I wandered in the other direction this afternoon, towards Grau d’Agde. I’ve done Agde (lovely) and Cap d’Agde (Orwellian) so today it was Grau’s turn.

Grau in French means mouth of river near sea. It’s a fair summation of what the port of Grau is, but were I translating in the other direction, I think I’d offer up Flaqnoire, or Blackpool.

Grau is very much a bise-moi vite, moules-frites sort of place. There’s a bar whose name, translated into English, means Like nothing you’ll find elsewhere, and the self-penned description is well-deserved. It is like nothing else on Earth, emitting all the joie de vivre of Accrington, and Irma la Douce’s corpse. The shops shut from 12 until 4 – historic even by French standards – but in the brief minutes of opening, offer things fashioned entirely from plastic and nylon.

You would have to use the French universal dustbin-noun truc to describe these things. In English we would say mementos – or more commonly, tat. Somebody has to buy them, and they obviously do in huge quantities. All the purchasers looked suspiciously as if they might be regular customers at Le McDo. In the worst of these emporia, however, was the one slim customer to be seen, an obvious transsexual (the pre-surgery Adam’s Apply is always the giveaway) debating in serious tones whether vermillion or fuchsia might be the couleur juste for his/her jauntily-angled hat. A summary of the retailer’s view might be “Fuchsed if I know matey”, but anyway he/she chose the vermillion in the end. It offered a stark contrast to the emerald of her/his sarong.

The one thing la Place at Grau does have is an excellent boulangère…….an older lady who clearly knows that what she is at. The Baguette du Chef at her establishment was top-hole, and almost worth the one hour round trip to find it. In truth, the main enjoyment of the adventure was the tow-path back by the Hérault river, during which I watched fishing boats on stilts being variously oxy-acetylened and sanded, amateur fisherman conversing non-stop about the absence of fish, and the French doing what they do best: cycling.

The high-point of the afternoon was seeing a tandem, on the back of which was a panier containing a small Scottish terrier. It never ceases to amuse me how dogs love being driven in the open air. I think it has something to do with the 38 million interesting smells belting up their refined nostrils every inch of the way. The equivalent for us, I suspect, would be that of a motorbike pillion passenger doing 90 mph across the Camargue towards a wood-oven cooked pizzeria offering 38 million recipe variants.

……………………………….

A survey quoted in The Independent today asserts that almost nobody in Britain thinks they are thicker than the average Briton. This means that 48% of Britons are at odds with reality, a finding that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

However, what primarily intrigues me about this finding is the important 2% who thought they were more dense than the mean. My considered view is that they should be found, and a representative sample used to form the next House of Commons. As none of them would ever skip Page One, they could well produce the most sensibly driven Government in history. But even more important, when some Whitehall Sir Humphrey spouted drivel, they would without doubt call him out and employ sound common sense.

Find a thickie today. You know it makes sense.