How Charles de Gaulle Fails Woefully at Customer Assistance

An Experience Best Forgotten

My experience at Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Airport in Paris yesterday evening is one to be forgotten for all time. As someone who has used a walking cane for decades, this airport poorly manages access for those with mobility issues. The walks are long, lifts are usually out of service, and toilets are rarely situated near where you need them.

After radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer in 2024, I have requested airport Customer Assistance for all legs of my journey, but this is the first time I have passed through CDG. In Manchester, Amsterdam, and Cape Town, beyond the issue with easily accessible toilets for those in the assistance pool, there was information, consideration, assistance, and personnel to do the job.

Unprepared and Understaffed

Even though Air France-KLM was aware of my request for almost three months, their preparedness for it at CDG left much to be desired. We arrived at the end of a 12-hour flight from Cape Town, and there was no one at the gate to collect the three of us who needed assistance. I had to ask the flight crew what the situation was.

I was assured they would be with us soon, but one lady arrived with a wheelchair to convey three of us. She applied almost octopus-like skill to laden herself with our carry-on luggage, and we basically had to walk the few hundred yards through security to the waiting area. The information was muddled and unclear, but we waited until a shuttle bus arrived.

Neither Voice Nor Agency

Our boarding passes were in the hands of the personnel, being passed around between them to our collective discomfort. Each time, someone had to ask if the boarding passes were still around. Many of the personnel we encountered at this international airport spoke to us in French. It was uncomfortable.

In the end, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be delivered to wherever we needed to be, because our incapacity seemed to be a debilitating disability for which we had neither voice nor agency. Delivered to the gate, my boarding pass was checked, but I was barely noticed when we were asked to board.

A Systemic Failure

From this experience, if you have mobility issues, CDG must be avoided at all costs. This is not an issue with the people at the front line delivering the service; rather, it is a management failure laid bare. Totally unacceptable and utterly despicable. "Appalled" does not begin to describe what should warrant the high point of a one-star review of this service—dishonest at best.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Cape Town reflections: To the point of embrace

With every hope to do

A time to reflect on my recent journey to Cape Town, for this visit for a rendezvous with Brian had been in consideration from the time I returned in mid-January 2021, but the pandemic with its many waves and Coronavirus variants kept everything at bay.

As the year drew to a close, I had at least two essential things to do before I could plan to travel, my biannual consultation was already scheduled for the last week in October and coming due in the second week of November was my vaccine booster shot after which it looked like there was a clear way ahead to plan for the break.

I planned on a 6-week break and had diligently informed them at work about my plans for which a stand-in was recruited for my time away and this gave me the opportunity on approval to book my holiday from the first week of November and the countdown had begun.

We ploughed ahead regardless

Meanwhile, our daily conversations continued, in the morning and the evening as we planned what we were going to do along with the prospect of getting married. It looked like the whole pall of the pandemic was being put behind us until just in the last week of November, the Omicron variant first sequenced in South Africa though from what transpired was already prevalent around in Europe and the US, led to the putting of southern African countries on the UK red list without even knowing much about the variant.

This could have kiboshed our plans, but I reckoned that since I was going to be away for 6 weeks, enough knowledge and understanding of the variant would have helped put some in reconsideration into the knee-jerk reaction in the Global North. Besides, the whole idea of spending 10 nights in sub-standard quarantine hotels did not appeal to me.

Anyway, I kept my hopes up and continued with my arrangements, renewing my travel insurance, helping my stand-in bed-in, taking my Fitness to Travel PCR Test and I was ready to go. My journey to Cape Town was smooth and in just two legs, the first from Manchester to Paris and the newly reinstated Paris to Cape Town leg, arriving just after 22:28 on the 3^rd of December, but without my baggage in tow.

Bags on a merry-go-round

My baggage did not make the transfer between arriving from Manchester to taking off from Paris, and though we arrived late in Paris, I literally had to rush to the departure gate, the transit time was another 24 minutes longer than the scheduled connection and still, I was not reunited with my baggage until Sunday afternoon. The baggage itself took the Manchester – Paris – Amsterdam – Cape Town route. I should have been given Airmiles for that too.

At first, I thought I would need to stay at an airport hotel overnight because of the pandemic restriction curfew, but that was not an issue, travellers were allowed to make that journey to their accommodations. I had arrived in Cape Town safely and was in Brian’s arms that night, that was all that mattered besides the troublesome issue of my baggage somewhere on the planet.

A red hat in Paris

My heart in Paris

Paris, a city I know like the back of my hand and have not had the opportunity to visit since November 2018. Now, I do transit through Charles de Gaulle Airport, but that is another story. The truth is I miss Paris, the café culture, and my seat on the first floor of Café Beaubourg watching onto the front of the Georges Pompidou Centre, that I have never visited, as the world goes by.

That view I have cherished for 21 years, a place of memories and much else, for some friends have departed or fallen apart, and this apart from those from whom one receives no alerts of conversation or communication anymore.

