Here is how to do a booze cruise. Together with 3 or 4 friends you hire a van. It has to be a white van. No other colour will do. Somehow you all squeeze into the front seat, and set off for Dover (the ferry port on the south coast of England). Because you are late for the ferry, you drive at 20 mph over the speed limit and overtake other vehicles on the wrong side. You get to Dover and drive onto the ferry. Driving has made you thirsty, so you go to the bar to drink beer while the ship crosses the English Channel to Calais. In France, they drive on the right hand side of the road, not the left. But don’t worry about that – you aren’t going very far. You are going to a restaurant for lunch, actually. In the restaurant, the waiter brings the menu. It is all in French (well, it is France, after all!). You recognise only one word on the menu. You all order pizza, and a bottle or two of red wine. After lunch you drive to one of the big hypermarkets and load up several trollies with cases of beer or wine. You pay for them with your friend’s credit card, because you have forgotten to bring any euros with you. You load everything into the white van, and return to the ferry. If the customs officer at Dover stops you, you tell him that all 35 cases of wine and 25 cases of beer in the van are for your own personal use. Once back in England, you and your friends sing football songs all the way home along the motorway.

　　So it was with horror that we read this week that the European Court of Justice was considering whether we actually needed to go to France to buy beer and wine cheaply. Instead, perhaps we could order it on the internet, and it could be delivered from France to our homes. This would have brought the fine tradition of the booze cruise to an end. No more white vans speeding down the motorway. No more day trips to Calais to buy wine for the Christmas party. Fortunately, the Court decided that you could not avoid British taxes by ordering things on the internet from France. So the booze cruise has been saved.