Germany calling

BACK in 1960, I learned which country was destined to be the organ grinder to whose tune the monkeys of Brussels would have to dance.

I was a shorthand typist with the International Labour Office, one of the UN agencies in Geneva.

One morning my boss took me to a conference by the european Coal and Steel Community, a forerunner of the EU. It was extremely dull and, after putting on the translation headphones, I dozed off.

I woke with a start when the German delegate said: ‘And we hope within a few years, europe will be one country.’ I thought: ‘ Good

gracious, they’re at it again!’ That delegate might have meant it in the nicest possible way, but it was only 15 years after World War II, and that was not the way I took it. I think I was right, wasn’t I?

SONYA PORTER, Woking, Surrey.