Our Man in Paris

Encounter with French Police on return journey

[Sorry, am unable to put pictures up at the moment. Will try to fix when I have more time!]

Since I had spent a few days in London just before Christmas, I decided to take a more direct return route, so I booked myself on the ferry from Portsmouth (where I was staying) to Cherbourg, and the train from there to Paris. After negotiating the somewhat labyrinthine stages of the operators' websites, I managed to book the journey for £47, which I thought wasn't too bad.
The six-hour-long 8am crossing from Portsmouth on the Val de Loire was fairly eventless, and were it not for watching The Constant Gardener (a film which I would recommend) in the ship's underwater cinema, I would have been rather bored. (I should point out that the hull prevented the audience from actually getting wet.) Any good views of Portsmouth or the Isle of Wight were thwarted by the rather gloomy weather, although this didn't stop me taking photos, most of which are fairly boring. Cherbourg is, of course, a town which is utterly impossible to photograph from the port, due to its ugliness.
Processes on either side of the crossing were relatively straightforward; there were no intrusive customs procedures, and I only had to wave my passport a couple of times. On finding out that there was no bus, I made the 2-km journey to the train station on foot. After failing to obtain my ticket from the machine, I had to run through the various bureaucratic stages of requesting a refund, and making a new purchase, with the assistance of a helpful member of station staff (take heed, British Rail, or whatever it’s called these days). After this, I had 40 minutes to kill, so I tried to find somewhere other than the rather limited station shop to grab a quick bite to eat. I had not been out of the station for two minutes when I was apprehended by two police officers, who asked to see my passport. Suspicious that they were not wearing any uniform, dressed as they were in plain clothes with a simple orange arm-band with the word “Police” printed on it, I asked to see some identity. They duly obliged, so I showed the female officer my passport. My suspicions were further fuelled by their behaviour: she was slowly moving away from me, and talking into a walky-talky, and he appeared to be deriving much amusement from the scenario. I suddenly foresaw the potential consequences of trying to pursue someone running away from me with my passport whilst I was encumbered by my heavy suitcase (containing my laptop, amongst other less valuable possessions), and began to envisage my predicament as the victim in an elaborate stitch-up job.
Panicking, I grabbed my passport back from her, amidst their protests, telling them that I would show it to someone in uniform. I ran, with my luggage, back to the station, where I immediately reported the incident to the station staff. My first thought was just to get to safety amongst people whom I trusted, but it then occurred to me that I should give them all the details, so that another unfortunate would not suffer in the same way. To my amazement, the two individuals in question had the nerve to follow me into the station, and were standing about 50 yards away by the entrance. To my further amazement, after I had struggled through my explanation (in French), one of the station staff said, “That’s right, I recognise her, she is a policewoman”. I didn’t know what to think; at once I felt a fool, but also a confused foreigner who just wanted to go home. I’m sure the police in a so-called civilised country should not behave in this way.
After that, the journey back to Paris seemed positively eventless.

posted by Rorkey @ 7:09 AM