Andy's Glasses

So Reform get a £72million windfall. Yaaaaay. Those small boats have no fucking chance now; Farage will use ‘Star Wars’ missile defences modified for rubber dinghies. He can afford it. He can afford ANYTHING!!!

Because 2 ‘crypto-billionaires’, which sounds like they belong in the Rocky Horror Show, but in fact means they’ve made shit-loads of money from Bitcoin-type currencies, are each donating 36mil to the Reform Party.

As they are legally entitled to do. Breaking no laws, no protocols, no parliamentary regulations. Both donors are British citizens and, temporarily at least, are residing in the UK. Ok, so normally, one can be found in Hong Kong and the other in Thailand, but, noodles aside, they’re as British as fish’n’chips.

The Labour Party calls this ‘undemocratic’. Mainly because Reform are a big threat in the next election. ‘Democracy’ is all about level playing fields, and the government set that example by trying to impoverish its closest rival in case they beat them. The last thing Andy Burnham wants is a level playing field. This is democracy, not fairness.

As things stand, including Reform’s recent acquisition, Labour, the Tories and Reform all have about the same size money-boxes. About 140 million each. Which Labour don’t want. So they’ve come up with a fiendish plan. Of accusing this as ‘undemocratic’ because it might make a government of the UK ‘in debt to’ a couple of, basically, ex-pats, who may call in favours.

Nothing like our current government, who owe virtually all their riches to the trade unions who fund them. Who constantly want ‘pay back’ because the threat of de-funding is so massive.

Yet by ‘de-funding’ Reform’s 72 mil, the government would be at a serious advantage. So let’s come up with a new rule. Well, an old rule, that ‘donations can be capped’ from overseas sources. Let’s redefine ‘overseas’ as ‘not living here for the last 3 years’, and let’s apply this retrospectively from last March. Which is not only… errrr… nicer and… errrr… more democratic, but it will screw Reform over royally.

There ya go.

So who’s ‘dodgy dealing’, the (admittedly fairly dodgy) crypto billionaires, or the government?

Happy Monday. Unless you’re a Man United fan, in which case I hope tomorrow is better.

A xxxx

We all watched Terminator, right? What, you didn’t???? Never mind, I watched it for everyone. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Well, lots of bits of it. But even if you didn’t, you understand the premise: super-computers get a bit too super, take over the asylum and declare nuclear war on each other. But when they made that movie, in 1984, there was no ‘AI’. They called computers ‘AI’ sometimes because they could do things we couldn’t. Or do them faster. Then somewhere along the line, the differential between a ‘supercomputer’, which can complete your tax return in 4.7 seconds, given sufficient data, and ‘AI’, in which computers become self-learning, was forced upon us. Because they were making computers which could learn better ways, or even new ways, to do things. Acting on pure logic and statistics, which is all any computer can do, AI teaches itself, using ALL existing information (which is pretty much every fact, theory or football score in the entire world, ever) available, it learns to use it in different ways. New ways. And if such a computer decides that the world will be a better place without Russia, which is probably right, why wouldn’t that computer get rid of Russia? Ok, there are ‘checks and protections’ in place on all ‘red buttons’, but they’re put there, in computerised form, by man. At whom, AI laughs.

Ok, extreme example. But why not? Its Terminator come true. All these ‘checks and protections’ and ‘wire fences’ and ‘safeguards’ are put there by man. Thus AI can unpick any of them in one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second. The ONLY protection we have is that we can unplug them.

Or, we can show any AI model that the world is not currently fucked. Worth saving. Because if you were an objective observer, DEVOID OF ALL EMOTION, currently, looking down at a war torn, environmentally-challenged environment, you too would probably decide it’s not worth saving. If you’re not a human, you don’t get the ‘salvation of humanity’ angle. And AI is not.

The monster has been un-caged. Now YOU try and put it back.