A walk of life

Stepping out of Café Beaubourg after brunch, I bear left onto Rue Saint-Merri, cross Rue Saint-Martin which as certain times host venues of excitable pleasures with strangers and then I am at a milliner’s where every colour of hat exists to challenge your daring. That is where I eventually decided, the day after on a red pork-pie hat.

I put the hat I was wearing in the bag and stepped out with this callout of brilliance that elicited commentary every few steps I took, I was looking good and feeling just as good too. Then on to Boulevard de Sebastopol past Place du Chatelet, down the ramp to the north side of the Seine and a walk westwards towards Pont Neuf where I found a seat to observe the river traffic, take in the winter sun and some photographs too.

You can’t have not

One of such photographs became the source of a compliment, my outfit with the red hat according to him, he loved, and I looked really cool. I acknowledged and asked if he was doing well too. He was preparing for the day and out of interest asked where the picture was taken which gave life to my knowledge of Paris.

To my concealed shock, he had never visited Paris nor been around Europe though he planned to do a bit of travel before he was 50. Now, I can understand people planning for adventures and exploration at a later point in life, taking it as a given. For instance, he had another 12 years to fulfil those desires, if we are sure of things, times, and terms.

The time for travel is now

I have learnt, the only time we have is the moment called now, the past is gone, the future uncertain, so we are left asking the question, what are we doing with the now? It is where I suddenly get philosophical because it is necessary to have things in perspective.

Any time you get to do travel, do it, do not wait for a time you might think is convenient. I am 55 and thankfully 12 years after cancer which at prognosis only gave me 5 weeks to live if my physiology could not tolerate the treatment. Before that illness, I thought myself inviolable and invincible.

Banish the spectre of regret

Whilst not trying to sound morbid, the time we have for anything is now and what we must not waste the now on is to set ourselves up for a future of regrets at what we could have done. It is the same thinking I had at the end of 2018 when at one point I was undecided about going on holiday to South Africa until I caught myself thinking, if I did not travel, I might well regret it.

I did travel and I met Brian with whom I hope someday to visit Paris and see the sights that have enthralled me. Too many people have options and opportunities before them, but they, out of the embarrassment of choices and an inkling of self-worth set themselves on for the prospects and possibilities ignoring what is at hand. I hope they can reset their course before no option is available, those opportunities are lost and the possibilities they dared to dream of shatter into shards of regret.

No prophet would come into your indecision, but you will hear some voices and some advice as good as prophecy, now for the discernment to make that move and make it count.

Paris by the Seine - February 2017

On the mind of travel

A leg to start off

My thoughts wander from arrival to departure in the things we control and the things we must consider for now and after. These were ruminations of the mind as I began my travel from South Africa back to the UK. There were three legs to my journey, from Cape Town to Johannesburg on a once rescheduled, then cancelled and then rebooked flight which was a British Airways flight managed by their partner and subsidiary Comair.

Arriving 3 hours early at the Cape Town International Airport, I was not allowed to check-in for another hour. A porter helped me from the Uber cab that got me to the airport and stayed with me through check-in to when I had to go through security. He was of a friendly disposition, a human resources manager before he retired and took on porterage to keep busy. Porters get by on tips, though licenced and uniformed, they are not salaried, hence, the jostling for custom. I was even asked if I needed a wheelchair; we laughed.

Let’s get ready to fly

The first leg was uneventful, nothing was served to us on that two-hour flight and my baggage was not checked through to Manchester. I had to collect my baggage and check-in at the AirFrance desk in Johannesburg for my flight to France. I had a 4-hour stopover in Johannesburg, much time to reminisce about the last 5 weeks and the thought that Brian still had another 3 nights in South Africa before returning home.

When the time came for boarding came for my long-haul flight second leg to Paris, by the time I arrived at the gate, I was unable to take advantage of priority boarding. I was in Zone 1 and Zone 4 & 5 were already boarding. The crowd as such that there it was unnecessary to claim that right, I settled into the queue as it took almost 15 minutes to board. I took my window seat beside an ageing couple in the middle aisle seats then made to the toilet to change into my pyjamas before handing my clothes to the air steward to be hung in the cupboard.

Miles and wiles

For a while now, I have taken no entertainment on the flight and concentrated more on the flight maps. We were to fly 5,530 miles or 8,900 kilometres over 10:17 hours to arrive at 05:35 hours local time in Paris. We took off on a Boeing 777-328(ER) at the speed of 210.6 mph (339 km/h) and soon reached cruising speed of 581 mph (935 km/h) and cruising height of 32,001 ft (9,753 m). We did after the Equator breach 10 kilometres, but I could not be bothered than much.

I maintain fascination with the place names I see on the flight map unsure of if I would ever visit, talk less of the logistics of getting there surrounded by my creature comforts. I am not one to countenance backpacking, a strain of colonial expectation greets my desire to have Sherpas and campaign furniture. If I deign to suffer such an experience.

Louis Trichardt, South Africa; Selebi-Phikwe, Maun, Mopipi all in Botswana, and Kuito (Silva Porto), Angola caught my attention before I fell asleep, tossing and turning, waking up 4 times to use the toilet. I had dinner but requested I be left alone at breakfast time which was to be around the unholy hour of 04:00 hours.

