularly Andrea. And not forgetting Sharon of the RTE News, Noodles Carey from the weather and Lisa who does the weather forecast on Sky News.
Mick shares my patriotic enthusiasm. ‘They don’t call us the fighting Irish for nothing. We have been the travel innovators of Europe. We built the roads and laid the rails. Now it’s the airlines. I’m Irish and we don’t have to prove anything. We are God’s own children. We bow down to nobody. The airline industry is full of bullshitters, liars and drunks and we excel at all three in Ireland. We will be the world’s biggest airline. There is no shortage of ambition here. We’ll stuff every one of them in Europe, we won’t be second or third and saying, “Didn’t we do well?” We are a small Irish company, out there stuffing it to the biggest airlines all over Europe, and of course that feels good.’
Customer Service
Ruinair Ltd
Dublin Airport
Dear Sirs,
I wish to complain about my recent flight from Dublin to Beauvais.
I boarded early to get a good seat at the rear of the aircraft. I remind you that your website states the following: ‘We operate a free seating policy, so seats cannot be pre-booked. However, we operate a priority boarding system which allows you to choose your own seat on board.’ There were seats vacant in rows at the rear but when I went to sit there a cabin crew girl told me I could not sit in these rows. When I asked her why not, she replied, ‘Balance.’ I said I was fine and I hadn’t touched a drop of hard liquor all day. When I asked her what she meant, she did not know, but kept saying ‘For balance.’ Clearly she was repeating something she had been told without fully understanding it. I have travelled on many other airlines and have seen passengers sit in these rows and we all lived to tell the tale to our loved ones. Now I am worried that if I sit ever again in these