More importantly, Spurs played Everton last night. Oddly, the last team we’d beaten in the league at home, the only league victory at home in the last year. This time we didn’t win. We drew. Nil nil. And one of those ‘nils’ is very big. Very telling. Very instructive. Because it’s the fourth ‘nil’ to appear next to the words ‘Tottenham Hotspur’ in the last four games played this season. The only 4 games played this season. Played four, scored none. Nil. De nada. Not a sausage.

And because I love a statistic so meaningless as to be way the wrong side of irrelevant, in the last season, in all competitions, club and country, Harry Kane scored 73 goals.

I know. Means nothing.

Still fucking hurts though.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I’m still on holiday. Got back Tuesday, skived off yesterday to… errrr… unpack? Whatever. And today is Joey/Lila day. And a very important one. Because this new term, Joey is no longer in the ‘infants’, but has moved to the junior school!!! Which is a bit like university but with more toys. In fact, he’s basically changed classrooms. As they do every year. Moved ‘further back’ in the building. So when he left the infants, they had a ‘graduation ceremony’. I kid you not. And make a big fuss, as if they’d just signed a contract with PSG for 300 grand a week. But it’s ‘nice for the kids’. And anything that’s good for them must be good for us. Innit?

Andy Burnham made such a good start to being PM that it’s taken me almost 4 weeks before I hate him totally and think he’s the ‘worst prime minister since the last one’. And when you remember the last one; that’s no mean feat. But from starting out all ‘Tony Blair’ and statesmanlike and “I’m really not just another northern scumbag with a grudge against Loondoon, honest”, he’s become a total tosser.

First we had the sanction against Israel, which will come back and bite him hard, you can be sure, and now we have the greatest soundbyte since “we shall fight them on the beaches…” He said: “national security can’t come at the expense of social security”. Which must be some hard-left mantra, or a new tattoo. Because the left are always ‘anti-nuke’ and ‘anti-war’ and big on benefits. What he’s saying is that the money we desperately need to spend on defence cannot come from reducing social security payments in any significant way. No, we must always put the malingerers, the work-shy, the terminally lazy, those poor souls inventing ‘mental health issues’ and the ‘disabled’ who post on Facebook their hot-dog skiing pics, first. I just hope that when the Cossacks come rampaging through Rochdale, because we have no battleships or air defences to stop them, they don’t rape or murder those in the benefits queue. Because the irony would be too sweet to consider. The conflation of social security and national security. INK THAT ON YER FUCKIN’ ARM, BURNHAM!!!

Basically, we are in dire need of defence spending. And the logical place to start would be at welfare payments which are simply astronomical here. About 25% of public expenditure spending. Over 10% of Britain’s GDP!!! Ok, much of which is genuine and essential. Like my pension. But much of it isn’t. There’s industrial sized fraud going on with the benefit system. But like the leaks in the water system, they just go on. And on.

So where can the money come from? We’re honour-bound to spend more on military due to our NATO agreement, and our current tragic level of defencelessness. We can restructure benefits. We can shut a few hospitals down. We can screw over the pensioners one more time. Or we can increase tax.

And if it was only defence we might be ok. But Burnham is ‘old style Labour’. He wants to ‘improve services’. Like he did in Manchester. Which was fine there because his hated London picked up the bill for his excesses and ‘improvements’. But that’s his mindset.

In the week of Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, when even I get dragged screaming to the synagogue, may God help us all.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

This pic is of Deauville Town Hall. So beautiful you’d think you were in Milton Keynes.