And then we land

After changing into my pyjamas, I was offered another window seat with presumably more space. We wore our masks throughout the flight except for when we had drinks and meals. At one point, the man sat in front of me acknowledged me. How uncanny, he was the same man who sat beside me on the first leg.

Arriving in Paris, I had a 7-hour stopover, I did not have to pass through immigration, but traversing Charles de Gaulle airport is never much a pleasure. I was soon through security and in the lounge that became quite busy by the time I left. The last leg was easy and after baggage reclaim clothed for the chill of winter, I was in a black cab, the window open and settled into what was supposed to be an imposed 10-day self-isolation. I look forward to another return journey that I so enjoy for the process and the purpose. One day, Brian will be by my side on the way to the land of happily ever after.

Winter will end at 11 AM

In preparation

Travel is an expectation and excitement rolled into a flurry of emotions that you cannot fully express apart from just being the experience being lived.

I had ample time for plan for my journey to South Africa, once I had passed my TOGAF certification last week Tuesday in London and returned home to Manchester on Wednesday, I had 6 days to get things sorted. My first plan was to get the laundry service to pick up my laundry on Wednesday evening to be returned 24 hours later.

Daily, I had begun to gather the things I needed for my journey, trying to ensure nothing was forgotten, and this without making lists even as a small still voice was advising me to consider a list. I would think I have everything I want and also something for Brian and I to wear, as for weeks I had been looking for matching jackets, Brian being two sizes smaller, but with the same length of arms.

Hefty baggage

I did most of my packing the day before, using compactors for my shirts and trousers with my underwear, then shoes, hats, and other essentials. My portable scales put the suitcases at 19kg and 16kg, I think there was another few kilograms added by the time I got out of the door. I hailed a Uber cab to the airport when 5 minutes into the trip, I realised I had left a wallet at home.

This happened my last trip too, fortunately, it did not contain the essential cards. I got the driver to turn back whilst I retrieved my wallet and we took a more scenic route to the airport. After checking in and being ushered unto the Fast Track lane which was anything but, you begin to realise why you should have more than enough time to clear security.

Security dexterity

Without a doubt, those with toddlers need to research how to traverse security at ease and at speed, I had 4 families ahead of me and everyone looked like first time travellers, babies implacable, mother extending like an octopus granted a few more limbs to unpack bags, hold the baby, keep the other child from running around and attempting the contortions of a double-jointed gymnast. A sight to behold and a good 30 minutes of my life frittered away before the wand wielder checks my watch, cufflinks and affinity bangle, then waves me through.

I proceed to cool off in the lounge, the need for travel to be stress-free cannot be exaggerated, there are two stops before Cape Town tomorrow afternoon. We are coasting at 4⁰C, the thought of leaving winter behind warms my breast.

Hiding the winter props

In Paris, angels were on assignment, that is all I can say. Having walked through the literally inscrutable Charles De Gaulle airport, it is a beast of an airport as friendly as a hyena is to its prey, if it were avoidable, but why simplify the complicated, when you can make it a harrowing experience.

The boarding gates for my next destination of Johannesburg were in the same terminal and I still had to lug my things through security, the obligatory striptease without music has become a dramatic art worthy of an Academy nomination. Thankfully, but thankfully, there were no families with toddlers, pushchairs and kids on fizzy drinks running around like they were buzzing on drugs.

The disarray at the security check is not worth reckoning with, we survived it and I made for the lounge. There, I should have shown my paper boarding pass, but I resorted to my mobile phone boarding pass. With that in hand, I made for a seat with the aim of charging my phone and putting my overcoat into my suit carrier.

Angels working overtime

That was a struggle as I put my phone down and knelt on the suit carrier to get the zipper done up. I only had time for a drink when I noticed my flight to Johannesburg was boarding. I picked up my bags and it was close to a 10-minute walk to the boarding gate and on getting through, I found my seat, put up my hand baggage and was about to sit down when an air stewardess presented me with a mobile phone.

I was completely oblivious of the fact that I had left my phone in the lounge, I cannot account for how the phone made it from the lounge to my seat. The gravity of realising how it could have been a disaster to lose my phone only began to dawn on me hours after. I got me some angels watching over me.

Winter did end at 11:00 AM

As we arrived in Johannesburg, it was 11:13 AM, two minutes ahead of schedule, I was hit with the heat of summer, my winter was over as I was informed I would need to collect my baggage and recheck-in with the local airline that would get me to Cape Town, this after I was told that my baggage had been checked through to Cape Town, I guess that was figuratively rather that literally. I collected my baggage and no additional labels are attached to them.

My seat was pre-allocated, and I could not change it because it was with another airline, Brian had a seat 3 rows from mine as we had arranged to be on the same flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town. We met up in the lounge and I was expecting him to use his charm offensive to get us to sit together. As luck would have it, whilst I was given an aisle seat, the window seat was free, it meant Brian could come to sit beside me for the flight.

