France 1 - England 0 - Calais Challenge Cup final score

In some ways the history of the Anglo-French (or Franco-English, if you prefer) wars of the last millennium is treated in the same way as the history of the Ashes.  At least in England, we tend to remember the glorious victories and quietly forget about the rest.  Unlike the Ashes series, at least overall we've tended to break even with the French over the years.  But contrary to popular belief, the French are not really cheese-eating surrender monkeys.  Oh no.  Sometimes they don't surrender.  In fact half the time they actually won.  Bear in mind that English territories in France used to include Acquitaine, Normandy and parts of Flanders.  These days we just own the Dordogne.  Which just shows how often the French must have won.

The loss of Calais, whose anniversary we celebrate, if that's the right word, today, is such an example.  The only thing some people know is that Sellar & Yeatman got  it about right when they referred to Queen "Bloody" Mary having the word "Callous" engraved on her heart.  And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then go read some books.  They're really interesting, spelt correctly more often than the Internet, and generally more reliable.  Especially if you use this site for your facts.

But back to the case at hand.  The point is, at Calais in 1558 the French won.  We lost.  Again.  And the French carried on with their mission to tidy up all the edges of their end of Western Europe by making all the little countries they were surrounded by (such as Brittany, Burgundy and Flanders) surrender and start speaking French.  They later had a bash at including other little countries around them, such as Russia, England and Spain, but thankfully met their Waterloo.

Consider:

• If the English still owned Calais, we wouldn't be able to go there on a booze cruise.  We'd have to nip along the autoroute to St Omer and booze cruise there instead.
• You would go into Eurotunnel driving on the left, and come out driving on the left - thus meaning it was just the rest of the Continent that was anomalous, and resulting in incredible pile-ups on the Boulogne road. 
• Except we wouldn't have Eurotunnel, because Maggie Thatcher would have won the argument and we'd have a six-lane motorway under the Channel anyway.  And wouldn't have to worry about trains breaking down.
• The people of Calais would be able to launch a credible campaign to be able to speak their native Flemish tongue, instead of a nasty imposed language.  Or even, if the last Flemish speaker had died, do like the Cornish and re-invent the mother tongue they never knew.  Because you can pull the wool over the eyes of the English like you can't with the French.

So at tonight's Freezing-Over of Beakers we will be having a Comminition of the French.  At supper, we will eat a selection of Italian cured ham for starters, then English beef and mustard with Brussells Sprouts and Spanish onions, followed by Black Forest Gateau.  Wine will be from Luxembourg, Pilsner from the Czech republic and mineral water from Derbyshire.  That'll show them.