In the Papers

2nd June 2000

THE SPECTATOR

CANNES OF WORMS

I read Charlotte Edwardes' Diary (Spectator 27 May) concerning her experiences with the French authorities following a mugging in Cannes with a sinking feeling and growing recognition. Three weekends ago, a friend and I went for a long weekend to Cannes. The weather being bad, we escaped the coast to base ourselves in the ancient university town of Aix en Provence. We parked our hire car in a busy main road having safely secured all our valuables out of sight in the boot. Forty minutes later, we returned to our car having found rooms and drove to the hotel. We opened the boot. It was empty.

Entering the hotel reception, sans luggage (and, in my case, sans trousers and passport - I just had a pair of shorts to my name) we were given directions to the Police Nationale. I had little hope of recovering the stolen goods, but at least I could quickly file a report for insurance purposes. Or so I thought. The police station had been built in the sixties and was particularly uninviting. A large sign proclaimed "Defence de Fumer" while a heavily armed but shabby gendarme sucked on a particularly rancid local brand of cigarette. We went to the main desk to report the crime. A police officer suffering from terminal acne who looked 16 years of age and about 5 foot 4 inches tall gesticulated at a bench and said "Deux Minutes". We joined a group of disgruntled American and German tourists all of whom had had their hire cars broken into and all of whom had been waiting for more than 'deux minutes'.

After an hour of sitting there we enquired again and were told to sit down. "Deux minutes". Two women police officers then arrived and sat at another desk. After a few minutes of uncertainty, no one had approached us, a scramble then ensued to be first on the list they seemed to be compiling. We were asked why we wanted to see a detective. We told them we had had all our luggage stolen. They asked what we expected the Police Nationale to do about it. After three hours and twenty minutes we got to make our report. I collected a form which may enable me to claim back on the insurance but, we were assured, offered no hope whatsoever of finding our belongings.