A touch of frost

The British are usually quite self-abasing when it comes to getting in a tizz over some adverse weather, be it leaves on the railway line, the wrong leaves on the line or a moderate layer of snow slowing everything down. But in California, it drops down to 2 degrees celsius and the authorities declare a state emergency. Honestly, it's not even in minus numbers. There’s a few photogenic frost-encrusted lemons and they go barmy. I guess living in California does make you soft.
The release of the archives that showed a proposal from the French Prime Minister in 1955 for the UK and France to merge was treated by BBC One news in a way that pandered to easy prejudices. All the running was made by Guy Mollet, the French PM of the constitutionally and economically weak Fourth Republic and Anthony Eden said 'non', forcing France to turn to Germany and beginning the decades of Britain being sidelined in Europe. Mollet even suggested that Queen Elizabeth II could have been head of state of the merged entity. But the BBC did an introductory graphic of a map of Europe where Britain is being pushed onto France by arrows reminiscent of the opening credits of Dad's Army, giving an illusion that Britain was being joined against her will to a totalitarian enemy. And all the comparisons were negative for Britain saying what we would have to give up, such as swapping fish and chips for snails and a pint of beer for Bordeaux. That last notion is particularly illogical. But then so much of the padding was. The graphic would have been far more truthful had it shown France being pushed onto Britain and if anything, it's the French who would have to make the sacrifices. The kernel of truth excavated from the report was very illuminating, as were the interviews with Brits on the Eurostar platform and Parisians. But the rest of it was highly pathetic, encouraging the myth that Europe is a monolithic enemy continually trying to swallow the UK up. As a side point, with Queen Elizabeth head of state of the two countries, she could have styled herself in the manner of her royal predecessors up to George III, as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, (Northern) Ireland and France, the pretension to the title of the monarch of France being dropped in 1802 as part of a peace treaty.