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