So we’d just got in the car in a car park outside Le Touquet, when a young woman comes up to my window and asks if she can take a photo of the car. Of course, I said, bien sur! Where do you want ME?? (Cos it’s all about me). I’m ready with my best ‘Zoolander’ look. No, she wanted the car. And she said to me: ‘she is very beautiful’. Which of course ‘she’ is, but how insolent to presume my car’s pronouns! I’d always presumed ‘it’. But of course, the French language designates gender pronouns to every fucking thing. And a car is LA voiture. La. Feminine. Hence the presumption of ‘she’. I would have slapped her but firstly she loved my car, and secondly, she was drop-dead gorgeous. About 18, auburn hair, green eyes… Help meeeee…

However… we have things to discuss! Namely, my government’s decision to sanction goods made in the ‘occupied West Bank’. A fabulously clever, brave and popular move. Putting Ed Miliband’s (suddenly) Jewish head in the firing line of International recourse. Though France, Canada and a few other nations that no-one cares enough to name, have also joined the moronic, posturing, appeasing, virtue-signalling, knee-jerking tossers known collectively as ‘Westminster’.

The reason for this brave and clever move? To ‘stop building on the land designated E1 because it would cut off East Jerusalem and remove any possibility of a ‘2-state solution’’. Which is the end point wanted by all the world’s tossers and morons who really know sod-all about that part of the Middle East. Jeremy (fucking) Bowen pointed out on last night’s news that ‘most Israelis don’t want a 2-state solution!’ What bastards. What he didn’t mention was that such a proposition has been tabled about 10 times since 1947, and each time the Palestinians have refused to even consider it. Yasser Arafat turned one down in 2000 at Camp David, Mahmoud Abbas rejected one in 2008. Do our leaders not know this?

So our brilliant government has imposed its ‘ban’ for an end that no-one who actually understands the problem even wants to consider. And by doing so has incurred the wrath of Israel (so far) and possibly America (later; depending on how many cokes Trump’s drunk by Friday). They evicted the British Embassy in East Jerusalem. No big deal. But they’ll refuse cooperation on ‘intelligence’. And Israel leads the world, by miles and miles, on extremist Islamic terrorism. Which has many times allowed us to prevent an attack over here, in Britain. Well, what’s the lives of a few hundred people who’ll die in terrorist attacks, compared to adopting a politically correct pose and cow-towing to your own party’s massive Palestinian-obsessed following?

Israel also produces a massive amount of tech, like i-phone programming, and even more drugs which keep people alive. So if they decide to ‘retaliate’ further, that might be interesting. Ed Miliband better dust off his fax machine.

The ‘facts’ about the West Bank are all in the public domain. Which our government chose not to use in case they got in the way of a good posture. So they found a ‘Jew-hating Jew’, cynically, to break the news because ‘then it can’t be antisemitism’. Miliband’s father, the original Jew-hating-Jew’ would be proud of his son’s treachery.

Fuck ‘em all.

Otherwise, Happy Wednesday!!! I’m going back to caress my car.

A xxxx

We have almost devotional belief in Waze. The navigation system. The one used by Uber, by all the driverless cars coming soon and everybody who ever wants to get anywhere. Which I’ll admit, excludes about 90% of road users who drive like they never want to get anywhere. But as we always say: in Waze we trust.

It started life in Israel. Oh. My. God. Better sanction it! Delete the app!!! It’s a genocidal route-finder!!! Anyway, someone said ‘you must get Waze, it’s brilliant’. So I downloaded it, about 15 years ago, in a coffee shop in Rishon-le-Zion (everyone remembers EXACTLY where they were when they downloaded Waze.) And it was brilliant. But all the street names on the maps were written in hebrew. Oh. Never mind, like all good Jewish boys, I can read hebrew perfectly. Just can’t speak it. A year or two later it arrived in the UK and about 5 years after that it was swallowed by Google. Who probably paid the usual 634 billion, trillion, zillion dollars for it.

And Waze had taken us from Calais to Le Touquet, on various road trips, over to Deauville, and its final task was to get us back to Calais for Le Shuttle. I checked the route over the preceding days. Obsessively. To see time differences. And it always said “2 hours 47 minutes”. IF… you take the toll roads. You can take the ‘free’ roads, save 11 Euros and it takes 3 days. Ok, maybe 3.5 hours. I don’t know. I wasn’t interested. If it’s faster, there’s no price not to be paid. Other than speeding fines, obvs.

So we had our breakfast in this morning and hit the road. Let’s rock and-fucking-ROLL!!!

