THE HOLIDAY BEGINS OR SUNDAY

After the kind of rain that would have Noah redesigning a bigger boat, a fog descended on us. I hate fog. Fog says horror and ghost sailors knocking at your door and ripping you asunder with their ghost sailor fish hooks. The fog lifted and I felt better. At an early hour I set out on my bike to explore the area. I basically went the wrong way. All I found were fields upon fields of cows, and little farmsteads on isolated sections of road. I was convinced I would stumble upon a hideously malformed inbred boy play dueling banjos whilst his two older brothers jumped out of the woods, knocked me off my bike and pinned me to a tree shrieking, ‘Squeal little piggy, squeal!’ This didn’t happen. Thankfully.

Some of my morning riding countryside. Beautiful yet full of menace.
Well, menacing if you are me and are a wuss in the extreme.

La Famille Magill enjoyed the book market at La Roche Bernard, a touch lost on us, given that the books were French and no matter how cool we may think it looks to have French books on your shelves, it is equally pretentious and doubly pathetic if you can’t read French. Then headed off to the beach at Pénestin. Curious things spotted today were:
• French men will stop and piss anywhere. They care not who can see, what building, field or car they are washing with their aqua vitae. They just piss when they need to. This is illegal if you are a French lady, unless you are pregnant. We didn't spot a pregnant French lady squatting anywhere so assume they are the gender with better bladder control.
• French families arrive on a beach for around 30 mins. Do their thing and go. English families build fortifications around themselves, the sand castle is not just pleasure in creation it is the Englishman’s way of spraying his territory on the beach, little turrets of boundary demarcation are erected to tell all other beach users what the acceptable parameters of proximity are.
• Petrol stations don’t like English credit cards and are unmanned. This results in you driving for miles to find one that does thus wasting the petrol you hope to buy.
• The stereotype of French public toilets being hideous continues to be proven true. Not only do they not have toilet paper, they don’t have seats either. This is not pleasant for a 6 and 7 year old. We are using up our antibacterial baby wipes very quickly.
• The French are also nice people and generous people. They topped up Mrs M’s wine on a no-charge refill basis (little did they know how much Mrs M could actually consume)

I think the bar owner's folly was not using a smaller glass for Mrs M.

We have worn the kids out. They played in the sea and in the pool. Every now and then I get the crunching sensation of sand in my mouth and the shower has been turned down just a fraction on the heat, a sure sign of the early days of tan. Today has been a very lovely day.