Return trip to Gallic adventure

We arrived in Auxerre in the early hours of April 21 to be walked (the French didn't appear to have heard of school buses) two miles to our hosts, in my case Dr Herman, at 129 Rue De Paris. His son, Jean, two years older than I, was to return to Bingley for the summer.

This gave us four days to adjust to France before the tougher adjustment to the Lycee Jaques Amyot. On Sunday, Smales took us to a tiny Protestant Church and to school on the Monday. He then went back to run the cross between borstal and Eton we called BGS. French family life was easy to adjust to. The Hermans fed me much better than I was used to. No rationing, more cooked meals. Madame was a full-time mum, unlike mine who worked at Bradford market. Coffee and croissants for breakfast, wine with meals (though always diluted in my case) and the toughest meat I've ever eaten, most of which ended up in my handkerchief.

One of the BGS exchange pupils the year before had taken a box of Hammond's sauce (his father worked there) as a present to the family. They'd been insulted. So I kept quiet about the inedible meat piling up in my pockets and ignored the wet stains it left on my pants. Frogs' legs and snails, which I'd heard so much about, were never offered. Thank heaven. They'd have made my pockets even messier.

School was tougher, the hours far longer and the education more intellectually demanding than BGS. French education is elitist but its ethos was egalitarian. The teachers occasionally went on strike and when I (little snob that I was) denounced John Richardson as daft enough to be a dustbin man, the teacher demanded what was wrong with being a dustbin man. I couldn't answer. History was particularly puzzling for one brought up on the Daily Express. I believed in British superiority in every field. So I was shocked by complaints that we'd left much of the French army behind at Dunkirk, and cruelly sunk the French navy at Mers El Kebir. I denied both and never offered Waterloo in retaliation.

School was so tough and the hours so long (8am-7.30pm) that I gradually dropped out. At first I stopped going back to the evening classes. Then I stopped going in the afternoons and finally entirely so we could spend our afternoons swimming in the river Yonne and sunbathing at the river water pool at L'Abre Sec. At lunchtime we'd hang around the Hotel d'Epe where Wallace Arnold coaches called and Yorkshire passengers occasionally gave us a bob or two. Always English money because the travel allowance was then only 50.

I'd taken 10, according to my then passport, in which Ernest Bevin required the world to look after me. My parents insisted I keep it in a money belt. Which I lost, fortunately empty. The exchange rate was then 1,100 francs to the pound, another reason for our sterling sense of superiority since one franc was worth less than a farthing. Indeed, this started my career as a big investor. I bought huge sheets of one centime stamps for my collection, sure they'd appreciate. I still have them. Still worthless.

After the scrounge we went swimming, arriving home later smelling of Eau de Yonne. No showers then and the Herman family only bathed once a week, all using the same water one after the other, so it was pretty murky by my turn (the last). As a Yorkshire lad I only had a bath once a week but always in my own water – it wasn't until I went to New Zealand that I discovered that people showered every day. We really must have ponged 60 years ago.

As we returned from swimming, the news vendors were yelling "Lisez l'Humanit, le journal central du parti communiste". It sounded subversive. Then home to a heavy meal and early bed. No homework, at least none that I did. No going out. No TV, of course, but we listened to the radio and I occasionally managed to receive Donald Peers (and crackle) on the Home Service. That brought a touch of culture to the family though, for some reason, they preferred Radio Luxembourg.

The only time I was allowed out at night was the week of the school concerts, always followed by parties. After the last, along with French classmates who'd been parading round the town in army uniforms and kepis, we were all arrested at 1am for being drunk and disorderly. The gendarmerie spoke no English. I was too baffled and bemused (or, as the French put it, "ivre") to understand what was going on or stop singing Le prisonnier de la tour. Eventually they gave up and phoned Doctor Herman who came, apologised for me and took me home. Still singing extracts from Les Companions de le Chanson. There, I've confessed. Keep quiet about it.

It was a wonderful exchange. No regrets, as I told Edith Piaf. I could speak French: "Comme une vache Espagnole," they said. I've loved France ever since. Our exchangees' return to Britain was less successful. They were older and had discovered girls (unknown territory to me) so they produced quite a buzz at co-ed BGS and often disappeared mysteriously. Their visit was mostly in the holidays but they didn't appear to be interested in Morecambe where we went every year. Stafford Cripps devalued the pound in September, making my dad grumble as he forked out a bit more than the huge five shilling pocket money we gave Jean. Bebert, one of the French lads, got so homesick he cleared off from Skipsea where the Huntingdons had taken him for a camping summer on the vanishing Yorkshire coast. Probably frightened it wouldn't last his stay.

I've lost touch with both hosts and school friends. Of the BGS students, three (including me) went to New Zealand (two coming back), one went to Norway, one (briefly) to prison, one committed suicide. Jean Herman finished up in Paris working, fairly unsuccessfully, in the French film industry. JP Leignol became a big estate agent, Bebert's Galeries Moderne went bust, not modern enough. The rest disappeared and I couldn't find any familiar names in the phone book but with everyone in France equipped with mobile phones, phone books aren't much use for anything but door stoppers.

I've long wanted to go back to Auxerre. Gordon Brown disrupted my plans to go in April by the election but the political lull after it provided a new opportunity for a 61st anniversary visit. The journey took only five hours, even with a French railway strike, and the pilgrimage was an eye-opener.

In 1949, we felt superior to the French: our houses were better, our economy more powerful, our politics more stable, our money worth more and, after all, we'd won the war. They'd not only lost it but couldn't even manage to keep a government for more than a few weeks.

All now reversed. France has enjoyed 60 years of strong growth and public investment. Their standard of living is higher. Much of Bingley has been pulled down, its wool industry destroyed and the only substantial local business left, Bradford and Bingley Building Society (RIP), has gone bust and been taken over by Santander.

Auxerre has prospered. The town has been renovated, its historic buildings done up and new, light, industries have developed. The old market building has been pulled down to be replaced by cafs. People no longer swim (or wash) in the river and L'Abre Sec is now a Pizzeria, its swimming pool huge (and clean) with a modern football stadium next door, for the town's top football team.

The flat, 129 Rue De Paris is now a hairdresser's, dedicated to the "perfectionnement de la coiffure". The street pissoirs, which amused me even before I'd seen Clochmerle, have all gone which is deeply annoying for someone of my age who needs them far more now than I did then. "Ou sont les pissoirs d'antan?" became my bursting cry but annoyingly I can't find any of the photos taken in 1949 of me waving over the top while using the bottom.

Unlike our towns, where supermarkets have closed town centre shops or turned them into charity shops, Auxerre has kept them. Its groceries, food and wine shops have all vanished (like the 10 franc bottles of Algerian wine), but have been replaced by restaurants, dress shops, endless opticians, banks and insurance shops. The camera shop from which I bought my first camera, a French

Kinax II, (which fell to bits in a decade)

is still a photographer's but he didn't seem interested in a refund, though I still have the receipt. Fewer people live in the centre of town (lots of vendre and louers). Building has spread over the hills.

Bingley, however, has gone downhill. However, it still has a swimming pool, not now the Princess Hall, where they'd put a floor over the swimming pool in winter for dances, but a dedicated pool in its place.

The through traffic which once choked Auxerre's narrow streets has been diverted by Autoroute 6 and the tourist industry has prospered. The charms of the old town are a big draw and holiday barges ply the Yonne and the Bourgandy canal as a powerful summer attraction, turning the riverside into a huge marina.

In this tale of two towns, the Yorkshire side is the saddest. "Throstle Nest", as the town was known, declined with a woollen industry which had seemed world beating in 1949. Auxerre has benefited from planning, investment and the development of training and tourism. It helps that it's part of the Chablis wine region and the centre of a rich agricultural and tourist area, though Bingley is near the Dales.

The sense of Yorkshire superiority I had in 1949 has been shattered.

Austin Mitchell is Labour MP for Great Grimsby.