There are over 11,000 ‘beaches’ in Australia - that is approximately 2,000 Aussies per beach but if you weed out the ones that don’t swim, those who don’t like sand, those for whom it is too hot, or those for whom the water is too cold, and those who can’t be bothered, why there is a bloody good chance that if you turn up early in the morning, you
Madiba, the Father of the Nation, has gone and sad though it is, no one would have wished this great, great man to malinger, not his family, not his countrymen, no, not even his enemies of apartheid times.
Belgium sneaks up on you. One moment you are in France, and the next it is like you are still in France because all the signs are still in French, but um, you are not. And if you check the flag and make sure the stripes are vertical, well you know you are not in Germany.
The road to Rouen is paved with good inventions. Like that tiny weenie Jane, who every day crawls into the confines of our TomTom, which in turn sits on my windscreen and shows our course, although sadly, not always unerringly.
We sped out of Paris faster than you could say “Peripherique,” the mighty ring road around the city, and zoomed into the countryside, the glorious countryside made golden by an abundant summer sun and paint-worthy by the proffered harvest of yellow butter-balls of hay lobbed into fields Van Gogh like even with those big black crows in the fields beside them.
You are wrong, Cole Porter. I can never imagine Paris not sizzling like a rasher of streaky bacon dropped into a hot frying pan, any time of year. Yes, even in the winter when you say it drizzles.
