“Where are the beach huts?” Chris asked turning to me as we rounded the corner from Boat Cove to Coryton Cove.

We were out for a nice walk with Chris’s cousin and his wife, who have been staying the weekend with us, and we were on our way to the locals’ favourite beach, which few of the holidaymakers know about (let’s keep it that way!). Upon a moment’s reflection Chris and I came up with the answer to his question.

“The storms!” Chris and I said simultaneously.

We carried on walking and soon noticed the strange sight of groups of people stopping in little groups by a colourful windbreak near the three surviving beach huts. As we drew closer we could see why people had been stopping; there was a board with a message on it – at the top, underlined and in capital letters, it read, NEWS FLASH. It continued:

YES, WE SURVIVED THE STORM

YES, THE OTHER 19 BEACH HUTS WERE WASHED AWAY

WE DO NOT KNOW WHEN THEY WILL BE REPLACED

THE CAFE ALLEGEDLY BURNT DOWN (ARSON) ON 25 APRIL

WE DO NOT KNOW WHEN IT WILL BE RE-BUILT BY THE COUNCIL

WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR DAY AT CORYTON COVE AND REMEMBER – THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON – HOORAY.

Just as we were reading the news flash a familiar face – one of the party behind the windbreak – appeared and smiled at me.

“Roma wrote it,” he said.

“Ah,” I smiled back.

It had to be the Roma who I know, the Roma who Chris and I often see out with her boyfriend, Tony the magician, when we go for cycle rides. On the other side of the windbreak were a variety of happy sunbathers lounging or sitting on sun-chairs. They were the proprietors of the only three beach huts left in Dawlish. Roma and Tony (not to be confused with “Tony Roma’s” of spare ribs fame) were sat in front of the blue beach hut. She saw me straight away (she couldn’t miss me because I was wearing a bright orange  sun-dress with white polka dots, and I had on red lipstick).

“You wrote the news flash,” I said by way of enquiring why.

“Well, Sally, people have been asking such silly questions that we just got tired of it,” Roma began and went on, “They asked things like, ‘Did you survive the storms?’, so I said, ‘No, we were dragged to the bottom of the sea!’ Then there was the other good one; someone looked at the charred remains of the cafe over there and asked me, ‘Was the cafe burnt down?”, so I answered, ‘No, it was abducted by aliens!'”

“Do you mind if I put this in my blog tonight?” I asked (thinking that you might find this as funny as I did).

“You go ahead,” she replied.

“But remember to tell people that I’m a magician,” said Tony Everest the fabulously talented (I’m sure) magician from Dawlish.

The happy band of sun worshippers were kind enough to let me take their photographs too.

This morning I was up early, at eight o’clock (well it is Sunday!), to make a telephone call to my good friend, Rolando, who lives in Brisbane. As per usual, initially we spoke with Scottish accents (for some strange reason he is always Doctor Finlay and I am Janet – from the old television show, “Doctor Finlay’s Casebook”) before reverting back to Aussified English and Anglicized Australian respectively – ironically, Roland is the English one.

“There is something I have to tell you,” he said as if daring me to guess what it could be.

“You’ve booked up for a holiday to England,” I answered. (Well, what else could it have been? He’s been thinking about it for at least three years.)

“Aw, you stole my thunder…”

“But it wasn’t a bolt from the blue. Anyway, how marvellous!” I marvelled.

“Better still…”

“You’re flying first class!” I interrupted.

“No, business class – I’m not a millionaire you know,” he laughed.

“Who are you flying with?”

“Thin air.” (Well that’s what I thought he said!)

“Thin air?” I burst into laughter.

“Finn Air, F-I-N-N Air, the Finnish Airline,” he laboured whilst howling with me.

“Not the Irish Airline, or the mermaid airline company?” I asked.

“No that’s called Morefinn!”

“Which is what you need when you travel economy class,” I added.

Hooray! The seventeenth of May is another glorious sunny day in Dawlish, the third day running; by English standards that is a heatwave – long may it last.

But more importantly, it is Mary’s birthday. In our family we don’t tend to make a big song and dance about birthdays as there are so many of us, but I have only one sister, the kindest, most beautiful person I have ever known and her name is Mary. She is eighteen months my senior, therefore she did everything slightly ahead of me. When, at only fifteen years old and just arrived from Australia, she began work as a secretary, Mary never bought anything for herself without buying something for me. For much of our childhood and teenage years we shared a bedroom as well as everything in the wardrobe that fitted us both. All through my life I’ve had to be careful not to admire her possessions too enthusiastically or she would press them upon me. Mary is witty, intelligent and a marvellous travelling companion (so long as you don’t drive too fast!).

