Letter: Thanks to Europe

Phyllida Barstow (letter, 31 January) relates how crossing the Channel used to be an adventure, everything on the other side looking, smelling and tasting different.

I too vividly remember crossing the Channel, into a country in which it was impossible to get a decent meal in whole counties, because even if the ingredients were available, nobody knew what to do with them. A land where women left church early to put the cabbage on, and where the delicatessen was a newsagent's that sold milk.

If England now looks, smells and tastes not that much different from Europe, let us thank our lucky stars.

NICOLAS du Q BIRD

Bath, Somerset