Philobiblon

* On the (pebble) beach this afternoon, an old bloke with a metal detector presumably looking for dropped coins; I’m not sure if that counts as desperation or simply persistence. He didn’t find any that I saw.

* On the steps of the Palais de Justice last night, a group of young men drinking. One of them accidentally kicked a bottle down the steps and it shattered at the bottom. He solemnly got a plastic bag and picked up at least the biggest of the piece before putting them in a bin – not what you’d see in London…

* Strolling along the pebbles under an almost full moon, I absent-mindedly picked up a sea-smoothed rock that would have made a perfect pestle, smooth and comfortable in the hand: when you think about it, while it is archaeologically unrecoverable, the first tool wasn’t those shaped by (semi-)human hands, but when a hominid, or an even earlier creature, first picked up an implement, found it good, and carried it with them with intent for future use. Probably a long way back – possibly even a dinosaur, this piece suggests.

I now feel better about my terrible accent in French: that’s after listening to a Eurostar conductor attempting, and thoroughly mangling, “St Pancras”. A further cause for celebration of the move of the terminus (aside of course from the fact that it will be a 10-minute walk from my door).

The workers in French bricolage stores (or at least the one next door to my hotel) are just as bad as B&Q’s – the one I asked this morning for a French-English elecriticy connector (another one to add to my collection – somehow it is what I always forget) had to run to the one woman in the store who seemed to know something – she had a queue of staff waiting for her attention.

Note to self: don’t ask for a recommendation of a cheese “a la region” in Nice – when I thought about it, it obviously isn’t exactly a dairying region. The nice woman behind the counter in Casino made a valiant effort, however, suggesting gorgonzola, since Italy is just around the bay, more or less. I thought that was a bit much for lunch on the beach, however, so settled for a very pleasant Brie de Meaux.