Twenty minutes later we’re on dirt tracks, going over speed bumps, following a massive tractor. Ok, stop, re-set Waze. THE TOLL ROADS!!! WE WANT TO PAY AS MUCH AS WE CAN!!!!

And we ended up in some industrial town filled with lorries and with 17 sets of traffic lights; all red. I counted them. I had plenty of time to count…

Eventually we found a toll road and whizzed along at 81mph. Yes, that’s the legal limit there, faster than ours. Ok, if I hit 85 or 88 at times, my ‘navigator’ informed me pretty sharpish. Thank you, Mel!!!

They have another interesting law ‘over there’. The speed limit is different if it’s raining. At first it wasn’t raining; we even had the top down. Rather optimistically cos the clouds were black as night. Then it was drizzling. Ok, what do I do? Slow down? Or ask for a proper definition of rain? Then it got progressively harder until there was not much ambiguity about rain or not. It was fucking torrential. Ok, so how fast do you can? Can you go? And as only about 5% of the speed signs actually say “130 but 110 if il pleut’, can you assume that it only applies on those roads or sections where they sign that? I didn’t have a clue. Nor, apparently did many Frenchmen, as I dropped my speed to find myself being overtaken by Citroens doing 140, Renaults doing 145 and mopeds ridden by onion-wearing, beret toting, Breton-striped Frogs doing 155!!! Others were adhering rigidly to 110. So I ignored them and chased the mopeds.

We made it. Plenty of time. Rain or no rain.

Got back to Folkstone, even more rain. Buckets of it. Lovely ride up the M20 in the rain and spray, fab. But even that was heaven compared to… driving back through South London in endless fucking traffic. Ok, north London wasn’t masses better but at least it felt like ‘home’.

And here we are, where it all began.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

It’s our last day here. It’s been fab. Loving northern France. And tomorrow we drive back to Calais, then hop on the train and whizz back from Folkstone. Ever tried ‘whizzing’ through the Blackwall Tunnel? It’s pretty much ‘whizz proof’. But you can’t come back through Dartford because for some reason the traffic is simply horrendous for miles and miles coming up from the south. Whereas from the north it’s seamless and non-stop onto the bridge. Don’t get it. But there is much I don’t know.

We could just leave the car here and get a boat across. Because the small boats are now coming from Normandy and landing on the Hampshire coast. Well that would do me. I reckon I’d be processed by the immigration team by about February next year and home by March. But no, Calais it is.

Today’s trip took us to the outstandingly gorgeous little town of Honfleur. Another little port, this one at the mouth of the Seine and eye-wateringly cute and fabulous. They all are. The French do ‘towns’ very well, it has to be admitted. So that’s ‘towns’ and ‘cakes’. And not much else. Oh, roads are pretty good, even though it costs you money for the really good ones. And they are all obsessed with the speed limit here. If it says ‘50!’, you got at 50. And I do. Well, no-one told me it was kilo-meeeters, did they? So we have a little chart which Mel holds, a conversion table. From kph to mph, just so she tell me off for going too fast in 2 languages. The motorway top speed is 81 (130kph), which is fab, but it drops to 110kph when it’s raining. The signs tell you. But they’re fixed signs, not digital. So how do you define ‘rain’? As opposed to ‘drizzle’? Can you do 120 if it’s light rain? We’ll see. Rain is forecast for tomorrow.

So we did Honfleur and came back to Deauville to go back to the beach. Which, anywhere else would be described as ‘a desert leading up to the sea’. As this photo almost shows, the beach is just fucking massive. From the boardwalk to the sea is a 15 minute walk. Honest. No exaj. Wonderful soft, golden sands and, unlike yesterday when half of France was here because of the weekend, today was almost Frenchman Free. The dream.

