The sea is cold and green, the vast stretch of beach is deserted, save for a few early morning joggers, only the whispering sigh of the contented waves and the ethereal song of the seagulls swirling around the Fort National to break the silence…

Early morning by the sea. I like looking at the sea whilst eating croissants and drinking tea. Fuck that coffee nonsense. Tea is what one has with breakfast. Hence the name: Breakfast Tea. Nobody ever made Breakfast Coffee. And with good reason, tea is civilisation in a cup, delicate of scent, smooth of flavour and refreshing to the palette. Coffee is merely a cupful of bitter darkness, drunk only by the unrefined and those who inhabit the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder.

But I digress.

Looking out from the empty breakfast room at the silent expanse of Le Grande Plage du Sillon (otherwise known as the beach) and the ever-heaving waves of the English Channel (not La Manche as the oft defeated Frenchies would have it – to the victor the spoils and the bragging rights I think!) fills one’s soul with peaceful thoughts and a small smile. Breakfast by the sea. This is how one should begin one’s day before girding one’s tattered loins and venturing out into the fresh breeze and salty air, whilst offering many a hearty bonjour! to the local peasants who wobble by on their creaking bicycles with freshly baked batons, strings of onions and a jaunty beret perched upon their greasy gallic tetes, leaving a trail of stinking Gauloise smoke and garlic fumes in their wake. Ah, vive la belle France!