The birthday girl hasn’t been well with a chest infection for nearly a month; the sunshine will be a great boon to her health and morale. I tried to phone her a little earlier without success; I had a feeling she wouldn’t hear – of course, she will be in her daughter’s garden… making the garden grow. Happy birthday Mary!

Isn’t it ironic that, as soon as the sun comes out here in England, we don’t go out and do nice things like having picnics or lazing on the beach? No, we work like Trojans mowing the grass and digging the garden (lest the winter returns and we don’t have any other opportunity to get everything nice outside). Today we had our second warm sunny day of the year and Chris and I spent all of it spring-cleaning the house from top to bottom; we’ve only just finished and we’re worn out and aching; I, for one, now have blisters and raw skin where yesterday it was only red and painful (which goes to show that housework is harder than gardening!). But something nice happened today not very far from here, in fact it happened in the air, just above the sea, and quite close to our sea wall under reconstruction… Chris told me about it – I was downstairs hoovering at the time and missed it.

The unusual event took place just as lucky Chris was cleaning the picture frames in the guest bedroom on the third floor (the one with the best elevation for views of the sea). Suddenly he heard a helicopter, close and loud, so he went to the bay window to observe. Apparently, it was an army helicopter – a Lynx (if that means anything to you – it doesn’t to me) – and it was hovering (not hoovering, like me) very low and near to the sea, and it did a little dance, like a half victory roll, for the hundred or so workers still hard at work restoring our devastated sea wall. Another Lynx helicopter joined the first one and did the same dance in the air. And after their impromptu performances the pair flew off in the direction of Torquay.

Chris said it was very sweet. I wish I had seen it too; nevertheless, thanks to Chris I can imagine the Railtrack workers, all dressed in their unmistakable bright orange uniforms, being amused, and perhaps feeling appreciated, by the nice helicopter pilots who came to see them at Dawlish.

When Chris said the words, “You do desperate better than me!”, I knew he was right and I accepted the phone from his outstretched hand; I may not have as many hormones as I used to but I still have enough to cause the floodgates to open when necessary. And yet, as I held the phone and dialled the number for Dave the plumber, I felt more mad than desperate, after all, only yesterday we had forked out £250 for a boiler part and two hours work – Dave the plumber charges £48 per hour and adds as much as he wants onto the price of parts, however, he is more experienced at boiler problems than Sam the plumber (our first choice at £15 per hour plus parts at cost, and not to be confused with Speedboat Sam the plumber and diver who deprived us of £200 of our hard earned money for forty minutes work, after which the boiler was in worse condition than before he started).

Honest-faced Dave had promised us that he wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan plumber, nor a deep sea diver; he was back, living in Dawlish, and trying to make a name for himself; the part wouldn’t cost much and he would work as quickly as possible. Admittedly he had worked longer than Speedboat Sam but the outcome was not dissimilar – only worse still – every turn of the hot tap caused an explosion, and the sound like a foghorn went on for even longer than previously.

“I’ll come back and fix that as soon as I can,” Dave said as he was leaving, “It won’t cost much.”

So, understandably, this morning I was pretty mad when Dave informed Chris that the new part would cost £230 (plus his time at £48 per hour).

“Well done!” said Chris after I had put down the phone, “I knew from the moment you opened your mouth that you could make him bring the job in under one hundred pounds.”

“Oh? What did I say?”

“Well, you didn’t let him speak. You went straight in for the jugular…”

“Really? Go on, tell me – I can’t remember.”

“You asked, ‘Is that Dave?’ and he must have said ‘Yes’, then you said, ‘I’m very upset!'”

As much as I would like to say that I didn’t see his point, I can’t lie – I could see exactly what he meant. Dave has recently had a divorce. I suspect he’s had quite enough of women getting “very upset”.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – it was some time but what time? We could not be sure.

The alarm had been set for five in order for us to be away before six and boarding the “Armorique” at Roscoff ferry port by seven-thirty in the morning. It was pitch black, inside and outside, when Chris’s alarm went off; it was still dark when we arrived at Roscoff, which was eerily bereft of any other cars or people – not even the port officials were in evidence; the ship had not yet arrived and all the barriers were down and unmanned.

“That’s funny,” began Chris, “I wonder if the night-crossing was cancelled due to high winds and rough seas, or could we be an hour early?”

In the darkness I squinted at my mobile phone and made out the time as five twenty-five, but as to whether it was French time, English time or Australian time, for that matter (well, it has been only a few weeks since my return), I could not gauge because the English clocks had gone forward an hour recently, and I rarely ever use my English mobile as a phone, and I was still half asleep anyway.

Thinking it pointless to wait in the deserted ferry port we agreed to drive a little farther along and go into the centre of Roscoff village.

