As anybody who ever cribbed an opening line from The Go-Between has told you, 'the past is another country, they do things differently there.' Right now plenty of things feel like another country. Possibly because I'm in France.
The future must be another country too. Montpellier? Montpellier feels like another world: like Bladerunner re-imagined by the man who inflicted 'A year in Provence' on us. It was recently voted the place most French citizens would like to live in, and it is easy to see why. I've never been anywhere that made city life such an easy and pleasant place to live, at once thoroughly modern and obviously ancient.
The centre is entirely pedestrianised, which gives an incredible feeling of liberty. People move around the broad open squares and parks on bike or foot. Otherwise transport is by space-age tram, which hum to and fro in near silence, occasionally clanking a bell to warn people to get out of the way.
The old buildings, most of them turn of the 19th century and akin in style to posher parts of Paris, sit alongside the modern clean concrete lines and dark glass windows of newer municipal edifices. The paved streets are cut through with gleaming steel rails, and studded with futuristic bollards and street lamps.
My hotel is across the way from the Antigone housing project (and for once, and possibly explaining why I'm in such a good mood, near the city centre). Antigone is somebody's conception of utopia, and it seems to work. I suppose London's Barbican was once a similar thing. Antigone is likely to age better because it blends the new with the old as opposed to attempting to surpass it altogether.
Libraries, swimming pools, fountains and avenues, surrounded by low cost housing. It's all within a short walk of the city's medieval core, which stops the whole thing from descending into the kind of soulless-ness that gives JG Ballard his kicks.
First impressions of Montpellier are of the city as it should be. Way out of town, at the end of a tramline which takes you past the 13th century medical school, the modern-day University complex, science parks, and countless graffiti strewn parks and basketball courts, is the Stade La Mosson.
There, two teams who to British rugby fans could scarcely be more 'of another country' and are certainly assumed 'do things differently' contested one of the more fierce and brutal games I've seen.
French ticket-holders came, along with most other neutrals, expecting a kind of free-flowing festival of passing and running rugby. What they got was a ferocious South Pacific derby, between two teams who meet so often - 23% of Samoa's Tests have been against Tonga - that they ground each other to a virtual standstill.
"Why did you insist on playing in a style that is so foreign to the way Samoa traditionally play", asked one English journalist of Michael Jones, as though he had a better grasp of the game on the far-side of the world than the coach himself.
"It wasn't foreign", Jones shot back. "We've beaten these guys nine times in the last seven years. We know how to do it." Samoa, unlucky to have a try disallowed due to the inconclusive video replays, were "out-passioned and out-muscled" by a team who wanted it more, said Jones.
The game itself was all errors and high-balls. The solitary try came from a catch-and-drive. Yet from the stunning confrontation of war dances, Sipi Tau versus Siva Tau that started it, the match was compelling viewing, not because of the quality - there was none - but because of the passion.
This was derby rugby, played in a style not unfamiliar to anyone who has seen Bristol and Bath or any other neighbours go at each other when there is something serious at stake.
Jones said that Tonga had played the best that he'd ever seen them. It was an astonishingly committed display, which frequently crossed over into becoming illegal: high tackles, punches and elbows were everywhere, and the referee duly penalised both sides. The final five minutes, which saw 13-man Tonga hold 15-man Samoa away from their try-line, were breath-taking.
For the Tongans it was something of a sin to be playing on a Sunday at all, and the coach, Quddus Fielea, attributed the team's spirit in those final moments to a large prayer meeting his squad had held that morning, when they'd asked for especial forgiveness and fortitude for playing on a forbidden day.
That was a familiar emotion indeed, with my mind drifting away to quintessential Brits like Eric Liddle and David Shephard. But then there was a certain familiarity about the entire game: from the tactics on display, to the styles of play, to the motivations behind them.
Unlike Montpellier, behind the ostensible differences, the Tongans, and to a lesser extent the Samoans, offer a version of the game that is not too dissimilar to English sensibilities: brutish and simple, error-prone and emotional. It will make for dour but engrossing viewing as Pool A pans out.
