By Michael Simkins
Last updated at 9:27 PM on 17th April 2009
He had fallen in love with France as a child, but his wife hated the country. So MICHAEL SIMKINS kissed her goodbye and crossed the channel for a hilarious voyage of discovery. Just don’t tell the missus what he did there!
Michael Simkins knew his wife hated France – so he packed his bags and took off for a solo adventure
My relationship with France began when I was interfered with at my local cinema in Brighton when I was about nine or ten. I was watching a curious French movie with English subtitles: Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.
Set in a fictional seaside resort on France’s Atlantic coast, this strange and beguiling comedy depicted the gently anarchic adventures of French comedian Jacques Tati’s alter ego during one summer in the Fifties.
The real star of the film was the location itself: a small, sleepy resort, complete with sun, sea, sand, donkeys, laughing children and evening strolls along the prom.
It could almost have been Brighton, if it weren’t for the fact that it was hot, elegant, exotic, timeless and languid.
Midway through the picture, the cinema’s only other occupant, a man in his 40s with greasy hair, squeezed between the seats, plonked himself down next to me and moved his right hand on to my left knee. I knew something was wrong.
Yet, despite all my parents’ dire warnings, so entranced had I become by the strange sunlit world that I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I merely moved my seat.
That had been my relationship with la belle France ever since. Fascination mixed with mild anxiety. Yet somewhere inside me I still dreamt about one day finding my fantasy France.
My wife, Julia, has lived there and is fluent in the language, yet has no desire ever to visit the country again. So, I knew it was a risk to treat her to a surprise 50th birthday lunch at one of Paris’s most historic restaurants, La Coupole, where I could listen to her converse in French with the arrogant waiters she professed to despise.
She ran effortlessly through the menu in perfect French, asking for some water while we waited for our feast. In perfect English, the waiter dismissively replied: ‘Certainly madam. Sparkling or still?’ The thunderous look on Julia’s face made me panic. In an attempt to lighten the mood I told the waiter, in jolly English, that it was my wife’s birthday and (why, oh why?) could he guess how old she was?
Waiter: ‘I have no idea. 60, 62?’ I knew from that moment that if I ever wanted to discover France, I would be doing it alone. So I made a plan to travel around for three months, despite speaking not a word of the language.
Julia was in favour of the idea. Middle-aged, middle class and middle England, I was stuck in a rut and knew I was dwelling more on things I hadn’t done than on things I had.
My wife was no longer the only one in this marriage who thought I should develop a sophisticated taste for the finer things in life: food, wine, sensuality, risk-taking. And her.
Confronting my childhood inspiration was my first challenge.
Over the years, whenever relationships or work or traffic jams got too much to bear, I’d imagined myself in Mr Hulot’s Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, on that beach, bathing in that sea in front of that same homely Hotel de la Plage.
On the first morning in St Marc, I opened the hotel curtains and found myself on the film set I remembered so vividly. I stood on the balcony with a cup of tea, gently humming the theme from the movie, when a harsh French voice complained in accented English: ‘Please – if you must sing at this time in the morning, lower your voice.’
I looked up to find a middle-aged Frenchman wearing only a crumpled T-shirt standing in the window above and glaring down. His comments would have carried more gravitas if he hadn’t been entirely naked below the midriff.
Michael stumbled across a game of naked boules
For 40 years I’d been looking forward to a dip in the sea here, yet even as I strode purposefully towards the shoreline, I knew what would happen.
My inherent Englishness welled up again: ‘It’s too cold, the wind’s too stiff, I might get a stitch, I’ve just washed my hair, I mustn’t get sunburnt, there may be jellyfish, I may step on a sea urchin and have to be flown to Luton by air ambulance.’
I had to go in. No matter I was the only bather. No matter it was starting to rain.
And then I noticed him: about 50 yards off, and the only other occupant of the beach. A small stout man, sitting all alone on a tartan rug.
He wore a cream and orange sports shirt underneath a beige jacket and matching slacks, with his feet encased in old-fashioned rope-soled shoes. A transistor radio was pressed to one ear, his fingers fiddling intently with the dial.
I recognised him instantly. He was a mirror image of myself. This odd, solitary figure offered a reflection of the old me I’d come all the way here to escape.
Forward or back? Which was it to be? I ran in shrieking like a big girl’s blouse at the first numbing shock of Atlantic water on my midriff.
When I came spluttering up for air a few strokes later, my doppelganger had already gathered up his things and was trudging back towards the promenade.
I ran out and took a photo of his departing figure, just to prove he hadn’t been some self-indulgent hallucination. Within seconds he’d disappeared from view and I’d headed back for the sea and another surge of endorphins.
It was time for a celebratory meal. During my French odyssey I intended to try all the country’s signature dishes: pig’s trotters, frog’s legs, snails – but tonight I’d wade in gently with something Gallic yet familiar.
