After “breakthrough,” the British witnessed la difference.* The French section was generally swisher and better-lit, it contained a shrine to St Barbara, the patron saint of miners, a “cairn” of champagne bottles and the odd fag-end. The French tunneling machines had girls’ names: the British numbered theirs.
*Note the unconventional spelling “la difference,” an apposite amalgam of French and English.
Martin Latham, “The Secret History of the Channel Tunnel (1802–2001),” in Kent’s Strangest Tales (London: Portico, 2016), 103. Original emphasis.