Karen Woods

I’m just back from Paris. Two days in the city taking it easy, wandering around the streets and boulevards, enjoying a few sights and plenty of food and wine. But – here’s shock news. Parisians are lovely. And certainly not rude. From a sports bar in Montparnasse where I relished steak frites and watched the rugby – cheering on le patron’s team, Biarritz despite have no knowledge of (or interest in) the game … to the Pantheon where notable Frenchmen and women are buried, everyone I met was really nice.

Instead, I saw plenty of examples of tourists being rude to Parisians. Ignoring the simple courtesy of saying ‘Bonjour’ on entering a shop, visitors often grunted at the staff and brushed them aside. No wonder they get a little miffed.

Alright, I now know a fair bit of French so can make a decent attempt to speak to the locals. And I deliberately avoided the tourist traps, seeking out the places frequented by native Parisians even in August when most flee the city. But simple common sense and politeness reap results anywhere in the world. Even Paris.

I’ve made my living through radio and journalism throughout my career. But now I urge you – turn the radio off.

Everytime you catch a news bulletin these days, there’s more gloom and doom about forthcoming massive public spending reductions. Up to 40% cuts are forecast this autumn and nothing is safe, even the supposed ‘ring-fenced’ areas of health and overseas aid. I’ve been to several networking meetings this month in Hampshire. Uncertainty is universal, no-one seems confident of survival.

I’m wondering what will happen in a few months time when the cuts begin to bite. Will there be Greek-style riots or will the British remain – well – British.

Maybe that’ll be the time to worry – and turn the radio on again. In the meantime, enjoy the summer. If you can.

I’m in Denmark. I’ve been working in Aarhus with the University for two days and have now travelled by train to ‘wonderful’ Copenhagen.

And it is a wonderful country and a wonderful city, a place where people smile and are helpful, a place where the trains run on time yet locals haven’t lost their sense of humour.

But it’s not entirely as the guide books would have you believe. Here is my select list of things you may not know about the Danes or Denmark:

Copenhagen has been sacrificed to workmen. All the attractive streets and squares are being dug up. An elderly woman tripped over a badly-marked temporary pathway this morning and narrowly escaped serious injury. Not good.

It’s a young place. Pregnant women and young children are everwhere. And the Danes like old fashioned Mary Poppins-style prams that fill the pavement. If there is any space left around the workmen.

Bicycles are everywhere. A good thing.

It isn’t as expensive as you may think. Although the coinage is very strange. No, it’s not in the euro zone.

Many, many seemingly-intelligent people still smoke. Not indoors, thankfully but step out along any street and you’ll choke.

Danes share the rest of the world’s fondness for nasty tattoos. A real shame.

The Little Mermaid is no longer at the harbour. She has been taken to China to represent Denmark at the World Expo. There’s a replica at the Tivoli Gardens, but ……..

Actually, forget all of the above. It’s still a wonderful place. And don’t miss out on the meatballs.

Strange things happen at sea. I was walking with a friend along the seashore at Lee-on-Solent last weekend when an unusual vessel sailed into shore. It looked like an ancient landing craft carrying military lorries, perhaps a relic of the second world war practising for a historical re-enactmant.

Not so. It turned out, according to a helpful council warden, to be a modern  piece of army equipment on manoevres along the south coast.

We found this slightly worrying.

Canadians are nice people, I’ve never met an unpleasant one. Which makes a recent news story even more shocking. There was drama on a long-distance Greyhound bus a few weeks ago as it travelled through the prairies, when a passenger attacked the stranger sitting next to him with a knife – and then beheaded the man. The coach slammed to a halt and the driver urged the rest of the passengers to get out. The knifeman climbed down carrying the head and dropped it at the driver’s feet.

I spent a day in Canada last month; changing planes from Chicago to London, I missed my onward connection in Montreal. I sweet-talked Air Canada into re-booking my next flight the following evening. So, a free night in an airport hotel, a voucher for a free dinner, and a whole day to enjoy this wonderful French-Canadian city.

And it was very French, although the accent was amazing (I’ve been told French-Canadian programmes broadcast on French TV often have subtitles!). French and American words were often used together – lovely if you’ve forgotten a word in one language but can remember it in the other. Lots of history to enjoy – as Montreal was the entry point for many of the immigrants who sailed up the mighty Saint Lawrence river in the nineteenth century. Great food, friendly people and a destination to return to before too long. But maybe I’ll give the long distance buses a miss.

One of the joys of travel is the opportunity to meet people from different walks of life.

A visit to Chicago’s Symphony Center to hear Yo-Yo Ma and the city’s  renowned orchestra (the third best in the world, according to my guide book) was also a chance to talk to some fascinating Americans.

There was a party from Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Four parents, sundry chaperones and a marching band of 88 high school musicians. They’d driven 12 hours overnight in a bus to take part in a competition and were taking in a concert during their trip to the Windy City. All still full of beans despite their journey.

And I discovered a rare beast, an old-style US radical, proud to call himself a socialist in a land where the word ‘libera;’ is usually used as an insult. We had a marvellous conversation about Obama, Mayor Daley, David Cameron and Chicago’s plans to privitise its water supply (We’ve already done that in the UK, I told him). We talked of corruption, big money and class consciousness. How refreshing. How honest.

