A trip to Paris fills Dalrymple with national pride, of a sort:

The English now choose ugliness as a matter of ideology….This would bode ill for us were it not that other nations are in the process of following suit. Behind me in the queue to board the plane was a plump young woman squeezed into unsuitable clothes so hideous I thought she must be English. This impression was strengthened by the metallic-mauve coloured pins that she had had inserted into her upper lip on both sides of her mouth. Despite this stupidity, however, she was French, not English. My heart swelled with patriotic pride at our cultural influence.