Commiserations to anyone making a last day return after the school holidays on Monday. The locals are planning a go-slow. In French terms that means practically a full stop.
I can see their beef however. For ages they've had to put up with 'the Jungle'. Now almost 10,000 almost exclusively economic migrants hell-bent on worming their way into the UK.
And now the French interior minister has boldly declared it will be dismantled before the end of the year. Good luck with that. They'll just find other places to set up shop. In Paris, every time an impromptu camp is dismantled it's back within a week. And the mayor there wants to build two large centres to house 3000 migrants. That won't act as a magnet to the world's poorest will it ? Especially as they're a short walk from Eurostar.
Whatever your views on the crisis, France, which has done nothing to stop the horde reaching Calais from their borders, aided and abetted by Italy who've pretty much waved them through, is in deep shit.
My daughter came back on the ferry from Cherbourg to Poole last Tuesday. Although luckily not targeted, she saw hundreds of them hanging around the fences there. No gendarmes however.
The summer is over after Monday for holiday-makers. Thank Christ. Who knows what the future holds because I can't see any end to the invasion. The Frogs have an election next year. Whether the left or right get in it won't make any difference until the Saintly do-gooders stop their glorified ferry-service from North Africa to Italy. One plan suggested is an asylum-processing centre on French soil to assess the claims of genuine refugees. I don't have a problem with that as long as we have the power to say no to the vast majority. And that asylum means just that for the claimant. Not his 25 extended family as well. As for the poor children that Vanessa Redgrave would love to come over (not in her back garden mind you). Maybe it would be reasonable to assume that if he has a full beard he's older than the 15 he claims to be.
I've said all along. IF a genuine refugee, fleeing war and totally vetted, makes an asylum claim, we should help. But we don't have the resources to help entire families still in Syria. It is however a small percentage. I feel sorry for the thousands of Africans trying to escape poverty. We've drawn life's long-straw on this continent, no argument. But Europe can't house them all. And however huge the attraction, France will have to deal with those we refuse. And a damn-sight more forcefully than they do now. It won't be pretty.
I love my holidays abroad. I had a fantastic one this year. But next summer it's a staycation. Rain and all.