Back on the French coast

Today millions of people are in the streets protesting the proposed changes to the pension system. Who do you think Sarkozy summons to the Elysée Palace? The presidents of the major unions? Geez. You don't have the French touch, yet. Of course, it is Thierry Henry, one of the stars of the now hated French soccer team. Not just invited, summoned!!! Fast-forward a week. Now it's the Representatives who have requested a meeting with Domenech (the disgraced manager of the national team) and Escalettes, the president of the French Football Federation, who just resigned. Officially they do this to try and "understand what happened". Ironically, it is the Culture commission that requested the meeting. Yes, in France nowadays, culture is soccer. Or soccer is culture. They met for two hours, without the press! All came out saying they hadn't learned anything. Only a few came out expressing their dismay at this use of their time. The only result of this new debacle is that FIFA is really upset at this perceived meddling of politicians in their affairs, and that the French Federation is on the verge of being excluded from the International Federation...

We zip under the channel again to return to Pas-de-Calais, the territory of my ancestors. I've never been there other than to take the ferry to England. My grand-parents were chased by bombs during the war (Boulogne was leveled and all its public records lost) and they never got to return to the rather pleasant life they had before the war. Old photos in my dad's albums show them spending their free time (my grand-ma went to business school in the '20s and was working full time all her life) playing tennis, boating or having fun with their numerous friends on the beach. This time we are to meet a cousin my father has not seen in 60 years and a grand-cousin only met on the phone. She has a son a year older than Arthur. They don't look anything like one another - our common ancestry is too far removed - but they immediately get along like gangbusters. 

Over two days we explore the coast, la Côte d'Opale, up and down.

The coastal landscapes are gorgeous, a sharp contrast to the in-land dullness we drove through on the way up last week. 

The weather too is in sharp contrast to last week. It is unusually warm and sunny, which of course transforms everything. 

I want to settle for the summer in the low-slung cliff-top house on Cape Gris-nez (on the left on the aerial pic), with dark blue shutters, an expanse of grass, unrestricted ocean view, and a cellar built into one of the omnipresent leftover bunkers, that we came across after a short walk through an improbable narrow trail, evoking Provence more than the Northern reaches of France. Anyone care to join me there?