I studied the menu at the local restaurant. Some of the words I didn’t recognise. Never mind, the main dish had the word saucisson next to it, and that was enough for me.
A big, fat, fulsome sausage on a modish wooden board arrived, with a few legumes and some French fries.
Far now from all things English, I’d had my first swim and had ordered my first meal in the vernacular.
My knife pierced the thick, yellowish skin and a curl of steam billowed round my nostrils as I took in a deep olfactory draught of proper provincial restaurant cooking.
I may not be Gordon Ramsay, but I know drains when I smell them.
I inched my way inside, using my knife and fork as if performing delicate brain surgery. The meat had an unfamiliar terraced texture to it, slabs of pink meat interlocked as if in some fleshy jigsaw. I fumbled for my handkerchief and opened it just in time to cough discreetly. What was that word next to saucisson that I’d so blithely disregarded?
‘Andouillette. Pig’s intestine.’ Bon appetit.
New lease of life: Michael enjoys a French tipple
Like most Englishmen, I am a reluctant and awkward mover – Julia always says I dance like an insurance salesman. But as I arrived in Quimper, the capital town of Brittany, my new sense of adventure made me determined to join in the Festival de Cornouaille, one of the largest folk-dancing events in Europe.
I’d set my heart on stomping through fest-noz - a distinctive dance once frowned upon by the Catholic Church. Rounding a corner in the deserted main street, I saw the entire population of the town was in a large tent. And they were dancing.
Crabbing sideways across the dancefloor were thousands of people – pensioners, businessmen, teenagers, hoodies, entire families – snaking round the hall as if attempting to edge their way along an imaginary window ledge.
Each participant was linked to their partner only by their intertwined little fingers. How very French, I thought, all ages joined together united by a cultural pride.
As a red-blooded Englishman, however, there was one thing I needed before I took the plunge – a drink.
Outside, a long wooden counter was dispensing pints of draught Guinness under a starlit sky, yet the bar was virtually empty. Men preferring to dance rather than drink Guinness? This was a strange country indeed.
Fest-noz was trickier than I’d thought and I failed repeatedly to persuade anyone to welcome me by grasping my finger.
I was about to slink home when I recognised the runt of the litter, the one who could be picked off before he could run for safety.
He was a lumbering tourist like myself, with an unwieldy haversack on his back and fleshy, sunburnt feet encased in dusty sandals. His sweaty fingers slipped, a gap opened up and with a single bound I grasped his spare hand. His huge flapping fingers closed gratefully round mine and I’d made it. I was dancing with unaccustomed abandon – and it was about to get a whole lot better.
Someone had grabbed my other hand and was holding it at regulation midriff height.
She was an attractive older woman in her mid-50s, the sort you always hoped to meet as a teenager; warm, unthreatening and experienced: think Susan Sarandon mixed with Meryl Streep.
But better still, she had the largest pair of ripe, bountiful, fifty-something breasts that had ever had to endure a country dance.
They were bouncing up and down and landing on my hand with a satisfying slap each time we hopped. The fest-noz had proved every bit as mysterious and powerful as I’d imagined.
In the glow of a July evening, in France’s greatest ethnic music fest, I danced as I’ve never danced before, with a pair of 38DDs slapping the top of my right hand.
Romantic luxury: Michael went to France seeking the finer things in life – but he got more than he bargained for
If I was to embrace the spirit of France, I must learn to appreciate wine, which is why I headed for Bordeaux where, 50 euros lighter, I found myself on board a coach to a chateau for a wine-tasting session.
Half an hour later, we were trapped inside a building that contained only empty stainless steel vats where Madame Blanche, the vineyard owner, launched into an exhaustive explanation of fermentation procedures.
It was nearly two hours since we’d left the tourist office and we were due back by 5.30pm, so an air of insubordination had set in among our coachload of Aussies, Germans, Japanese and a solitary, thirsty Englishman.
At last there appeared trays of wine bottles and a corkscrew. All around me people were scrutinising the liquid, holding it up to the light and swirling it round the sides.
Thankfully, I noticed the young Aussie downed his glass in one and stuck his hand out for a refill.
I followed suit and stood smacking my lips, waiting for something to emerge. Vanilla, n’est-ce pas? With a faint afterglow of apple?
Whatever it was, it was excellent. Perhaps I should have another, just to make sure.
The next glass tasted even better. We tried another white with a citrus flavour and an aftertaste of yellow flowers and Tizer; and then another white. Before I knew it, my beaker was being filled again.
There was no doubt about it: the first two had definitely been whites, and this one was most certainly a red.
Beyond that I wouldn’t yet want to commit myself, but it was a start.
I conducted an experiment to see if tipping the glass of white I was holding in one hand into the glass of red I was holding in the
It was only when I tried to get up that I realised my plight. I must have put away the best part of two bottles in a little under an hour, and life suddenly didn’t seem quite as much fun.