And the concert? Well, it started with an excellent work by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and finished with Shostakovich 6. And Yo -Yo?  Well, he was lumbered with  a cello concerto (called Cello Concerto) by the famous Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky. The usual confection of discordant noise with copious use of percussion. Such a shame. Yo-Yo sat on the stage and produced a variety of notes. We all clapped politely. Actually, some of the audience went into a surprising frenzy of whooping and hollering. Maybe they were all exiled Uzbeks? But the master should have played Bach….

Elections are always entertaining for political junkies like me but we are living through especially interesting times at the moment.

UK voters gave no party an overall majority on May 6. The predicted Tory landslide failed to materialise and the current situation is:

• Conservatives 306
• Labour 258
• Liberal Democrats 57

The ‘others’ including Scottish and Welsh nationalists, sundry parties in Northern Ireland, and a newly-elected Green total 28.  To form a government in its own right, a party needs an overall majority – 326 seats.

And the horse trading has begun. Liberal leader Nick Clegg has been locked in meetings all day as his party decides which of the major parties to support, either in a formal coalition or an agreement not to oppose individual issues. His party has a complex system of approvals before its leader commits to linking with another. The pundits say we need to know who will be forming the next government before Monday or the money markets will go ballistic.

Suddenly, politics is the thing to talk about. Brits unaccustomed to talk to others about the way they vote are now discussing issues with friends and colleagues, office computers are showing BBC online coverage and commentary on the twists and turns of events. It’s fascinating. Voting reform is now almost certain to top the agenda of whichever government takes power. Maybe, in the future, the almost-seven million Liberal voters will elect more than 57 MPs.

Year after year, Mayday sees the traditional celebration of working people around the world. In decades past, weapons have been paraded before elderly Soviet leaders. This year Athens saw violent clashes as the country struggles to resolve its debt problem.

The day was marked in London by the traditional march from the Karl Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square. I was there with volunteer students from the University of Southampton who were surveying protestors to discover why they had chosen to come along. My role was to take  photographs of their efforts and record audio for a university podcast. For once, the sun shone and everything went smoothly, forms were filled in and questionnaires handed out, pictures were taken and sounds were recorded.

But the march wasn’t quite what we expected. For a start, police told us there a maximum of 3,000 took part, far fewer people than we had been advised. Several big trade unions were represented but the foreign contingent almost outnumbered UK activists. We had Portuguese people, Colombians, Iranians and a large party of Turkish communists, some proudly carrying a giant picture of Stalin. Some organisers speculated the upcoming UK General Election kept local people away as they pounded the pavements in support of their candidates.

Light relief was provided at Trafalgar Square when a speaker declared  Greece’s financial problems were caused by a combination of the World Bank and MFI. Well, that self-assembly furniture can be tricky….

It was a fascinating day, but hardly a resounding festival of Labour. Maybe next year?

The weekday PM programme on BBC Radio Four (5.00-6.00pm) is a must-listen because of the wit and wisdom of its presenter Eddie Mair. While never compromising journalistic standards, he gets the most from his live interviews through a combination of thoughtful and persistant questioning, often from fresh angles, and a healthy dose of humour. He is always at his best when something strange happens.

Take this evening when technical problems stole the show. An outside broadcast using satellite technology from a Parliamentary constituency in Luton was apparently knocked out by rain, just as reporter Carolyn Quinn was getting into her stride. Eddie, manfully, played us the recorded audio clips of voters that had been previously sent over from Luton. The incident became a running joke for the next 30 minutes before Eddie came to another scheduled live interview from Nigel Wrench, who had the same kind of broadcasting kit. Nigel introduced himself and his guest, admitted it was raining but said he was safely under an umbrella – then we heard a loud click and silence. Cue helpless laughter from our Eddie and the muffled sound of a hapless producer chattering into his headphones.

With several minutes still to go before the arrival of the weather forecaster at 5.57, he picked himself up (perhaps literally), read some emails and talked rather slowly to Paddy O’Connell who arrived in the studio to promote his Sunday morning show.

Genius. A classic broadcasting moment.

Northern Europe remains cut off from the rest of the world this evening as  volcanic ash from Iceland floats in the atmosphere many thousands of metres above the ground. Aviation authorities insisted on a ’safety first’ approach and closed all airspace four days ago. Now airlines and airports conspire to challenge their theories and demand new assessments as they haemorrhage money. Test flights from the likes of BA and KLM land without incident yet NATO military jets are damaged by the tiny abrasive particles.  Where is the truth? No-one knows. The forces of nature are stronger than the works of man. Doomsayers say the unpronouncable Icelandic volcano may erupt for weeks, months or years.

Actually, I suspect many British people stranded overseas are enjoying the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ challenge of getting home by train, bus, taxi, ferry etc. It combines bold derring-do with the deep love of moaning beloved of most Brits. People who usually boast about the value of their houses are now sounding off about the cost of renting a hire car to drive to Calais. On the positive side, those living near Heathrow and other major airports are relishing hearing birdsong in their gardens for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, may I recommend a wonderful book written by the eminent Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1957. In The Black Cloud, a huge mass of gas approaches the solar system on a course predicted to bring it between Earth and the sun’s rays, threatening disaster for our home planet. Science fiction or prediction? I recall this book was a school set text decades ago but I stayed up all night when I was given it and read it cover to cover. Which wasn’t  really a good idea as we then spent endless weeks in class painstakingly reading it very slowly. I often think English studies destroy all love of literature by endlessly dissecting novels in such detail that all enjoyment is lost.

There’s an award-winning novel or blockbuster film in all this volcano business, I’m sure.