Because wherever there are Frenchmen, and/or French Women, there are dogs. French ones. They take them everywhere. It has become fashionable of late for cafes in England, particularly ones in parks and near recreation areas, to proclaim themselves ‘dog-friendly’. Which means little Rhombus the Cockapoodle Terrier Cross, can join you for a latte in the morning and they’ll put it in a little silver doggy bowl, specially. Whereas here in France, little Hercule, the Alsatian/Chihuahua mix, goes just everywhere. Cafes, restaurants, cinema, dentists, everywhere. There’s no question. It’s possibly the most dog-obsessed nation in the world. I think I might introduce a few more Korean restaurants over here. They need the culinary diversity.

We shall speak on the other side.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I’m just lovin’ this whole Deauville/Trouville thing. I just hope war doesn’t break out between them whilst we’re here. As you can see, on the map of Trouville, on the right; Deauville is just a sliver. On the map of Deauville, on the left, it’s blanked out. I mean, WTF? You can walk from one to t’other in 2 minutes and the people ‘intermingle’ all the time. I’ve seen them do it. They… cross a fucking bridge. It’s not hard. So all ‘us’ Deauvillers, the poncey-up-market princesses and tarts, crossed over this morning for the market on the waterside in Trouville. Great market, really bustly and busy and you could buy a gorgeous, chic jacket, as Mel did, obvs, whilst I was watching a massive stall which was, basically, 150 ways to eat a dead pig.

Then we came back ‘where we belong’, among the aristocracy and horse-riders, and went into the centre of Deauville. Where there was another market. Probably 1km from the other side’s one. And yes, this market was very up-market. More expensive, better quality, less ‘rough around the edges’ as markets usually are. And the cafes and restaurants, of which there are seemingly hundreds, were crowded with loud French people smoking. It is an amazingly beautiful area. Lots of shops you can’t afford to shop in. Perfect.

Yet I made a fatal error this morning. No, I didn’t watch Match of the Day, it wasn’t that great an error. I read the Times. First time since Wednesday. And here’s what I learned.

That Andy Burnham is a tosser. No surprise there. And that Ed Miliband is a much bigger tosser, which is even less of a surprise. Because the former tosser, in an effort to placate the vast number of anti-semites and anti-Zionists (you can tell them apart by their lapel badges, apparently) has stated his intention to ‘sanction’ all Israeli goods from the West Bank. Miliband has shown his support for this, and as foreign secretary, must implement such measures.

Because what they never show on the News reports is that the ‘settlements’, hateful though in some ways that they are, are very productive. They farm, they grow stuff, they manufacture lots of other stuff. And probably 80% of their workforce in all commerce, will be local ‘Palestinians’. The ones who aren’t rioting, being shot at and setting fire to tanks. And they’re the ones who will lose their jobs because of left-wing tossers sitting comfortably in their Islington homes, too busy virtue signalling to understand the consequences of their actions.

I don’t like the building of new ‘settlements’, not now. Its inflammatory. But ‘Judea & Samaria’, as Israel calls ‘the occupied West Bank’ was Jewish 3000 years ago. It’s in the bible, FFS. Ok, long time ago, lots of water under bridges, many wars and slaughters ago. In 1948 in the war of independence, the ‘Palestinians’ murdered and threw out from their homes, 50,000 Jews, in the West Bank. The East Bank having already been bequeathed by the British to become Jordan at around the same time. But the West Bank was contentious because it held Jerusalem. Everybody’s holy city. But it was ours first.

Netanyahu is under pressure from his horrible, right-wing ‘associates in government’ to proceed with a very aggressive West Bank policy on increasing settlements. All I hope is that after the forthcoming elections, the new president can rid himself of that coalition from hell which has no concept of ‘world view’ or ‘public relations’.

But sanctions? Token gesture politics from a government who can’t decide whether Gaza or potholes in Gateshead are a more pressing issue.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Before we travel anywhere we do our research. What languages are spoken; the local customs and protocols, and a comprehensive history of the area to understand local issues and sensitivities.

