Day on a Norman beach

We are about 50 minutes from the beach. It took us a while to get used to this notion. If you can hop in the car with kiddies, and some buckets and shovels, and be digging sand castles in under an hour, it is a pretty neat thought, and for a long while it took getting used to that this thought applied to us.

The boys are crazy about the beach. For years now, Maxime has been constructing in the sand not sandcastles, which hold little interest for him, but elaborate cities and water works with fantastic canals of Kafka-esque impenetrability and complexity.

Gabriel loves digging, and sandcastles. And dragging his boat-on-a-string over the sand. Sometimes he drags it at a full clip, as fast as he can go, over the bumpy sand hills, which wreaks havoc behind, and the boat has issues with this.

Mama likes doing nothing, as this is one of the only times she can hope to do such a thing.

Papa, this time, was not present, as he was recovering from the flu, but he did raise the question why one could not just as well have the flu on the beach as at home in bed.

A fascinating thing about the Norman beaches is that there are never crowds. It's even funny to think about such a thing in these parts. The wide expanses, the natural shores, it is really special.

At moments like this, one again feels the presence of the past, no intrusion of the commercial modern world. These moments can strike at any time, and in sometimes the most unlikely places. Like in a boulangerie, when the proprietress greets you like an old friend, and asks about your kids, who have been coming in for years, and the lack of rush just to sell you something and "move on" is not only absent but unthinkable. Not just to you, but to her. At these moments you might as well be in the 19th century since there would be no noticeable difference and it is this which brings the past up to the present, and you can picture it and understand how it was.