From Paris, my friend Peter Allen reported on Tunisians gathering at the Gare du Nord, "desperate immigrants fleeing the chaos in North Africa", in the hope of travelling to Britain.
And my part in chronicling the human fall-out from the jasmine revolution took me across the border to the town of Ventimiglia, or Vintimille as the French call it. The jasmine revolution has been warmly welcomed in the West; the human fall-out, namely the migrants, have not.
Ventimiglia looks like a place that could be attractive if it tried harder. At such close proximity to the smart resorts of the Côte d'Azur, it needs to try an awful lot harder.
I confess to disliking the Friday market (a treat for anyone seeking fake designer goods until they have them confiscated and burned on the French border), and I also dislike paying €35 a head for a meal that is no more than adequate.
During my visit, I met several of the hundreds of Tunisians who have reached this border town and hope to proceed to France, Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany - anywhere they can find work and a new life away from grinding poverty and, they say, continuing repression back home.
Ahmed Chalbi, show above, was in possession of the papers deemed necessary for him to travel on to any of those countries. Theory is not all always matched by practice.
For the papers were issued by the Italian authorities who, it must be said, were only too anxious to get these unwanted visitors from the Maghreb off their hands as quickly as possible.
Some 26,000 people have made it across the Med since January and their presence in Italy is an embarrassment for Silvio Berlusconi - no stranger, of course, to embarrassment - at a time when immigration is an electoral minefield.
But France doesn't want them either, and has used various means of stopping people like Ahmed from getting across the border and staying there.
And there you have one very big reason why Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy were locked in discussion in Rome yesterday. They agreed to call for changes to the Schengen open-border treaty to enable them to be that much tougher on these inconvenient visitors from North Africa; the talks were hailed in Paris as a great rapprochment between squabbling neighbours, but will surely be followed by further disputes.
After talking to Ahmed, I met Hassen Sahli (left, below) and Sami Garslah, who led me through the station at Ventimiglia to show me their sleeping arrangements: a waiting room they described as their "five-star hotel de luxe".
Others make their beds in a makeshift Red Cross camp or a park close to the sea front, where they must take care not to offend the forces of law and order by lying on the benches.
My conversations with Hassen and Sami cost me something like two packets of Marlborough - the dangers of smoking seem less troublesome when you've seen fellow refugees drown on the voyage across the Med - and a little money for food.
Read what I made of it in my piece for The National, Abu Dhabi, or indeed how Peter reported the Paris end for his readership.
Serious questions are raised by the consequences of turmoil in Arab world, and Europe has legitimate to be concerned about accepting large numbers of migrants.
But I also have one other abiding thought. When other people fleeing from difficult conditions at home, whether in Asian or Africa, began to gather again at Sangatte, where the Channel Tunnel begins, long after the closure of the refugee camp, I met several of them, too. They also wanted to make it to England.
When I heard what they'd gone through to reach the outskirts of Calais, I formed the view that here were people with the resourcefulness and drive that would make them a credit to Britain.
Let them in, I said to anyone who would listen. But I had an equally attractive balancing notion: that we could take them, but selectively expel a few people already resident in the UK. I had in mind, naturally, people who think al-Qa'eda are decent folk deserving of our support, but also those good, upstanding citizens who belong to the BNP.
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