We arrived in Cape Town without much fuss, the captain’s parting message beyond the Christmas wishes was the hope that South African Airways would still be a thriving company that provides the wonderful service we have enjoyed over the decades. How Jacob Zuma and his clique almost ruined that bastion of South Africa expression with incompetent and unqualified people.

I was soon in my shorts and amongst the teeming crowds of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

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Talking hair is not cheap

Hair is politics, or should I say political. It is also commercial, it is big business. Yet, it is quite personal, the choice of expression with or without hair is interesting and sometimes just left to the observation.

Then, you come to the real issue, the one of hair for black women. I was walking down the road on Boulevard de Strasbourg, just after the Saint Laurent Catholic Church on the left, before the street changes to Boulevard de Sebastopol and I observed something I had not seen before.

There were men stood in front of shops accosting women and doing everything to persuade them to come into the shops, black women that is, and these shops had dangling from every window and hook as you peered in from the shop windows and the doors, hair of every dark shade, ready to be used as augmentation of natural hair.

How long has this been going on?

Now, I have seen architectural works of the hair that I cannot fathom how much skill and time it has taken to put those creations on the heads of the wearers and they do not come cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

I have written of this section of Paris before, both sides of the street teeming like an African ghetto that even I feel too much of an outsider to be able to relate. Literally, every shop sells hair and cosmetics, and as they are all selling the same things, you do wonder about what makes each shop unique as competition is brisk, if not cutthroat, you probably need men to literally muscle in the customer off the street.

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

Travelled the world and the seven hairs

The hair, however, is a different story, having travelled off the shorn heads of poor people from the hinterland of Brazil and India, the hair has become the travelled dream of people who probably would never see miles beyond their locality for a lifetime.

The profits from these lengths of follicular fancy would hardly get to them. That is absorbed somewhere in the value chain by people who have probably become billionaires in the purveyance of this fleeting enhancement to beauty.

I would not know if there is a fair-trade hair construct that ensures a bit more of the profits of this arbitrage goes back to the source communities of the hair. That is another element of the opacity of capitalism.

Where’s the shampoo?

I guess for me, the only hair product I use is a razor and shaving gel if that counts as hair products. I shave my head just while I shave my beard, or whatever those itchy bristles are. It was funny and cheeky when my friend as he was using the shower ventured then declined. He then said he could not ask me for something I basically could not have. Shampoo!

That is another story. The trade in hair is about to get nasty and it is in the pulling of customers rather than of their hair.

Like TLC does say, “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow.”

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

An observation

Walking up Boulevard de Strasbourg towards Gare de l’Est Station, I could not help but notice amongst the bijou restaurants and cafes along with the decrepit but expensive hotels that would hardly elicit a 2-star rating on any self-respecting booking site, the ethnic homogeneity of people and shops.

Whilst I would not venture the suggestion of African town as a corollary to Chinatown, most of the shops had something to do with hair, cosmetics and some fashion.

The barbers and there were a few, and much as I should resist the temptation to get into the Afro hair wars, an observation of this sort must not be left unattended to.

Changing the African

Now, the shops had all manner of paints and colours, makeup to make scary clowns of otherwise beautiful and comely people. The matter of hair extensions is another thing, not one lady of African ancestry appears to sport natural hair.

No braids, no plaits, rather, we all happen to have hair like Caucasians will have their hair, relaxed, long and falling over the shoulders, most black and at times melanin-deficient brown. It is not like I should have much to say about hair, from the moment I noticed male-pattern baldness, I have shaved my head rather than exercise myself over the loss of hair.

The unpretty angst

This is inexpensive for me, considering I shave it just when I have my regular shaves and the occasional scrapes that take fillets of skin off my scalp that the pain gives that unusual opportunity to shed a tear or two.

Beyond hair, the skin is toned and despite that tendency to scarring some have resorted to cosmetic surgery with varying results, and that is not to say of those who have paid the ultimate price enhancing their boobs, buttocks or looks. When are we going to feel secure and comfortable in our own skins?

It goes without saying that we have bought into a mindset that creates a fashion industry exploiting the predominant view that naturally, we are somewhat unpretty. Yet, we must all choose the look that makes us most confident about ourselves, even if it is not natural, that is one of the amazing things about the resourcefulness of our humanity. However, the greatest beauty will always be on the inside.

TLC – Take it away!

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

My food haunts in Berlin and Paris

My habitude

The creature of habit that I am means I have a tendency to do visit the same places, watch the same series or similar genre, eat the same cuisine and repeat some things without tiring of the experience.

It is like I am comfortable, fulfilled and happy when I find something I like and cannot be persuaded to consider something else.

On my recent visit to Berlin, having stayed in hotels all around the city, I have more recently gravitated to staying right in the centre, Schöneberg, in fact, it would most likely be bordered by the Wittenbergplatz and Kurfürstenstraße metro stations.

Apart from the ease of getting around Berlin from this central location, most of the places I will frequent will normally be within walking distance.

