Ian McMillan: An out-of-this-world experience lost in France

They’ll have had crunchy baguettes and fresh croissants for breakfast and they’ll be looking forward to an afternoon visit to a patisserie to buy some of those perfect strawberry tarts the French do so well.

That’s the theory, anyway, and I’m going to stick with it until they come home and tell me differently: the drizzle, the croissants the consistency of ear wax, the baguettes like old sticks of Whitby rock. No, I’m sure it won’t be like that.

I thought about their impending trip the other day when I found myself at a loose end in London, so I nipped into the British Library, on Euston Road, to look at an exhibition of old and new Science Fiction illustrations.

It’s amazing: primitive robots that look as though they’re made from old dustbins, battle it out with heroes with Mesmer Rays and jutting jaws and knife-edge quiffs.

A lot of the robots and aliens come from planets with names like Zog or Brzzzz38, and the main Science Fiction plot is always that there’s going to be a clash of cultures in a minute and you’d better watch out!

The idea is that planets like Zog and Fnaaarq have customs and language that are different to ours, and the drama will come as they rub together, making sparks fly.

It’s what literature professors call a trope.

I thought about my family going across the Channel and I thought about my early encounters with the three worlds that they were about to visit – The Planet France, The Planet Camping, and The Planet South.

Each of these planets has its own culture, its own way of seeing the world, and each of them is as odd and eccentric as Mercury in their own way.

The Planet France is familiar to me now. I like it. I’ve colonised it over the years, made many visits there and had my holidays there like people once predicted we’d have holidays on the Moon.

I remember one of my early visits to the planet, though, when the kids were little and we were trying to find a campsite not that far from the ferry terminal, and parts of it really were like another galaxy.

We’re talking about the lost and forgotten days before SatNavs, so all I had was a map. It looked easy on the map – there was the ferry terminal and there was the campsite. And there was a blue line that connected the two. Simples, as they say these days. Except on The Planet France, nothing was simples.

I was navigating and my wife was driving and the kids were bickering in the back, and the trouble was that there was no warning before the turnoffs. A small but important consideration, I reckon.

In Barnsley, they let you know a mile before the turnoff that you’re going to have to turn off. In France, they just tell you and then they laugh at you because you missed it.

My wife and I rarely snap at each other but we snapped at each other that day, I can tell you.

The Planet Camping is an even more individual planet than The Planet France.

For a start, it never gets dark. You go to bed in the light and it stays light and you get up in the light.

It’s a noisy planet, because even when people aren’t talking you can hear the birds singing in Piaf-like French and, far away on a skinny country lane, you can hear a buzzing moped swerving to avoid a lost Englishman who can’t read his map.

When it rains on The Planet Camping, you can’t hear yourself think because of the cloudburst tap-dancing on the roof.

To be honest, I prefer other planets: The Planet Luxury Hotel, for instance, with its kind inhabitants who knock on your door to bring food on a tray.

The oddest Planet though, is The Planet South. Way back when the kids were little and we finally found the campsite and got our things into the tent, we noticed that there weren’t many Yorkshire accents around.

To put it bluntly, we were surrounded by beings from another universe. These people called their dinner their lunch. They called their tea their supper. They drank wine while sitting round fold-up tables. They seemed to know what to do with anchovies. They had kids called Rollo and Henrietta.

We’re talking about the late 1980s here, when the North-South divide was gaping like a chasm and I guess I was as much of an alien to them as they were me.

And, of course, I’ve got to know them since and they’re nice people, despite their eccentric meal names.

Enjoy your trip, children. Remember: they may be strange worlds but the natives are friendly. Remember: it never gets dark and you’ll get lost and there’ll always be somebody who knows more about anchovies than you do.

Have fun!