Summer on the beach in Hossegor, France and there are bazookers everywhere. Big ones, small ones, firm ones, droopy ones. Eggy ones, torpedo ones. Sure it sounds good. But… actually no buts.
It is good.
Summer by the beach in France and there are humans everywhere. In the lineup, on the roads, people, people. The sun is high and warm and proud but there is a strong stench of rising urine in this carpark, against this wall. There is broken glass from a broken-into car and you have cut your foot and are standing in the semi-evapourated wee lake and it’s getting into the cut, you fear, which is also unpleasantly sandy.
Ouch.
Summer a la plage en France and you are in your fastest, lightest, quick dry-est super surf trunks and you feel amazing and light and fabulous. Possibly you’re in a tube suit or at worst a shorty, but the principle is the same. You feel emancipated, you are a performer. Your board is the same one or maybe it’s new but either way it loves summer on the beach in France as much as you… more, maybe. Look how she goes whizz, crack, carve, slice, tube streak, thwack, fizz!
Summer on the beach in France and you just have to be here. But so do the lifeguards. But the lifeguards are also in the army now or maybe they are cops and they are frowning and pissed off. They have Ladas, actual pre-fall of the Iron Curtain Russian Lada 4×4’s or possibly those strange little tank thingys and they are trying to prevent folk from drowning but they are also trying to prevent you the surfer from the best surfing peak, and it is such a fine line. You tried not to stray into the segretated area but… just… couldn’t. And now they are trying to drown you. They are actually dunking you underwater with moves they learned in the army police college training manual and as you gasp for breath you wonder how did it all go so…wrong?
Summer and the beach.
In France. And you.
Here.
Summer by the beach and you’re in a bar and have a bit of sun sting because you have been out in the beautiful, splendid blue surf all day, r-i-p-p-i-n-g. And it’s all just fine. There are ones from Czech cities, other ones from who-knows-where? Probably Gothenburg and surely Toulouse. All the squeakers are always from Toulouse. They look at you and you look at them and they wonder was he out there in the beautiful splendid surf all day ripping? And your sparkle radiates off your I-just-ripped-all-day self and bounces off a piece of caramel curve of breast top or possibly thigh and says, ‘Surely, yes, I was’. And you and they wonder, will we go to the beach under the cover of night tonight listening to the sounds-louder-in-the-dark crash of Biscay shorebreak? Or will we wait and instead Facebook tomorrow from the campsite wifi and go to the beach tomorrow night? You don’t know which, but you suspect one or the other, and you get another drink. It is mighty pricey, but hey, this is summer.
Beside the beach.
In France.
Summer along the beach down France and it should be flat but just isn’t, and you have been getting seriously barrelled, more than you did at Chopes. Mainly because you have never ever been to Chopes, and have no plans to go.
But you have plans to come back to the beach in France next summer.
Don’t you?

-PE