Ebe Ano, again and again

On such place I cannot miss when in Berlin is Ebe Ano at Pohlstraße 52, a Nigerian soul food restaurant that I must say is second to none in all the Nigerian cuisine outfits I have visited in Western Europe.

What it does not have in variety is full catered for in service and passion with what is on offer. The proprietors are a multi-racial couple, the man being the chef majoring in the exquisite stews from the eastern part of Nigeria.

I do the deep dive with a starter of pepper soup or suya and follow that with one of the many vegetable stews that includes any of Bitterleaf, Oha, Ukazi, Utazi, Egusi, Ogbono, Ugba, Okro vegetables with pounded yam, semolina, garri, amala, ground rice or wheat puddings.

Hands and more

The stews are not heavily spiced or too hot for the Western palate, though you are provided a side ramekin of red hot chilli paste, if you want to up the ante.

We go the traditional way and eat with our fingers rather than with cumbersome cutlery, and you will probably see many non-Africans digging in with just as much pleasure beyond the unadventurous rice or jollof rice with plantains and moin-moin into the amazingly exotic.

My understanding is that they have a growing non-African patronage and it is always a pleasure to meet up with friends there. For the taste of something original, different, exquisite, ethnic, inexpensive and delicious, you cannot afford to walk past Ebe Ano without looking in and having a go. I always do.

CDG is an impossible airport

Then, if I do stopover in Paris and have time on my hands, navigating Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) is hellish at the best of times and whoever designed that airport should get invited for tea with Madame Guillotine at the Bastille.

The staff at CDG are well aware of the absolute inscrutability of this airport, my only advice to anyone transiting through CDG is to never be pressed for time navigating this place or you’ll miss your flight. Let me introduce the EasyCDG website which is not affiliated to CDG but is the labour of love of some who knows the CDG is anything but easy.

Getting into Paris

I finally found my way to the RER B trains to Paris with a long wait at the counter-intuitively impossible self-service ticket dispensing machines that up to 70% of the users operated with great difficulty before I boarded the 45-minute train journey to Châtelet – Les Halles in the very heart of Paris.

The station sits beneath a sprawling shopping centre that is being reconstructed, it does have the feel of a construction site with directions a bit messed up apart from the fact that escalators and lifts could be out of order.

Generally, I want to make it out of the Rambuteau exit towards the Georges Pompidou Centre that I have viewed for as long as I have visited Paris but never entered.

Just Café Beaubourg

My rendezvous is the Café Beaubourg [Not a flattering review, but hey!] which is to the left of the centre if you are stood with your back to the centre. This is where I meet with friends in Paris and where I take anyone I meet in Paris for brunch.

The brunch does not come cheap, but the view from a first floor window towards the centre and the square in front of it is one where you can watch the world go by without being disturbed by the charade outside.

It is also a place to reminisce for there I have been with friends some gone away and some long gone leaving me with just the memories and the realisation of how the passage of time brings people through your life like a river flows under a bridge. Sometimes an eddy is created that lasts long enough for one to behold with wonder leaving more than an impression.

Blog - Thought Picnic: A Brunch of Long Memories

These are things creatures of habit are born to suffer, the living and the memory and then a smile and a tear. The moment is replayed in the mind like a film and then we move on from that encounter with the past to be tried again at another opportune time.

#JeSuisCharlie: Time to go after the extremists completely

No excuses

It was with utter shock at lunchtime that I saw the news on the canteen television set that 12 people had been murdered on the premises of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Nothing in my view could excuse the blood-letting carnage meted out by murderous brigands in the name of some belief system or religion.

Satire is a wonderful tool and sophisticated medium of expression to carry interesting, difficult, complex or controversial thought to a reading or listening public, it is to make people think and reflect, never is it to inspire barbarity and atrocious behaviour leading to murder.

Undermining their cause

The three cowardly and masked criminals who shot up the place and left as they were heard shouting "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "God is Great" in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar"), have done a great damage to any cause they portend to represent.

To suggest they were avenging the prophet is to promote the view that beyond the mystique, the mystery and sometimes the myth, the so-called prophet is weak, powerless, fitful and ineffectual. This can never be the case if the teachings of the prophet have thrived for over 14 centuries.

God is no doubt great, but this is not how to project the greatness of God, by spilling blood on the streets in the quest for their own personal sense of justice.

Lawless brigands

It makes you wonder, who appointed these butchering criminals judge and jury to run riot with weapons taking any life they see fit because they were seemingly offended?

In this day and age, we cannot allow people to overrun civil society bringing carnage amongst us and then running into some hiding place seeking refuge from justice. Cowards!

What damage these people have wrought in the name of Islam is beyond reckoning, and much as they are not representative of Islam per se, this act of unmitigated violence will give the movement that appreciates Islamophobia more fuel and support.

Damage to religion

Suffice it to say that the people who do the most damage to religion are those who through their actions in support of their beliefs are both unreasonable and extremist.

People whose perspective of life strips humanity of any expression beyond one of subservience to a deity that is cruel, merciless and humourless, yet, if we are to lose the richness of satire and humour to the feeble religious sensibilities of fanatics, we deserve no liberty nor freedom.

