The grass might not be greener on the other side of the Channel, but I realise, on a recent short break to Normandy, that I desperately want it to be. My first trip abroad for nearly a year: of course I need to believe that the eight-hour journey to the beachside house we’re staying at near Barfleur is worth the time, money and energy we’re spending. And that everything, everything, is better the way they do it in France.
“Look at the pylons,” I spout, from the car on the road from Le Havre to Caen. “They do them with so much… so much grace.” The roads are so much better, the bridges have more style about them, the cars look nicer. Even the road kills seem to have pegged it with a bit more thought about their final pose.
The clouds are shapelier, the trees have a certain chic-ness about them, the newly built houses blend so well in with their older neighbours. There seems to be a better quality about the air we are breathing.
“Take a look at those seagulls,” I say to my long-suffering girlfriend, once we’ve arrived. “Is it my imagination, or are they better-behaved than our lot? Our seagulls have an Anglo-Saxon loutishness about them. I bet they’re drunk half the time.”
At the end of the holiday we are queuing to drive onto the ferry, back in Le Havre. The space is much neater than its shabby Newhaven counterpart, with a line of pretty benches sitting in front of a neat row of children-drawn trees. In the air two seagulls are frolicking as they fly daintily overhead. Even the seagulls, I think. Even the bloody seagulls.
One of them lets loose a squirt of liquid excretion which I watch getting bigger as it drops towards me. I react quickly enough to get out of the way. The mess splatters down onto the car in front, obscuring the first letter of its clunky British number plate.