Mont St Michel is impressive.
The Normandie beaches thought provoking.
The War ruins sobering.
The villages and countryside beautifully peaceful.
But it is the little eccentricities, foibles of the everyday that colour an experience. Its the tiny moments of family reality that give you an insight into another world, other lives.
... Like the sounds of Belice, the french spaniel, loping bored through the house, jumping up to lever the door-handles and pull open the doors.... and the resulting house full of doors with handles removed to slow her down.
... like the ducks that find their way into the garden every evening to munch on the soft green lawn at the back of the house, quacking and waddling furiously back to their field whenever you come into sight.
... Like mop-haired grandson Markouf, who runs a path between his house and Dominiques, in a permanent battle to avoid his mothers chores at grandma's and grandma's chores at Mums. Homeschooled, his days and nights consist of eternal attempts to watch the television and play on the computer. Markouf! qu'est ce que tu fais! .... rien maman.
Like the smiles that spring from every meal when youngest son Hugos is home to mumble his laconic criticisms of every meal, and amusing names for his least favourites (war-cake, famine stew), and make the meals after he returns from the fishing boats, an amusing caberet.
Like the smiles that come every time a bottle of wine is opened, and the cork sporting the simple statement 'vie' (life) revealed, giving everyone a chance to riff on the cliche of french life being found in a bottle of wine.
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