Life between breaks always feels like a frantic 3rd gear chase.
After a few days the holiday routine slips into an altogether more comfortable rhythm.
The hangovers seem more forgiving; the heat more bearable; the prices marginally less crippling. It is a rapid process of acclimatisation. After all, if you don't come to terms with the continental way of life, the only alternative is to come to blows.
So, it slowly dawns on the parents of small children that they can finally relax into the forgotten charms of simple things like a day at the beach.
And so we did.
Dressed, fed and frog-marched to the car while the world was still sleeping, the children's check list of essential beach paraphernalia quickly contracted to the remnants of a partly digested pain au raisin and a means of undertaking further beach excavations. My only concern was avoiding the relentless UV barrage.
Arriving once again in the sand strewn parking area of Bois De Plage, something was on fire. Billows of smoke were rolling over the tree tops and into the car park.
In France, this constitutes a genuine concern as fires spread quickly in the tinder box conditions, while in the UK, even something of biblical proportions comes a distant second to the ritual of hunting for parking change. The French seem to instinctively understand that charging for every ancillary is a real turn off. At some time over the last decade, UK plc seems to have concluded otherwise.
When did it became normal to pay for toilets? Probably at about the same time as hold luggage, air for your tyres and ATM cash withdrawals. Did Ryan Air seriously plan coin operated oxygen masks?
But it wasn't smoke; it was fog.
As I stood gawping, a damp grey blanket descended, the sun was dimmed and the temperature dropped double digits in as many seconds.
Expecting it to burn off as quickly as it came, we selected a spot on the empty beach and wondered where the sea was.
Alex ambled away in one direction and Sophie in the other and in the moment that it took for the fog to thicken a notch, they were both swallowed by the murk. How quickly the detached laissez-faire of parents grows, firstly into mild unease and then to an escalating sense of unspoken panic. Walking increasingly briskly and then breaking into a trot when they didn't immediately appear in the gloom, I resorted calling impotently into the whiteness as my fears mushroomed.
In the end, the children were more frightened than I was and soon were scooped up by well wishing French beach combers who emerged from the mist to the sight of a much relieved but rather foolish feeling father.
As a stern punishment, we had ice creams.
After a few days the holiday routine slips into an altogether more comfortable rhythm.
The hangovers seem more forgiving; the heat more bearable; the prices marginally less crippling. It is a rapid process of acclimatisation. After all, if you don't come to terms with the continental way of life, the only alternative is to come to blows.
So, it slowly dawns on the parents of small children that they can finally relax into the forgotten charms of simple things like a day at the beach.
And so we did.
Dressed, fed and frog-marched to the car while the world was still sleeping, the children's check list of essential beach paraphernalia quickly contracted to the remnants of a partly digested pain au raisin and a means of undertaking further beach excavations. My only concern was avoiding the relentless UV barrage.
Arriving once again in the sand strewn parking area of Bois De Plage, something was on fire. Billows of smoke were rolling over the tree tops and into the car park.
In France, this constitutes a genuine concern as fires spread quickly in the tinder box conditions, while in the UK, even something of biblical proportions comes a distant second to the ritual of hunting for parking change. The French seem to instinctively understand that charging for every ancillary is a real turn off. At some time over the last decade, UK plc seems to have concluded otherwise.
When did it became normal to pay for toilets? Probably at about the same time as hold luggage, air for your tyres and ATM cash withdrawals. Did Ryan Air seriously plan coin operated oxygen masks?
But it wasn't smoke; it was fog.
As I stood gawping, a damp grey blanket descended, the sun was dimmed and the temperature dropped double digits in as many seconds.
Expecting it to burn off as quickly as it came, we selected a spot on the empty beach and wondered where the sea was.
Alex ambled away in one direction and Sophie in the other and in the moment that it took for the fog to thicken a notch, they were both swallowed by the murk. How quickly the detached laissez-faire of parents grows, firstly into mild unease and then to an escalating sense of unspoken panic. Walking increasingly briskly and then breaking into a trot when they didn't immediately appear in the gloom, I resorted calling impotently into the whiteness as my fears mushroomed.
 |
| Can you see my children? |
In the end, the children were more frightened than I was and soon were scooped up by well wishing French beach combers who emerged from the mist to the sight of a much relieved but rather foolish feeling father.
As a stern punishment, we had ice creams.
No comments:
Post a Comment