We must protect our liberty, our freedom, our expression and our wonderful humanity from these sort of people by chasing them and their sponsors; the acquiescent, the committed and those who give succour to the ends of the earth, bringing them to face the full wrath of the law.

Much as we have civilised ourselves beyond the routine shedding of blood, we must deprive these people of their liberty that no one else comes to harm by their words, thoughts or deeds.

Snakes in the backyard

We can no more pussyfoot around religious extremism, it has to be tackled head on and brought to heel, as every terrorist does not belong on our streets for more than an overly generous second.

It is like what Hillary Clinton said about tolerating terrorism in whatever form, “It's like that old story - you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.”

That is what we do when those with a tendency to terrorist activity are allowed to remain free because of our fear of engaging them and eradicating whatever the radicalisation or philosophy is.

Whose picture is it, really?

Then we need to deal with the issue of depictions, nobody knows what any of the original religious leaders looks like, it is quite beyond belief that anyone would then think a depiction is a representation. Like every picture of a white man with blonde long hair wearing a white robe is Jesus Christ, or every picture of a man with dark hair, a big beard and a wearing a turban is Mohammed.

How we can be so convinced of what we do not know to so act as if it were a personal living experience makes the hold of religion on some people feel more cultist than devotional. This is where people not so grounded in the richness of their faith and belief systems get so easily offended by completely innocuous things.

Can we have come through centuries of repression, persecution, wars and emancipating to then end up in the 21^st Century looking like the Dark Ages? It ought not be so.

Protecting our expression

No one can so suddenly be so religious to begin to personify the original prophets and instigators of the belief systems we now hold dear, from whatever persuasions and anything that attempts to create and nurture people with that kind of mind-set needs to be nipped in bud.

Back to Charlie Hebdo, I am saddened and perturbed by this tragedy, but for the victims of this tragedy not to have died in vain, we must continue the discourse in the richness of satire and humour, whilst condemning those who have decided to forfeit this wonderful gift of human expression for murderous instincts.

Justice will prevail, peace will rein and may the beauty of human expression on any topic we so desire to reflect upon never wane.

May all those who lost their lives in this unfortunate tragedy, rest in peace.

#JeSuisCharlie

Europe: My Observations of Homelessness in Paris, Berlin and London

My homeless life

The roughest I have ever slept is on a sofa for just over a week when I was graciously offered a roof having become homeless.

I have been a nomad for years but have had the generosity and goodwill of others for periods of time beyond overstaying my welcome, but they have not refused me.

My things are scattered between countries, cities and homes, all of which has taught me to appreciate adversity as it affects people, and yet I consider myself blessed beyond measure for I have choices and in some way, the means to make such choices.

The backstory to this has been written innumerable times on this blog, I own my experiences and my story.

Blog - Homeless! My exciting life takes a new chapter

Blog - England: How Lewisham Single Homeless Intervention Prevention humiliated me

Between Paris and Berlin

Yet, in the capital cities of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, many have not been that fortunate.

In Paris, it was whole families that I observed sleeping rough, it was humbling and quite instructive.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Hard Times

In Berlin, I never once saw a cardboard box, but there was a spirit of humanity that I noticed. Those sleeping rough were not in store doorways but inside buildings sleeping amongst the enclosed automatic teller machines.

This could mean most of the homeless had a support system to fall back on and the few without access just got this alternative.

They obviously were not threatening, which might be why they were allowed in the bank branch buildings.

Maybe, but why?

Maybe again, Berlin businesses have a human heart that beats with compassion and empathy.

However, at a very unholy hour, I saw an old man without lower limbs fast asleep in his wheelchair, his polystyrene begging cup lightly clasped in his hand, my heart melted and I put in some change with the hope that clatter of chinks did not disturb his sleep. There was no need to be thanked.

It should never be on God's good earth that a man end up old and destitute with just his wheelchair for a bed. Not in Germany and not in Europe, but that is the reality and our humanity is the poorer for it, regardless of the life story of the man, the old and the young are the responsibility of the able.

I have no smart answers to the big questions, but what I can affect in my little sphere of influence and impact with the little experience, advice, means and help I have got, I would strive to be a blessing to others.

A bed of nails in London?

London however plumbed the depths of Dickensian malevolence when pictures appeared of anti-homeless spikes and studs being installed at entrances of prime real estate properties, we were scandalised.

You would think fakirs had invaded London and were ready to entertain with one of their interesting bed-of-nails tricks, but that was not the case.

An atrocity of inhumane corporatism

Worst still was when Tesco, the supermarket giant followed suit, installing studs at their recessed storefronts, such corporate irresponsibility that tacks onto the vilest expression of capitalism is utterly, utterly beneath contempt.

Tesco has lost my custom, and though after drawing public ire they have removed the said studs that they deigned to carry out the thought just shows they have no discernible humanity.

I have written before, we have a serious homelessness problem in the UK that the system has not yet fully grasped, it is an issue I would continue to write about until I see changes.