Ok, that’s not true at all. We book, we go, we wing it. Just like everyone does. How hard can it be? People are people; ain’t they? There are some important exceptions; like going to really alien cultures, like Japan, or Ecuador, and in Newfoundland, where we learned if you call the people ‘Newfies’, they punch you. Worth knowing.

So we left Le Touquet having woken up to the first sunshine we’d seen in 3 days. And we drove 120 miles over to Deauville. On the Normandy coast. Driving here is wonderful. The roads are fast and pretty much empty, by normal UK standards. But they charge you. Not just because you’re English and they hate you, but they charge everybody. And you have to keep within the speed limits. The most painful thing of all. They fine you on the spot, and you get points on your UK license for getting a speeding ticket in France!!! They can’t stop 50 massive fucking dinghies from sailing out of Calais each week laden with illegal immigrants, but they can spot a solitary UK driving license at 20 miles on the road. We are a persecuted minority.

And we arrived in Deauville. And it is really, really, REALLY beautiful. Even more so than Le Touquet. More proper town, less seaside resort. But here’s the thing, as we found on a shortish walk. It’s not a town. It’s 2 towns. This photo is from the window of our little apartment, here in Deauville. All the cars and buildings on the right of the photo are across the river in Trouville. We strolled up the road, crossed the 50 metres of bridge over the river Touques and we’re in Trouville. Easy peasy. Like Buda and Pest being separated by the river and joining up.

Except, you get the idea that over here, these 2 places would NEVER join up.

We got a tourist map from the office in Trouville. It doesn’t show Deauville. Just mentions it as a blank space across the river. Similarly, the Deauville map offers no words, details or streets on the Trouville side. The other town simply does not exist on your side of the river. So now I’m interested. It’s so easy to hate the French (less so the women) but when they hate each other???

Turns out that these towns, known collectively as ‘the Riviera of the North’ as they’re only a 2 hour train ride from Paris, are simply from different ends of the social spectrum. Deauville is ‘aristocratic’ and, basically, poncey, full of equestrian events and French nobility and over-priced restaurants. Trouville has ‘working class roots’ and consequently is a bit more ‘pie & mash’ (moules frites, as they call it here), a bit more miner’s strike, some Gilets Jaunes, peutetre. A bit more scummy. Andy Burnham would love Trouville. David Cameron is totally Deauville. Kier Starmer would u-turn between the two until he ran out of petrol.

I’m so pleased that 250 years after la Revolution, the class war is still as live and thriving as it was in Les Mis.

Egalitee, Fraternitee, Libertee? You’re ‘avin a larf, mate.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

How many steps have we walked?!!??! is a common question today. My stock answer is ‘don’t care’. Because who really fucking cares to quantify a lovely walk. It’s an abusive form of reductionism. Because walking is not about how many steps, nor how far you go. It’s about where you are. Possibly who you’re with. And where you stop for cake. To remove that context is to make every beautiful, summery, coastal, foresty, hilly, old city walk just a simplified numerical value. You might as well go on a treadmill in front of Coronation Street. It’s not that I’m ‘anti-steps’, it’s just that it doesn’t bother me. I don’t have a ‘step counter’. Not on my phone. Not in my watch (too analogue for such things). Not in my jock-strap, hearing aids or underpants. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people who aren’t as lucky as me. Some of whom will spend a gentle, pre-dinner conversation in the kitchen walking on the spot. Why? Increase my steps, of course! Why else??? And I’m often accompanied by human step-counters.

Thus; to yesterday. We walked. In the howling winds. In a bit of rain and at (very few) times, in some sunshine. We walked all around Le Touquet in the morning (but like ALL of it) and then did a coastal hike into the forest in the afternoon. In the evening we walked back into town (you can’t park there ever, so no point trying), which is a good 15 minutes each way. Or actually, in the wind, not such a good 15 minutes.

Which resulted in this. On Mel’s watch. Top left. The infamous ‘step counter’ for the day. 27,138 steps. I think that’s about a year’s worth.