Fuzzily, I laboured across the courtyard and sat down heavily on the gravel. The next thing I remember is being woken up 40 minutes later. The coach party had been pulling out of the car park when they noticed my feet sticking out from behind the wall.
I had perfectly represented my countrymen by going berserk at the first sight of free booze and having to be helped back home by strangers.
If there’s one thing that differentiates us English from the French, it’s our relationships with our bodies. In my entire 51 years, I’d been naked in public only once and that was in a play above a pub in Dalston, East London. The premises closed soon afterwards.
Naturism in France, by contrast, is big business, employing 3,000 people and bringing in 250million euros a year.
For someone like me who waits until the mercury reaches 30 before I’ll even remove my tie, the whole point of coming to France was to break free from the social conditioning that held me back.
If I was serious about this, then I must visit the daddy of all nudist camps – Cap d’Agde in the Languedoc. Known throughout France simply as Espace Naturiste, or the Naked City, it’s the world’s biggest nudist centre.
Cap d’Agde was a curious place, I was told. As well as naturists, it also catered for – and here I had to do some rough translating – swingers.
Alongside the vast majority of dedicated nudists, Espace Naturiste also welcomed a more eclectic clientele, who combined nudity by day with exotic sexual practices by night: exhibitionists and swappers of wives. This was slightly unnerving, but I wasn’t going to be put off.
For just 9 euro I could buy a day pass so, moments after arriving, I was squeezing through a turnstile in the perimeter fence.
‘Total nudity is obligatory within the quarter,’ stated my information sheet. There was nothing for it. For the first and I imagine the last time in my life, I stripped naked in broad daylight in the middle of a mini-roundabout and set off towards the sea with my shoulder bag slung as carelessly over my shoulder as I could manage. The
scene that greeted me over the dunes was stupefying. Naked bodies stretched as far as the eye could see, reclining on sun loungers, dozing under beach umbrellas, swimming in a crystal sea or playing beach tennis.
I tried to fix my gaze on the sea, but wherever I turned, quivering things filled my eyeline. The sight of one old man kneeling on all fours in front of me assembling a picnic table was enough to put all thoughts of lunch out of my head, possibly for life.
There was only one place to hide. Moments later I was doggypaddling in the sea. The sensation of swimming in the nude was immeasurably lovely, and I cursed my stunted outlook that it had taken me so long to experience it.
Exploring the complex brought new oddities at each turn. I stumbled across a naked boules tournament in full swing, with a silver trophy standing proudly on a side table for the eventual winner.
If I’d closed my eyes I could have imagined myself back in Tunbridge Wells, the only sound that of convivial chatter and clacking balls. I’d foolishly forgotten about sun cream and my buttocks were now like two braised pork chops, but otherwise I felt ten years younger.
The purely naturist aspect of Cap d’Agde had won me over utterly. Yet the swinging side remained stubbornly beyond my grasp.
Just then, I heard the strangled shrieks of the Bee Gees drifting in the breeze.
I followed the sounds to a large building, where a group of nudists was clustered round the entrance, while others were on their way out, flecked with gobbets of soapy bubbles as if they’d just stepped out of a luxurious bath. ‘Glamour-Puss Foam-n-Mousse Disco Extravaganza’ screamed a sign pinned to the door.
A foam ‘n’ mousse disco would almost certainly be as near to sampling swinging as I might get or, indeed, desire. But a bouncer barred my way. He pointed to the ‘Strictly non-Solo’ sign.
Thwarted, I was about to leave when I caught the eye of a woman in her late 60s or early 70s resembling a retired primary school teacher, standing by herself.
The next moment, without a word being spoken, we converged simultaneously on the door. We were waved through with barely a glance.
I found myself in a cavernous space illuminated by wheeling disco lights.
A number of leathery individuals stood around, dancing in a desultory manner, while a machine spewed out cascades of lumpen foam, most of which dropped straight to the floor.
There were no writhing bodies, no acts of exotic hedonism, no sexual gymnastics: just a load of peeling Germans jogging up and down like revellers at a 50 birthday disco.
I’d confronted my inhibitions and I’d seen enough to know that I wasn’t a swinger. But I was now a firm convert to the naturist ideal.
The starched, sniggering mentality I’d arrived with had dissolved under the bucolic magic of life in the raw. Nudity seemed to me the most natural thing in the world.
What better way to finish my day than by calling my wife, Julia. She’d be tickled to death.
I called home and told her of my exotic day spent among the swingers and sun-worshippers. I ended up describing dancing naked to the Bee Gees next to a German businessman among cascading bubble bath.
Julia? Julia, are you still there? On Monday, I’ll recount how I played French cricket, became a gambler and was robbed in a world-famous hotel.
• Extracted from Detour De France: An Englishman In Search Of A Continental Education by Michael Simkins, published by Ebury on May 7 at £10.99. Copyright Michael Simkins 2009. To order a copy (P&P free), tel: 0845 155 0720.
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