Likewise, the village was in darkness, apart from the soft glow of a few street lamps dotted around and the hard yellow of a neon light coming from a small bistro. We parked the car and walked back to the only establishment with any sign of life; with my face pressed against the glass door I could see a woman sweeping the floor at the far end of the shop, and I tried the handle – it was locked and she didn’t see me. I thought better of knocking and perhaps alarming the lady.

Instead, we decided to walk the short distance to the harbour and watch the sun rise up from the sea; some fishing boats had come in and were unloading their bounty as the sky turned from grey to mauve, yellow and orange; at the same time our ferry, the “Armorique”, could be seen behind the the fishing port, passing by in the deeper channel that led to the ferry dock.

At length, when the sky had paled into the grey of a showery morning, we joined one of the queues for the car ferry and watched the commercial vehicles disembark first, then the cars. And everyone waited; and while we waited some people in camper-vans took their little dogs for walkies; and others went to the rest rooms, which had opened during our absence; and officials chose our queue of cars for the random search for contraband, but it was all done nicely – I didn’t even have to get out of the car (I guess I looked as if I had got up an hour earlier than necessary).

On-board a little while later, Chris and I were feeling tired and irritable (to the point that I had gathered my things together and very nearly walked off in a huff) but I’m not as hot-headed as I used to be, and I stayed. After a nap I became less irascible still when Chris suggested that we do some shopping.

In the Duty-Free Shop , the young woman who was gift-wrapping my presents looked at me and said in her French accent:

“I sink I have seen you before somewhere – non?”

“We’ve been staying in Le Conquet since Friday,” I answered.

“Zat’s it!” she said delighted, “I sink I saw you in se boulangerie – the bakery – in the main street, you know se one?”

We each marvelled and agreed that it is a small world and we all felt good because of the special connection – being linked by place and time – and because it’s always nice to be remembered, or to realise that you are the one with an excellent memory.

Back in the lounge area with comfortable chairs for sleeping, Chris went off on a scouting expedition whilst I rested my eyes again. I was awoken by the sound of two teenage girls singing; they had left a small group of friends (already only a part of a larger party of French schoolchildren) in order to practise their singing. Sat on the window sill, and with the song-sheets in their hands, they sang the song, “Happy” (by Pharrell Williams). They sang very softly, perhaps because they thought I was asleep.

“That was very pretty,” I said smiling at the end of their rendition.

“Sank you,” they answered, surprised.

I closed my eyes again and the girls sang the song again, this time a little louder.

The rain had stopped somewhere in the Channel during our crossing and the sun reappeared. As we entered the harbour at Plymouth the sun highlighted the red and white lighthouse and the elegant terraced buildings on and around Sir Francis Drake’s famous Hoe. The sky was blue and the clouds, white and puffy; and the sunshine and pretty skyscape was with us all the way home, making it not so bad to be home – after all, it is printemps – springtime.

Whatever the weather, whatever the time of day, one of the greatest pleasures in going for a walk around Le Conquet (the “Land’s End” of Brittany) is meeting the inhabitants; the chances are that you’ll stand and admire a beautiful house on the seafront only to find that the owner is a good friend of Glyn, my brother-in-law, and the next minute you are invited in to have a glass of wine and some bread and pate. Or Glyn might whisk you up to the door of his artist friend, who has visitors already, and you feel it may be an imposition to go in but Phillipe, standing in his doorway, looks disappointed when you turn to leave and implores you to join the party. And even though you don’t catch a third of what they say, you understand them nevertheless because they express themselves quite adequately with kisses and laughter.

The pictures speak for themselves.

The rain stopped during breakfast and the sun beckoned us to go to market at the neighbouring town of Saint Renan this morning.

“Do you like seafood such as crabs?” asked Glyn. (Glyn is Chris’s brother with whom we are spending the weekend.)

“Certainment! (Of course we do)” we answered.

“Good,” said Glyn.

And we followed Glyn and his Portugese ami, Gee (perhaps not the correct spelling), as they made their way through the market. We came across many purveyors of seafood, and at each one I expected us to stop and buy; however, we passed by each of them until our return, and even then we stopped at only one special one. The stall belonged to a lady I recognised – she was Glyn’s new neighbour, the one who intends to extend her house along the other side of Glyn’s garden wall. Chris, who was doing the buying, asked for three crabs. The rich fisherman’s wife sold us three live crabs and four whole plaice for fourteen euros.

“They were worth between thirty and forty euros,” said Glyn with a knowing smile.

No, not sausage dogs on a hot day! Sorry about my Franglais, but well, when in France with only a bit of schoolgirl-French… Here are the dogs of my day.