France: As we did it

We were off

It could have lasted longer but for events completely out of our control. A butterfly apparently flapped its wings in America and it caused a hurricane in Europe.

A month ago, I jetted off to France to lead a deployment team that was to visit over 20 countries in the following 6 months – I was full of excitement.

Our arrival in the dreadful Charles de Gaulle airport had me walking literally a mile in Terminal 2 to meet up with other members of my party who had flown in from Manchester.

Disarray we could do without

Our firm had engaged a travel agent that just seemed to make a mess of our car hire, our hotel bookings and much else, a turn-around journey that could have lasted less than 5 hours took the best part of 11; we were not pleased.

When we got to our hotel, we just knew this was not where we wanted to spend the next 20 days, in the middle of nowhere, far from facilities and sentenced to pizza deliveries in the witching hour, something had to give.

Our firm got this sorted that we ended up in another hotel from the third night, it was further away from Paris but it had a life about it and good transport connections to our place of work and into Paris.

Not ready but going steady

Work was interesting, there was much to do but one could not vouch for the preparedness of the whole process to deliver what we were there to do.

In the end, we got some progress and things began to pick up as upheavals, dismissals and disbandment circled around us that we needed to seek assurances of all concerned.

One had to be able and deft, we won through and delivered on our remit, sought improvements to certain implementations and took the opportunity to offer advice that we thought could make things go even better.

Good for me

Though we were to be out there for 21 days with 6 days off, we did 24 days with only three days off, sometimes working the unholiest hours, caught in French detours of traffic that took over 30 minutes to unravel.

The politics of the environment was moving at fast pace from the United State; overruns and overspends suddenly meant that the dream of extensive travel will for now end with France.

For me, I regained my technical acumen, my confidence and my knack for problem resolution whilst being completely mindful of the people affected by my activities. I made three good friends too. We might just do it again – who knows?

In Paris: Such Raw Talent

This was different

Now, I have seen many buskers in stations with varying degrees of musicality from the ability to sing to amazing dexterity and talent with musical instruments.

The strains and strumming have rarely moved me to listen, stop and spectate; I do not have that sense of curiosity and distraction when I have other purpose until last night.

This was really different

As I made for my train to the Parisian suburbs just on the platform ahead of me the voice came with angelic resonance singing A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin) to backing music on an amplifier.

We all stopped and gathered round for this unusual session of entertainment to which we all applauded without respite.

Then she did Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack), I Want to Know What Love Is (Foreigner), Sitting on the Dock of the Bay (Otis Redding) and Human Nature (Michael Jackson).

Who discovers talent?

It made you wonder why such talent wasn't filling concert halls, night after night. However, the appreciation was generous as we all seemed to chip in a coin, a note and more applause.

She made the boring but bustling platforms of Châtelet des Halles lively with the nostalgic sound of really good music.

As I boarded my train, I could only wish the lady the very best and I thought, where does such raw talent go to be really appreciated?

Thought Picnic: No stars for my coffee and no bucks for the WiFi

Starbucks to the rescue

For free wireless internet connectivity at the price of a coffee with strange names [tall, grande or venti] pretending to trendiness at Starbucks you can surf.

I usually have a café latte grande which in simple English is a medium-sized coffee with frothy milk, but it felt strange seeing the coffee being made.

Now, I have had student doctors gather round my bed, even had some sit in on consultations either with my medical consultant or for intimate topics of discussion without thinking much about it as long as they are not poking me with things or making the calls.

The taste of trainee coffee

It is the first time I have had an apprentice barista [not barrister at law for a vendor at a coffee bar] prepare my coffee as she was instructed through each step of making the coffee.

You could see she was not a dab hand that my coffee was in danger of coming short of the Starbucks quality I had grown accustomed to; there was not enough frothy milk to fill my mug that the instructor had to step in.

She might with time become such an expert able to train other baristas in making the Starbucks menu of coffee-bean offerings but I would have liked a little subtlety in the instruction.

Just ask

For a café full of people who I thought were using the free WiFi, I found out it was down, the jinx of my hotel seemed to be following me, but when I asked, the guys in the café switched it on and we were all able to surf for free.

I cannot be the most forward and assertive person around, I guess people just looked for alternatives rather than ask and that might be because they had their coffees in take-away paper cups rather than in a china mug as I always have mine.

Why ask?

This only lasted so long before the WiFi service became unusable in two Starbucks cafés around Chatelet des Halles that it was better to find a seat inside Forum des Halles for the free WiFi connection.

Where an annoying prick took exception to people taking pictures in the mall where he might have inadvertently appeared in their pictures after being the most irritating nuisance on the phone beside me. He was just about walked out of the place by security – Good riddance.

To think in one Starbucks café I only had to click on a button to connect and in another hardly 300 metres away I filled in a form to guard against terrorism just short of divulging my sexual preferences and blood type – I’ll rather be rescued by something freer than what Starbucks has to offer of over-priced coffee and a fraction of a carrot cake compared to what I will get in Germany going for literally twice the price. Daylight robbery!

