One afternoon it rained, in drizzles and in sheets, it rained all day as if we were fishermen’s wives with naught to do but sit at home and wait. We drove out to Paimpol, where the rain fell on the little port, on the local hotel looking out onto boats white and green and yellow. La vareuse, a hardy overshirt for seafaring folk.



We walk along the coastline, alternatively blue or grey or seaweed green. We balance on the craggy tips of black rocks, we slip on mossy stones. We discover clear, quiet rock pools of transparent shrimp. La vase, the sludgy, sandy mud that squelches beneath our feet. Le gué, a narrow, uneven path, a secret lane between two coasts, that reveals itself when the tide goes out.



Yesterday we walked back halfway from Plougrescant.

– funny, these small-town names: Gonver, where a muppet is mayor; Finistère, where everyone stealths along in trench coats and dark glasses; Buguélès, as if your every entrance is announced by scouts in shorts, in a small brass band –

I was saying.



Yesterday we walked back halfway from Plougrescant. We had just had coffees and crêpes of salted butter caramel on the terrace at Le Gouermel – oh, these crêpes, sweet and salty and crunchy and soft all at the same time, then Claire turned her back and licked her plate – we finished off our lunch, then we watched the tide slowly creeping in. Heading back towards Port Blanc, Georges dropped us off just after the little house and its bushes bursting with hydrangeas, and we ran down the hill till laughter threatened to make me lose my step. La hortensia, the great thick blooms on every street, in every house, it seems, in deep pink or lilac, in magenta, in blue.

We found a field growing artichokes, the sturdy stalks ending in an explosion of purple-green flower. The cows meandered up to us. They were white and curious. Me too, I am curious, but look where it gets me, for, trying to scale a grassy bank to reach the massive bales of hay, I planted my foot firmly in a prickly gathering of nettles. “Attention aux orties !” Olive said, but it was too late. “Ils piquent,” he said, just as my foot started to sting. “Mother!” I said. “Fucker!” I said, and I would have said more, and in French, had I remembered, at that moment, how. “Bordel de merde de... pute... de...,” I say, because I forget the order of things, even though I remember it ends, triumphantly: “A queue !”

But, so.

The artichokes, the cows, the nettles. We walked westwards till we came to the soft sand the colour of sand-coloured fish.



We eat like kings, like fisherman kings, like fisherkings. Le rouget, drizzled with olive oil and baked for seventeen minutes. Le maquereau, marinated overnight in muscadet, and popped in the oven with tomatoes and melting onions. Le lieu jaune, baked with pats of salty local butter. One night we had great fire-orange crabs, bigger than my head. Right now, I know, there are sardines in a brown casserole in the fridge. They have been marinating in lemon juice and salt since yesterday. The fisherwoman at the Port Blanc market has sad eyes and rubber boots. She is lean up and down, with a big laugh. Her hair, cropped close, is white-blond from the sun and the sea.



So the holidays are upon us. The house is stirring now. Hopes are high for a pot of Malo yoghurt and a grand dollop of confiture de fraises de Plougastel.