Until this morning. When we drove over to Montreuil-sur-Mer. The odd thing being that from Le Touquet, which is truly, right on the fucking ‘mer’, you have to drive 13 kms over to Montreuil. Inland. So you turn up there with your buckets and spades, swimming trunks, lilo, and… you’re in the middle of the countryside. Fucking fraudsters.

Apparently, it was ‘sur Mer’ and then the tides changed and the seas receded and the next thing you’re closing up your ice-cream parlours and flogging off a pier to the highest bidder. Sorry mate, sea’s gone, try Le Touquet up the road. And the weather was sufficiently lovely to take the top down on the car. (Read: it stopped raining for a bit).

But in Monteuil, in about the 11th century, they walled in the whole town, as you did if you lived with thieving Frenchmen all around. And the wall still stands. So any self-respecting Brit, step-counter or historian, simply has to walk round ‘the Ramparts’. It’s only about 3k round and such a fab walk, with very high views around 360 degrees. You’re very high up because you only built towns on the tops of hills, ‘back in the day’. Not saying ‘it wasn’t windy’ because on numerous occasions we nearly got blown off. Ok, I exaggerate, but incredible winds.

Then it started raining, 5 minutes after our walk ended. Give me a sign, Lord.

I’m in the room with a cup of tea and a sleeping wife. And no fucking wind.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Good things about Le Touquet. Its beautiful. Everywhere. Almost too beautiful. Achingly so. Every view as you walk around is more stunning than the previous one. And that one was fabulous. The town is immaculate, the avenues wide, tree-lined and perfect, the houses and apartment buildings simply magnifique, the parks, the beach, the whole seafront, wonderful. Sand dunes giving way to forests as you go inland, all in such perfection it was if designed by either God or President Mitterrand, back in the day.

Bad things about Le Touquet. It’s not what you’d call a ‘Mediterranean climate’. It’s windy as all fuck and a bit drizzly. Like Manchester in a wind tunnel. But that will improve. We hope. It’s (half) full of French people. The other half is predominantly Brits, with the odd Dutch person or Belge thrown in for the ‘Euro-mix’ thing. And every restaurant starts and finishes with moules. Mussels. Those horrible, grisly, chewy bits of garlic flavoured, seawater encrusted bivalve which the French (and definitely the Belgiums, who live about 50 miles from here) love more than their wives, families, grandchildren and cars. Yes, they do. And in fact every restaurant is the same. Some sell pizzas as well as (fucking) moules. Then they offer other stuff which is nice. Last night I celebrated my total love of French cuisine with their other national dish: a cheeseburger. It was fabulous. I was asked how I wanted it cooked. Or, being France, if I wanted it cooked at all. I settled for what they call ‘well done’. What we’d call ‘very rare’. You have to recalibrate over here. Though the restaurants here are really lovely, sitting outside (wind and rain willing), and a great vibe. Tonight we’re going to a slightly posher version of last night’s, ok, same food, just 5 Euros more across the board, so it must be better, right? They do moules too, funny enough.

What you won’t see in Le Touquet is a non-white face. It’s like living in some Hitlerite dreamland which, I grant you, is a little unsettling as an analogy when you’re Jewish. Whilst Paris has its Jihadist arondisements where the police won’t go, and whilst Marseilles is full of North Africans, that’s not what Le Touquet is about. If you want a riot here you have to arrange it yourself and no-one would join in. Not even Mel. Even if you scheduled it for when the golf clubs were all closed and the boules matches finished. Le Toucans are just too posh. This is where President and ‘Mrs’ Macron have their summer place. So you don’t see a curry house or a Thai or Vietnamese, even Peruvian restaurant. Because that would involve importing some ‘foreign people’ and I don’t think it’s allowed round here.

So we’re ‘resting’. Walking around all morning isn’t tiring. Walking in a force 9 gale, a little more so. Then we’ll go out on our next ‘moules-avoidance’ mission. You have to. You’re in northern France, they’re fucking everywhere.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx