I have bilingual plumbing. The faucets in the kitchen read 'C' and 'H', for 'cold' and 'hot', while the faucets in the bathroom read 'F' and 'C', for 'froid' and 'chaud'. This means that I burn myself twice each day, once while doing the dishes, and once while brushing my teeth. There is a metaphor in there, but Montreal is too nice a city, and the summer is too beautiful a …

Great Britain is a deceptively small country; it's very easy to get distracted and find that you've overshot it altogether, which is how I found myself standing near a petrochemical plant in Calais just a few hours after boarding a train in Sheffield, a city that I thought was safely removed from the southern coast.

The French have done everyt…