Paris - from triumph to agreement

No flicker on Picasa

Having taken a good few photographs, I was met with the problem of how to publish them. So, to Google, I went searching for web ablums and I got introduced to Picasa Web Albums, part of the Google behemoth which I think is a play on Picasso the artist.

Easy as everything seemed including the deals and so on, I usually subscribe to any Internet service that would provide me value, performance and service – this goes for my hotmail and blog service.

So, how do I subscribe to the Picasa thingy? I need a Gmail account.

How do I get a Gmail account? I need to be introduced but another Gmail member or get an SMS message sent to my mobile phone. So, I go for the second option.

You cannot be serious, the Netherlands is not in the list, in fact, no European country appears in that list. Well, that is one lost customer for Google and one gain for Yahoo – getting on flickr.com does not involve extraneous and sanctimonious controls – I hate frustrated access – it puts me off and I sure would not be doing Gmail – not ever.

I just have to bear the silliness of greetings like Aloha AkinNLD! on flickr – One is seriously not impressed.

Paris ma belle ville

Anyways, I could offer myself as a mini-tour guide to Paris, I have done it a few times taking friends and relations round Paris and helping them understand that they do not have to see Paris and die.

Usually, my guests only have two nights to spend in Paris, so major attractions like the Louvre Museum are out of the question.

Usually, I concentrate on the views and the landmarks; first thing to do is the Eiffel Tower to the very top – a must, a time out for lunch and a trip on the tour bus. In a romantic setting it would be dinner on the 53^rd floor of the Montparnasse Tower the tallest building in Paris, facing the Eiffel Tower at night.

Alternatively, go up to the Grande Arche in the Place de La Défense and just have a time there.

In other cases, one can walk up or down the Champs-Élysées Avenue between the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe.

I must confess that doing the Champs-Élysées at night saves you the urge and temptation others have to go into every shop with fools gold and too much glitter especially if you have to adjudge if the ring fits or the necklace design is right.

On a very sunny day, walking through the Jardins des Tuileries from Place de le Concorde to the Louvre is one exciting view – today, I did the Arc de Triomphe to Louvre plod recorded a few things of interest.

I took quite a number of pictures and you can find them on my flickr album.

Just in case you are wondering about the title - it is about my walk from the Arc de Triomphe (triumph) to Place de la Concorde (harmony/agreement).

Brunch with Florence Nightingale in Paris

Don’t be late for brunch

A morning in Paris is not complete without brunch at the Café Beaubourg adjacent to the Georges Pompidou Centre – usually, I take a window seat on the first floor and watch the world go by as I tuck into the amalgam of English/Continental breakfast.

Well, it is tea, coffee or chocolate, freshly pressed orange or grapefruit juice, toast, scrambled eggs, hash browns, fried ham looking like bacon, sausages, butter, jams, a salad and still water.

You crown that with a fruit salad or a selection of cheeses, somehow this time the waiter brought coffee instead of the chocolate, I ordered, that was changed, but I did not ask for the fruit salad to be exchanged for the cheese – well, sometime the staff are just not up to it.

The main thing is to get to the café before 11:00AM when things start to change to another kind of menu, so, as the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, I did wonder to myself as I looked at my watch – “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”

I just never seem to make it for breakfast in hotels though the quality of choice can be lacking in hotel buffets.

My big toe – Ouch! Ouch!

So, I left the hotel with just 45 minutes to spare and got out at Les Halles metro stop, just as I was cresting ground-level on the escalator, there was a misstep and I bruised my toe.

It is summer and temperature are in touching distance of 30 Celsius, so we are all in shorts and sandals, but unlike the Dutch, I never wear socks in my sandals, probably leaving ones toes unprotected if one stumbles.

Protecting size 46 – European/12 – UK feet can be an ordeal, not that my feet are big, they are just long and really each foot is exactly a foot (imperial measure) long – so I do have 2 feet in every sense of the word.

Thankfully, my feet were already size 45/11 at 15 and they have not grown in that proportion, shopping for good shoes is some arduous task.

Anyway, I thought, it was just a bruise then noticed it was really bleeding, so I had to look for a chemist to get a dressing and treatment if necessary, so I hobbled about looking for a green neon sign in the shape pf a cross – the sign for pharmacies in Europe in general – I found one and walked in, queued up to be served.

Only Florence Nightingale could do better

A lady comes round and now my foot is something of a mess, she gets sterile pads and so on, and here I am thinking I have to find a bench to sort this thing out.

Then come the sterile gloves and disinfectant, swabs and all that nursey stuff, she gets me to sit down and sets to work on my bloodied big toe, nothing overly serious 4 lint pads later and a plaster.

Then she cleans the blood off my sandals too and after that, says I can go. I can go? No charge for the service? She would not take anything and you really cannot tip for this kind of service.

Anyway, I put a healthy currency note on the counter and insist, that is a thank you for what she had done.

Just in time for brunch at the café but for the first time I have to have it on the terrace rather than my favourite window seat.

If only the waiters in some restaurants in Paris could be as good as the lady at the apothecary.